Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-19-03290/USCOURTS-ca7-19-03290-1/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 899
Nature of Suit: Other Statutes - Administrative Procedure Act/Review or Appeal of Agency Decision
Cause of Action: 

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In the 

United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ 

Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

CITY OF CHICAGO, 

Plaintiff-Appellee, 

v.

WILLIAM P. BARR, Attorney General 

of the United States, 

Defendant-Appellant. 

____________________ 

Appeals from the United States District Court for the 

Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. 

Nos. 1:17-cv-05720 & 1:18-cv-06859 — Harry D. Leinenweber, Judge. 

____________________ 

NO. 18-2885 ARGUED APRIL 10, 2019,

NO. 19-3290 SUBMITTED FEBRUARY 6, 2020 

DECIDED APRIL 29, 2020 

AMENDED JUNE 4, 2020 

____________________ 

Before BAUER, MANION, AND ROVNER, Circuit Judges. 

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2 Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

ROVNER, Circuit Judge. In this appeal from two 

consolidated cases, we consider for a second time the legality 

of conditions imposed by the Attorney General on the 

Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program 

(“Byrne JAG”). See 34 U.S.C. § 10151 et seq. (formerly 42 

U.S.C. § 3750). Previously, the district court granted a 

preliminary injunction as to two conditions—known as the 

notice and access conditions—imposed by the Attorney 

General on the FY 2017 Byrne JAG grant applicants. We 

upheld the preliminary injunction and its nationwide scope 

in City of Chicago v. Sessions, 888 F.3d 272 (7th Cir. 2018) 

(“Chicago I”). 

The Attorney General then took the rare step of seeking en 

banc review limited to only the nationwide scope of the 

injunction, excluding the determination that injunctive relief 

was proper as to the notice and access conditions, and we 

granted en banc review. During the pendency of that review, 

the district court granted a permanent injunction, and in light 

of that superseding relief we vacated the decision granting en 

banc review. City of Chicago v. Sessions, No. 17-2991, 2018 WL 

4268814, at *2 (7th Cir. Aug. 10, 2018). The district court again 

determined that the notice and access conditions imposed by 

the Attorney General were unlawful and unconstitutional, 

but also determined that a third condition—the compliance 

condition—was unconstitutional as well. City of Chicago v. 

Sessions, 321 F. Supp. 3d 855 (N.D. Ill. 2018). The court 

extended the injunction to apply to all FY 2017 grant 

recipients program-wide, but in light of our prior grant of en 

banc review regarding the scope of the injunction, stayed the 

injunction to the extent that it applied beyond the City of 

Chicago. 

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Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 3

The Attorney General appealed that determination, and 

while it was pending in this court, the district court granted a 

permanent injunction in a second case brought by the City of 

Chicago, this time challenging the Attorney General’s imposition of conditions on the FY 2018 Byrne JAG grant. City of 

Chicago v. Barr, 405 F. Supp. 3d 748 (N.D. Ill. 2019). Those conditions included the same notice, access, and compliance conditions that the district court enjoined as to the FY 2017 grant, 

as well as some new conditions. The district court enjoined 

the imposition of all of the challenged conditions as to the FY 

2018 Byrne JAG grant and all future years, and once more 

stayed the injunction as to grantees other than the City of Chicago. Id. at 770. The Attorney General again appealed to this 

court, and we consolidated the two cases for the purposes of 

the appeal. 

The stakes in this case are high. Chicago, like many local 

governments, has determined that: (1) effective law enforcement requires the cooperation of its undocumented residents; 

(2) such cooperation cannot be accomplished if those residents fear immigration consequences should they communicate with the police; and, therefore, (3) local law enforcement 

must remain independent from federal immigration enforcement. The Byrne JAG grant was enacted by Congress to support the needs of local law enforcement to help fight crime, 

yet it now is being used as a hammer to further a completely 

different policy of the executive branch—presenting a city 

such as Chicago with the stark choice of forfeiting the funds 

or undermining its own law enforcement effectiveness by 

damaging that cooperative relationship with its residents. 

The Attorney General repeatedly expresses frustration 

that Chicago, or any other jurisdiction, can “simultaneously 

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4 Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

accept federal law enforcement grants, yet maintain local policies that frustrate federal immigration enforcement.” Appellant’s Brief 1-3-20 at 1. It is a sentiment echoed by the only 

circuit—of the five that have considered it—to uphold the 

challenged conditions thus far. See State of New York v. Dept. of 

Justice, 951 F.3d 84, 107 (2d Cir. 2020) (“there is something disquieting in the idea of States and localities seeking federal 

funds to enforce their own laws while themselves hampering 

the enforcement of federal laws, or worse, violating those 

laws.”) But states do not forfeit all autonomy over their own 

police power merely by accepting federal grants. And the Attorney General’s perception of the urgency of immigration 

enforcement does not corral for the executive branch the powers entrusted to the legislative branch. The executive branch 

has significant powers over immigration matters; the power 

of the purse is not one of them. This tendency to overlook the 

formalities of the separation of powers to address the issueof-the-day has been seen many times by the courts, and it is 

no more persuasive now than it was in those cases. As the Supreme Court has stated, repeatedly: 

Much of the Constitution is concerned with setting forth the form of our government, and the 

courts have traditionally invalidated measures 

deviating from that form. The result may appear ‘formalistic’ in a given case to partisans of 

the measure at issue, because such measures are 

typically the product of the era’s perceived necessity. But the Constitution protects us from 

our own best intentions: It divides power 

among sovereigns and among branches of government precisely so that we may resist the 

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Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 5

temptation to concentrate power in one location 

as an expedient solution to the crisis of the day. 

Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898, 933 (1997), quoting New 

York v. United States, 505 U.S. 144, 187 (1992). 

We conclude again today, as we did when presented with 

the preliminary injunction, that the Attorney General cannot 

pursue the policy objectives of the executive branch through 

the power of the purse or the arm of local law enforcement; 

that is not within its delegation. It is the prerogative of the 

legislative branch and the local governments, and the Attorney General’s assertion that Congress itself provided that authority in the language of the statutes cannot withstand scrutiny. 

I. Facts and District Court Rulings 

In Chicago I, we discussed at length the Byrne JAG program and Chicago’s Welcoming Ordinance, as well as their 

respective purposes. See Chicago I, 888 F.3d at 276–82. In short, 

the Byrne JAG grants are awarded annually to address the 

needs of state and local law enforcement. They are the primary source of federal criminal justice enforcement funding 

for state and local governments. This lawsuit stemmed initially from the Attorney General’s decision to attach three 

conditions to those grants—the notice, access and compliance 

conditions, which as set forth by the district court provide respectively: 

(1) A State statute, or a State rule, -regulation, -policy, or -practice, must be in place 

that is designed to ensure that, when a State 

(or State-contracted) correctional facility receives from DHS a formal written request 

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6 Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

authorized by the Immigration and Nationality Act that seeks advance notice of the 

scheduled release date and time for a particular alien in such facility, then such facility 

will honor such request and—as early as 

practicable—provide the requested notice to 

DHS. 

(2) A State statute, or a State rule, -regulation, -policy, or -practice, must be in place 

that is designed to ensure that agents of the 

United States acting under color of federal 

law in fact are given [] access [to] any State 

(or State-contracted) correctional facility for 

the purpose of permitting such agents to 

meet with individuals who are (or are believed by such agents to be) aliens and to inquire as to such individuals’ right to be or 

remain in the United States. 

(3) The applicant local government must 

submit the required ‘Certification of Compliance with 8 U.S.C. § 1373’ (executed by 

the chief legal officer of the local government). 

City of Chicago v. Sessions, 264 F. Supp. 3d 933, 937–38 (N.D. Ill. 

2017). In short: 

 the notice condition requires that state or local officials honor requests to provide federal agents advance notice of the scheduled 

release date and time for aliens in custody; 

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Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 7

 the access condition requires state or local 

correctional facilities to give federal agents 

access to aliens in their custody; 

 and the compliance condition requires the 

state or local governments to certify their 

compliance with 8 U.S.C. § 1373 (hereinafter 

“§ 1373”), which prohibits state and local 

governments from restricting their own officials from communicating information regarding the citizenship or immigration status of any individual to the Immigration and 

Naturalization Service.1 

All of those conditions were imposed on applicants for the 

FY 2018 Byrne JAG grant as well, but three new conditions 

were added. The first was virtually identical to the compliance condition, except that it referenced 8 U.S.C. § 1644 (hereinafter § 1644) rather than 8 U.S.C. § 1373 which contains essentially the same language: 

 the § 1644 compliance condition requires 

certification that the “program or activity” 

funded under the Byrne JAG award complies with § 1644, which provides “[n]otwithstanding any other provision of Federal, 

State, or local law, no State or local government entity may be prohibited, or in any 

1 The Homeland Security Act of 2002 completely dismantled the Immigration and Naturalization Service and created a new cabinet level agency—

the Department of Homeland Security—under which Immigration and 

Customs Enforcement (ICE) now operates. See Homeland Security Act of 

2002, Pub. L. No. 107–296, 116 Stat. 2135.

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8 Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

way restricted, from sending to or receiving 

from the Immigration and Naturalization 

Service information regarding the immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of an alien in 

the United States.” 

The Attorney General concedes that the two compliance 

conditions are equivalent and that our disposition as to one 

will control as to the other. 

The Attorney General imposed two additional conditions 

on the FY 2018 Byrne JAG grant that were distinct from those 

imposed on the FY 2017 grant, which have been termed the 

“harboring” condition and the “additional certification” condition: 

 The harboring condition prohibits the recipient jurisdiction from making any “public 

disclosure ... of any federal law enforcement 

information in a direct or indirect attempt to 

conceal, harbor, or shield from detection any 

fugitive from justice under 18 U.S.C. ch. 49, 

or any alien who has come to, entered, or remains in the United States in violation of 

8 U.S.C. ch. 12—without regard to whether 

such disclosure would constitute (or could 

form a predicate for) a violation of 18 U.S.C. 

1071 or 1072 or of 8 U.S.C. 1324(a).” 

 The additional certification condition requires the certification that “neither the jurisdiction nor any entity, agency, or official 

of the jurisdiction has in effect ... any law, 

rule, policy, or practice that would apply to 

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Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 9

the ‘program or activity’ to be funded ... that 

would or does—(a) impede the exercise by 

federal officers of authority under 8 U.S.C. 

§ 1357(a); or (b) impede the exercise by federal officers of authority relating to 8 U.S.C. 

§ 1226(a) or (c), 8 U.S.C. § 1231(a), or 8 U.S.C. 

§ 1366(1) or (3).” 

Chicago, 405 F. Supp. 3d at 754–55. 

Those conditions conflict with the Welcoming City Ordinance, which reflects Chicago’s determination that the cooperation of all persons, whether documented or undocumented, “’is essential to achieve the City’s goals of protecting 

life and property, preventing crime and resolving problems.’” 

Chicago I, 888 F.3d at 279 (quoting Chicago Municipal Code, 

Welcoming City Ordinance (the “Ordinance”), § 2-173-005 

“Purpose and Intent”). Toward that end, the Ordinance sets 

forth standards which include prohibitions on requesting or 

disclosing information as to immigrant status, as well as a 

prohibition on detaining persons solely based on a belief as to 

their immigration status or on immigration detainers based 

solely on violations of civil immigration laws. Chicago I, 888 

F.3d at 279; Ordinance, § 2-173-020, -030, -042. The Ordinance 

further provides that “unless acting pursuant to law enforcement purposes unrelated to the enforcement of civil immigration law, no agency or agent shall permit Immigration and 

Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents access to a person being 

detained or permit the use of agency facilities for investigative 

interviews, nor can an agency or agent while on duty expend 

time responding to ICE inquiries or communicating with ICE 

as to a person’s custody status or release date.” Chicago I, 888 

F.3d at 279; Ordinance § 2-173-042. Those restrictions in the 

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10 Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

Ordinance are inapplicable when the subject of the investigation “has an outstanding criminal warrant, ... has been convicted of a felony, ... is a defendant ... where ... a felony 

charge is pending, ... or has been identified as a known gang 

member either in a law enforcement agency’s database or by 

his or her own admission.” Ordinance, § 2-173-042(c); Chicago 

I, 888 F.3d at 279–80. 

A. Challenge to FY 2017 grant 

In the first of the two cases before us, Chicago challenges 

the conditions imposed on the FY 2017 grant, alleging: that 

the conditions were unconstitutional because the Byrne JAG 

statute does not provide the Attorney General with the statutory authority to impose the conditions, and that the imposition is therefore ultra vires and a violation of the separation of 

powers; that the conditions violate the Spending Clause of the 

Constitution; and that, independent of the Byrne JAG grant, 

§ 1373 is an impermissible federal conscription of state power 

and is unconstitutional under the anticommandeering doctrine of the Tenth Amendment. Chicago also sought a declaratory judgment providing that even if § 1373 is constitutional, 

Chicago is in compliance with it. Finally, Chicago alleged that 

the imposition of the conditions was arbitrary and capricious 

in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act and violated the Paperwork Reduction Act. 

The Attorney General sought dismissal of the complaint 

in its entirety, arguing that the complaint was insufficient to 

state a claim and that the court lacked subject matter 

jurisdiction. As to subject matter jurisdiction, the Attorney 

General asserted that the Department of Justice had not yet 

consummated any final agency action that was ripe for 

judicial review because it had not reached a final decision as 

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Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 11

to whether to award Chicago funds under the Byrne JAG 

grant. Chicago responded that its challenge was not to the 

Attorney General’s pending decision as to whether to award 

the grant funds, but rather to the decision to attach the 

conditions to the grant in the first instance. The district court 

agreed with Chicago as to the nature of the challenge, noting 

that the complaint requested that the court “[d]eclare that all 

three immigration-related conditions for the FY 2017 Byrne 

JAG are unlawful.” City of Chicago, 321 F. Supp. 3d at 865. The 

court noted that in order for an agency action to be final, two 

criteria must be satisfied: it must mark the consummation of 

the agency’s decision-making process and not merely a 

tentative or interlocutory decision; and it must be one by 

which rights or obligations of the challenging party have been 

determined or from which legal consequences will flow. Id. at 

865 (citing Bennett v. Spear, 520 U.S. 154, 177–78 (1997)). The 

court held that the action was not merely tentative or 

interlocutory, because the Attorney General stated in his 

declaration that every FY 2017 award would include 

conditions identical to the ones in the grant already awarded, 

which included all of the challenged conditions. Id. at 865. In 

addition, the court noted that the FY 2017 grants were 

awarded based on a solicitation that clearly imposed the 

challenged conditions. Id. The court held that the second 

criteria was met as well, because the conditions force Chicago 

to choose between accepting the award with those conditions, 

or forgoing the grant and the corresponding law enforcement 

benefit in favor of maintaining the policies that it believed 

would maximize law enforcement goals. Id. at 866. 

Chicago moved for partial summary judgment as to three 

counts, arguing that the Attorney General acted ultra vires in 

imposing the conditions, and in violation of the separation of 

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12 Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

powers, and contending that even if the compliance condition 

was valid, Chicago was not in violation of § 1373. The district 

court granted the motion and determined that § 1373 was facially unconstitutional under the Tenth Amendment’s anticommandeering principle, that the Attorney General exceeded the authority delegated by Congress in the Byrne JAG 

statute, 34 U.S.C. § 10151 et seq., and in 34 U.S.C. § 10102(a)(6), 

and that the Attorney General violated the principle of the 

separation of powers in attaching conditions to the FY 2017 

Byrne JAG grant. The court enjoined the imposition of the 

three conditions program-wide, but stayed the injunction beyond the City of Chicago pending the appeal. Id. at 882. The 

Attorney General now appeals that decision as to all three of 

the conditions. 

B. Challenge to FY 2018 grant 

In the second of the two cases consolidated in this appeal, 

Chicago raises identical challenges to the notice, access and 

compliance conditions, and also challenges the harboring 

condition and the additional certification requirement.2 The 

district court held that the notice, access, and compliance conditions were materially identical to the conditions it had already enjoined in the case challenging the FY 2017 grant conditions, and that the new compliance condition referencing 

§ 1644 was indistinguishable from the § 1373 compliance condition and therefore unlawful under the same reasoning. As 

2 Although one additional claim was dismissed without prejudice, the 

City of Chicago has informed the court that it disavows any right to further pursue that claim in this action, and therefore the judgment is reviewable under § 1291. See West v. Louisville Gas & Elec. Co., 920 F.3d 499, 506 

(7th Cir. 2019).

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Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 13

to the additional certification requirement, the court first recognized that the Executive possesses no inherent authority to 

impose conditions on the payment of federal funds authorized by the Legislature, and that the Attorney General had 

failed to identify any source of authority as to the imposition 

of the additional certification requirement. The district court 

nevertheless proceeded to analyze whether any statutory basis for the Attorney General’s authority was apparent. 

The court first noted that the Byrne JAG statute itself provided no such authority, and in fact strictly delineated the formula for the distribution of grant funds. The court then noted 

that it had already held, with respect to the notice and access 

conditions, that § 10102(a)(6) did not provide such authority. 

The court further held that the statutes enumerated in the additional certification requirement applied only to the federal 

government and did not require cities or localities to do anything, and therefore the Attorney General could not require 

compliance with those statutes as an “applicable federal law” 

under § 10153(A)(5)(D). Finally, the court addressed the harboring condition. After again noting that § 10102(a)(6) cannot 

provide a source of such authority, the court considered the 

Attorney General’s argument that 34 U.S.C. §§ 10102(a)(2) 

and (4) authorize the imposition of the harboring condition. 

Those sections require the Assistant Attorney General to 

maintain liaison with the executive and judicial branches of 

the federal and state governments, public and private educational and research institutions, state and local governments, 

and governments of other nations, relating to criminal justice. 

The district court held that §§ 10102(a)(2) and (4) contain no 

delegation of authority to place a harboring condition on 

Byrne JAG grantees, but rather are more plausibly read as an 

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14 Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

instruction that the Assistant Attorney General maintain bilateral communications with state and local governments. 

II. Analysis—Overview 

As we discussed in Chicago I, this appeal is not about optimal federal or state immigration policies. That is not for the 

court to discuss or decide. Rather, the issues before us today 

concern the spheres of power that reside in the state rather 

than in the federal government, and the critical balance of 

power between the executive, legislative, and judicial 

branches of the federal government. Chicago, in deciding that 

its law enforcement needs would be better met if its undocumented residents could report crimes and communicate with 

its police force without fear of immigration consequences, is 

exercising its police power—an area of power long recognized as resting with the states. The Attorney General now 

seeks to pursue the federal government’s interest in enforcing 

its immigration laws. Regulating immigration into this country is a legitimate federal interest, and the executive branch 

including the Attorney General has authority to enforce the 

nation’s immigration laws. But the methods the executive employs in pursuit of those legitimate ends must be lawful and, 

in this case, the means the Attorney General has chosen are 

not lawful. The federal government cannot merely conscript 

the police forces of the state or local governments to achieve 

its ends; that would eviscerate the principles of federalism 

that rest at the very foundation of our government. 

The Attorney General’s use of extra-statutory conditions 

on federal grant awards as a tool to obtain compliance with 

his policy objectives strikes at the heart of another core value, 

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Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 15

which is the separation of powers among the branches of the 

federal government. The authority to pass laws and the 

power of the purse rest in the legislative not the executive 

branch. The composition of the legislature—with elected 

representatives and dual chambers—provides institutional 

protection from the abuse of such power. But no such 

institutional protection from abuse exists should such power 

be concentrated in the executive branch, where one 

individual—whether the President or the Attorney General or 

another official—determined to impose his or her policy 

preferences regardless of the will of Congress, could proceed 

unimpeded by the types of institutional checks present in the 

legislative body. Such a concentration of power would allow 

tyranny to flourish, and our system of government is wisely 

set up by the Founders to foreclose such a danger. The 

executive branch has significant powers of its own—

particularly in matters such as immigration—but the power 

to wield the purse to alter behavior rests squarely with the 

legislative branch. Congress has thus far refused to pass 

legislation that would do precisely what the Attorney General 

seeks to do here. “Respecting the separation of powers 

forecloses no substantive outcomes. It only requires us to 

respect along the way one of the most vital of the procedural 

protections of individual liberty found in our Constitution.”

Gundy v. United States, 139 S. Ct. 2116, 2145 (2019)(Gorsuch, J., 

dissenting). 

Article I of the Constitution vests the power to legislate 

with Congress, not the Executive. Id. at 2123. Therefore, 

“when Congress confers decisionmaking authority upon 

agencies Congress must ‘lay down by legislative act an intelligible principle to which the person or body authorized to [act] 

is directed to conform.’” (emphasis in original) Whitman v. 

