A judge blocked President Trump's anti-sanctuary city executive order Tuesday, accusing the White House of wrongly trying to threaten the cities and saying Congress, not the president, gets to decide what strings to attach to federal funds.
With Santa Clara County and San Francisco's landmark motion for a preliminary injunction approved, the section of the executive order applying to sanctuary jurisdictions will not go into effect until the court rules on the county's February 3 lawsuit against the administration.
The decision will stay in place while the lawsuit works its way through court.
There's no official list of which cities count as "sanctuaries" under this definition, or, for that matter, how much a city would have to limit its cooperation to count as a "sanctuary".
Executive Order 13768, titled "Enhancing the Public Safety in the Interior of the United States", was issued on January 25 and outlines a number of immigration enforcement policies, including one to "e$3 nsure that jurisdictions that fail to comply with applicable Federal law do not receive Federal funds, except as mandated by law".
The Republican president's administration and two California governments that sued over the order disagreed about its scope.
San Francisco and Santa Clara County argued that the order threatened billions of dollars in federal funding for each of them, making it hard to plan their budgets.
The Justice Department said the counties had taken an overly broad interpretation of the president's order, which it said would affect only Justice Department and Homeland Security funds, a fraction of the grant money received by the counties.
In a statement, San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera said, "This is why we have courts - to halt the overreach of a president and an attorney general who either don't understand the Constitution or chose to ignore it".
"The defunding provision is entirely inconsistent with law in its stated goal and directives because it instructs the Attorney General and the Secretary to do something that only Congress has the authority to do - place new conditions on federal funds", Gorrick wrote.
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Supporters of the sanctuary policy argue that enlisting police cooperation in rounding up immigrants for removal undermines communities' trust in local police, particularly among Latinos.
His city was one of several communities in MA that the Department of Homeland Security recently cited as jurisdictions that have enacted policies that limit cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The San Francisco City Attorney's Office and Department of Justice did not immediately return phone calls and emails seeking comment Tuesday afternoon.
San Francisco enacted its sanctuary city policy in 1989 because it believes the city is safer when "all people, including undocumented immigrants, feel safe reporting crimes", according to its lawsuit.
Mayor Martin J. Walsh, who previously pledged to shelter immigrants in Boston City Hall if necessary to fight Trump's hard-line immigration policies, praised Orrick's order in a statement.
"Because San Francisco stood firm, that's not going to happen here or anywhere else in the United States", the city attorney added.
The Department of Justice responded that the city and county's lawsuits were premature because decisions about withholding funds and what local governments qualified as sanctuary cities had yet to be made.
Orrick does not sit on the USA 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
The Boston-based Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and Economic Justice, which represents Lawrence and Chelsea in a related federal lawsuit in MA, also praised Orrick's ruling on Tuesday.
Priebus was referring to the 9th Circuit Court based in San Francisco, where judges have also ruled against Trump's travel bans.
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