A Rhode Island court rejected the Trump administration’s attempt to leverage federal transportation funds – including billions of dollars in grants for freight projects – to coerce states to help enforce federal immigration laws.
“Had Congress wished to try to make federal transportation funding contingent on cooperation with federal civil immigration enforcement, it could certainly have attempted to do so,” wrote U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island Chief Judge John McConnell, in granting summary judgement to 20 states that had sued the U.S. Department of Transportation.
“Absent any clear indication of such an attempt, the court declines to find that DOT was vested with the sweeping power it asserts in setting a condition that is so obviously unrelated to the grant programs it administers.”
The lawsuit was filed in May shortly after Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who was also a defendant in the lawsuit, issued a letter to recipients of all federal transportation funding reminding them that they must enforce the administration’s immigration rules or risk losing out on the money.
“DOT has noted reported instances where some recipients of Federal financial assistance have declined to cooperate with ICE investigations, have issued driver’s licenses to individuals present in the United States in violation of federal immigration law, or have otherwise acted in a manner that impedes Federal law enforcement,” Duffy wrote in the April 24 letter.
“Such actions undermine federal sovereignty in the enforcement of immigration law, compromise the safety and security of the transportation systems supported by DOT financial assistance, and prioritize illegal aliens over the safety and welfare of the American people whose federal taxes fund DOT’s financial assistance programs.”
But McConnell disagreed, ruling that by demanding that those receiving federal grants and other transportation funding adhere to immigration laws, DOT and Duffy “have blatantly overstepped their statutory authority, violated the [Administrative Procedure Act], and transgressed well-settled constitutional limitations on federal funding conditions. The Constitution demands the court set aside this lawless behavior.”
The ruling is a reprieve for highway, port and rail projects at risk of losing money for expansion projects as well as for maintenance.
Jeff Davis, senior fellow at the Eno Center for Transportation, a non-partisan policy group, told FreightWaves that the ruling also eliminates confusion for those applying for grants.
“States don’t like it when the federal government rewrites existing rules for grants in the middle of the process,” Davis said.
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