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16 Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

Am. Trucking Ass’ns, 531 U.S. 457, 472 (2001), quoting J.W. 

Hampton, Jr., & Co. v. United States, 276 U.S. 394, 409 (1928). 

III. Notice, Access, Harboring and Additional 

Certification Conditions 

For his authority to impose the conditions, the Attorney 

General points to 34 U.S.C. § 10102, which sets forth the duties 

and functions of the Assistant Attorney General as follows: 

(a) Specific, general and delegated powers

The Assistant Attorney General shall-- 

(1) publish and disseminate information on the 

conditions and progress of the criminal justice 

systems; 

(2) maintain liaison with the executive and judicial branches of the Federal and State governments in matters relating to criminal justice; 

(3) provide information to the President, the 

Congress, the judiciary, State and local governments, and the general public relating to criminal justice; 

(4) maintain liaison with public and private educational and research institutions, State and local governments, and governments of other nations relating to criminal justice; 

(5) coordinate and provide staff support to coordinate the activities of the Office and the Bureau of Justice Assistance, the National Institute 

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Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 17

of Justice, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the Office for Victims of Crime, and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention; and 

(6) exercise such other powers and functions as 

may be vested in the Assistant Attorney General 

pursuant to this chapter or by delegation of the 

Attorney General, including placing special 

conditions on all grants, and determining priority purposes for formula grants. 

34 U.S.C. § 10102. 

The Attorney General argues that §§ 10102(a)(2), (4), and 

(6) provide authority for him to impose the substantive conditions on the Byrne JAG grant. Specifically, he points to 

§ 10102(a)(6) as allowing virtually unlimited authority to 

place conditions on grants and therefore allowing the imposition of the notice, access, harboring and additional certification conditions. He further points to the provisions in 

§§ 10102(a)(2) and (4) empowering the Assistant Attorney 

General to “maintain liaison” as further authority for the harboring condition. 

A. Section 10102(a)(6) 

We turn first to the notice and access conditions, which we 

previously addressed in the appeal from the grant of a preliminary injunction. Chicago I, 888 F.3d 272. The district court 

imposed a preliminary injunction as to those notice and access 

conditions, and in Chicago I we upheld that preliminary injunction. The standard for preliminary injunctive relief requires only a showing of a likelihood of success on the merits, 

whereas permanent relief requires a determination on the 

merits. Amoco Prod. Co. v. Vill. of Gambell, AK, 480 U.S. 531, 546 

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18 Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

n.12 (1987). As to the challenge to the notice and access conditions, however, this is a distinction without a difference. 

Our reasoning in Chicago I established Chicago’s entitlement to relief on the merits, not merely a likelihood of success. 

The Attorney General relied on 34 U.S.C. § 10102(a)(6) as 

providing the statutory authority to impose both of those conditions. 

Subsection (a)(6) provides that the Assistant Attorney 

General shall “exercise such other powers and functions as 

may be vested in the Assistant Attorney General pursuant to 

this chapter or by delegation of the Attorney General, including placing special conditions on all grants, and determining priority purposes for formula grants.” § 10102(a)(6) (emphasis added). During the first appeal, we held that the plain 

meaning of that language was to delineate the subcategory of 

powers and functions that the Assistant Attorney General 

could exercise when vested in the Assistant Attorney General 

either by the terms of this chapter or by delegation of the Attorney General. Chicago I, 888 F.3d at 285; accord New York, 951 

F.3d at 102, City of Philadelphia v. Atty. Gen. of United States, 916 

F.3d 276, 287 (3d Cir. 2019), City & Cnty. of San Francisco v. 

Sessions, 372 F. Supp. 3d 928, 943 n.4 (N.D. Cal. 2019). The “inescapable problem” with the Attorney General’s interpretation, however, was that he did not even claim that the power 

exercised here was authorized anywhere in the chapter, nor 

could he claim that the Attorney General possesses that authority and could delegate it to the Assistant Attorney General. Chicago I, 888 F.3d at 285. And the plain language of 

§ 10102(a)(6) precludes an interpretation that it is a standalone grant of power unrelated to the authority granted in the 

chapter or the authority granted to the Attorney General. Id. 

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Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 19

We further noted that our plain reading of the statute was 

consistent with the structure of § 10102 and the Byrne JAG 

program itself. Id. at 285–86. In contrast to discretionary 

grants, the Byrne JAG program was a formula grant program, 

with strictly-circumscribed provisions allocating award 

amounts and penalties. An interpretation of § 10102(a)(6) that 

would authorize the wholesale denial of all grant funds 

would be a radical departure from the otherwise carefullydelineated rules for the awarding and the withholding of 

funds, and one would expect such a significant power to be 

unmistakable in its language and to be connected to the Byrne 

JAG (or grant awards in general) by reference. We noted that 

‘[a] clause in a catch-all provision at the end of 

a list of explicit powers would be an odd place 

indeed to put a sweeping power to impose any conditions on any grants—a power 

much more significant than all of the duties and 

powers that precede it in the listing, and a 

power granted to the Assistant Attorney General that was not granted to the Attorney General. ... As the Supreme Court has repeatedly 

held, ‘Congress ... does not alter the fundamental details of a regulatory scheme in vague terms 

or ancillary provisions—it does not, one might 

say, hide elephants in mouseholes.’ 

Id. at 285–87, quoting Gonzales v. Oregon, 546 U.S. 243, 267 

(2006); Philadelphia, 916 F.3d at 288. We will not repeat that 

analysis here, but it applies equally in the context of a permanent injunction. No new meritorious arguments have been 

raised by the Attorney General as to those conditions in this 

appeal. Accordingly, we adopt and incorporate the reasoning 

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20 Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

from Section III of that opinion in this appeal. Chicago I, 888 

F.3d at 282–87. For the reasons stated in Chicago I, the district 

court did not err in granting permanent injunctive relief as to 

the notice and access conditions. The Attorney General relies 

on § 10102(a)(6) as the authority to impose the additional certification and harboring conditions as well, and our rejection 

of that argument in Chicago I forecloses the argument as to 

those conditions as well.

3

B. Sections 10102(a)(2) and (4)

The Attorney General attempts to salvage the harboring 

condition by pointing to a different portion of § 10102—the 

subsections that instruct the Assistant Attorney General to 

maintain liaisons with other entities—in (a)(2), “with the executive and judicial branches of the Federal and State governments in matters relating to criminal justice,” and in (a)(4) 

“with public and private educational and research institutions, State and local governments, and governments of other 

nations relating to criminal justice.” That language entrusts 

the Assistant Attorney General with maintaining lines of 

3 In the course of his argument that § 10102(a)(6) authorizes the imposition 

of the additional certification condition, the Attorney General also states 

in a parenthetical that the additional certification condition “also involves 

the provision of programmatic information to the extent that any active 

impeding takes the form of withholding information, see 34 U.S.C. 

§ 10153(A)(4).” Appellant Brief, No. 19-3290, at 22; see also City of Providence v. Barr, 2020 WL 1429579 at *7 (1st Cir. March 24, 2020) (rejecting the 

argument that the “programmatic information” language in § 10153(A)(4) 

provided authority for the conditions). That is the sole reference to 

§ 10153(A)(4) as a basis to support the imposition of the additional certification condition, and is insufficient to raise the argument before this court. 

See Sauk Prairie Conservation All. v. United States Dep't of the Interior, 944 

F.3d 664, 674 (7th Cir. 2019). 

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Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 21

communication with other entities, and is sandwiched between a recitation of other relatively-ministerial duties of the 

Assistant Attorney General including the power to: “publish 

and disseminate information on the conditions and progress 

of the criminal justice systems [in (a)(1)], ... provide information to the President, the Congress, the judiciary, State and 

local governments, and the general public relating to criminal 

justice [in (a)(3),] ... [and] coordinate and provide staff support to coordinate the activities of the Office and the Bureau 

of Justice Assistance, the National Institute of Justice, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the Office for Victims of Crime, and 

the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention [in 

(a)(5)].” 34 U.S.C. §§ 10102(a)(1), (3), (5); Chicago I, 888 F.3d at 

287. 

Nothing in that language even references, let alone authorizes, the Assistant Attorney General to impose conditions 

on the distribution of funds authorized by Congress. See State 

of Oregon v. Trump, 406 F. Supp. 3d 940, 969 (2019) (holding 

that the definition of liaison does not even hint at a punitive 

aspect, “let alone a discretionary authority to completely dissolve relations when one side does not abide by the wishes of 

the other,” and that the structure of the statute also weighs 

against the Attorney General’s interpretation); San Francisco, 

372 F. Supp. 3d at 944 (noting that “[t]he structure of Section 

10102 does not support the contention that ‘maintain liaison’ 

in Section 10102(a)(2) provides more than a ministerial duty 

on the Attorney General to maintain communication with 

other Federal and State agencies.”). It would strain statutory 

interpretation to the breaking point to interpret a provision 

that requires the fostering of communication as handing to 

the Assistant Attorney General the power to withhold the entire Byrne JAG award for the failure to comply with 

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22 Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

substantive conditions imposed by the Attorney General—

particularly given that the language in the Byrne JAG grant 

sets forth highly detailed and precise circumstances that 

would justify the withholding of funds and the percentages 

that can be withheld. See Chicago I, 888 F.3d at 286–87. 

Moreover, the language in subsections (a)(2) and (4) could 

not support the harboring condition even if we were to ignore 

the problem that the language itself does not authorize the 

imposition of conditions. Both subsections address the power 

to maintain liaisons relating to criminal justice matters. But the 

harboring condition that the Attorney General seeks to impose on the Byrne JAG grant is explicitly not targeted to criminal matters. The harboring condition prohibits the recipient 

jurisdiction from making any “public disclosure ... of any federal law enforcement information in a direct or indirect attempt to conceal, harbor, or shield from detection any fugitive 

from justice under 18 U.S.C. ch. 49, or any alien who has come 

to, entered, or remains in the United States in violation of 

8 U.S.C. ch. 12—without regard to whether such disclosure would 

constitute (or could form a predicate for) a violation of [federal criminal law provisions] 18 U.S.C. 1071 or 1072 or of 8 U.S.C. 1324(a).” 

(emphasis added) Chicago, 405 F. Supp. 3d at 754–55. Thus, it 

would withhold funds even regarding disclosures that related only to civil immigration and not the more narrow category of criminal immigration matters. And it is being used by 

the Attorney General to target Chicago’s Welcoming City Ordinance, which explicitly allows the City to cooperate in criminal, as opposed to civil, immigration matters. The Attorney 

General cannot rely on a provision encouraging communications as to criminal justice matters as authority to deny funds 

for disclosures related only to civil matters. See San Francisco, 

372 F. Supp. 3d at 945 (holding that the scope of the harboring 

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Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 23

condition exceeds the ministerial duty to maintain liaison). 

For that reason as well, §§ 10102(a)(2) and (4) do not provide 

authority for the harboring condition. 

IV. Compliance Condition 

We turn, then, to the compliance condition, which requires the state or local government to certify that it will not 

restrict its own officials from communicating information regarding the citizenship or immigration status of any individual. The burden of that requirement is not insignificant. For 

instance, in City & Cnty. of San Francisco v. Sessions, 349 

F. Supp. 3d 924, 952 (N.D. Cal. 2018), considering only detainer requests, the district court noted that “California’s law 

enforcement agencies experienced double the detainer requests from ICE in one year—from 15,000 in fiscal year 2016 

to 30,000 in fiscal year 2017.” Under the Attorney General’s 

compliance condition, a state or local government could not 

instruct its own employees that they must devote their time 

to law enforcement tasks that it deems a higher priority rather 

than respond to those information requests from ICE. 

The compliance condition was not before this court in the 

prior appeal. The district court had denied preliminary relief 

as to that condition and Chicago did not cross-appeal that issue to this court. At the permanent injunction stage, however, 

the court reversed course and granted injunctive relief as to 

that condition as well based on the Supreme Court’s decision 

in Murphy v. Nat’l Collegiate Athletic Ass’n, 138 S. Ct. 1461 

(2018), which had been issued in the interim. 

A. District Court Analysis 

In the “Overview of Legal Requirements Generally Applicable to OJP [Office of Justice Programs] Grants and 

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24 Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

Cooperative Agreements - FY 2017 Awards,” (hereinafter 

“Overview of Legal Requirements”), the Attorney General 

declared that he was imposing the compliance condition 

“[c]onsistent with OJP’s statutory authority to impose grant 

conditions, including 42 U.S.C. 3712 [now found at 34 U.S.C. 

§ 10102].” See Dist. Ct. R. 26, Exh. M. As with the notice and 

access conditions, the Attorney General points to § 10102(a)(6) 

as authorizing the Assistant Attorney General to place special 

conditions on all grants and determine priority purposes for 

formula grants. We rejected that interpretation in Chicago I as 

to the notice and access provisions, and we have adopted that 

rationale in this appeal as well. The Attorney General’s reliance on § 10102(a)(6) fails for the same reason when applied 

to the compliance condition. 

Despite his declaration that the grant condition would be 

imposed pursuant to his power under § 10102, in the district 

court and on appeal the Attorney General primarily anchors 

the compliance condition to 34 U.S.C. § 10153(A)(5)(D) (hereinafter “§ 10153”). That provision states that in a request for a 

grant, the application “shall include ... [a] certification, made 

in a form acceptable to the Attorney General ... that ... the 

applicant will comply with all provisions of this part and all 

other applicable Federal laws.” (emphasis added) The Attorney 

General argues that the italicized portion allows him to require that applicants certify compliance with 8 U.S.C. § 1373.

Section 1373 provides: 

(a) In general 

Notwithstanding any other provision of Federal, State, or local law, a Federal, State, or local 

government entity or official may not prohibit, 

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Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 25

or in any way restrict, any government entity or 

official from sending to, or receiving from, the 

Immigration and Naturalization Service information regarding the citizenship or immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual. 

(b) Additional authority of government entities 

Notwithstanding any other provision of Federal, State, or local law, no person or agency 

may prohibit, or in any way restrict, a Federal, 

State, or local government entity from doing 

any of the following with respect to information 

regarding the immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual:

(1) Sending such information to, or requesting or 

receiving such information from, the Immigration and Naturalization Service. 

(2) Maintaining such information. 

(3) Exchanging such information with any other 

Federal, State, or local government entity. 

(c) Obligation to respond to inquiries 

The Immigration and Naturalization Service 

shall respond to an inquiry by a Federal, State, 

or local government agency, seeking to verify or 

ascertain the citizenship or immigration status 

of any individual within the jurisdiction of the 

agency for any purpose authorized by law, by 

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26 Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

providing the requested verification or status 

information. 

Under the Attorney General’s reasoning, Congress itself 

incorporated § 1373 into the Byrne JAG program by requiring 

compliance with “all other applicable federal laws.” And the 

Attorney General interprets the requirements of § 1373 incredibly broadly, maintaining that the information as to “citizenship or immigration status” incorporates information beyond an individual’s immigration status, including, for instance, an alien prisoner’s release date. 

The district court interpreted the term “all other applicable federal laws” as encompassing all federal law. City of Chicago, 321 F. Supp. 3d at 875. The court held that if Congress 

wanted to limit the term to include just a specific body of federal grant-making laws, it could have done so, but that the 

language “all other applicable federal law” includes any federal law that applies to Chicago. Id. Because § 1373 is a federal 

law, the court held that § 10153 would require applicants to 

certify compliance with it. Id. 

But the district court then considered whether § 1373 was 

itself constitutional, reasoning that an unconstitutional law 

could not constitute an “applicable law” under § 10153. The 

court held that § 1373 violated the anticommandeering 

doctrine of the Tenth Amendment in light of the Supreme 

Court’s decision in Murphy, 138 S. Ct. 1461. City of Chicago, 321 

F. Supp. 3d at 866–73, 875. In Murphy, the Court made clear 

that regardless of whether a federal law commands state 

action or precludes it, Congress cannot issue direct orders to 

state legislatures. Murphy, 138 S. Ct. at 1478. Accordingly, the 

language in § 1373 could be problematic under the Tenth 

Amendment even if it merely operated to preclude the state 

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Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 27

from taking certain actions. The district court then considered 

the language of § 1373, which bars any government entity or 

official from prohibiting, or in any way restricting, any other 

government entity or official from exchanging information 

with federal immigration authorities, and also prohibits any 

person or agency from doing the same. The court held that 

Chicago had challenged § 1373 as an independent statute, and 

concluded that it was unconstitutional under the anticommandeering doctrine of the Tenth Amendment. City of 

Chicago, 321 F. Supp. 3d at 867, 869. The court noted that a 

state’s ability to control its offices and employees is at the 

heart of state sovereignty and that § 1373 violates that in a 

number of ways: first, it supplants local control of officers, 

precluding Chicago and other localities from limiting the 

amount of paid time its employees use to communicate with 

federal immigration authorities; second, it indirectly 

constrains local rule-making by precluding local lawmakers 

from passing laws that implement the localities’ preferred 

policies, such as the Welcoming City Ordinance, which run 

counter to § 1373—a concern squarely addressed in Murphy; 

third, it redistributes local decision-making power by 

transferring that power from local policymakers to line-level 

employees who are empowered to decide for themselves 

whether or not to communicate with immigration authorities; 

and finally, because it eliminates the ability of a locality such 

as Chicago to control its employees’ communications with 

federal immigration authorities, § 1373 prevents that locality 

from extricating itself from federal immigration enforcement, 

thus foreclosing the “critical alternative” recognized in New 

York v. United States, 505 U.S. 144, 177 (1992), of the option of 

non-participation in a federal program. City of Chicago, 321 F. 

Supp. 3d at 869–70. The court concluded that § 1373 was 

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28 Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

unconstitutional on its face and, as an unconstitutional law, it 

could not be considered an “applicable federal law” for 

purposes of § 10153. Id. at 875–76. It rejected the Attorney 

General’s baseless argument that even an unconstitutional 

law could be considered an “applicable federal law” under § 

10153. 

B. Section 10153 

The Attorney General challenges those conclusions on appeal, but we need not address the district court’s compelling 

analysis of that Tenth Amendment issue, because we hold 

that the term “all other applicable federal law” cannot be construed so broadly as to encompass § 1373. Pearson v. Callahan, 

555 U.S. 223, 241 (2009) (noting the court’s long-time practice 

of “constitutional avoidance,” where courts do not pass on 

questions of constitutionality unless such adjudication is unavoidable). Our analysis begins with the plain language of 

§ 10153, interpreted not in a vacuum, but in light of the context and the statutory structure as a whole. Gundy, 139 S. Ct. 

at 2126; Pennhurst State Sch. & Hosp. v. Halderman, 451 U.S. 1, 

18–19 (1981). Proper interpretation considers not only the specific context in which the language is used, but the overall 

structure of the statute as a whole, as well as its history and 

purpose. Gundy, 139 S. Ct at 2126. 

1. Plain Language 

The Attorney General argues that the term “all other applicable federal law” incorporates all federal law that applies 

to states or localities. The immediate problem with that interpretation is that it renders the words “other applicable” superfluous. See TRW Inc. v. Andrews, 534 U.S. 19, 31 (2001) 

(quoting Duncan v. Walker, 533 U.S. 167, 174 (2001)) (“[i]t is ‘a 

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Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 29

cardinal principle of statutory construction’ that ‘a statute 

ought, upon the whole, to be so construed that, if it can be 

prevented, no clause, sentence, or word shall be superfluous, 

void, or insignificant.’”); Philadelphia, 916 F.3d at 289 (“the 

canon against surplusage counsels us to read the term ‘applicable’ in a way that gives it some independent heft.”) If Congress meant to incorporate all law that applies to States or localities, that would be accomplished by requiring compliance 

with “all federal law.” Any federal laws that did not apply to 

states or localities would simply be irrelevant in considering 

compliance, in that an entity could not fail to comply with a 

law that does not impose any legal obligations on it, and 

therefore the term would not be overinclusive. By including 

only “applicable” federal laws, the provision encompasses 

only laws that apply by their terms to the award itself. 

The natural reading of the phrase considers the language 

in the subsection as a whole: 

(A) To request a grant ... the ... State or unit of local 

government shall submit an application to the 

Attorney General ... in such form as the Attorney General may require. Such application shall 

include the following: 

... 

(5) A certification, made in a form acceptable to the 

Attorney General and executed by the chief executive officer of the applicant (or by another officer of the applicant, if qualified under regulations promulgated by the Attorney General), 

that— 

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30 Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

(A) the programs to be funded by the grant meet all 

the requirements of this part; 

(B) all the information contained in the application 

is correct; 

(C) there has been appropriate coordination with 

affected agencies; and 

(D) the applicant will comply with all provisions of 

this part and all other applicable Federal laws. 

