One other day, one other federal decide having to elucidate to the Trump administration that court docket orders will not be non-obligatory ideas.
This time, the lecture got here from Decide Matthew Kennelly of the U.S. District Courtroom for the Northern District of Illinois, who discovered that the Division of Homeland Safety didn’t adjust to a previous order directing it to unfreeze migrant assist funds owed to Chicago, Denver, and Pima County, Arizona. Since you don’t get to dodge your authorized obligations simply since you’d reasonably not comply with them.
The case facilities on reimbursement requests submitted by native governments below federal migrant assist grants. These requests have been filed earlier than Homeland Safety formally terminated the grants, and the regulation requires businesses to course of reimbursements inside a statutory 30-day window. As an alternative of paying up or providing a lawful rationalization for denying the requests, the administration froze the funds after which argued that it not needed to meet the reimbursement deadline as a result of the grants have been now in “closeout.”
Decide Kennelly was not impressed.
The governing regulation, he defined, “doesn’t ponder permitting a federal company to flee its regulatory obligations just because it later terminates a grant.”
This ruling matches neatly right into a growing stack of judicial orders documenting the administration’s more and more informal relationship with the idea of a co-equal department of presidency. Again and again, courts have needed to spell out what must be primary civics: govt businesses don’t get to disregard deadlines, rewrite laws on the fly, or deal with judicial oversight as a nuisance to be managed reasonably than authority to be revered.
Judge Kennelly’s order doesn’t do something flashy. It doesn’t grandstand. It merely insists that the federal government do what the regulation requires. However within the present local weather, that insistence itself feels momentous.
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Regulation, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the most effective, so please join along with her. Be happy to e-mail her with any suggestions, questions, or feedback and comply with her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Mastodon @[email protected].
