The executive branch does not have the power to cut off funding to cities The 10th Amendment provides that “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.” Implicit in this amendment, according to the Supreme Court, is a doctrine known as “Anti-Commandeering,” which typically prevents the federal government from giving orders directly to state officials such as state and local police.
As the Court explained in Murphy v. NCAA (2018), “conspicuously absent from the list of powers given to Congress is the power to issue direct orders to the governments of the States.”
But, while the federal government may not directly order local police to take certain actions — it cannot, for example, order those police to crack down on protests that the president disapproves of — the federal government can place conditions on federal grants that states must comply with if they wish to keep that money.
The Dole decision, however, lays out several limits on the federal government’s power to attach conditions to grants — a few of which are relevant to Trump’s memo.
First, as mentioned above, the power to impose conditions is vested in Congress, not the president, so unless Trump can convince Congress to pass a law targeting “anarchist jurisdictions,” he may not impose new limits on existing federal grants.
Second, when Congress does impose a condition on a federal grant to a state or local government, it “must do so unambiguously” so that states are not surprised by unexpected obligations. In the Supreme Court’s words, grant recipients must be able to “exercise their choice knowingly, cognizant of the consequences of their participation.” If they don’t want the conditions, they don’t have to accept the money in the first place.
Thus, if the Trump administration wants to argue that an existing federal law permits it to strip federal funding from “anarchist jurisdictions,” it faces a heavy burden. It must find an existing law that clearly imposes specific policing obligations on states and localities. It is, to say the least, unlikely that Congress has already enacted a law that unambiguously permits Trump to strip federal funds due to a personal disagreement over local policing strategy.
2 comments:
Thanks, but I just contributed an anti-Trump TRUTH to the thread above.
The executive branch does not have the power to cut off funding to cities
The 10th Amendment provides that “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.” Implicit in this amendment, according to the Supreme Court, is a doctrine known as “Anti-Commandeering,” which typically prevents the federal government from giving orders directly to state officials such as state and local police.
As the Court explained in Murphy v. NCAA (2018), “conspicuously absent from the list of powers given to Congress is the power to issue direct orders to the governments of the States.”
But, while the federal government may not directly order local police to take certain actions — it cannot, for example, order those police to crack down on protests that the president disapproves of — the federal government can place conditions on federal grants that states must comply with if they wish to keep that money.
The Dole decision, however, lays out several limits on the federal government’s power to attach conditions to grants — a few of which are relevant to Trump’s memo.
First, as mentioned above, the power to impose conditions is vested in Congress, not the president, so unless Trump can convince Congress to pass a law targeting “anarchist jurisdictions,” he may not impose new limits on existing federal grants.
Second, when Congress does impose a condition on a federal grant to a state or local government, it “must do so unambiguously” so that states are not surprised by unexpected obligations. In the Supreme Court’s words, grant recipients must be able to “exercise their choice knowingly, cognizant of the consequences of their participation.” If they don’t want the conditions, they don’t have to accept the money in the first place.
Thus, if the Trump administration wants to argue that an existing federal law permits it to strip federal funding from “anarchist jurisdictions,” it faces a heavy burden. It must find an existing law that clearly imposes specific policing obligations on states and localities. It is, to say the least, unlikely that Congress has already enacted a law that unambiguously permits Trump to strip federal funds due to a personal disagreement over local policing strategy.
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