34 U.S.C. § 10153(A)(5). This provision relates to the grant application itself and conformance to all of its requirements. It 

provides for an assurance that the programs to be funded by 

the grant meet all the requirements, that the information in 

the grant application is correct, that appropriate coordination 

with agencies affected by the grant has occurred, and that the 

applicant will comply with all provisions of this part and “all 

other applicable Federal laws.” The most natural reading of the 

last provision is that “all other applicable” laws refers to the 

many federal laws that apply specifically to grants or grantees. That is consistent with the structure of the provision as a 

whole which addresses requirements related to the grant and 

the application for the grant itself. See City of Providence v. Barr, 

2020 WL 1429579 at *11 (1st Cir. March 24, 2020); Philadelphia, 

916 F.3d at 289 (noting that those four subsections all relate to 

the programs that will be funded under the grant, thus counseling against a broader interpretation of the applicable laws 

clause); San Francisco, 349 F. Supp. 3d at 954 (noting that all of 

the conditions preceding it apply to the grant itself). This 

reading also tracks more closely to the language of 

§ 10153(A)(5)(D) itself, which requires certification that the 

“applicant” will comply with all provisions of this part and 

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Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 31

all other applicable federal laws, thus signaling that the requirement is tethered to the status of the state and locality as 

a grant applicant and not merely as a governmental entity. 

2. Consistency with Other Statutes Applied 

The language at issue is mirrored in a subsequent subchapter that also applies on its terms to the Byrne JAG program, and provides: 

Whenever, after reasonable notice and opportunity for a hearing on the record in accordance 

with section 554 of Title 5, the Bureau of Justice 

Assistance, the National Institute of Justice, and 

the Bureau of Justice Statistics finds that a recipient of assistance under this chapter has failed 

to comply substantially with— 

(1) any provisions of this chapter; 

(2) any regulations or guidelines promulgated 

under this chapter; or 

(3) any application submitted in accordance 

with the provisions of this chapter, or the provisions of any other applicable Federal Act; 

the Director involved shall, until satisfied that 

there is no longer any such failure to comply, 

terminate payments to the recipient under this 

chapter, reduce payments to the recipient under 

this chapter by an amount equal to the amount 

of such payments which were not expended in 

accordance with this chapter, or limit the availability of payments under this chapter to 

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32 Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

programs, projects, or activities not affected by 

such failure to comply. 

(emphasis added) 34 U.S.C. § 10222. Again, the statute speaks 

in terms of the “recipient of assistance under this chapter” 

complying with “the provisions of any other applicable Federal law,” thus signaling that the laws that would be “applicable” are laws that refer specifically to grant recipients, not 

any laws that apply generally to states or localities. The reference to “other” applicable Federal law is a nod to the requirements that precede it, which all relate to the grant itself and 

regulations relating to it. Specifically, preceding the “all other 

applicable Federal law” provision are the requirements that 

the recipient of assistance comply substantially with provisions of that chapter, regulations or guidelines promulgated 

under that chapter, and applications submitted in accordance 

with the provisions of this chapter. All of those requirements 

directly relate to the requirements specific to the subject matter of the grants. The most natural reading of the phrase “all 

other applicable Federal law,” then, is that it includes laws relating to grant recipients that appear outside this specific chapter of the United States Code. 

And that is true of the same language in § 10153(A)(5)(D) 

as well. Because many federal laws explicitly apply to federal 

grantees, the most natural reading of § 10153 as a whole is that 

it requires the applicant to certify that it will comply with all 

of those federal laws that apply, by their terms, to successful 

grant applicants. That is consistent with the other listed provisions in § 10153(A)(5) which relate to the grant itself—either 

in assuring that it is awarded based on correct information, or 

that it is pursued in proper coordination with affected agencies, or, in the part at issue here, that it will be in compliance 

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Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 33

with all the grant requirements in this part or other parts of 

federal law. It is also reflected in the OJP’s own explanation 

of grant requirements as set forth in its Overview of Legal Requirements, which explains that “[e]ach recipient of an OJP 

grant or cooperative agreements must comply with all federal statutes and regulations applicable to the award, as well 

as the particular award conditions included in the award document.” (emphasis added) Dist. Ct. R. 26, Exh. M.; see also id. 

(providing applicant an overview of statutes and award conditions “that apply to many (or in some cases, all) OJP grants 

and cooperative agreements awarded in 2017”) (emphasis 

added). As that language makes clear, the connection of the 

law to the award itself is what renders a particular federal law 

“applicable.”4 

Such statutes directly applying to grants and grant recipients are plentiful, and the Byrne JAG program explicitly identifies a number of them in its application. In fact, a review of 

the other federal laws referenced in the application reveals a 

clear pattern of laws that explicitly apply to those receiving 

federal funds. The Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance 

4 The Attorney General argues that some federal laws and regulations include language modifying “applicable,” and that absent such language 

the term should be interpreted as unbounded (citing 42 U.S.C. 

§ 16154(g)(1) (“generally applicable Federal laws and regulations governing awards of financial assistance, contracts, or other agreements”) and 

Pub. L. No. 113-121, § 1043 (a)(3)(C)(ii)(II), 128 Stat. 1193, 1246 (2014) (“all 

applicable Federal laws (including regulations) relating to the use of the 

funds”)). It is not at all clear that such language serves to narrow rather 

than to clarify, but regardless, the use of modifying language in other statutes does not alter our conclusion that the context, language and structure 

of this statute defines the phrase as including only laws relating to grants 

and grantees. 

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34 Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

Grant Program FY 2017 Local Solicitation directs applicants 

to the web pages accessible through the “Overview of Legal 

Requirements Generally Applicable to OJP Grants and Cooperative agreements – FY 2017 Awards” for a general overview 

of the important statutes and regulations that apply to the 

grant. Appellant’s Appendix, No. 18-2885, at A175. That 

source identifies a number of federal laws that apply to the 

grant, and those laws are identified in the grant award itself 

as well. See id. at A50–A69. Unlike § 1373, however, those laws 

by their very language apply expressly to grants and recipients of grants. For instance, the laws include: 

18 U.S.C. § 1913—Lobbying with appropriated 

moneys, which provides that “[n]o part of the 

money appropriated by any enactment of Congress shall, in the absence of express authorization by Congress, be used directly or indirectly 

to pay for any personal service, advertisement, 

[etc.] ... intended or designed to influence in 

any manner a Member of Congress ... .“ 

22 U.S.C. § 7104—Prevention of trafficking, 

which in § 1704(g) provides that “the President 

shall ensure that any grant ... provided or entered into by a Federal department or agency 

under which funds are to be provided to a private entity, in whole or in part, shall include a 

condition that authorizes the department or 

agency to terminate the grant ... if the grantee 

or any subgrantee ... engages in ... (1) severe 

forms of trafficking in persons ... .” 

41 U.S.C. § 4712(a)(1)—Enhancement of contractor protection from reprisal for disclosure of 

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Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 35

certain information, providing that “[a]n employee of a ... grantee, or subgrantee ... may 

not be discharged, demoted or otherwise discriminated against as a reprisal for disclosing to 

a person or body described in paragraph (2) information that the employee reasonably believes is evidence of gross mismanagement of a 

Federal contract or grant ... .” 

28 C.F.R. § 54.100—Title IX regulation “designed to eliminate (with certain exceptions) 

discrimination on the basis of sex in any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance, whether or not such program or activity is offered or sponsored by an 

educational institution ... .” 

28 C.F.R. § 42.102-42.105—Title VI of the Civil 

Rights Act—prohibits discrimination on the 

ground of race, color, or national origin and 

“applies to any program for which Federal assistance is authorized under a law administered by the Department,” with Federal financial assistance defined as including “grants and 

loans of Federal funds.” It also requires that 

“[e]very application for Federal financial assistance to which this subpart applies ... shall, as a 

condition to its approval and the extension of 

any Federal financial assistance pursuant to the 

application, contain or be accompanied by an 

assurance that the program will be conducted or 

the facility operated in compliance with all 

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36 Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

requirements imposed by or pursuant to this 

subpart.” 

31 U.S.C. § 1352—Limitation on use of appropriated funds to influence certain Federal contracting and financial transactions, providing 

that “[n]one of the funds appropriated by any 

Act may be expended by the recipient of a Federal ... grant ... to pay any person for influencing or attempting to influence an officer or employee of any agency, a Member of Congress, an 

officer or employee of Congress, or an employee 

of a Member of Congress in connection with 

[federal contracts].” 

(emphasis added). Those statutes and regulations also 

provide specific remedies tailored to each provision for 

violations—ranging from civil penalties to abatement 

measures to grant termination—in contrast to §1373 for which 

the Attorney General himself has determined that wholesale 

withholding of the entire grant is the remedy for 

noncompliance. See, e.g., 31 U.S.C. § 1352(a)–(c) incorporated 

by reference in 18 U.S.C. § 1913, 22 U.S.C. § 7104(g), 41 U.S.C. 

§ 4712(c). Section 1373, therefore, represents a departure from 

the other federal law incorporated into the grant. In fact, the 

Third Circuit in Philadelphia, 916 F.3d at 290, considered the 

history as to which laws the Justice Department included 

under the applicable laws clause, and noted that “[e]very 

condition that is authorized by the Applicable Laws Clause 

applies specifically to programs funded under the grant, not 

more generally to the grantee.” 

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Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 37

C. Problems with AG’s Interpretation 

The Attorney General’s interpretation of the compliance 

provision, in contrast, would expand that provision far beyond the context of the grant and its application, to encompass the broad, unrelated array of federal laws that apply to 

states or local governments regardless of their connection to 

this or any grant. Moreover, as we will explain, the Attorney 

General’s interpretation would: (1) allow the executive to impose conditions that Congress repeatedly declined to institute 

itself; (2) allow the Attorney General in his discretion to impose a substantive qualifying condition on a grant that Congress explicitly established as a formula rather than a discretionary grant; (3) render irrelevant or illogical other provisions in the Byrne JAG statute and raise constitutional concerns; and (4) conflict with another statutory provision. As 

such, it is inconsistent with the bedrock principles of separation of powers and federalism, and the district court properly 

granted injunctive and declaratory relief. 

1. 

Although the Attorney General interprets § 10153 as requiring compliance with § 1373, Congress has repeatedly refused to pass legislation that would do precisely that, as we 

recognized in Chicago I: 

In the past few years, numerous pieces of legislation were introduced in the House and Senate 

seeking to condition federal funding on compliance with 8 U.S.C. § 1373—which was intended 

to address “sanctuary cities” and prohibit federal, state or local government officials or entities from restricting the exchange of information 

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38 Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

with the immigration authorities regarding citizenship or immigration status. None of those efforts were passed by Congress. See, e.g., Stop 

Dangerous Sanctuary Cities Act, H.R. 5654, 

114th Cong. § 4 (2016); Stop Dangerous Sanctuary Cities Act, S. 3100, 114th Cong. § 4 (2016); 

Enforce the Law for Sanctuary Cities Act, H.R. 

3009, 114th Cong. § 3 (2015); Mobilizing Against 

Sanctuary Cities Act, H.R. 3002, 114th Cong. § 2 

(2015); Stop Sanctuary Policies and Protect 

Americans Act, S. 2146, 114th Cong. § 3(a) 

(2015); Stop Sanctuary Cities Act, S. 1814, 114th 

Cong. § 2 (2015) (all available at 

https://www.congress.gov). see also Annie Lai 

& Christopher N. Lasch, Crimmigration Resistance and the Case of Sanctuary City Defunding, 

57 Santa Clara L. Rev. 539, 553 n. 87 (2017) (listing eight pieces of legislation introduced during 

that time, all of which were unsuccessful). 

Chicago I, 888 F.3d at 277–78. The Attorney General’s reading 

would thus allow the Executive Branch to override Congress’ 

refusal to endorse § 1373 compliance and would effectively 

“legislate” a different result. 

2. 

Second, the Attorney General’s interpretation would vest 

the executive branch with unbridled power to identify select 

federal laws and impose them as a precondition for the receipt 

of federal grant money allocated by Congress. That discretionary authority is fundamentally inconsistent with the nature of the Byrne JAG grant as a formula grant, located in a 

separate section of the Act than the discretionary grants. See

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Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 39

generally Bureau of Justice Assistance Grant Program, 34 

U.S.C. § 10151 et seq. As a formula grant rather than a discretionary grant, the grant awarded is a function of the state or 

local government’s proportionate crime rate and population, 

and is incompatible with the sort of unbridled discretion that 

the Attorney General’s interpretation would yield. See Philadelphia, 916 F.3d at 290 (noting that Congress structured the 

Byrne JAG program as a formula grant, and that allowing the 

withholding of funds “because a jurisdiction does not certify 

compliance with any federal law of the Attorney General’s 

choosing undermines the predictability and consistency embedded in the program’s design, thus turning the formula 

grant into a discretionary one.”).5

The Attorney General dismisses this as a non-issue, declaring that the States and local governments were already 

subject to those laws and therefore the certification of compliance imposes no burden or barrier. He disclaims any role in 

determining which laws will be applied, stating that his interpretation “does not require compliance with laws ‘selected at 

the Attorney General’s uncabined discretion.’” Reply Brief, 

No. 18-2885, at 5. Instead, he declares that he is “not urging 

that the Attorney General has discretion to select applicable 

laws; rather, Congress has made laws applicable to Chicago, 

and Chicago must comply with them.” Id. at 5–6. But that argument is utterly inconsistent with the application process 

5 As we noted in Chicago I, the provision for discretionary grants is located 

in a different subpart of the same statute, and “imbues the Director (who 

reports to the Assistant Attorney General) with the authority to award 

funds on terms and conditions that the Director determines to be consistent with that subpart.” Chicago I, 888 F.3d at 286. 

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40 Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

that the Attorney General has actually implemented and is 

meritless. 

First, the grant application does not purport to track compliance with the entire universe of federal law. Instead, the 

Attorney General has singled out particular federal laws 

which act as a gatekeeper to control and limit access to the 

grant. That is apparent in the language of the application—

which identifies specific statutes—and also in the Attorney 

General’s apparent absence of concern with the multitudes of 

other federal laws that apply by their terms to states and cities, such as OSHA requirements or EPA regulations or any 

other federal constitutional, statutory or regulatory law. In 

fact, the Attorney General has singled out § 1373 and required 

a separate certification of compliance for that statute alone, 

with penalties for false statements or omissions ranging from 

civil penalties to criminal prosecution. Rather than conditioning the award of the grant on evidence that the state or local 

government is in compliance with all federal laws that by 

their terms apply to states or local governments, the Attorney 

General conditions the award on a certification that the state 

or locality is in compliance with one specific law—§ 1373—as 

is trumpeted in the following notice to grant applicants: 

Alert: New Requirements for Certain FY 2017 

Programs 

Consistent with OJP’s statutory authority to 

impose grant conditions, including 42 U.S.C. 

3712, OJP will include—in an award document 

sent to a prospective FY 2017 Edward Byrne 

Justice Assistance Grant (“Byrne JAG”) 

recipient for acceptance—express award 

conditions concerning ongoing compliance 

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Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 41

with 8 U.S.C. 1373, throughout the award 

period, in the “program or activity” funded by 

the award. (In general, section 1373 bars 

restrictions on communication between State 

and local agencies and officials and the 

Department of Homeland Security (and certain 

other entities) with respect to information 

regarding the citizenship or immigration status 

of any individual.) States and units of local 

government that apply for awards under the FY 

2017 Byrne JAG Program will be required—

prior to award acceptance—to submit a specific 

certification from the chief legal officer of the 

jurisdiction regarding the applicant’s 

compliance with 8 U.S.C. 1373(a) and (b). 

Interested applicants may view a sample 

certification document at 

https://ojp.gov/funding/Explore/SampleCertific

ations-8USC1373.htm. 

In addition, consistent with OJP’s statutory authority, OJP will include in any FY 2017 Byrne 

JAG award (as part of the award document) additional express conditions that, with respect to 

the “program or activity” that would be funded 

by the FY 2017 award, are designed to ensure 

that States and units of local government that 

receive funds from the FY 2017 Byrne JAG 

award: (1) permit personnel of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) to access 

any correctional or detention facility in order to 

meet with an alien (or an individual believed to 

be an alien) and inquire as to his or her right to 

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42 Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

be or remain in the United States; and (2) provide at least 48 hours’ advance notice to DHS regarding the scheduled release date and time of 

an alien in the jurisdiction’s custody when DHS 

requests such notice in order to take custody of 

the alien pursuant to the Immigration and Nationality Act. 

Overview of Legal Requirements, Dist. Ct. R. 26, Exh. M. That 

alert to future grant applicants expressly recognizes that the 

OJP has selected one federal statute to impose as a grant condition with requirements of certification that are specific to 

that statute. Its contention that Congress, rather than the Attorney General, has selected the laws that will constitute conditions of the grant is patently false. 

The argument that the certificate of compliance imposes 

no burden because government entities were already 

required to follow the law fails for an additional reason. The 

identification of a federal law as an “other applicable law” for 

receipt of the grant imposes a penalty on the violation of that 

law that would otherwise not exist. It transforms every 

federal legal obligation into a potential basis to withhold 

funding that has been designated by Congress for 

disbursement to state and local governments for law 

enforcement. Yet that penalty for non-compliance is not a 

penalty set forth by Congress in those other statutes. 

Therefore, the interpretation by the Attorney General which 

could transform any federal law into a condition of the grant 

would indeed impose a burden not already provided by the 

federal law itself, in the form of a steep financial penalty. In 

fact, that “penalty” could extend well beyond the denial of the 

Byrne JAG grant if the Attorney General’s interpretation of 

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Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 43

“all other applicable federal law” is adopted. It would allow 

the Attorney General to withhold myriad other grants that 

have been authorized by Congress because that precise term 

is used in numerous other statutes—often as part of a 

statutory section that mirrors the one in the Byrne JAG grant 

at issue here—including statutes providing grants under: the 

Comprehensive Opioid Abuse Grant Program, 34 U.S.C. 

§ 10702; Matching Grant Program for School Security, 34 

U.S.C. § 10552; Career and Technical Education Assistance to 

the States, 20 U.S.C. § 2322; and the Byrne JAG discretionary 

grants, 34 U.S.C. §10181. 

Interpreting that language as potentially incorporating 

any federal law would vest the Attorney General with the 

power to deprive state or local governments of a wide variety 

of grants, based on those entities’ failure to comply with 

whatever federal law the Attorney General deems critical. Yet 

there is nothing in those statutes that even hints that Congress 

intended to make those grants dependent on the Attorney 

General’s whim as to which laws to apply, cabined only by 

the requirement that the laws apply generally to states or localities. That anomalous result is avoided if we interpret the 

term “all other applicable federal law” to incorporate federal 

laws that explicitly apply to grants or grant recipients. As to 

those federal laws, Congress clearly intended them to apply 

to states and local governments applying for federal grants, 

and to impact those grants. 

The potential for abuse is apparent. Here, the Attorney 

General has used the broad interpretation of “other applicable 

law” as a means of hijacking the legislatively-established 

Byrne JAG program to further particular policy goals of the 

Executive, despite the repeated refusal of Congress to impose 

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44 Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

such a prerequisite itself. The open-ended ability to choose 

federal laws at will would allow the targeting of states or policy issues if the Attorney General chose to do so. For instance, 

the Attorney General could effectively isolate specific states 

by requiring certification of compliance with federal law regarding controlled substances, thus disqualifying states or local governments that have legalized or decriminalized marijuana, or by requiring a certification of compliance with federal constitutional law such as Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), 

thus eliminating grant funding for states that recently have 

passed “heartbeat bills” and other legislation designed to 

challenge Roe. That would transform the highly-structured 

formula grant into one that vested total in the Attorney General to impose barriers to the grant through his choice as to 

which other federal laws to target as grant conditions.6

3. 

The Attorney General’s identification of a specific law—

and the conditioning of the grant on compliance with it—falls 

far astray from the language, context and structure of the statute itself. And a reading of the statutory language in a manner 

promoted by the Attorney General would raise potential 

6 In addition to the impropriety of such discretion in a formula grant generally, the discretion to set conditions here is also problematic because the 

certification provided in § 10153(A)(5) is only a certification “in a form acceptable to the Attorney General” that the applicant will comply with all 

other applicable federal laws. The statute, then, grants discretion only 

over the form of the certification, not the content as the Attorney General 

seeks to assert here. Compare 13 U.S.C. § 141 (providing that “[t]he Secretary shall ... take a decennial census of the population ... in such form and 

content as he may determine ... .”) (emphasis added); accord City of Providence, 2020 WL 1429579 at *11. 

