Judge rules Trump administration can't tie transportation grants to immigration enforcement

Kent Nishimura/Bloomberg

A federal judge ruled Tuesday that the Trump administration "blatantly overstepped" its authority when it tied federal transportation funds to states' immigration enforcement policies.

The ruling stems from a lawsuit filed in May by 20 Democratic states that sued the U.S. Department of Transportation and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy in Rhode Island district court. In June, Chief U.S. District Judge John McConnell, Jr. issued a preliminary injunction in favor of the states, and on Tuesday granted the states' motion for a summary judgment.

The "defendants have blatantly overstepped their statutory authority, violated the [Administrative Procedure Act], and transgressed well-settled constitutional limitations on federal funding conditions," McConnell wrote. "The Constitution demands the Court set aside this lawless behavior."

In April, Duffy ordered that transportation grant recipients must comply with federal immigration enforcement efforts, prompting the states' lawsuit. That followed President Trump's executive order in January that directed the U.S. Attorney General and Secretary of Homeland Security to "evaluate and undertake any lawful actions to ensure that so-called 'sanctuary' jurisdictions . . . do not receive access to federal funds."

Previous administrations have sought to put their stamp on how federal infrastructure funds are spent, as seen most recently in the criteria under the Biden administration's Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and early moves by Biden's DOT to restrict highway expansion projects.

But the Trump administration's efforts have rattled the municipal bond market with what some have called "unprecedented approach to executive power over infrastructure policy." The administration has yanked funding for a bevy of infrastructure projects in Democratic-led states and cities over issues like diversity equity and inclusion criteria, including New York and Chicago. The day after taking office, Duffy issued an order that conditioned grant dollars on cooperation with the administration's larger priorities like funding projects in areas with high birth and marriage rates.

McConnell, who was appointed in 2011 by former President Barack Obama, ruled that the DOT exceeded its authority in imposing a requirement that states comply with U.S. Immigration Customers Enforcement in order to receive the transportation grants.

"Had Congress wished to try to make federal transportation funding contingent on cooperation with federal civil immigration enforcement, it could certainly have attempted to do so," the judge wrote. "Absent any clear indication of such an attempt, the court declines to find that DOT was vested with the sweeping power it asserts in setting a condition that is so obviously unrelated to the grant programs it administers."

In granting the states' summary judgement and denying the DOT's, McConnell ordered the IEC vacated from "all grant agreements" administered by the DOT, and permanently stopped the administration from attempting to condition federal transportation funding on state cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.

"If President Trump wants to stop losing in court, he should stop breaking the law," California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement Tuesday. "The courts have repeatedly and firmly rejected the Trump Administration's efforts to infringe on states' constitutional right to set their own policy priorities."

The DOT did not respond to a request for comment.