FOR PUBLICATION UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT CITY OF LOS ANGELES, No. 18-55599 Plaintiff-Appellee, D.C. No. v. 2:17-cv-07215-R-JC WILLIAM P. BARR, Attorney General; ALAN R. HANSON, in OPINION his official capacity as Acting Assistant Attorney General of the Office of Justice Programs; RUSSELL WASHINGTON, in his official capacity as Acting Director of the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services; UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Defendants-Appellants. Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of California Manuel L. Real, District Judge, Presiding Argued and Submitted August 30, 2018 Pasadena, California Filed July 12, 2019 2 CITY OF LOS ANGELES V. BARR Before: Kim McLane Wardlaw, Jay S. Bybee, and Sandra S. Ikuta, Circuit Judges. Opinion by Judge Ikuta; Dissent by Judge Wardlaw SUMMARY * Federal Spending / Immigration The panel reversed the district court’s summary judgment in favor of the City of Los Angeles in an action challenging the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”)’s use of certain factors in determining scores for applicants to a competitive grant program – the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) grant program – that allocates a limited pool of funds to state and local applicants under the Public Safety Partnership and Community Policing Act (the “Act”), enacted as part of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. DOJ gave additional points to an applicant that chose to focus on the illegal immigration area (instead of other focus areas), and gave additional points to an applicant who agreed to the Certification of Illegal Immigration Cooperation – in which the applicant agreed to ensure Department of Homeland Security personnel had access to the applicant’s detention facilities to meet with an alien, and to provide notice to DHS regarding scheduled release of an alien in * This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader. CITY OF LOS ANGELES V. BARR 3 custody. Los Angeles submitted an application under the Act but was not awarded any funding; it chose “building trust and respect” as its focus area and declined to submit the Certification. As initial matters, the panel held that the appeal was not moot because although there was no longer a live controversy regarding the 2017 grant program, the situation was capable of repetition yet evading review. The panel also held that Los Angeles had Article III standing to bring the appeal. The panel concluded that Los Angeles’s slight competitive disadvantage due to its policy of not assisting the federal government on immigration-related issues was sufficient to give Los Angeles standing in this action. The panel rejected Los Angeles’s argument that DOJ’s practice of giving additional consideration to applicants that choose to further the two specified federal goals violated the Constitution’s Spending Clause. Because DOJ’s scoring factors encouraged, but did not coerce, an applicant to cooperate on immigration matters, the panel also rejected Los Angeles’s claims that DOJ’s use of the factors infringed on state ...
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Source: All recent Immigration Decisions In All the U.S. Courts of Appeals