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Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 45

constitutional and statutory concerns. First, as we have already discussed, the statute cited as providing the authority 

for the imposition of the condition grants no such power to 

the Attorney General. Moreover, the vesting of such discretionary authority in the hands of the Attorney General would 

render irrelevant or illogical the statute’s exacting delineation 

of the formula for grant awards and the precise limits on the 

extent to which the Attorney General can deviate from that 

distribution, as we discussed in Chicago I, 888 F.3d at 286: 

The ability of the Attorney General to depart 

from the distribution mandated by the formula 

is strictly circumscribed. For instance, of the total amount available in a given fiscal year, the 

Attorney General is authorized to reserve “not 

more than 5 percent, to be granted to 1 or more 

States or units of local government” for one or 

more of the allowed statutory purposes, “pursuant to his determination that the same is necessary (1) to combat, address, or otherwise respond to precipitous or extraordinary increases 

in crime, or in a type or types of crime; or (2) to 

prevent, compensate for, or mitigate significant 

programmatic harm resulting from operation of 

the formula ... .” 34 U.S.C. § 10157(b). Moreover, the Attorney General is authorized by other 

statutes to reduce the funding in certain circumstances, but even then the amount of the reduction is set by statute. For example, the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act mandates a 10 percent reduction in JAG funding if a 

state fails to substantially implement its provisions. 34 U.S.C. § 20927(a). And the Prison Rape 

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46 Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

Elimination Act of 2003 stipulates that a state 

that does not certify full compliance with its national standards can forfeit 5 percent of JAG 

funds unless it certifies that no less than 5 percent of such funds will be used solely to achieve 

compliance. 34 U.S.C. § 30307(e)(2)(A). 

In contrast to those carefully delineated reductions for 

specific circumstances, the Attorney General’s interpretation 

would allow the Attorney General to withhold 100% of funds 

based on his determination as to which federal law to target. 

In addition to the dissonance with the statutory structure, 

the selective targeting of specific statutes without regard to 

the statute’s relation to the grant or its purposes could present 

constitutional concerns. First, we note that as the Supreme 

Court reaffirmed in Gundy, 139 S. Ct. at 2129, a statutory delegation of authority “is constitutional so long as Congress has 

set out an ‘intelligible principle’ to guide the delegee’s exercise of authority ... [o]r in a related formulation, the Court has 

stated that a delegation is permissible if Congress has made 

clear to the delegee ‘the general policy’ he must pursue and 

the ‘boundaries of [his] authority.’” Although courts rarely 

second-guess the degree of policy judgment left by Congress 

to those responsible for executing the law, the term “applicable” by itself is so devoid of any definition or guidance that, 

if the Attorney General were relying on that provision as a 

delegation of authority to impose the conditions, it would 

vest discretion unmoored by any legislative general policy or 

boundaries of authority. 

In fact, the Supreme Court in Gundy recognized the 

constitutional issues presented by statutory provisions 

vesting such broad discretion, in considering the Sex Offender 

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Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 47

Registry Notification Act (“SORNA”) which provided that 

“[t]he Attorney General shall have the authority to specify the 

applicability of the requirements of this subchapter to sex 

offenders convicted before the enactment of this chapter ... 

and to prescribe rules for the registration of any such sex 

offender.” Id. at 2122. Although the Justices in the plurality 

decision in Gundy could not agree as to the outcome, a 

majority recognized that such a provision, if read as granting 

the Attorney General discretion to determine whether to apply 

SORNA to offenders rather than the mechanics of how to 

apply it, would present constitutional nondelegation 

problems. See Gundy, 139 S. Ct. at 2123, 2128 (plurality) 

(discussing the whether/how distinction and noting that it 

would present a nondelegation question if, as Gundy argued, 

the provision in the SORNA statute “grants the Attorney 

General plenary power to determine SORNA’s applicability 

to pre-Act offenders—to require them to register, or not, as 

she sees fit, and to change her policy for any reason and at any 

time”) and 139 S. Ct. at 2143, 2145 (dissenting) (noting that the 

provision “gave the Attorney General unfettered discretion to 

decide which requirements to impose on which pre-Act 

offenders” and that “[m]ost everyone, the plurality included, 

concedes that if SORNA allows the Attorney General as much 

authority as we have outlined, it would present ‘a 

nondelegation question.’”). 

Here, the Attorney General’s interpretation of the “other 

applicable federal law” language would grant the type of unfettered discretion to determine whether a particular federal 

law will be a precondition of the grant that seven Justices of 

the Grundy Court recognized presents a constitutional nondelegation issue. Accordingly, the language of the statute, if 

read as delegating the authority to the Attorney General to 

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48 Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

choose which federal laws would constitute conditions of the 

grant, would raise grave constitutional concerns. 

But the Attorney General has not relied on that language 

in that manner. Instead, the Attorney General asserts that 

Congress, with the “other applicable law” provision, itself imposed the condition on the grant under its Spending Clause 

power because Congress thereby incorporated all federal 

laws as grant conditions. Yet among the requirements for the 

constitutional exercise of such spending power, is the requirement that Congress, if it desires to condition the receipt of federal funds, “’must do so unambiguously ..., enabl[ing] the 

States to exercise their choice knowingly, cognizant of the 

consequences of their participation.’” South Dakota v. Dole, 483 

U.S. 203, 207 (1987), quoting Pennhurst, 451 U.S. at 17. A state 

cannot knowingly accept the conditions of the federal funding if that state is unaware in advance of the conditions or unable to ascertain what is expected of it, and therefore we insist 

that Congress must speak with a clear voice. Pennhurst, 451 

U.S. at 17. An interpretation of “other applicable federal laws” 

that is limited to laws that expressly apply to grantees is 

clearly ascertainable, in contrast to the broader interpretation 

of the Attorney General which is unbounded—which would 

literally include thousands of federal statutes and regulations. 

The Second Circuit, in adopting the broad interpretation 

of the language that the Attorney General seeks, 

acknowledges—even celebrates—the unbounded authority 

that such an interpretation would provide, and makes clear 

that the interpretation will allow denial of the grant for 

federal laws entirely unrelated to the purposes of the grant 

such as environmental laws: 

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Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 49

Indeed, whether a grant is awarded by formula 

or by discretion, there is something disquieting 

in the idea of States and localities seeking federal funds to enforce their own laws while 

themselves hampering the enforcement of federal laws, or worse, violating those laws. One 

has only to imagine millions of dollars in Byrne 

funding being sought by a locality that is simultaneously engaged in persistent, serious violations of federal environmental laws. The formula nature of the Byrne Program does not dictate that such an applicant must be given federal 

money even as it continues to flout federal law. 

To the contrary, § 10153(a)(5)(D) authorizes the 

Attorney General to condition the locality’s receipt of a Byrne grant on its certified willingness 

to comply with all federal laws applicable to that 

locality, which includes environmental laws. 

New York, 951 F.3d at 107–08. 

We do not agree with that interpretation of the language. 

Congress, under its spending power, can attach only conditions that “bear some relationship to the purpose of the federal spending,” and the universe of all federal laws as promoted by the Attorney General would necessarily include 

many laws that fail to meet that standard—once again rendering the conditions ambiguous. New York v. United States, 505 

U.S. 144, 167 (1992), citing South Dakota, 483 U.S. at 207–08 and 

n.3. Thus, the more narrow reading of the language is not only 

more consistent with the structure of the statute, but it avoids 

potential constitutional questions. 

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50 Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

4. 

Moreover, the narrower interpretation that we adopt today also avoids a conflict with 34 U.S.C. § 10228, which applies to the chapter that includes the Byrne JAG grant provisions. Section 10228 provides: 

(a) General rule

Nothing in this chapter or any other Act shall be 

construed to authorize any department, agency, 

officer, or employee of the United States to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over 

any police force or any other criminal justice 

agency of any State or any political subdivision 

thereof. 

The incorporation of § 1373 as a condition of the Byrne 

JAG grant directly conflicts with § 10228. Through § 1373, the 

Attorney General seeks to prohibit the state or political subdivision from providing certain instructions and limitations 

on the actions of its own police force, thus exercising “direction, supervision, or control” over that police force. Nor does 

it matter that § 1373 prohibits the state from taking an action, 

as opposed to requiring an action. As the Supreme Court recognized in Murphy (in considering a claim under the anticommandeering doctrine of the Tenth Amendment), it does not 

matter whether a law commands a state to take an affirmative 

action or prohibits a state from taking an action—either situation involves the exercise of control over the state. Murphy, 

138 S. Ct. at 1478. Section 1373 declares that a state or local 

government may not prohibit or restrict its own officials from 

communicating information regarding the citizenship or immigration status of any individual to the INS. That restriction 

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Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 51

of the state or local government would constitute direction or 

control over the communications by the state or local police 

force. Because § 10228 declares that “[n]othing in this chapter 

or any other Act shall be construed to authorize” such direction or control, we should not construe § 10153 in a manner 

that would incorporate § 1373 as a condition of the grant. See

Philadelphia, 916 F.3d at 291 (noting that § 10228 may be a statutory limit to which laws are “applicable”). 

Accordingly, based on the language, structure, and purpose of the Act, the reference to “all other applicable federal 

laws” in § 10153 should be read as referencing any federal law 

that by its terms applies to federal grants or grantees in that 

capacity. Accord Providence, 2020 WL 1429579 at *12. Because 

we so hold, we need not consider the alternative argument 

that § 1373 cannot be considered an “applicable federal law” 

even under the broader reading by the Attorney General because it is unconstitutional under the anticommandeering 

doctrine of the Tenth Amendment. See Pearson, 555 U.S. at 241 

(noting that we generally should avoid constitutional questions if possible). The holding that § 1373 is not an “applicable 

federal law” equally dooms the argument that § 1644 provides authority for the compliance condition, as the parties 

concede that § 1644 is identical to § 1373. 

V. Relief 

We turn, then, to the final issue in this case, which is 

whether the district court erred in extending the injunction 

beyond the City of Chicago. In its Final Judgment and Order 

in the FY 2017 litigation, the district court granted declaratory 

and injunctive relief to Chicago. The district court ordered 

that “the Attorney General’s decision to attach the Conditions 

to the FY 2017 Byrne JAG grant is set aside and shall have no 

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52 Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

legal effect” and enjoined the Attorney General from “denying or delaying issuance of any FY 2017 Byrne JAG award insofar as that denial or delay is based on the Conditions.” Dist. 

Ct. Final Judgment and Order, R. 211 at 3. The court further 

held that “[t]his Order applies to the Attorney General’s imposition of the Challenged Conditions on the Byrne JAG grant 

program as a whole. Its effects run to the benefit of all Byrne 

JAG applicants and recipients are not limited to the City of 

Chicago and its sub-grantees.” Id. at 4. The court stayed the 

order as to all areas of the country beyond Chicago in light of 

the stay our court had granted pending the since-vacated 

grant of an en banc rehearing. 

The court declared that § 1373 violated the Tenth Amendment’s anticommandeering principle and was therefore facially unconstitutional, that the Attorney General exceeded 

the authority delegated by Congress in the Byrne JAG statute, 

34 U.S.C. § 10151 et seq., and in 34 U.S.C. § 10102(a)(6), and 

that the Attorney General’s decision to attach the conditions 

to the FY 2017 Byrne JAG grant violated the constitutional 

principle of separation of powers. Dist. Ct. Final Judgment 

and Order, R.211 at 2. In the subsequent challenge to the 

FY 2018 grant conditions, the district court held that §§ 1373 

and 1644 violate the Tenth Amendment’s anti-commandeering principles and are therefore facially unconstitutional, that 

the Attorney General exceeded the authority delegated by 

Congress in the Byrne JAG statute and in § 10102(a) in attaching the challenged conditions to the FY 2018 Byrne JAG grant, 

and that the decision to attach those conditions to the grant 

violated the constitutional principle of separation of powers. 

The district court extended the permanent injunction it had 

imposed as to the FY 2017 Byrne JAG grant to include FY 2018 

and all future years, enjoining the Attorney General from 

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Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 53

denying or delaying issuance of the Byrne JAG award insofar 

as that denial or delay is based on the challenged conditions 

or materially identical conditions. Dist. Ct. Final Judgment 

and Order, Appellant Appendix, No. 19-3290, at SA50. The 

court stayed the injunction to the extent that it applied to 

grantees other than the City of Chicago. 

The district court’s decision to extend the injunctive relief 

to include future years reflected the history of litigation and 

the positions taken by the Attorney General. In the litigation 

challenging the FY 2017 injunction, the Department of Justice 

attorney representing the Attorney General [hereinafter “DOJ 

attorney”], asserted that it would be premature to enjoin conditions in FY 2018 or the years to follow because those conditions were “still in formation and ... will be different in some 

respects from the 2017 conditions.” Dist. Ct. Transcript of Proceedings, Doc. 213 at 5. The DOJ attorney then stated that although disagreeing with the district court’s analysis, “we’ve 

certainly taken it to heart. And so we are looking at the conditions for next year against the backdrop of your prior decision.” Id. He argued to the district court that relief beyond the 

specific year was improper because the issue was not yet ripe, 

arguing: 

[DOJ attorney]: Your Honor, two things. One, 

the solicitation is not – are not the actual conditions. This is an invitation to seek a grant. It 

doesn’t expressly state what the conditions are. 

Two, I’ve told you that we’re looking at those 

conditions and that we are taking to heart your 

prior decision. And three, I think your point 

about, if we impose the exact same conditions 

without notice and force them to affirmatively 

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54 Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

file a case, there might be other remedies available to the plaintiffs in that context. 

[District court]: That would mean their lawyers 

would get paid. 

Id. at 5–6. Despite these assurances made by the DOJ attorney 

to Judge Leinenweber, the Attorney General nevertheless imposed the very same conditions again in the FY 2018 grant application, and indeed also added yet another condition that 

was identical to the § 1373 compliance condition as well as 

two more conditions that relied on the same statutory authority that the district court and this court rejected. In its FY 2018 

Byrne JAG application, Chicago included an addendum indicating that it would not comply with those conditions. The 

Department of Justice began announcing grant recipients in 

the fall of 2018, issuing 752 Byrne JAG local awards by October 12, but still had not granted Chicago’s application; at that 

time Chicago filed a complaint challenging the FY 2018 conditions. About a month after Chicago filed suit, on November 

20, the Department of Justice informed Chicago that it was 

awarded the grant. The Department of Justice subsequently 

announced that in light of the ongoing litigation, it would not 

enforce the notice, access, compliance, and additional certification conditions against Chicago, but that it retained the 

right to enforce the harboring condition. 

The temporal scope of the injunctive relief in this case is 

proper. Injunctive relief is forward-looking, and a plaintiff 

injured by an unconstitutional or unlawful action in one year 

does not need to suffer injuries repeatedly in each ensuing 

year—and separately sue after each injury—to obtain relief 

from the unlawful actions. See United States v. Oregon State 

Med. Soc., 343 U.S. 326, 333 (1952) (“[t]he sole function of an 

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Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 55

action for injunction is to forestall future violations”); see

generally § 2942 Availability of Injunctive Relief—In General, 

11A Fed. Prac. & Proc. Civ. § 2942 (3d ed.) (noting 

that injunctive relief looks to the future and is designed to 

deter rather than punish, and that even if the defendant 

claims the conduct has been discontinued, the court will deny 

injunctive relief only if there is no reasonable expectation of 

future injurious conduct). Injunctive relief is designed to 

prevent precisely that scenario. Once an injury is shown in the 

imposition of the grant conditions sufficient to demonstrate 

standing, Chicago can challenge the imposition of those 

conditions in the Byrne JAG grant, and that challenge is not 

temporally limited—at least where, as here, the challenge is 

not in any way related to the timing of the conditions. And of 

course, the Attorney General’s indication to the district court 

that it would alter the conditions in future grants proved 

false. See Oregon State Med. Soc., 343 U.S. at 333 (“It is the duty 

of the courts to beware of efforts to defeat injunctive relief by 

protestations of repentance and reform, especially when 

abandonment seems timed to anticipate suit, and there is 

probability of resumption.”). The district court need not await 

yet another round of the same conditions and the same 

rejected justifications before enjoining the future conduct. 

A. Injunctive Relief Beyond City of Chicago 

The Attorney General argues that, even if we agree with 

the district court on the merits, the court erred in extending 

injunctive relief beyond the City of Chicago. In Chicago I, 888 

F.3d 272, the panel addressed a similar issue as to the preliminary injunctive relief, with the majority holding that nationwide injunctive relief was proper and with one panel member 

dissenting. Our court granted rehearing en banc to consider 

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56 Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

only the issue of the proper scope of the injunction, but that 

rehearing was vacated when the district court’s grant of the 

permanent injunction superseded the preliminary injunction. 

We now are presented again with the issue of the proper 

scope, although in the different context of a permanent rather 

than a preliminary injunction. 

At the outset, we note that a remand is necessary for the 

district court to consider whether any additional injunctive 

relief is appropriate as to the unlawful imposition of the compliance condition. The court imposed declaratory relief as to 

the constitutionality of § 1373, and injunctive relief as to the 

imposition of that condition. But because we have determined 

that the term “all other applicable Federal law” encompasses 

only law that by its terms applies to federal grants or grantees 

in that capacity, we have not reached that Tenth Amendment 

issue. A remand is required to allow the district court to determine whether any additional injunctive relief is appropriate for the violation as we have framed it. For instance, the 

declaratory relief would no longer be necessary because 

§ 1373 is inapplicable here, but other injunctive relief might 

be proper, such as enjoining the Attorney General from interpreting the phrase “all other applicable federal law” to include laws that do not explicitly apply by their terms to the 

grant or grantees. The Attorney General relied on that misuse 

of § 10153 to impose the § 1373 compliance condition on Chicago. In the FY 2018 grant, the government continues to require a certification of compliance with § 1373, but perhaps 

anticipating the foreclosure of that option, added the requirement of certification of compliance with the parallel provision 

in § 1644. 

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Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 57

That FY 2018 condition leaves no doubt that the Attorney 

General intends to continue to interpret § 10153 as allowing 

the incorporation of federal laws unrelated to the grant or 

grantees. Because the injury to Chicago in this case, in relation 

to the compliance conditions in both § 1373 and § 1644, is 

caused by the Attorney General’s unsupportable interpretation of § 10153 as allowing the incorporation of all federal law 

as a condition of the grant, proper relief in this case could include an injunction preventing the Attorney General from incorporating federal law unrelated to grants or grantees as a 

condition of the grant under § 10153. The proper scope of any 

additional relief, however, is for the district court, not this 

court, to determine as an initial matter, and we remand for the 

district court to consider whether to order any other relief as 

to the unlawful imposition of the compliance condition in 

light of our decision. We review such decisions only for an 

abuse of discretion. eBay Inc. v. MercExchange, L.L.C., 547 U.S. 

388, 391 (2006). We may consider, however, the propriety of 

the injunctive relief that has already been granted as to all of 

the challenged conditions 

1. Authority of the Court 

Courts and commentators, particularly recently, have recognized serious concerns with imposing injunctive relief that 

extends beyond the parties before the court to include third 

parties. In fact, the question as to the authority of a court to 

issue such nationwide, or universal, injunctions, as well as the 

propriety of such injunctions, has spawned a veritable cottage 

industry of scholarly articles in the past few years. See e.g.

Mila Sohoni, The Lost History of the “Universal” Injunction, 133 

HARV. L. REV. 920, 924–25 N. 16 (2020) [hereinafter Sohoni, Lost 

History], citing: Spencer E. Amdur & David Hausman, 

Case: 19-3290 Document: 57 Filed: 06/04/2020 Pages: 112
58 Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

Response, Nationwide Injunctions and Nationwide Harm, 131 

HARV. L. REV. F. 49 (2017) [hereinafter Amdur & Hausman, 

Nationwide Injunctions]; Samuel L. Bray, Multiple Chancellors: 

Reforming the National Injunction, 131 HARV. L. REV. 417, 419 

(2017) [hereinafter Bray, Multiple Chancellors]; Zachary D. 

Clopton, National Injunctions and Preclusion, 118 MICH. L. REV. 

