Judge rules in favor of Denver, other cities over Trump threat to withhold federal transportation dollars

A federal judge this week put a preliminarily hold on the Trump administration’s potential plans to withhold about $600 million in transportation grant funding from Denver because of the city’s politics.

U.S. District Court Judge Barbara Jacobs Rothstein agreed with Denver and dozens of other cities and counties involved in a lawsuit. She ordered two preliminary injunctions and said the cities are likely to win their case challenging the constitutionality of the administration’s threats.

“One need not conjure the most extreme cases of bridges collapsing and train derailments to understand instinctively that maintaining the health of the systems … is critical,” Rothstein, a federal judge in Seattle, wrote in her Tuesday ruling.

New York City, Denver and 29 other cities, counties, and local housing and transportation agencies filed the lawsuit in Seattle on May 21. They cited an April memo from U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, an appointee of President Donald Trump, who wrote that the department wouldn’t dole out federal grants to cities whose policies don’t align with the president’s stances on issues of immigration and diversity.

In the memo, Duffy said that programs and policies “designed to achieve so-called ‘diversity, equity and inclusion,’ or ‘DEI,’ goals” violate federal law. Cities also must fully cooperate with federal immigration enforcement to receive the grants, Duffy wrote.

The localities argued that those new rules were unconstitutional and that the president didn’t have the authority to set grant conditions beyond what Congress has established.

Denver’s Department of Transportation and Infrastructure is the recipient of about $300 million in federal funding in recent years and Denver International Airport is the recipient of another $300 million, said Jon Ewing, a spokesman for the mayor’s office.

Rothstein agreed with the plaintiffs that the action would violate the separation of powers doctrine, which states that the Constitution grants the “power of the purse” solely to Congress and not the president.

She also said the threats themselves created problems for the cities as they develop their budgets.

“It is this looming risk itself that is the injury, and one that plaintiffs are already suffering,” she wrote.

She ruled that unless there was another ruling from the court, the U.S. Department of Transportation couldn’t impose or enforce the new conditions for grants. The ruling is only preliminary and the full case will proceed.