A federal judge has permanently blocked the Department of Transportation (DOT) from conditioning grants based on states’ cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.
In a summary judgment order on Nov. 4, U.S. District Judge John McConnell Jr. of the District of Rhode Island said the Trump administration’s conditions violated both the Administrative Procedure Act and the spending clause of the U.S. Constitution.
The Trump administration “expressly inserted the [conditions] into … grant agreements to coerce the States into cooperating with federal immigration enforcement,” McConnell wrote. He said the conditions bore “no reasonable relationship to the transportation infrastructure programs” to which they were attached….