Newsom v. Trump

California challenges the executive actions as violating the anti-commandeering doctrine by conditioning federal funding on state cooperation with federal immigration enforcement, effectively requiring state officials to implement federal policy in violation of Printz and Murphy. Under Spending Clause scrutiny, any such conditions must be unambiguous and related to the federal program's purpose, but—critically—they cannot be unduly coercive, particularly when withholding substantial independent federal funding. The court must resolve whether these executive actions fall within the permissible scope of conditional spending (which states may decline) or constitute impermissible commandeering of California's sovereign law enforcement discretion, a distinction sharpened by California's established sanctuary policies that reflect deliberate state choices about resource allocation and priorities.