1 (2019); Amanda Frost, In Defense of Nationwide Injunctions, 

93 N.Y.U. L. REV. 1065 (2018) [hereinafter Frost, In Defense]; 

Suzette M. Malveaux, Class Actions, Civil Rights, and the National Injunction, 131 HARV. L. REV. F. 56 (2017) [hereinafter 

Malveaux, Class Actions]; Michael T. Morley, De Facto Class 

Actions?: Plaintiff- and Defendant-Oriented Injunctions in Voting 

Rights, Election Law, and Other Constitutional Cases, 39 HARV.

J.L. & PUB. POL’Y 487 (2016); Michael T. Morley, Nationwide Injunctions, Rule 23(b)(2), and the Remedial Powers of the Lower 

Courts, 97 B.U. L. REV. 615 (2017); Zayn Siddique, Nationwide 

Injunctions, 117 COLUM. L. REV. 2095 (2017); Alan M. Trammell, Demystifying Nationwide Injunctions, 98 TEX. L. REV. 67 

(2019); Howard M. Wasserman, “Nationwide” Injunctions Are 

Really “Universal” Injunctions and They Are Never Appropriate, 

22 LEWIS & CLARK L. REV. 335 (2018) [hereinafter Wasserman, 

Nationwide Injunctions]. 7 Those articles are a response to the 

perceived increase in the utilization of universal injunctions 

in the past few decades. It is a question for another forum 

7 The terms “nationwide” and “universal” injunctions are both used by 

courts and commentators to describe injunctions for which relief extends 

beyond the plaintiff, see Wasserman, Nationwide Injunctions at 352–53, and 

we use these terms interchangeably in this opinion. As to the relief provided in this case, we use “program-wide” injunction because it is more 

descriptive of the actual reach of the injunction here. 

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Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 59

whether any such increase signals an expanding judicial overreach or an increasing executive autocracy. 

As to the authority to issue such injunctions, some urge 

that injunctions extending beyond the parties before the court 

are a recent invention, first appearing in the 1960s, and that 

the absence of such equitable relief before that time should 

cause us to question the legitimacy of that remedy. See e.g.

Trump v. Hawaii, 138 S. Ct. 2392, 2425 & 2428 (2018) (Thomas, 

J. concurring) (indicating that the first universal injunction 

emerged “a century and a half after the founding,” in 1963, 

and “appear to be inconsistent with longstanding limits on 

equitable relief and the power of Article III courts”); see also

Bray, Multiple Chancellors at 437–38; Wasserman, Nationwide 

Injunctions at 353. 

But recent scholarship casts doubt on that constricted window of universal injunctions, exhaustively documenting the 

use of injunctions that extend beyond the plaintiff going back 

over a century, from a Supreme Court decision in 1913 to the 

present. See Sohoni, Lost History, 133 Harv. L. Rev. 920, 924 

(2020); see also Samuel Bray, A Response to The Lost History of 

the “Universal” Injunction, 36 Yale J. on Reg.: Notice & Comment (Oct. 6, 2019) available at: https://www.yalejreg.com/nc/ 

a-response-to-the-lost-history-of-the-universal-injunctionby-samuel-bray/ (last visited 4/7/2020) (discussing “four serious problems” with Sohoni’s analysis), and Mila Sohoni, A 

Reply to Bray’s Response to The Lost History of the “Universal” 

Injunction, 36 Yale J. on Reg.: Notice & Comment (October 10, 

2019) (http://perma.cc/P8BA-2UJ6 (last visited 4/7/2020) (refuting Bray’s concerns). Sohoni meticulously examines equitable remedies in the past century, documenting the equitable 

relief that extended to non-parties throughout that history, 

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60 Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

and reaching the conclusion that universal injunctions are 

consistent with those traditional equitable remedies. Id. 

That conclusion has found support as well in an amicus 

brief submitted to this court by a group of legal historians, 

professors at Stanford and Columbia Law Schools and Princeton University, who concluded that “[n]ot only did equity 

courts have the equitable power to grant injunctions that look 

like modern nationwide injunctions (save they did not run 

against the federal government itself),8 but they in fact issued 

injunctions of astonishing scope.” Brief of Amici Curiae Legal 

Historians In Support of Plaintiff and Appellee the City of 

Chicago [hereinafter “Amicus”], No. 18-2885, at 6. That wide 

scope included even exercising “their equity powers at nationwide scale in the 19th and early 20th centuries, to enjoin 

the activities of hundreds of thousands of individuals, including thousands of non-parties.” Amicus at 18. Bray, a leading 

opponent of universal injunctions, disagreed with their conclusions, but nevertheless acknowledged the gravitas of the 

authors of that amicus brief, characterizing the authors as “an 

all-star cast of legal historians and historians of the early Republic” and recognizing that “[t]hese historians have written 

some of the leading scholarship on American equity.” Bray, 

National Injunctions: Historians Enter the Lists, THE VOLOKH 

8 They subsequently explained that injunctions restraining the “United 

States” from nationwide enforcement of a law could not happen until after 

1976, when the United States enacted its first general waiver of sovereign 

immunity, and that suits to restrain high level executive branch officials 

like the Attorney General were difficult to bring because “[i]n the absence 

of the modern venue statute, and because of doctrinal barriers that no 

longer exist, a modern nationwide injunction could only have been 

brought in Washington, D.C.” Amicus at 18–19. 

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Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 61

CONSPIRACY (Nov. 17, 2018, 2:21 PM), https://reason.com/2018/11/17/national-injunctions-historians-enter-th/ 

(last visited 4-7-2020). Those historians examined the relief 

provided in equity from the 18th century onward, such as 

bills of peace as well as ordinary bills for injunctions including injunctions to abate nuisances, and concluded that “equity 

courts had the equitable powers to issue nationwide injunctions in the early republic,” and “have long issued injunctions 

that protect the interests of non-parties.” Amicus at 6, 8. In 

fact, the historians noted periods of time in which the equitable remedies were much more drastic, extending as far as enjoining non-parties (which it noted would not be accepted today) and including a period of time in which injunctions were 

so broad they were called “omnibus injunctions” and “Gatling-gun injunctions.” Amicus at 16–17. They noted that those 

omnibus injunctions were repeatedly upheld by the Supreme 

Court, and ultimately Congress used its power to restrain 

their issuance. Amicus at 17. Although concluding that nationwide injunctions are historically grounded, the legal historians cautioned against an approach that would anchor equitable remedies too closely to the “notoriously difficult subject” of history, noting that the continuity of some traditional 

equity practices should not foreclose adapting equitable remedies to modern circumstances. Amicus at 25; see also Frost, In 

Defense at 1081. 

2. Consistency with Supreme Court Law 

Therefore, there is a substantial historical basis for the 

concept of injunctive relief that extends to the benefit of nonparties. The Attorney General and the dissent in this case 

nevertheless argue that universal injunctions are inconsistent 

with the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Mendoza, 

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62 Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

464 U.S. 154 (1984). The Mendoza Court held that the 

government in that case should not be subjected to 

nonmutual offensive collateral estoppel because the 

“economy interests underlying a broad application of 

nonmutual collateral estoppel are outweighed by the 

constraints which peculiarly affect the government.” Id. at 

162–63. The Court was concerned with the impact on the 

government if one decision could bind the government as to 

that legal issue in any subsequent cases brought by other 

litigants. The Attorney General and the dissent argue that the 

same danger is presented in a universal injunction. 

There are, however, important distinctions between nonmutual offensive collateral estoppel and a universal injunction. First, as is obvious, the legal concepts at issue here are 

not identical, so the Court’s decision as to an estoppel issue is 

in no way dispositive of the question as to the availability of 

universal injunctions. The significance of Mendoza must come 

from its reasoning, then. But the very different contexts make 

Mendoza of less relevance to this question. As to collateral estoppel, “once a court has decided an issue of fact or law necessary to its judgment, that decision is conclusive in a subsequent suit based on a different cause of action involving a 

party to the prior litigation.” Id. at 158. The principle would 

apply to litigation remote in time, involving different underlying causes of actions, and regardless of whether the litigant 

in the subsequent suit was similarly situated to the one in the 

past case. 

That expansive reach presented issues uniquely problematic for the government. Whereas in disputes over private 

rights between private litigants, there was “’no sound reason 

for burdening the courts with repetitive litigation,’” the 

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position of the government is not identical to that of the private litigant. Id. at 159–60., quoting Standefer v. United States, 

447 U.S. 10, 24 (1980). The government is more likely to be 

involved in cases with significant legal issues and is likely to 

be sued more often than a private party, thus increasing the 

potential for estoppel to be invoked. Id. at 160. In addition to 

depriving the government of the benefit of multiple courts of 

appeal weighing in on the issue, the application of estoppel 

would force the government to appeal every time it disagreed 

with a legal issue regardless of the significance of the case in 

which it was presented, or risk being bound by that holding 

in a later case of more importance to the government. Id. at 

160–61. Finally, the use of estoppel would prevent subsequent 

Administrations from altering the government’s position on 

a legal issue, thus upsetting the ability of the Executive Branch 

to adapt to the changing philosophies of subsequent political 

leaders. Id. at 161–62. In light of those concerns unique to the 

government as a litigant, the Court held that “[t]he conduct of 

government litigation in the courts of the United States is sufficiently different from the conduct of private civil litigation 

in those courts so that what might otherwise be economy interests underlying a broad application of collateral estoppel are outweighed by the constraints which peculiarly affect 

the government.” Id. at 162–63. 

The concerns expressed by the Court as to the use of estoppel against the government are not equally present in the 

context of the universal injunction. Of course, both situations 

present the concern with one court’s decision preventing the 

percolation of the issue in different courts. But unlike the collateral estoppel context, the universal injunction by its nature 

will concern an issue that is common to all parties bound by 

it who will be similarly-situated, will involve an issue of 

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64 Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

obvious and significant impact (thus not presenting the government with the need to appeal every adverse legal decision 

in even minor cases), and will not interfere with the ability of 

future Administrations to change policies (because the impact 

of the universal injunction will be felt in one ongoing case that 

would be appealed, not in unlimited, unforeseeable cases in 

the future). Its restriction on the government’s ability to relitigate an issue will be limited to that case and will not raise the 

prospect of impacting future unforeseeable situations remote 

in time. Therefore, the reasoning of Mendoza counsels an outcome as applied to universal injunctions. See Frost, In Defense

at 1113. To the extent that Mendoza identifies factors relevant 

to both estoppel and universal injunctions, the weighing of 

the factors should occur—as it routinely does—in the district 

court’s discretionary determination as to the appropriate equitable relief. The situations are not similar enough to support 

a blanket prohibition of universal injunctions under the reasoning of Mendoza. 

And the decisions of numerous courts post-Mendoza, including the Supreme Court itself, support that conclusion. 

The historical underpinning for the argument that courts 

have the power to issue universal injunctions is complemented by the actual allowance of injunctions benefitting 

non-parties more recently. As we noted in Chicago I, the Supreme Court in Trump v. Intern. Refugee Assistance Project, 137 

S. Ct. 2080 (2017) (“IRAP”), allowed an injunction to remain 

in place that applied to non-parties. 888 F.3d at 289. In IRAP, 

the Court denied in part a request for a stay of a nationwide 

injunction in a challenge to an Executive Order that suspended entry of foreign nationals from seven countries. The 

Court recognized that “[c]rafting a preliminary injunction is 

an exercise of discretion and judgment, often dependent as 

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Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 65

much on the equities of a given case as the substance of the 

legal issues it presents.” IRAP, 137 S. Ct. at 2087. The Court 

granted the government’s request to stay the injunction as to 

foreign nationals who lacked any bona fide relationship with 

a person or entity in the United States, but refused to stay the 

injunction not only as to the respondents in the case, but also 

as to persons not parties to the case who were similarly situated. Id. at 2088. If the lower court was without the power to 

impose an injunction that provided relief to non-parties, and 

thus relief greater than that necessary for the parties before 

the court, then the Supreme Court’s decision to allow the injunction to remain in place as to those non-parties would be 

inexplicable. 

The concurring and dissenting justices in IRAP would 

have stayed the injunction entirely, but particularly argued 

that the injunctions should not have remained in place as to 

“an unidentified, unnamed group of foreign nationals 

abroad” for whom no class had been certified and in a case in 

which neither party had asked for the scope of relief applied 

by the Court. Id. at 2090 (Thomas, J. concurring in part, dissenting in part). They further asserted that the role of courts 

was to provide complete relief only to the plaintiffs, and not 

to non-parties. Id. The IRAP Court’s refusal to stay the injunction as to similarly-situated individuals, in light of those arguments in the dissent, should put to rest any argument that 

the courts lack the authority to provide injunctive relief that 

extends to non-parties. See Frost, In Defense at 1086. 

3. Propriety of Injunctive Relief 

Therefore, both historical and current practice lends support to a determination that the courts possess the authority 

to impose injunctions that extend beyond the parties before 

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66 Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

the court. The propriety of such an injunction, in a given case, 

is another matter. 

Such injunctions present real dangers, and will be appropriate only in rare circumstances. For instance, a nationwide 

injunction can truncate the process of judicial review, elevating the judgment of a single district court. That effect, however, is not absolute. As a practical matter, the issuance of 

such an injunction is unlikely to dramatically foreclose all 

other review, because the possibility of a stay while seeking 

review in the court of appeals—as happened here—limits the 

immediate impact on litigation in other jurisdictions, and ensures review by multiple judges in short order. See Amdur & 

Hausman, Nationwide Injunctions at 53 n.27 (providing examples in which nationwide injunctions did not foreclose percolation). But even if the impact is not absolute, it is nonetheless 

a concern and has the clear potential to narrow the input from 

different judicial panels. Moreover, the potential for forum 

shopping is a real hazard and alone should caution against 

such broad injunctive relief. See e.g. Bray, Multiple Chancellors

at 457; Frost, In Defense at 1104. 

That does not, however, mandate a conclusion that universal injunctions are never proper. See Frost, In Defense at 

1105 (noting that “[a]bolishing nationwide injunctions is both 

an over- and under-inclusive response to that problem”). In 

some circumstances, universal injunctions can be necessary 

“to provide complete relief to plaintiffs, to protect similarlysituated nonparties, and to avoid the chaos and confusion that 

comes from a patchwork of injunctions.” Id. at 1101. Just as 

the percolation through the courts is a valid consideration, so 

too the desire to avoid a multiplicity of suits has long been a 

consideration in equity, which even the opponents of 

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Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 67

universal injunctions acknowledge. See Bray, Multiple Chancellors at 426; Hawaii, 138 S. Ct. at 2427 (Thomas, J, concurring). 

An outright prohibition of such injunctions, however, 

would handcuff the ability of courts to determine the relief 

that is proper in exceptional circumstances. Any number of 

factors could influence a court’s determination as to the 

proper scope of an injunction, including the nature of the violation, the extent of the impact, the urgency of the situation, 

the multiplicity of litigation, and the ability of others to even 

access the courts. IRAP presented the type of situation in 

which the remedy of a universal injunction can be particularly 

crucial. 137 S. Ct. 2080. As we stated above, in that case, the 

Supreme Court denied in part a request for a stay of a nationwide injunction in a challenge to an Executive Order that suspended entry of foreign nationals from seven countries. The 

travel ban was imposed suddenly, impacting an immense 

number of people immediately—including people who were 

already on planes to the United States—and the ability of persons affected by the ban to access the courts individually for 

redress was extremely limited. In such a circumstance, a court 

that in its discretion determines that the equities of the case 

and the substance of the legal issues justifies an injunction, 

should not be limited to imposing that relief only as to those 

few persons who could obtain attorneys or present themselves in court. 

Nor is the presence of the vehicle of a class action a realistic alternative in such a case. The difficulties, expense and delay inherent in pursuing a class action would render it inadequate for the type of situation presented in IRAP. As noted by 

Frost, 

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[d]emonstrating these prerequisites [of numerosity, commonality and typicality and the adequacy of the named plaintiff to represent the 

class] is difficult and time consuming and has 

been getting harder as a result of recent court 

decisions and federal legislation. Courts have 

heightened the evidentiary standard for class 

certification, requiring hearings and sometimes 

significant amounts of evidence on the merits of 

the case before certifying the class. In recent 

years, courts have started to deny class certification if they think there has been a flaw in class 

definition. These courts typically deny certification without first allowing the plaintiffs to 

amend that definition in response to the court’s 

concerns. Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(f), defendants can seek interlocutory review of a court’s decision to certify a class, adding further delay and expense to the certification process. Noting these difficulties, one commentator has described the class certification 

process as a “drawn-out procedural bog,” 

which comes with significant expense and delay 

for the would be class member. 

(footnotes omitted) Frost, In Defense at 1096–97, quoting Samuel Issacharoff, Private Claims, Aggregate Rights, 2008 SUP. CT.

REV. 183, 208; see also Malveaux, Class Actions at 59 (describing 

the increasing hurdles to class actions and arguing that 

“Bray’s concession that ‘the requirements for a class action 

will not always be easy to meet’ understates the significant 

hurdles erected over the last fifty years”). The class action 

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Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 69

mechanism is not an adequate substitute for a universal injunction in the proper case. 

Absent the ability to grant injunctive relief that extends beyond the particular party, courts will have little ability to 

check the abuse of power that presents the most serious threat 

to the rule of law—such as that which is swift in implementation, widespread in impact, and targeted toward those with 

the least ability to seek redress. Although circumspection is 

appropriate in ascertaining whether such relief is appropriate, 

an outright ban of such injunctions is neither required by history nor desirable in light of the range of situations—some as 

unpredictable and impactful as the sudden travel ban—that 

courts may confront. 

That said, it is a more difficult question as to whether the 

nationwide injunction is proper in this case. In exercising its 

discretion to impose the permanent injunction nationwide, 

the district court identified a number of factors that strongly 

weighed in favor of an injunction that included more comprehensive relief. The court first noted that compliance with the 

Attorney General’s conditions would damage the relationship between local law enforcement and immigrant communities, and would decrease the cooperation with those communities that is critical to preventing and to solving crimes. 

The court held that the loss of trust, which once lost is not easily restored, would cause irreparable harm that could not be 

remedied with money damages. Moreover, the court held 

that the balance of hardships favored Chicago, noting that the 

Attorney General could distribute the funds without imposing the conditions, and nothing in the injunction would prevent any state or local government from coordinating its local 

law enforcement with the federal authorities absent those 

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70 Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

unlawful conditions. Finally, the court recognized that the 

public interest was served by an injunction in that it acts as a 

check on the executive’s encroachment of congressional 

power that violates the separation of powers. 

The Attorney General does not address those factors and 

does not question the court’s determination that injunctive relief is proper. Instead, the Attorney General focuses his challenge on the scope of the injunction, asserting injunctive relief 

must be limited to that necessary to provide complete relief to 

the plaintiff and cannot extend to non-parties. But as we have 

already discussed, courts have the authority to extend injunctive relief to non-parties, and therefore those arguments fail. 

The district court identified a number of considerations 

that supported extending injunctive relief in this case 

program-wide and to include future years. Among those 

considerations was the Attorney General’s repeated 

imposition of the conditions despite adverse court rulings. 

Upon our decision affirming the grant of the preliminary 

injunction in this case, the Attorney General took the highly 

unusual step of seeking en banc review only as to the scope of 

the injunction, declining to present for en banc consideration 

our holding that the Attorney General’s claim to lawful 

authority was unfounded. And despite his failure to seek 

rehearing as to the preliminary injunctive relief to Chicago 

itself, the Attorney General continued to refuse to release the 

grant funds to Chicago, choosing instead to withhold the 

grant of all funds to all recipients. See U.S. Department of 

Justice FY 2020 Performance Budget Office of Justice 

Programs March 2019, 

https://www.justice.gov/file/1144566/download, at 99–100 

(last visited 4-8-20) (noting that of the $403 million available 

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Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 71

for Byrne JAG grants in FY 2017, only $254.4 million had been 

awarded and similarly only $256 million of the $415.5 million 

available had been awarded in FY 2018, and explaining in a 

footnote that some FY 2017 and FY 2018 formula grants had 

not been released to grantees as a result of “concerns 

regarding compliance with federal immigration laws and 

ongoing litigation related to those matters.”) Because of that 

conduct, the district court explicitly enjoined the Attorney 

General from denying or delaying the issuance of the grant 

funds in the permanent injunction. 

