City of New York v. Department of Justice, et al.

In 2006, Congress enacted the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant (“Byrne JAG”) statute, requiring the Department of Justice to provide grants to state and local governments based on a statistical formula, provided that the governments use those funds for one of eight statutorily designated criminal justice purposes. For the 2017 grant year, the DOJ administratively imposed three new substantive requirements conditioning state and local governments’ eligibility for the Byrne JAG program on whether they would provide various forms of assistance to federal immigration enforcement over the term of the grant. Four courts of appeals have rejected the new conditions as beyond the DOJ’s authority in implementing the grant statute, whereas the Second Circuit upheld the conditions in the decision below. The question presented is: Do the three substantive conditions the DOJ has imposed on Byrne JAG program eligibility exceed its authority under the statute?