Dozens of New Cities Added to Sanctuary City Defunding Challenge

Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, and dozens of other cities and counties were added to a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s threats to defund local governments that refuse to work with federal immigration enforcement authorities.

Judge William H. Orrick, who is overseeing the case in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, granted the request by 34 sanctuary jurisdictions to be included in the suit, which was first filed in February by San Francisco and a handful of other cities.

The cities sought to amend the lawsuit and add the new jurisdictions after the administration engaged in what they said was a “flurry of additional executive actions” attacking sanctuary cities, including the the withholding of Federal Emergency Management Agency funds and new conditions on grants from a number of agencies.

Orrick’s Tuesday order rejected the administration’s argument that amending the suit will result in undue prejudice.

“Leave to amend should be granted liberally,” Orrick said. “While motion practice and discovery may well change the shape of this litigation, that is no reason to deny amendment.”

Orrick, who oversaw nearly identical sanctuary city litigation under the first Trump administration, granted a preliminary injunction in April preventing federal agencies from rescinding funds to cities based on their decisions to not cooperate with federal immigration authorities.

He later clarified that the administration can’t use new executive orders coercing sanctuary cities to make an “end run” around his original injunction.

Adding the new cities under one case in one court would actually increase judicial efficiency, the order said. “If all the plaintiffs were severed, there would be numerous district courts engaged in the same analysis around the country while the parties on each side utilized a ‘whack a mole’ strategy to protect their interests.”

The judge said the addition of more cities “ripens” the plaintiffs’ request to expedite their motion for a second preliminary injunction that would add the 34 localities under the scope of the existing injunction.

The case is City and Cnty. of San Francisco v. Trump, N.D. Cal., No. 3:25-cv-01350, 8/5/25.