Moreover, as described earlier, the Attorney General assured the district court that the permanent injunction need 

not cover future years, because the conditions imposed in future years would reflect a careful consideration of the court’s 

holdings as to their legality. The court accepted that assurance, and yet the Attorney General proceeded to impose the 

identical conditions on the grants for the next year, issuing an 

award to Chicago that was not dependent on satisfaction of 

the unlawful conditions only after Chicago filed suit yet 

again. See City & Cty. of San Francisco, 372 F. Supp. 3d at 940–

41 (“There is no dispute that certain challenged conditions in 

the fiscal year 2018 Byrne JAG Program are functionally the 

same as the notice, access, and Section 1373 certification conditions in the fiscal year 2017 Byrne JAG program at issue in 

the previous related litigation.”). Despite choosing to forgo en 

banc review as to the unlawfulness of the grant conditions, 

and with no change in the legal basis for those conditions, the 

Attorney General persists in his determination to impose conditions on the Byrne JAG grant that we held unlawful and that 

Congress itself has failed to impose. Those actions make manifest that each and every state and local government will have 

to bring its own suit in order to obtain relief (and possibly for 

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72 Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

each new grant year, given the Attorney General’s penchant 

for adding new statutory authorizations—even ones identical 

in language to rejected ones), leaving behind those who cannot afford such litigation. The concern with multiplicity of litigation is a valid factor in assessing the appropriate scope of 

injunctive relief. 

As the district court held, the nature of the violation also 

supports the scope of the injunction here, in that it involves a 

violation of the separation of powers doctrine. The nature of 

the injury is a valid consideration in determining the proper 

scope of injunctive relief. Whether deemed a statutory or a 

constitutional violation, the executive’s usurpation of the legislature’s power of the purse implicates an interest that is fundamental to our government and essential to the protection 

against tyranny. See Dalton v. Spector, 511 U.S. 462, 472 (1994) 

(distinguishing ultra vires claims, alleging an action that exceeded the authority, from constitutional claims, alleging an 

absence of any authority). 

At its core, this case implicates principles of federalism—

involving federal intrusion into spheres of power possessed 

by states—and, more directly, principles of the separation of 

powers between the executive, the legislative, and the judicial 

branches. 

Why did the framers insist on this particular arrangement? They believed the new federal government’s most dangerous power was the 

power to enact laws restricting the people’s liberty....

. Some occasionally complain about Article I’s detailed and arduous processes for new 

legislation, but to the framers these were bulwarks of liberty. 

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Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 73

... 

If Congress could pass off its legislative power 

to the executive branch, the “[v]esting [c]lauses, 

and indeed the entire structure of the Constitution,” would “make no sense.” Without the involvement of representatives from across the 

country or the demands of bicameralism and 

presentment, legislation would risk becoming 

nothing more than the will of the current President. And if laws could be simply declared by a 

single person, they would not be few in number, 

the product of widespread social consensus, 

likely to protect minority interests, or apt to provide stability and fair notice. Accountability 

would suffer too. 

... 

[E]nforcing the separation of powers isn’t about 

protecting institutional prerogatives or governmental turf. It’s about respecting the people’s 

sovereign choice to vest the legislative power in 

Congress alone. And it’s about safeguarding a 

structure designed to protect their liberties, minority rights, fair notice, and the rule of law. So 

when a case or controversy comes within the judicial competence, the Constitution does not 

permit judges to look the other way; we must 

call foul when the constitutional lines are 

crossed. Indeed, the framers afforded us independence from the political branches in large 

part to encourage exactly this kind of “fortitude 

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74 Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

... to do [our] duty as faithful guardians of the 

Constitution.” 

Gundy, 139 S. Ct. at 2134–35 (Gorsuch, J., joined by the Chief 

Justice and Thomas, J., dissenting). In our case, the executive 

branch has usurped the power of the legislature to determine 

spending and to set conditions on that spending. It has done 

so to conscript the police power of the states to serve the civil 

immigration goals of the federal government. The challenged 

actions strike at the heart of the vital principles of separation 

of powers and federalism and comity for state’s rights. 

That is particularly true in this case where the revolving 

door of statutory provisions relied upon by the Attorney General as authorization for the withholding of funds upends the 

process. Like a whack-a-mole game at a carnival, the Attorney 

General has presented the courts with one statutory “authorization” after another for the decision to withhold all Byrne 

JAG funding from sanctuary cities—from § 10102(a)(6) initially to §§ 10153(A)(4), 10153(A)(5)(C), and 10155 before the 

First and Second Circuits for the notice and access conditions; 

from § 1373 to § 1644 for the federal law supporting the compliance condition; and from § 10102(a)(6) to § 10153(A)(5)(D) 

as the catch-all for the conditions. See e.g. City of Providence, 

2020 WL 1429579 at *6–9. By relying on a moving target of 

statutory provisions, the Attorney General undermines his 

own argument that the conditions were a response to a legislative grant of authority rather than an executive policy in 

search of a legislative “hook.” The nature of the violation in 

this case strongly weighs in favor of more comprehensive relief, both because respect for the separation of powers is fundamental to our government, and because the willingness to 

add new “statutory authorizations” every time a court strikes 

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Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 75

one down—and to reimpose conditions on jurisdictions in ensuing years that have already been rejected—portends a multiplicity of litigation that would be a drain on the resources of 

the courts. At this point in time, five circuits have weighed in 

on the issues, diluting the benefit of any additional “percolation” through the courts. Those factors provide a strong argument in favor of the district court’s determination that program-wide relief extending to non-parties is proper. 

B. Injunction as Providing Complete Relief to Plaintiff 

But we should avoid deciding that more expansive issue 

if a more narrow approach is available, and it is available 

here. It is widely accepted—even by self-professed opponents 

of universal injunctions—that a court may impose the equitable relief necessary to render complete relief to the plaintiff, 

even if that relief extends incidentally to non-parties. See Califano v. Yamasaki, 442 U.S. 682, 702 (1979); Wasserman, Nationwide Injunctions at 360–61; see, e.g., McKenzie v. City of Chicago, 

118 F.3d 552, 555 (7th Cir. 1997) (noting that “in reapportionment and school desegregation cases, for example, it is not 

possible to award effective relief to the plaintiffs without altering the rights of third parties”); Gill v. Whitford, 138 S. Ct. 

1916, 1930 (2018) (recognizing, for instance, in two malapportionment cases, that “the only way to vindicate an individual 

plaintiff’s right to an equally weighted vote was through a 

wholesale ‘restructuring of the geographical distribution of 

seats in a state legislature’”). Here, because of the statutory 

structure of the grant calculations, an injunction limited to 

providing complete relief to the plaintiff alone will have the 

practical impact of preventing the application of the conditions program-wide, thus ameliorating the equitable concerns 

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76 Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

expressed above, without the need to extend injunctive relief 

beyond the plaintiff itself to non-parties. 

The Byrne JAG grant is a formula grant, not a discretionary grant. The determination of the funds that will be provided to a grantee is based upon a very structured, precise 

calculation that is set forth by Congress at 34 U.S.C. § 10156 

(formerly 42 U.S.C. § 3755), and the amount received by a specific state or locality is dependent on the calculations related 

to the other states and localities. Therefore, to provide complete and accurate relief to Chicago now and in the future, and 

ensure that it receives the allocation that it would receive if 

the Attorney General did not apply the unlawful conditions, 

the allocations as a whole must be lawfully determined. In this 

formula grant, the unlawfully-imposed conditions must be 

rendered inapplicable program-wide in order for the grant 

amounts to be properly calculated for the plaintiff itself. 

Before delving into the minutia as to the structure of the 

Byrne JAG awards and the interrelationship of the grants, it 

might be helpful to provide a brief overview. If every grantee 

was allocated a set grant amount, independent from each 

other, then relief for Chicago could be calculated and 

awarded in a vacuum. There would be no need to enjoin the 

conditions beyond Chicago to redress the monetary injury, 

because the imposition of the conditions beyond Chicago 

would not impact Chicago’s grant award. But that is not the 

case. The slice of the Byrne JAG pie that Chicago receives is 

related to the slices received by Illinois and other states, and 

if the imposition of the unlawful conditions eliminates Illinois 

or other states from receiving their own awards, then that can 

impact Chicago’s award as well. The grant awards are statutorily interrelated. 

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Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 77

The Byrne JAG program allocates grant amounts to some 

localities directly, and also allocates grant amounts to each 

state, which then must pass on a certain percentage to other 

localities. If a state is unable to qualify to receive funds under 

the program, that state’s award is redistributed to the localities. In that way, the amount a locality can receive is connected to the amount the state is awarded and to the ability of 

the state to participate in the program. And the amount that 

the state is awarded is itself impacted by the amounts 

awarded to other states. In a number of ways, Byrne JAG 

funds can be redistributed from some states to other states, 

thus decreasing some states’ awards and increasing the 

award for the other states. 

The Byrne JAG conditions challenged here disrupt the entire distribution plan, because they can prevent the states 

from even applying for an award—and clearly prevent the 

states from receiving a Byrne JAG award—if they cannot comply with the unlawful conditions at issue in this case. Because 

the awards to states are interrelated, and the award for localities is also related to the award to states, the imposition of the 

unlawful conditions impacts the proper calculation of all 

awards, including awards to localities such as Chicago. 

As we will see, the Attorney General does not really contest that Chicago’s award could be impacted by the imposition of conditions on states. Instead, the Attorney General argues that we need not be concerned with that because the imposition of the unlawful conditions on other grant applicants 

would be a windfall to Chicago, resulting in a higher grant 

amount than it would otherwise receive, and Chicago cannot 

complain of receiving a higher amount. As we will discuss, 

the impact on Chicago if the unlawful conditions are applied 

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78 Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

to the states would not necessarily be an increase in its grant 

amount; it could operate to decrease the grant to Chicago as 

well. Moreover, even an improper increase in its award 

would be problematic. Once we have concluded that the Attorney General is without the authority to impose the challenged conditions, the court’s role should be to ensure that 

Chicago receives the grant it would have been entitled to absent the unlawful conditions. Courts should not impose relief 

that makes Chicago an involuntary beneficiary of the very 

conduct that it seeks to enjoin. That can only be assured if the 

Byrne JAG awards as a whole are calculated absent the imposition of the unlawful conditions. 

1. Statutory Formula for Allocation 

That is the overview. We turn, now, to the details. As an 

initial matter, it is important to understand the statutory formula for calculating grants, with its awards to states and localities. In this subpart, we describe the statutory formula for 

the initial allocations of funds as to states and localities. That 

is the base, from which subsequent redistributions will occur, 

which we discuss in subsections 2 and 3. The dissent argues 

that we misunderstand § 10156(d) and (e) as making Chicago’s award contingent on any governing body’s compliance 

with the unlawful conditions. We do not argue that 

§ 10156(d)-(e) has any such effect. Those provisions set forth 

the formula for the allocation of funds at the outset, which is 

determined proportionally and therefore will inform redistributions of funds as well. Subsections 2 and 3 demonstrate the 

redistributions of funds that are provided in the statute, and 

explain how the imposition of the unlawful conditions on 

states can alter that redistribution and thereby impact Chicago’s Byrne JAG grant award. 

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Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 79

Consideration of the precise formula delineated by Congress in § 10156 makes clear the need for program-wide 

treatment. Under that statute, the Attorney General first determines the initial allocations to states and U.S. territories 

(hereinafter collectively referred to as “states”), allocating 

half of the available funds based on the ratio of a state’s population to the national population, and half allocated based 

on the ratio of a state’s share of violent crime to that of the 

nation. 34 U.S.C. § 10156(a)(1). If that number falls below the 

minimum allocation provided in § 10156(a)(2), reflecting 

0.25% of the total Byrne JAG allocation, the state is awarded 

that minimum allocation. The population and crime data 

from those states receiving the minimum allocation is excluded in calculating the ratios in § 10156(a)(1). With the exception of the U.S. territories and the District of Columbia, 

60% of the total allocation to a state is retained by the state, 

with 40% set aside for local governments. § 10156(b). The 

amounts allocated to local governments are calculated based 

on their share of all violent crimes reported in the state. 

§10156(d). If the local government is entitled to an award 

greater than or equal to $10,000, then that unit of local government is eligible to receive the award directly. § 10156(c)–

(e). If the amount allocated to a unit of local government is 

less than $10,000, that amount is returned to the state governments for redistribution to state law enforcement agencies and local governments. Id. Moreover, units of local government may not receive a Byrne JAG award that exceeds 

that local government’s total expenditures on criminal justice services for the most recently completed fiscal year, and 

therefore award amounts in excess of that total expenditure 

are reallocated proportionally among other units of local government. § 10156(e)(1). 

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80 Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

The formula for grant distribution also recognizes that, in 

some circumstances, a disparity can exist between the funding eligibility of a county and its associated municipalities. 

The three types of disparity include: a zero-county disparity, 

when one or more municipalities within a county are eligible 

for a direct award but the county is not, yet the county is responsible for providing criminal justice services for the municipality and therefore should be entitled to part of the municipality’s award; a disparity in which both a county and a 

municipality within it qualify for a direct award, but the 

award amount for the municipality exceeds 150% of the 

county’s award amount; and a disparity in which a county 

and multiple municipalities within that county are all eligible 

for direct awards, but the sum of those awards exceeds 400% 

of the county’s award amount. § 10156(d)(4); see also BJA 

Technical Report, Justice Assistance Grant Program, 2016, 

https://www.bja.gov/JAG/pdfs/JAG-Technical-Report.pdf at 

2–6 (“BJA Technical report”) (last visited 4-8-2020); BJA Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program Frequently Asked Questions https://bja.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/ 

xyckuh186/files/media/document/JAGFAQ.pdf at 23–24 (last 

visited 4-8-2020). Jurisdictions subject to such disparity must 

identify a fiscal agent to submit a joint application for the aggregate of funds to which the units of local government are 

eligible, and that joint application must specify the amount of 

funds to be distributed to each of the units of local government and the purposes for which the funds will be used. Id. 

Accordingly, the statutory formula for distribution of 

Byrne JAG funding includes both direct and indirect distributions to states and units of local government, and in some circumstances requires a unit of local government to submit a 

joint application on behalf of itself and specified 

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Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 81

geographically constituent units of local government. Chicago falls within those provisions, and therefore it files its application for Byrne JAG funding on behalf of itself but also on 

behalf of eleven other neighboring units of local government. 

Chicago I, 888 F.3d at 292. For instance, the City of Evanston, 

which is currently pursuing its own challenge to the Byrne 

JAG conditions along with the United States Conference of 

Mayors, receives its funds indirectly through an application 

submitted by the City of Chicago. 

The statute therefore employs a precise formula for determining the amounts to be awarded to applicants, including 

states and units of local governments. Because the amounts 

allocated are based on percentages, the actual amount that a 

unit of local government such as Chicago will receive is dependent on the number of applicants and the local government’s share of all violent crimes reported in the state relative 

to those other applicants. Nor is the award a static one that, 

once awarded, is automatically and permanently distributed 

to the applicants. The awards themselves are for a four-year 

period of time. During that time, the award requires of each 

applicant ongoing compliance with the terms of the award, 

which according to the Attorney General, includes the requirement of compliance with § 1373. An inability to comply 

with § 1373 during that time can result in the loss of the 

award. As we will explain, when a state is forced to relinquish 

its award or cannot qualify for an award in the first place for 

any reason including the unlawful conditions, that situation 

can impact the award amount provided both to localities and 

to other states. 

Essentially, application of the unlawful conditions to the 

Byrne JAG program can impact Chicago’s grant in any of 

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82 Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

three different ways: (1) if applied to Chicago, it will eliminate 

its grant entirely; (2) if applied to Illinois, it could disqualify 

Illinois from receiving a grant and increase Chicago’s grant 

award as described in subsection 2; (3) if applied to other 

states, it can impact Illinois’ award either by increasing or decreasing the award that Illinois otherwise would get as described in subsection 3. And again, that altered amount can 

impact Chicago’s award as described in subsection 2—even if 

the unlawful conditions were not applied to Illinois. 

2. Redistribution from State to Locality 

First, a state’s inability to participate in the Byrne JAG program for any reason, including the inability to comply with 

the unlawful conditions, can result in an increase in the grant 

received by the locality. In that way, the grant for the locality 

is interconnected with the grant to the state. 

Section 10156(f) explicitly provides for additional funding 

to units of local government, where a state is unable or unwilling to comply with the program’s requirements during 

that time, as follows: 

(f) Funds not used by the State 

If the Attorney General determines, on the basis of information available during any grant 

period, that any allocation (or portion thereof)

under this section to a State for such grant period will not be required, or that a State will be 

unable to qualify or receive funds under this 

part, or that a State chooses not to participate 

in the program established under this part, 

then such State’s allocation (or portion 

thereof) shall be awarded by the Attorney 

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Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 83

General to units of local government, or combinations thereof, within such State, giving 

priority to those jurisdictions with the highest 

annual number of part 1 violent crimes of the 

Uniform Crime Reports reported by the unit of 

local government to the Federal Bureau of Investigation for the three most recent calendar 

years for which such data are available. 

(emphasis added). Thus, even after the initial award, during 

that four-year period of the grant the Attorney General could 

determine that a State no longer qualifies to receive funds, 

and those funds will be redistributed to the units of local government, as long as that allocation does not exceed the local 

government unit’s total expenditure on criminal justice services for the most recently completed fiscal year for which 

such data is available. § 10156(e)(1). That can result in a redistribution of funds from Illinois to its localities for any of a 

number of reasons; one of those possible reasons is if the unlawful conditions were applied to Illinois and it was unable 

to comply with those conditions. 

The possibility of that provision impacting Chicago’s 

grant amount is far from negligible. The State of Illinois, for 

instance, recently passed the Keep Illinois Families Together 

Act, 5 ILCS § 835/1, which forbids local law enforcement agencies or officials from participating in the federal 287(g) program, an ICE program that allows local law enforcement officials to identify and remove undocumented residents from 

the United States. Id. at § 835/5. If the Attorney General were 

to determine that the law operated to restrict a local government official’s ability to send or receive information regarding 

immigration status in violation of § 1373, or if Illinois were to 

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84 Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

extend its protections of its families to prevent all communications regarding immigration status, then under § 10156(f) 

the funds awarded to the State of Illinois could be redistributed to units of local government. 

Regardless of whether the State of Illinois is in compliance 

with the unlawful conditions, the point here is that the award 

to a unit of local government such as the City of Chicago can 

be impacted by the award and compliance status of the state 

and the other units of local government, not just in the grant 

year but in the three years following it. That would require, at 

a minimum, that injunctive relief extend to the state level. But 

an injunction prohibiting the application of the unlawful conditions to Illinois would not itself ensure that Chicago receives the proper grant amount because, under § 10156(f), any 

number of scenarios can result in the redistribution of Illinois’ 

grant award to its localities. And the grant that Illinois receives, which can then be redistributed to its localities, is itself 

impacted by the enforcement of the unlawful conditions as to 

the other states. That is because the structure of the Byrne JAG 

program renders the grants at the state level interrelated as 

well. See City and County of San Francisco v. Trump, 897 F.3d 

1225, 1244 (9th Cir. 2018); Wasserman, Nationwide Injunctions

at 387–88 (acknowledging that the Ninth Circuit properly allowed the injunction to run to non-party California because 

the state grant could impact San Francisco’s grant). 

3. Redistribution from State to State 

Byrne JAG grant awards to each state are not determined 

in isolation from each other. First, the awards are based on the 

statistics of each state relative to that of the others. If states are 

no longer eligible for the grant program based on the unlawful conditions, the allocations could be calculated excluding 

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Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 85

those states, resulting in a higher amount for the remaining 

states. That is a hypothetical possibility, not a certainty, because it is possible that the initial allocations would still be 

calculated as to all states—even those rendered ineligible for 

funds—and the states would be excluded only at the award 

stage. If that was the only redistribution, we would remand 

to the district court for further fact-finding to determine 

whether the initial grant allocations will be impacted by the 

ineligibility of states due to the unlawful conditions. But we 

need not remand here because the state Byrne JAG awards are 

interrelated in other ways that do not require factual development. 

What is clear, even without factfinding, is that other 

statutorily-mandated redistributions of Byrne JAG funds 

among states will be upended by the imposition of the 

unlawful Byrne JAG conditions. Just as recipients of Byrne 

JAG grants have to certify compliance with anti-lobbying 

statutes and other grant-related requirements in order to be 

eligible for their grant award, grantees also can have their 

grant award reduced or increased based on their compliance 

with the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act 

(SORNA), 34 U.S.C. § 20927(a), and the Prison Rape 

Elimination Act (PREA), 34 U.S.C. § 30307(e)(2)(A). In 

contrast to the award conditions imposed in this case by 

executive fiat, the conditions of compliance with SORNA and 

PREA are legislatively-authorized, in explicit statutory 

language. See 34 U.S.C. § 20927(a),(c), and § 30307(e)(2)(A), 

(E). 

