Judge Reena Raggi of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit

In a win for the Trump administration, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled Wednesday that the Justice Department could withhold millions of dollars in federal law-enforcement grants from New York City and seven states over their sanctuary policies on immigration.

The unanimous ruling from a three-judge panel of the Manhattan-based appeals court lifted an injunction by a lower court that prevented the Trump administration from attaching immigration-related conditions to applications for federal funds under a federal grant program and placed the Second Circuit at odds with three other circuit courts that have upheld similar injunctions.

Seven states—New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Washington, Massachusetts, Virginia and Rhode Island—along with New York City, had sued the Trump administration in 2017 over the federal requirements, which conditioned funding on states' willingness to allow federal immigration authorities access to jails and to provide advance notice when undocumented immigrant would be released from custody.

U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos of the Southern District of New York in 2018 ordered the Trump administration to release the funds, finding that the Justice Department lacked the legal authority to impose its conditions, which Ramos found to be "arbitrary and capricious."

The Second Circuit, however, said that the plain language of the relevant statutes had authorized the DOJ to make the changes. The panel also noted that the federal government maintains broad authority over states and municipalities when it comes to enforcing immigration policies.

"While mindful of the respect owed to our sister circuits, we cannot agree that the federal government must be enjoined from imposing the challenged conditions on the federal grants here at issue," Judge Reena Raggi of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, an appointee of President George W. Bush, wrote in a 77-page opinion.

"These conditions help the federal government enforce national immigration laws and policies supported by successive Democratic and Republican administrations. But more to the authorization point, they ensure that applicants satisfy particular statutory grant requirements imposed by Congress and subject to attorney general oversight," Raggi said.

Judges Ralph K. Winter and José A. Cabranes of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, a Ronald Reagan appointee and a Bill Clinton appointee, respectively, joined in the ruling.

The New York Attorney General's Office and the City Law Department did not immediately provide comment on the ruling.

So far, federal appeals courts in Philadelphia, Chicago and San Francisco have all upheld lower court injunctions blocking some or all of the challenged conditions.

The Justice Department, under then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, announced a crackdown on sanctuary jurisdictions in 2017, saying cities and states that refused to share information with federal authorities would not be considered for justice assistance grants under the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Programs.

"So-called 'sanctuary' policies make all of us less safe because they intentionally undermine our laws and protect illegal aliens who have committed crimes," Sessions said in a June 2017 press release announcing the new policy.

The grants, named for slain New York City police officer Eddie Byrne, provide more than $250 million in federal funding for a host of criminal justice efforts, including support for investigative task forces, prosecutors' and public defenders' offices, drug courts and diversion programs. The funding has been distributed to state and local governments since 2006.

In granting summary judgment in favor of the plaintiffs, Ramos also found a federal law that prohibits state and local governments from restricting their information-sharing with federal immigration authorities was no longer constitutional in light of a 2018 Supreme Court decision that allowed states to legalize sports betting.

Ramos wrote that the high court's analysis of the Tenth Amendment's "anticommandeering"  principle in Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association applied to the states' immigration policies because both cases involved requirements that states adopt federal policies that encroached on the independent sovereignty.

The Second Circuit, however, rejected that reasoning because the states at issue had a "legitimate choice" in whether to accept the immigration conditions in exchange for grant funding.

"A state is deprived of 'legitimate choice' only when the federal government imposes grant conditions that pass the point at which 'pressure turns into compulsion,'" Raggi wrote.

She explained: "Pressure can turn into compulsion when the amount of funding that a state would lose by not acceding to the federal conditions is so significant to the states' overall operations as to leave it with no real choice but to agree."

Because the federal grant dollars represented only a small fraction of each state's overall budget, Raggi reasoned, the states could not claim that they had no choice but to comply with the federal requirements.

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