The Trump administration faces a legal challenge over funding cuts to sanctuary cities, as a federal judge in San Francisco ruled on Tuesday that the lawsuit will proceed. The lawsuit seeks to overturn the administration’s decision to withhold funds from these cities.

Senior U.S. District Judge William H. Orrick, appointed by President Barack Obama, issued a stern 31-page decision denying the federal government’s motion to dismiss the case. This decision came after the government filed the motion last summer, aiming to end the lawsuit prematurely.

The lawsuit, initiated in February 2025, includes more than 15 cities and counties as plaintiffs. These plaintiffs have consistently secured favorable rulings throughout the legal proceedings, starting with a preliminary injunction granted in April of the previous year.

With this latest ruling, the plaintiffs have achieved another significant victory in their quest to maintain access to billions of dollars in federal funding designated for various public safety initiatives.

In their attempt to dismiss the case, attorneys from the U.S. Department of Justice repeated several arguments that had previously been rejected. Their primary argument was that the claims were not suitable for judicial review, suggesting that the court should not have the authority to rule on them.

Orrick, who has repeatedly given short shrift to such claims — and who has gone on, at length, about why he believes the government should stop making such arguments — again disagreed with the DOJ.

In one earlier ruling, the judge observed that the plaintiffs had a well-founded fear of immigration-related action in general terms.

This time, however, the court took to the minutiae of the Trump administration”s arguments in order to weigh in on justiciability.

In the underlying litigation, San Francisco and others sued President Donald Trump over two executive orders — “Protecting the American People Against Invasion” and “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Open Borders” — issued in January and February 2025, respectively, threatening to cut off all federal funds for jurisdictions deemed to run afoul of federal immigration priorities.

Over the past several months, however, the president has issued additional executive orders, and the Trump administration has issued various pieces of guidance meant to effectuate those orders — resulting in several additional salvos from the plaintiffs. Some of those additional filings included amended complaints encapsulating what the plaintiffs view as the nearly ever-expanding nature of their allegations due to the federal government’s never-ending focus on immigration matters.

In turn, the plaintiffs asked for additional relief and permission to file new iterations of their lawsuit in May, July, and twice in August 2025.

The Trump administration, for its part, tried to frame this ongoing push-pull as indicative of the plaintiffs’ purported weakness.

But the judge simply was not having it.

“Defendants claim that I previously found plaintiffs ‘failed to establish an injury in their [first amended complaint] and that the same issue remains in the [second amended complaint],’” the order reads. “That is incorrect. My prior Order concluded that they did, in fact, establish an injury-in-fact in their [first amended complaint]—plaintiffs showed that a directive to halt federal funds to sanctuary jurisdictions would ‘irreparably harm their budgets and, by extension, their abilities to govern and provide services to the public.’ That is the same injury plaintiffs assert in their [second amended complaint].”

Beyond that basic misreading of the court’s earlier order, the judge was otherwise unimpressed with the DOJ’s motion to dismiss.

“[D]efendants’ remaining injury-in-fact arguments are futile,” the order goes on.

To hear the Trump administration tell it, the executive orders that gave rise to the litigation “merely” gave administrative agencies “policy directives,” but did not contain any actual rules or regulations.

The judge said that simply was not true.

Rather, the judge found, the text of the challenged executive orders “requires compliance” and “unambiguously command[s] action.”

“Because their alleged injuries are concrete, particularized, and imminent, plaintiffs have established an injury-in-fact for purposes of Article III standing,” Orrick determined.

The DOJ also offered a similar argument by claiming the executive orders do not actually proscribe any particular conduct. But the judge noted this argument was, again, a retread.

“My mind is unchanged,” the order goes on. “Defendants have not provided any new arguments.”

The court goes on to note that, if anything, the Trump administration’s actions with regard to sanctuary jurisdictions have indicated the federal government has very much chosen to proscribe certain conduct that plausibly aligns with the executive orders at the root of the lawsuit.

From the order, at length:

Plaintiffs articulate that President Trump tried throughout his first term to “threaten and coerce municipalities like Plaintiffs that limit cooperation with federal civil immigration enforcement.” They then list numerous instances where “Trump administration officials have . . . publicly confirmed the Administration’s intent to go after localities they deem to be ‘sanctuary’ jurisdictions” during President Trump’s second term. These facts plausibly suggest that plaintiffs have a “well-founded fear of enforcement” that confers upon them pre-enforcement standing.

“Nothing has meaningfully changed in defendants’ standing arguments since I last decided the question,” Orrick continues. “I decline to depart from my previous holdings.”