As described above, in the Byrne JAG program, initial allocations of Byrne JAG funds are made to states and, after the 

states submit their applications with the required 

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86 Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

certifications, awards of the grant are issued. If a state seeking 

a Byrne JAG grant is non-compliant with the requirements of 

SORNA, then its Byrne JAG grant award is reduced by 10 percent. Those funds are then reallocated as an addition to the 

Byrne JAG grant award to other, SORNA-compliant states in 

the following fiscal year unless the non-compliant state seeks 

reallocation of those funds to its own Byrne JAG grant award 

by certifying that the funds will be used solely to obtain 

SORNA compliance and that request is approved. 34 U.S.C. § 

20927(c). The amounts at stake in that redistribution can be 

significant. For FY 2016, the 10% penalty applied to SORNAnon-compliant states reduced Byrne JAG grants by more than 

$6 million, with approximately $5 million reallocated to the 

SORNA-non-compliant states that applied for the funds to 

promote SORNA implementation, and over a million dollars 

reallocated as a bonus award to SORNA-compliant states. See

Justice Assistance Grant Program, 2016 Technical Report at 7, 

at https://bja.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh186/files/media/document/jag-technical-report.pdf (last visited 4-8-2020). 

Accordingly, a state’s Byrne JAG award can be increased 

or decreased based on that state’s own compliance with 

SORNA and based on whether other states are noncompliant. Because the penalty is assessed when the Byrne 

JAG grant is awarded, it will not be assessed as to states that 

either cannot even apply for the award because they cannot 

certify that they are in compliance with the unlawful 

conditions, or that apply and are denied an award because 

they are not in compliance with those conditions. See Office of 

Justice Programs SMART, Byrne JAG Grant Reductions 

Under SORNA at 

https://smart.gov/byrneJAG_grant_reductions.htm (last 

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Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 87

visited 4-8-2020)(noting that the 10 percent reduction is 

imposed when the awards are made). 

That is a real problem if the unlawful Byrne JAG conditions challenged in this case are imposed upon the states. 

States that cannot or will not comply with those unlawful conditions will not be able to receive any award under the Byrne 

JAG grant. In fact, even filing an application for the Byrne JAG 

grant is problematic for such states. The application requirements and penalties leave potential applicants in “sanctuary” 

or “welcoming” jurisdictions with few options. The chief executive of each state or unit of local government must certify 

that the unit of government will comply with all Byrne JAG 

provisions and all applicable federal laws, and must include 

the certification of compliance with § 1373. The solicitation for 

Byrne JAG applications makes clear that the certification is 

subject to review by DOJ, and that a false statement or concealment or omission of a material fact may result in criminal 

prosecution, and also may trigger civil penalties and administrative remedies including suspension or termination of the 

award, placement on the DOJ high risk grantee list (with attendant consequences), disallowance of costs, and suspension 

or debarment of the recipient. See Edward Byrne Memorial 

Justice Assistance Grant Program FY 2017 Local Solicitation 

CFDA # 16.738 at 8–9, Appellant’s Appendix, No. 18-2885, at 

A153–54. In the amicus briefs in this case alone, fourteen 

states have challenged the conditions, which indicates that 

the number of states that could be impacted by the imposition 

is significant. That likelihood is apparent as well in the Department of Justice’s Byrne JAG Application and Award History, which as of March 2019 indicated that approximately 

$150 million of the $400 million in Byrne JAG funds each year 

for FY 2017 and FY 2018 still had not been released to grantees 

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88 Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

“as a result [of] concerns regarding compliance with federal 

immigration laws and ongoing litigation related to these matters.” U.S. Dept. of Justice, FY 2020 Performance Budget, OJP 

March 2019, https://www.justice.gov/file/1144566/download 

at 100 (last visited 4-8-2020). 

If states cannot apply for or receive Byrne JAG awards, 

then that impacts the SORNA penalties collected from and redistributed to the remaining states in the Byrne JAG grants. 

For instance, if SORNA-non-compliant states can no longer 

qualify for Byrne JAG funds because of the unlawful conditions challenged here, then the 10 percent SORNA penalty 

will not be assessed as to them because they will have no 

award. Therefore the penalty amounts will not be redistributed to the Byrne JAG grant the following year to SORNAcompliant states, thus lowering the Byrne JAG grant awards 

that the remaining states would have received. Those 

SORNA-compliant states will not receive the additional funds 

that would have been reallocated from the award of those 

non-compliant states. Similarly, if SORNA-compliant states 

are unable to participate in the Byrne JAG program because 

they cannot comply with the unlawful conditions, then the remaining SORNA-compliant states will receive a larger share 

of the SORNA penalty funds solely because the unlawful conditions forced the exclusion of those states and impacted the 

number of SORNA-compliant states left in the redistribution 

mix. The inability of SORNA-non-compliant states to seek reallocation of the penalty to their own Byrne JAG award, in 

years for which the unlawful conditions deprive them of any 

award, will also skew the calculations. 

Whether states experience a loss or a windfall, the result is 

that the imposition of the unlawful Byrne JAG conditions, by 

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Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 89

precluding states from eligibility for Byrne JAG awards, will 

alter the Byrne JAG grant amounts for other states, and therefore can alter amounts for localities as well. In other words, if 

the unlawful conditions are imposed upon the states so as to 

render some of them ineligible for the Byrne JAG award, the 

Byrne JAG award for other states will be impacted because 

the Byrne JAG award for each state is impacted by the 

amounts redistributed from other states. 

A similar redistribution of funds between states occurs 

based on compliance with the PREA. The PREA stipulates 

that a state that does not certify full compliance with its national standards can forfeit 5 percent of Byrne JAG funds unless it certifies that no less than 5 percent of such funds will be 

used solely to achieve compliance. See 34 U.S.C. 

§ 30307(e)(2)(A). In FY 2019, as a result of the PREA compliance requirement, nearly $3 million in Byrne JAG grant funds 

were reallocated, held in abeyance, or reduced. See Impact of 

PREA on Justice Grants, FY 2019 at https://bja.ojp.gov/ 

sites/g/files/xyckuh186/files/media/document/FY2019-PREAGrant-Impact.pdf (last visited 4-8-2020). If states are unable to 

comply with certain PREA requirements, the PREA provides 

that “the Attorney General shall redistribute the funds of the 

State held in abeyance to other States to be used in accordance 

with the conditions of the grant program for which the funds 

were provided.” 34 U.S.C. § 30307(e)(2)(E)(iii). 

States that are ineligible for Byrne JAG funds because they 

cannot comply with the challenged conditions will not be 

awarded Byrne JAG funds, and therefore the redistribution of 

Byrne JAG funds that would occur for non-compliance with 

the PREA will be disrupted. Once again, the impact of the 

challenged conditions will impact not only the individual 

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90 Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

state’s Byrne JAG grant amount, but will impact the grant 

amount of other states as well. Just as the Byrne JAG grants 

for localities are impacted by the grants for states and each 

state’s ability to comply with the challenged Byrne JAG conditions, so too the grants for states are impacted by the ability 

of each other state to comply with those Byrne JAG conditions. 

4. Complete Relief to Plaintiff 

Complete relief to the plaintiff requires the calculation of 

its Byrne JAG grant as if the conditions were universally inapplicable. As set forth above, based on our analysis of the 

structure of the statute, the only way to ensure that the plaintiff receives, now and in the future, the Byrne JAG grant 

amount that it would be entitled to in the absence of the unlawful conditions, is to calculate the amounts for grant recipients as a whole absent the unlawful conditions. Like a river 

that flows throughout an entire region, in which an impact on 

one part cannot be separated from the whole and relief for injury to the part must target the whole, relief for one grantee in 

the Byrne JAG program must target the whole program. Complete relief to Chicago requires that in calculating its grants 

the unlawful grant conditions are not applied program-wide. 

The dissent asserts that SORNA and PREA are irrelevant 

to a claim involving the Byrne JAG grant. But the focus here 

is not on the source of the redistribution of Byrne JAG funds; 

rather, the relevant question is whether that required redistribution renders Byrne JAG funding intertwined, such that the 

elimination of some states from the Byrne JAG program as a 

result of the unlawful conditions can impact the funds received by other states and localities in that program. In other 

words, the relevant question is whether the formula for 

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Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 91

calculating the Byrne JAG award renders one state’s and one 

locality’s award dependent on the award for other states, and 

whether the imposition of the unlawful conditions challenged 

in this lawsuit disrupts that calculation. If the imposition of 

the unlawful Byrne JAG conditions on the states as a whole 

could alter the award that a state (and therefore a locality) 

would receive, then a program-wide disregard of those conditions is necessary in order for Chicago to receive the award 

that it would be entitled to in the absence of the unlawful conditions. Chicago’s award is impacted not only if the unlawful 

conditions are applied to its own Byrne JAG application, but 

if they are applied to deny Byrne JAG awards to Illinois or to 

other states. Accordingly, the relief that would eliminate the 

impact of those unlawful conditions on Chicago’s Byrne JAG 

grant is an injunction preventing the consideration of those 

unlawful conditions program-wide in the awarding of Chicago’s Byrne JAG grant. A program-wide application is necessary to provide complete relief to the plaintiff, and therefore 

is proper. 

Notably, the Attorney General has never tried to establish 

that the grant awards are not interdependent. In his brief, the 

Attorney General addressed “the panel majority’s belief that 

‘the structure of the Byrne JAG program itself’ supports entry 

of nationwide injunction.” Appellant’s Brief, No. 18-2885, at 

54. But rather than challenge the assumption that the Byrne 

JAG funds would be redistributed from jurisdictions that lost 

funding, the Attorney General declared that the panel majority “failed to explain how that redistribution required a nationwide injunction to protect Chicago’s interests,” because 

such redistribution would benefit Chicago by increasing its 

grant. Id. at 54–55. At oral argument, the Attorney General 

again declared only that it is “unclear” whether funds from 

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92 Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

another applicant could increase Chicago’s award if the conditions rendered that applicant unable to retain or obtain a 

Byrne JAG award, but again argued that such redistribution 

would be a windfall of which Chicago could not complain. 

Under the Attorney General’s theory, then, even if Chicago 

would receive more funds if the unlawful conditions are applied to other Byrne JAG applicants, that would constitute a 

surplus and Chicago could not complain that it failed to obtain all relief to which it is entitled. The notion that a plaintiff 

cannot complain if it becomes a beneficiary of the unlawful 

actions it is challenging is an odd one. It is the equivalent of 

arguing that a victim of an unlawful pyramid scheme can receive proper relief from the illegal conduct if that victim is 

given a cut of the profits of that very same ongoing unlawful 

scheme. Chicago seeks a remedy that provides redress for the 

unlawful conduct, not one that allows it to profit from the 

continued imposition of that unlawful conduct as to others. A 

remedy that essentially makes the City complicit in the action 

it seeks to prohibit is no remedy at all, and certainly not one 

that can, by any measure, constitute a remedy grounded in 

equity. 

Courts have an obligation to award proper relief, and a 

windfall achieved by the imposition of unlawful conditions 

on other applicants is not proper relief. This is not a situation 

in which it is impossible to ensure that Chicago receives the 

award it would be entitled to without the unlawful conditions; it requires only that the unlawful conditions not be applied to the Byrne JAG awards at all. That relief is the proper 

and complete relief here, and it does not cease to be proper 

merely because other, non-plaintiffs, may thereby be relieved 

of the unlawful conditions that would otherwise be applied 

to their grant awards. In fact, relief that requires consistency 

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Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 93

in the application of conditions to all Byrne JAG grants is truer 

to the statutory structure. Particularly where, as discussed 

above, the other equitable factors also weigh in favor of broad 

relief, there is no reason in equity to deny the remedy that will 

provide complete relief to Chicago. 

Moreover, as discussed above, the impact of the unlawful 

conditions on the other states would not necessarily result in 

a windfall. It could also result in a lower grant award than 

would be proper absent the impact of those unlawful conditions. If, for example, SORNA-non-compliant states cannot 

receive a grant award, then the 10 percent penalty cannot be 

imposed on their award and redistributed to other states. That 

will decrease the awards to other SORNA-compliant states, 

and as set forth above, the state award can impact the local 

award. The assumption, then, that Chicago could only experience a windfall is unsupported as the statutory formula is 

structured. 

We have determined that the Attorney General lacked the 

authority to impose the challenged conditions. The proper relief to Chicago is to enjoin the imposition of the conditions to 

the extent necessary to ensure that Chicago receives the grant 

award that it would be entitled to if the unlawful conditions 

were not imposed. In a formula grant structure such as the 

one presented here, in which grant amounts are based on percentages and the award amounts are interrelated and interdependent, an injunction requiring the Attorney General to disregard the challenged conditions program-wide is necessary 

to ensure that Chicago itself receives proper relief. Because we 

hold that program-wide application is necessary to provide 

complete relief to Chicago itself, the injunction should reflect 

that limitation, which is the narrowest relief that will redress 

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94 Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

the injury. Any impact on other grantees in that context is incidental, rather than direct, and the injunction does not provide those grantees with independently-enforceable rights. 

To clarify that focus, we direct the court on remand to 

modify the language of the injunction to require the Attorney 

General to calculate the City of Chicago’s Byrne JAG grant as 

if the challenged conditions were universally inapplicable to 

all grantees. This modification is true to our focus on providing the plaintiff with complete relief, while keeping the injunction as narrow as possible. As a practical matter under 

our analysis above, that injunctive relief under the current 

statutory structure can only be accomplished by requiring the 

elimination of the conditions program-wide. That is because 

the grant calculation is not an isolated annual action without 

impact beyond that year, such that a calculation could be 

made separately as to Chicago alone. Proper calculation of 

grant amounts under the Byrne JAG program is not a static 

process in which grants, once awarded, are permanently and 

automatically distributed to the applicant and not subject to 

further redistribution. The behavior of the states following the 

awarding of grants impacts the redistributions under SORNA 

and PREA. Therefore, the continued imposition of the unlawful conditions on those states at any time interrupts the process such that the redistribution among states and localities 

cannot be properly calculated. 

For that reason, it will be difficult if not impossible to 

properly calculate Chicago’s grant without eliminating the 

conditions for all grantees. We have explained the structural 

reasons above, but perhaps an example will illustrate the incapability of separating the calculations. Suppose that in 2019, 

the government calculates Chicago’s grant by determining 

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Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 95

what each state and locality would get absent the unlawful 

conditions, giving Chicago its proper amount for that year 

with the unlawful conditions disallowed, but then proceeds 

to apply the unlawful conditions to the other states’ grant determinations. Now, under that scenario, State A does not get 

a grant that year because it cannot comply with the unlawful 

conditions. We now move to 2020-2023. The government cannot properly calculate Chicago’s grant “absent the unlawful 

conditions,” because the actions State A would have taken 

with respect to its grant in 2019 and beyond are unknowable, 

and those actions could have impacted Chicago’s grant. State 

A’s 2019 grant would have spanned four years if it had received a 2019 Byrne JAG award. Upon receiving that award, 

it could have sought reallocation of any SORNA penalty to be 

used for the purpose of SORNA implementation, and that request could have been granted or denied. Furthermore, during the ensuing years, even if State A was granted that reallocation of the SORNA penalty, it could have had the funds 

withheld if it subsequently failed to properly use them for 

SORNA implementation. In short, the factors that would impact the redistributions among states cannot be known if the 

unlawful conditions continue to be imposed on other states, 

requiring that the conditions need to be eliminated programwide for all grantees. We nevertheless narrow the language of 

the injunction to allow for the possibility that the Attorney 

General can establish to the district court, now or in the future, that Chicago’s grant can be separately calculated in a 

manner that would allocate funding to Chicago taking into 

account all of the redistributions of funds set forth above as if 

the conditions were inapplicable to the Byrne JAG program 

as a whole. 

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96 Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

Because we hold that the challenged conditions must be 

considered inapplicable program-wide for the purpose of calculating Chicago’s grant, we need not consider Chicago’s argument that program-wide relief is proper under the Administrative Procedure Act’s authorization that unlawful agency 

actions should be “set aside.” See D.C. v. U.S. Dep't of Agric., 

___ F.3d ___, 2020 WL 1236657, at *34 (D.D.C. Mar. 13, 2020) 

and cases cited therein (discussing a line of cases all holding 

that “the APA’s instruction that unlawful agency actions be 

‘set aside’ is ordinarily read as an instruction to vacate, wherever applicable, unlawful agency rules”); see also Sohoni, Lost 

History at 991 n.466. 

VI. Conclusion 

Once again, we address the need to preserve the separation of powers between the legislative and executive branch. 

The separation of powers is a foundation of our government, 

not a formality to be swept aside on the path to achieving 

goals that the executive branch deems worthy. The Attorney 

General’s nod to checks and balances rings hollow in light of 

the changing justifications provided here for the conditions, 

with a new purported legislative “authorization” whenever 

another is deemed baseless by the court. Rather than an exercise of authority granted to it by the legislature, the conditions 

imposed here are an executive usurpation of the power of the 

purse. See Providence, 2020 WL 1429579 at *8 (“[i]t is nose-onthe-face plain that [C]ongress intended Byrne JAG to operate 

as a formula grant program. ... Congress did not make an allowance for any deviation that would justify the actions undertaken by the DOJ in this case.”) 

The imposition of the challenged conditions in this manner is an abrogation of the legislative process. Preservation of 

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Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 97

the separation of powers is paramount if our democracy is to 

survive. 

Accordingly, we affirm the grants of declaratory relief as 

to the declarations that the Attorney General exceeded the authority delegated by Congress in the Byrne JAG statute, 34 

U.S.C. § 10151 et seq., and in 34 U.S.C. § 10102(a), in attaching 

the challenged conditions to the FY 2017 and FY 2018 grants, 

and that the Attorney General’s decision to attach the conditions to the FY 2017 and FY 2018 Byrne JAG grants violated 

the constitutional principle of separation of powers. In light 

of our determination as to the language in § 10153, it is unnecessary to reach the constitutionality of § 1373 under the anticommandeering doctrine of the Tenth Amendment. We remand for the district court to modify the injunction to require 

the Attorney General to calculate the City of Chicago’s Byrne 

JAG grant as if the challenged conditions were universally inapplicable to all grantees. As set forth in this opinion, as the 

grant is currently structured and implemented, that would require program-wide elimination of the conditions in the 

awarding of the grants unless the Attorney General establishes in the district court an alternative that would satisfy the 

injunction. Although that may have the practical impact of altering the grants of all grantees program-wide, that is an incidental effect of the injunctive relief that we uphold today, 

which is limited in scope to the plaintiff itself and does not 

grant relief directly to other grantees. We affirm the extension 

of injunctive relief to include the application of the challenged 

conditions to the Byrne JAG grant now and in the future, 

which included enjoining the Attorney General from denying 

or delaying issuance of the Byrne JAG award to grants in FY 

2017, FY 2018, FY 2019 and any other future program year insofar as that denial or delay is based on the challenged 

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98 Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

conditions or materially identical conditions. We remand for 

the district court to determine if any other injunctive relief is 

appropriate in light of our determination that § 10153 cannot 

be used to incorporate laws unrelated to the grants or grantees. Finally, because the injunctive relief is necessary to provide complete relief to Chicago itself, the concern with improperly extending relief beyond the particular plaintiff does 

not apply, and therefore there is no reason to stay the application of the injunctive relief. 

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Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 99

 

MANION, Circuit Judge, concurring in the judgment. 

Today’s amended opinion holds unlawful several conditions attached to the Byrne JAG program and affirms injunctive relief for Chicago alone. While I concur in the judgment 

as a whole, I do not agree that Chicago’s relief is a function of 

the awards of all other Byrne JAG applicants. I also write separately to underscore the importance of limiting injunctive relief to the plaintiff, Chicago. 

I. 

The Attorney General challenges the district court’s conclusion that the notice, access, and § 1373 compliance conditions required of FY 2017 and FY 2018 Byrne JAG applicants 

are unlawful. He also challenges the same finding regarding 

three new conditions placed on FY 2018 grant applicants: the 

§ 1644 compliance condition; the harboring condition; and the 

additional certification condition. These requirements all conflict with Chicago’s “Welcoming City Ordinance,”1 which, 

broadly speaking, forbids the city’s agencies or agents from 

cooperating with federal immigration authorities unless the 

1 Although Chicago’s ordinance places the city among other so-called 

“sanctuary” jurisdictions, Chicago creatively labels itself a “welcoming 

city,” perhaps to avoid prosecutorial suspicion over whether its elected 

officials are committing a federal harboring offense. Federal law makes it 

a crime for any person, “knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that 

an alien has come to, entered, or remains in the United States in violation 

of law,” to “harbor” that alien. 8 U.S.C. § 1324(a)(1)(A)(iii). The same statute also criminalizes encouraging or inducing an alien to “come to, enter, 

or reside in the United States,” knowing that such entry or residence 

would be in violation of law. Id. § 1324(a)(1)(A)(iv). With the right facts, a 

policy like Chicago’s could very well facilitate harboring or at least encourage and induce aliens to enter and reside unlawfully in the United 

States. 

