President Donald Trump is fighting to withhold funding from cities and states to force them to adopt his agenda on immigration, transgender policies, and diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Democrats are arguing that the president is doing so unlawfully, but court cases on the matter have in recent years seen mixed results. Past administrations have found ways, at times, to condition funding for states on policy changes.
Former President Joe Biden was partially successful in leveraging funds to force vaccine requirements in healthcare facilities, and former President Barack Obama used more than $4 billion in grants to incentivize only the states that implemented his desired education reforms.
Trump during his first administration attempted to target so-called sanctuary jurisdictions by withholding grant money from them, and while appellate courts blocked those efforts, the Supreme Court never had a chance to weigh in and could take up a similar case this time around.
Trump 2.0’s sanctuary city fight
Trump was quick during his second term to direct his Justice and Homeland Security departments to withhold funding from sanctuary jurisdictions and an ensuing lawsuit, brought by 16 blue counties and cities across the country, led to a federal judge in California blocking Trump from withholding the funds this week.
Trump “is intent on ignoring the rule of law and punishing all who would disagree with him,” the plaintiffs alleged in the lawsuit.
“In his new Administration, the President is again trampling established law limiting the extent of federal power over state and local governments,” the plaintiffs wrote. “He appears emboldened to do what the courts thwarted him from doing before and penalize ‘sanctuary jurisdictions’ that do not bend to his will.”
The DOJ has indicated that it intends to appeal the decision, meaning it could soon land in front of the high court. The government’s aim is to “crack down against policies that benefit criminal illegal aliens,” a DOJ spokesperson told the Washington Examiner after the district court’s ruling.
Trump’s aggressive attempts to shape state policy by threatening their funding so early into his second term come as part of a pattern in which Trump is testing the boundaries of his authority. In other areas, he has sought to cut independent agencies and watchdogs from the executive branch, fire swathes of federal workers, and freeze or cancel billions of dollars in spending and contracts, actions that have led to an accumulation of hundreds of lawsuits. The Supreme Court is likely to have the final say over the most pivotal questions raised in the lawsuits.
DEI
One of the lawsuits against Trump, brought Friday by a coalition of blue states, argued the Trump administration was threatening more than $18 billion in education funding for states that do not comply with his demands to ban DEI initiatives in schools.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in an announcement that he and his colleagues have no objections to federal anti-discrimination laws but that “sadly” Trump has “distorted” them.
DEI is “entirely legal,” Bonta said, adding, “Claiming that diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility programs are a form of discrimination is entirely illogical.”
DEI is a framework that schools, companies, governmental agencies, and other entities have adopted to promote equal treatment for minorities, but conservatives have long argued its practices can be discriminatory by improperly extending preferential treatment to them.
The blue states’ lawsuit, and others like it that have been filed against Trump, reference a letter the Department of Education issued in February warning that federal financial assistance for educational institutions is contingent on them getting rid of DEI.
Lower courts have mostly ruled against Trump in these cases, sometimes citing constitutional violations or Administrative Procedure Act violations that govern how the executive branch spends congressionally authorized money.
But the Supreme Court handed one small victory to the president in a case in Massachusetts this month that had put about $65 million in funding on the line.
The high court said in a temporary order that Trump could withhold the funds for now and that the case is likely not an Administrative Procedure Act case but rather a contractual dispute that could be handled in the Court of Federal Claims.
Oklahoma’s abortion hotline
While the Supreme Court dealt a historic blow to proponents of abortion access by overturning Roe v. Wade during Biden’s tenure, the president did see a small victory at the high court last year after he stripped Oklahoma of more than $4 million in Title X funding.
The fight over Title X, a federal family planning rule, showcased how Congress can apply conditions to federal funding where the president cannot.
Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar argued on behalf of the Biden administration that Oklahoma was required by Congress to provide neutral public information about abortion through a hotline, and the high court ruled in the government’s favor in a brief 6-3 order.
Maine’s transgender war
Where Biden left one of his more memorable marks was by attempting to break through the complexities of state-level enforcement of Title IX by reinterpreting the rule, which prohibits sex-based discrimination in education, to include gender identity. In practice, the reimagined rule could force schools to accept boys who say they are transgender in sports or restrooms that are exclusive to girls.
Republican-led states pushed back in lawsuits, arguing in part that they would not be eligible for Department of Education funding because of what they said was federal overreach. The Biden administration turned to the Supreme Court to lift two injunctions on his Title IX regulation that were imposed by lower courts, but the high court declined to do so in a 5-4 ruling last year.
The Supreme Court has not issued any final rulings on whether Title IX includes gender identity, and its first opportunity could come during Trump’s second term.
Trump has escalated his feud with Maine over the state’s decision to flout the president’s declaration that Title IX excludes gender identity and bars boys from competing in girls sports, bringing a lawsuit against the state and threatening its funding.
The moves came after Gov. Janet Mills (D-ME) chided Trump during a luncheon in February and after a male pole vaulter won a girls state competition that month. Mills told local news there were “maybe two” transgender athletes in her state.
After the lawsuit was filed, Mills said Trump’s actions were part of an “unprecedented campaign” to pressure the state’s government to “ignore the Constitution and abandon the rule of law.”
The state’s Democratic attorney general, Aaron Frey, also brought a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture alleging it unlawfully froze federal grant money that funded Maine’s education programs, including school lunches. The freeze violated the Administrative Procedure Act by imposing an “arbitrary and capricious” hold on congressionally approved grants, the Maine attorney general’s office alleged.
JUDGE BLOCKS TRUMP FROM HOLDING BACK FUNDS FOR SANCTUARY CITIES
“Even if the State of Maine were in violation of Title IX (and, to be clear, it is not), there are statutory and regulatory requirements that the federal government must comply with before it may freeze federal funds owed to a state,” the office wrote in its lawsuit.
Mills applauded Judge John Woodcock, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, for granting the state a temporary restraining order in the USDA case. Mills said it “reinforces our position that the federal government has been acting unlawfully.”