Case: 19-3290 Document: 57 Filed: 06/04/2020 Pages: 112
100 Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

individual subject to federal inquiry has an outstanding criminal warrant, a pending felony charge, or gang affiliations. 

Chicago, Ill., Mun. Code § 2-173-042. This ordinance, in my 

opinion, spoils the many inherent values gained when local 

and federal law enforcement agencies collaborate, yet the city 

claims this measure is necessary to foster cooperation between local law enforcement and “undocumented” immigrants, i.e., those here illegally, who might otherwise fear detention and removal (legal consequences) after coming forward as criminal witnesses. The city further insists the cooperation of illegal aliens “is essential to achieve the City’s goals 

of protecting life and property, preventing crime and resolving problems.” § 2-173-005. I find this logic unconvincing 

when, in 2018, Chicago’s self-reported clearance rates (cases 

in which a suspect was arrested, charged, and prosecuted) for 

murder (44.42 percent) and aggravated assault (38.42 percent) 

fell substantially below the national clearance average for 

those crimes (62.3 and 52.5 percent, respectively).2 Clearly, 

willing witnesses are lacking in Chicago despite its “welcoming” policies. 

We already addressed the notice and access conditions in 

City of Chicago v. Sessions, 888 F.3d 272 (7th Cir. 2018) (“Chicago I”), where we rejected the Attorney General’s reliance on 

§ 10102(a)(6) of the Byrne JAG statute and upheld the district 

2 Compare 2018 CHI. POLICE DEP’T ANN. REP., at 62 (2019), available at 

http://home.chicagopolice.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/2018AnnualReport-05July19.pdf (last visited June 4, 2020), with FED. BUREAU OF 

INVESTIGATION, CRIME IN THE UNITED STATES 2018, Table 25: Percent of Offenses Cleared by Arrest or Exceptional Means, available at 

https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018/crime-in-the-u.s.-2018/topicpages/tables/table-25 (last visited June 4, 2020). 

Case: 19-3290 Document: 57 Filed: 06/04/2020 Pages: 112
Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 101

 

court’s grant of a preliminary injunction regarding those two 

requirements. Here, the Attorney General relies on 

§ 10102(a)(6) once again, this time maintaining the provision 

extends to support the new harboring and additional certification conditions. But he raises no new meritorious arguments regarding § 10102(a)(6) in this appeal, so I agree with 

the court that our earlier reasoning warrants the same result 

here. I also agree that §§ 10102(a)(2) and (a)(4) do not support 

the harboring condition. Those provisions only permit the Assistant Attorney General to “maintain liaisons” with government agencies regarding criminal justice matters, not to impose conditions on grant money. 

That still leaves the Attorney General’s § 1373 compliance 

condition.3 Section 1373 prohibits states and localities from restricting the flow and maintenance of information regarding 

the citizenship or immigration status of any individual. 

8 U.S.C. § 1373. According to the Attorney General, conditioning Chicago’s grant award on the city’s compliance with this 

law is proper under § 10153 of the Byrne JAG statute. Section 

10153 requires applicants to certify, among other things, compliance with the program’s provisions and “all other applicable Federal laws.” 34 U.S.C. § 10153(A)(5)(D). The Attorney 

General argues this language captures § 1373, but such logic 

depends on a revision to the statutory language, one that requires certified compliance with “all Federal laws,” not just 

the applicable ones. 

There are thousands of federal laws. Adopting the Attorney General’s literal position would condition a grant award 

3 As the court notes, the Attorney General concedes the two compliance conditions—§ 1373 and § 1644—rise and fall together. 

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102 Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

on certifying compliance with each and every one of them. 

That cannot be the case. Under its spending power, Congress 

can attach only those conditions that “bear some relationship 

to the purpose of the federal spending” and must do so unambiguously. New York v. United States, 505 U.S. 144, 167, 172 

(1992) (citations omitted). The Attorney General’s unbounded 

interpretation ignores this concept. His oversight makes a difference because the relevant statutory context limits 

§ 10153(A)(5)(D)’s “all other applicable Federal laws” language to federal grant applicants. Reading § 10153 as a whole 

makes this clear. Indeed, the immediately preceding subsections, (A)–(C), all require certification of items pertaining directly to the Byrne JAG application itself. Moreover, the Byrne 

JAG program’s FY 2017 solicitation literature directs applicants to specific federal laws that the applicants need to abide 

by. Those laws, unlike § 1373, by their very language pertain 

expressly to federal grants and grant recipients, further indicating that compliance with § 1373 represents a departure 

from the grant’s statutory requirements. 

The Attorney General’s conditions, viewed in isolation, 

are perfectly reasonable. Federal officers have a basic duty to 

ensure enforcement of and compliance with our country’s immigration laws. That the federal government would require 

cooperation with its agencies in exchange for grant funds 

should come as no surprise. Nevertheless, the Constitution 

places the power to spend money in the legislative branch. See

U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 1 (“The Congress shall have Power ... 

to pay the Debts and provide for the ... general Welfare of the 

United States ... .”). The spending power also comes with the 

ancillary authority to place conditions on the receipt of federal 

funds. Nat’l Fed’n of Indep. Bus. v. Sebelius, 567 U.S. 519, 576 

(2012). So, the executive lacks authority to place conditions on 

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Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 103

 

the receipt of federal funds unless Congress vests it with such 

power. See generally La. Pub. Serv. Comm’n v. F.C.C., 476 U.S. 

355, 374 (1986) (“[A]n agency literally has no power to act ... 

unless and until Congress confers power upon it.”). Here, 

context clashes with the Attorney General’s expanded reading of § 10153(A)(5)(D), and he has received no such assignment of power from Congress. Holding Byrne JAG applicants 

to § 1373, therefore, is not supported by law. 

II. 

I agree with my colleagues that the injunction here must 

be limited to Chicago.4 But I do not share their approach to 

calculating Chicago’s deserved grant award amount. In a nutshell, the court claims the Byrne JAG statute’s structure renders the award amounts of all applicants—localities and 

states—interconnected. Therefore, according to the court, 

proper relief requires the Attorney General to calculate Chicago’s award as if the challenged conditions do not apply 

across-the-board. 

The court misinterprets the statute. With one exception, 

none of the provisions invoked by the court—read singly or 

in combination—make Chicago’s award contingent on any 

other governing body’s compliance with the Attorney General’s conditions. See generally 34 U.S.C. § 10156. For example, 

any reallocated funds Chicago receives under § 10156(e)(1) 

come from excess awards granted to other local governments, 

not from those jurisdictions’ noncompliance. And, the joint 

4 I also agree with the court’s decision to affirm the injunction’s temporal scope, i.e., “all future years.” And I concur with remanding for the 

district court to consider proper injunctive relief regarding the compliance 

condition. 

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104 Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

application process described in § 10156(d)(4) is likewise silent on whether one local government’s failure to comply can 

alter the grant awards of its fellow “geographical constituent 

units.” 

Furthermore, the court theorizes that the disqualification 

of a given locality (for failing to comply with the Attorney 

General’s conditions) can alter Chicago’s award amount because Chicago’s funds depend on both “the number of applicants” and its “share of all violent crimes reported in the state 

relative to those other applicants.” Maj. Op. at 81 (emphasis 

added). That’s not what the statute says. Subsection 

10156(d)(2)(A) governs grant allocations to localities. It directs 

the Attorney General to allocate an amount equal to the ratio 

of (1) the average number of violent crimes reported by the 

applicant over the three most recent years for which such data 

is available to (2) the number of “violent crimes reported by 

all units of local government in the State in which the [applicant] 

is located ... for such years.” Id. (emphasis added). By its own 

language—“all units of local government”—§ 10156(d)(2)(A) 

simply compares the applicant’s violent crimes against those 

reported by all localities within the applicant’s state. In other 

words, even if another Illinois locality fails to comply with the 

notice and access conditions, its violent crime statistics are not 

removed from § 10156(d)(2)(A)’s formula; they are still used 

to calculate Chicago’s award. The ratio remains the same regardless of any other locality’s noncompliance, and the yield 

for Chicago, therefore, is not affected. 

The one exception, foreshadowed above, is § 10156(f). 

That subsection provides: 

If the Attorney General determines ... that a 

State will be unable to qualify or receive funds 

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Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 105

 

under this part ... then such State’s allocation 

(or portion thereof) shall be awarded by the Attorney General to units of local government, or 

combinations thereof, within such State ... . 

Id. (emphasis added). So, if a state falls out of compliance, any 

redistribution of funds benefits that state’s local governments. 

But if, for example, California refuses to comply with the Attorney General’s conditions, then California’s allocation 

would not go to Chicago or otherwise change Chicago’s 

award at all. The states’ allocations are siloed by state; in this 

example, California’s allocation (or portion thereof) would be 

redistributed only to compliant localities within its borders. 

The court showcases the Keep Illinois Families Together 

Act, 5 ILCS 835, to emphasize that “[t]he possibility of [§ 

10156(f)] impacting Chicago’s grant amount is far from negligible” because the Attorney General may determine the legislation runs afoul of his unlawful requirements. Maj. Op. at 83. 

Maybe so. But while the possibility of an Illinois law impacting Chicago’s Byrne JAG award is “more than negligible” under § 10156(f), the possibility of another state’s law impacting 

Chicago’s award is zero. 

My colleagues’ reliance on the reallocation clauses in 

SORNA and PREA is similarly lacking. SORNA and PREA 

each provide that jurisdictions failing to implement the statutes’ mandates will be penalized with a reduction to their 

Byrne JAG award. 34 U.S.C. § 20927(a) and § 30307(e)(2)(A). 

Those reductions are redistributed among SORNA- and 

PREA-compliant jurisdictions. Id. § 20927(c) and 

§ 30307(e)(2)(E)(iii). The court’s theory is that, if states other 

than Illinois both (1) are held ineligible for a Byrne JAG grant 

because of the Attorney General’s unlawful conditions and (2) 

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106 Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

fail to implement SORNA and PREA, then Illinois—and perhaps by extension, Chicago—will miss out on the reallocated 

penalties. 

But Illinois and Chicago are not guaranteed reallocated 

funds in the first place; that depends on whether any other 

jurisdictions fail to implement SORNA and PREA. Even still, 

how much money would Chicago stand to receive? Any reallocated penalties, while not small sums themselves, are a drop 

in the bucket compared to all Byrne JAG funds. As the court 

notes, in FY 2016, reallocated SORNA penalties exceeded $6 

million across the country. Reallocated PREA penalties in FY 

2019 exceeded $3 million. Compare those amounts with 

nearly $275 million in Byrne JAG funds distributed for FY 

2016 and over $252 million for FY 2019.5 Describing the reallocated SORNA and PREA penalties as “significant” overstates the matter. 

Since other state and local governments’ compliance with 

the Attorney General’s conditions does not affect Chicago’s 

award amount, the purported need to calculate Chicago’s 

award as if the challenged conditions were universally inapplicable disappears. 

5 See https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/jagp16.pdf (last visited 

June 4, 2020); https://external.ojp.usdoj.gov/selector/title?solicitationTitle=BJA%20FY%2019%20Edward%20Byrne%20Memorial%20Justice%20

Assistance%20Grant%20(JAG)%20Program%20-

%20State%20Solicitation&po=BJA (last visited June 4, 2020); https://external.ojp.usdoj.gov/selector/title?solicitationTitle=BJA%20FY%2019%20Edward%20Byrne%20Memorial%20Justice%20

Assistance%20Grant%20(JAG)%20Program%20-

%20Local%20Solicitation&po=BJA (last visited June 4, 2020). 

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Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 107

 

III. 

Nevertheless, the injunctive relief directed by the court today avoids overstepping the well-established maxim that “injunctive relief should be no more burdensome to the defendant than necessary to provide complete relief to the plaintiffs,” 

not to non-litigant third parties. Califano v. Yamasaki, 442 U.S. 

682, 702 (1979) (emphasis added); see also Int’l Kennel Club of 

Chi., Inc. v. Mighty Star, Inc., 846 F.2d 1079, 1094 (7th Cir. 1988) 

(holding that the geographic scope of an injunction “must not 

exceed the extent of the plaintiff’s protectable rights.”) (emphasis added); California v. Azar, 911 F.3d 558, 584 (9th Cir. 

2018) (“The scope of [injunctive relief] must be no broader 

and no narrower than necessary to redress the injury shown 

by the plaintiff[s].”) (emphasis added). 

The “usual rule,” after all, is “that litigation is conducted 

by and on behalf of the individual named parties only.” Califano, 442 U.S. at 700–01. Thus, the court’s approach also keeps 

with “American courts’ tradition of providing equitable relief 

only to parties ... .” Trump v. Hawaii, 138 S. Ct. 2392, 2427 (2018) 

(Thomas, J., concurring) (emphasis added). As Justice Thomas 

outlined: 

For most of our history, courts understood judicial power as fundamentall[y] the power to render judgments in individual cases. Misuses of 

judicial power, Hamilton reassured the people 

of New York, could not threaten the general liberty of the people because courts, at most, adjudicate the rights of individual[s]. 

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108 Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

Id. at 2427–28 (alterations in the original) (internal quotation 

marks and citations omitted).6 

Today’s holding also guards against a decision premised 

on faulty assumptions: that the parties presented the district 

court with the very best arguments on the merits; that no 

other jurisdictions’ standards for injunctive relief would yield 

different results than in this case; that what goes for a 

Chicago-specific ordinance goes for all others; and that no 

trial judge sitting in the 93 other districts could possibly reach 

a different decision on these issues. 

The Supreme Court cautioned against these same kinds of 

assumptions in United States v. Mendoza, determining that a 

judicial holding against the federal government in one case 

could not be used by another party in another case “to preclude relitigation of issues ... .” 464 U.S. 154, 162 (1984). The 

Court was concerned that allowing parties to use preclusion 

in this way “would substantially thwart the development of 

important questions of law by freezing the first final decision 

rendered on a particular legal issue,” thereby depriving the 

Court of the benefit it receives when the various circuits explore and address difficult legal issues. Id. at 160. Thus, in barring the use of such nonmutual offensive collateral estoppel 

against the government, the Court sought to promote “thorough development of legal doctrine by allowing litigation in 

multiple forums.” Id. at 163. 

6 In the analogous context of Article III standing, the Supreme Court 

has also “caution[ed] ... that ‘standing is not dispensed in gross’: A plaintiff’s remedy must be tailored to redress the plaintiff’s particular injury.” 

Gill v. Whitford, 138 S. Ct. 1916, 1934 (2018) (citing DaimlerChrysler Corp. v. 

Cuno, 547 U.S. 332, 353 (2006)). 

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Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 109

 

While the Court in Mendoza did not address its concerns 

within the framework of nationwide injunctions, its reasoning 

nonetheless applies here. Indeed, the Fourth and Ninth Circuits have overruled nationwide injunctions as preventing the 

development of divergent views and outcomes. See Va. Soc’y 

for Human Life, Inc. v. Fed. Election Comm’n, 263 F.3d 379, 393 

(4th Cir. 2001) (remanding nationwide injunction in favor of 

more limited relief because such a broad measure encroaches 

on other circuits’ ability to develop their own precedent, relying on Mendoza), overruled on other grounds by Real Truth About 

Abortion, Inc. v. FEC, 681 F.3d 544, 550 n.2 (4th Cir. 2012); East 

Bay Sanctuary Covenant v. Barr, 934 F.3d 1026, 1029–30 (9th Cir. 

2019) (criticizing nationwide injunctions for depriving other 

parties of the ability to litigate issues in other jurisdictions, interfering with judicial decisionmaking, and preventing the 

percolation of legal issues and the development of the law, 

citing accordance with Mendoza in a footnote); Azar, 911 F.3d 

at 583–84 (determining nationwide injunction overbroad, citing Mendoza’s concerns).7 

Affirming the district court’s nationwide injunction here 

would block the underlying issues from percolating through 

the lower courts. This would hinder the issues’ development, 

prevent divergent legal views and opinions from coming to 

the fore, and force all future litigants in this country to accept 

7 We have also invoked Mendoza in the Rule 23 context to uphold a 

geographically limited class in light of “the Supreme Court’s admonition 

that certification of a nationwide class may have a detrimental effect by 

foreclosing adjudication by a number of different courts and judges, and 

of increasing, in certain cases, the pressures on [the Supreme Court’s] 

docket.” Shvartsman v. Apfel, 138 F.3d 1196, 1201 (7th Cir. 1998) (alteration 

in the original) (internal quotations and citation omitted). 

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110 Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

the determination of one district judge who was presented 

with one city’s ordinance and who took arguments from one

set of parties. These are real, tangible harms that impair our 

federal legal system. See Hawaii, 138 S. Ct. at 2425 (Thomas, J., 

concurring) (“[Nationwide] injunctions are beginning to take 

a toll on the federal court system—preventing legal questions 

from percolating through the federal courts, encouraging forum shopping, and making every case a national emergency 

for the courts and for the Executive Branch.”). And the fact 

that five circuits have now sounded off on the Attorney General’s conditions does not lessen the need for other courts to 

do so. Diversity of thought and opinion that flows from percolation is meant to benefit not only the Courts of Appeals, 

but our Supreme Court as well. See Arizona v. Evans, 514 U.S. 

1, 23 n.1 (1995) (Ginsburg, J., dissenting) (“[W]hen frontier legal problems are presented, periods of ‘percolation’ in, and 

diverse opinions from, state and federal appellate courts may 

yield a better informed and more enduring final pronouncement by this Court.”). Why should the judiciary call it a day 

after only five circuits weigh in, especially when they are 

split? 

The phenomenon of nationwide injunctions began to 

emerge in the latter half of the twentieth century but has “exploded in popularity” in recent years. Hawaii, 138 S. Ct. at 

2429 (Thomas, J., concurring). Indeed, in the public domain, 

the Attorney General has represented that, as of September 

2019, the current administration had already faced at least 

forty such injunctions, compared with twenty total 

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Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 111

 

throughout the previous administration’s eight years.8 That 

figure has since gone up. 

The nationwide injunction trend has also received scrutiny from the academy, and as Justice Thomas cautioned, the 

Supreme Court will be “dutybound to adjudicate” the lower 

courts’ authority to issue such “legally and historically dubious” injunctions should the practice continue. Hawaii, 138 S. 

Ct. at 2429 (Thomas, J., concurring). 

Last year, when ordering a limited injunction to ensure relief to the sole plaintiff before him, Judge Bennett of the District of Maryland observed: 

It is clear that most of the nationwide injunctions issued against the federal government in 

the past two years have come from United 

States District Courts in states less favorably inclined politically to the current administration. 

It is also clear that most of the nationwide injunctions against the federal government in the 

years before also came from United States District Courts in states less favorably inclined politically to the previous administration. It is important that the federal judiciary not allow itself to 

become part of underlying policy debate.

Mayor & City Council of Baltimore v. Azar, 392 F. Supp. 3d. 602, 

619 n.12 (D. Md. 2019) (emphasis added) (internal quotations 

and citations omitted). Considering the recent flood of nationwide injunctions, I echo Judge Bennett in emphasizing this 

8 William Barr, End Nationwide Injunctions, The Wall Street Journal, 

Sept. 5, 2019, http://www.wsj.com/articles/end-nationwide-injunctions11567723072 (last visited June 4, 2020). 

Case: 19-3290 Document: 57 Filed: 06/04/2020 Pages: 112
112 Nos. 18-2885 & 19-3290 

final point: we must not allow nationwide injunctions to serve 

as pretext for judicial activism. 

An injunction is a “drastic and extraordinary” remedy, 

Monsanto Co. v. Geertson Seed Farms, 561 U.S. 139, 165 (2010),

outdone only by an injunction issued on a national scale. This 

type of relief should be issued only when absolutely necessary and the court rightly recognizes it is far from necessary 

here. This is a funding case at its core, not an immigration 

case, where a nationwide injunction may, in very limited circumstances, be appropriate. See, e.g., Int’l Refugee Assistance 

Project v. Trump, 857 F.3d 554, 605 (4th Cir. 2017) (upholding 

a nationwide injunction on the President’s “travel ban” because plaintiffs were “dispersed throughout the United 

States” and there existed a need to apply immigration laws 

uniformly). Those circumstances are not present here. 

Case: 19-3290 Document: 57 Filed: 06/04/2020 Pages: 112