(CN) - San Francisco's police department is short roughly 30% of the officers it needs. The city is staring down an $800 million budget deficit with no clear way to hire more cops - then came word last fall that the federal government had approved a $6.25 million grant to help fill those gaps.
But there was a catch: To get the money, San Francisco would have to promise not to run any diversity programs, agree to follow all presidential executive orders and certify the funds wouldn't go toward promoting gender ideology or protecting governments that didn't stop vandalism of public monuments.
On Wednesday, a federal judge said that is not how the law works.
U.S. District Court Judge James Donato blocked the Trump administration from enforcing those conditions against San Francisco and three other cities, ruling that the DOJ had no authority to tie the strings it was demanding to community police grants.
The decision frees up nearly $8 million in funding for San Francisco, Tucson, San Diego and Santa Clara County, which had refused to accept those terms.
"Where then does the government find statutory authority to impose conditions on local governments about Covid-19 vaccinations, 'gender ideology,' or the vandalism of public monuments?" Donato wrote in his order. "It did not rely on anything in the statute, and the plain language of the Community Policing Act does not reveal a basis for the government's actions."
The Office of Community Oriented Policing Services grants were created in 1994 to help local police departments hire officers and implement community-focused strategies. Congress authorized the grants under a law outlining 24 specific purposes, ranging from officer hiring to training in mental health crisis response.
What the law doesn't mention is Covid-19 vaccine policies, monument protection or diversity programs. Yet those became prerequisites for this year's grants after the Trump administration issued executive orders in January targeting what it called "illegal and immoral discrimination programs, going by the name 'diversity, equity, and inclusion.'"
Donato, a Barack Obama appointee in the Northern District of California, rejected that standard. He pointed to the statute governing the grants, which directs applicants to recruit and hire racial and ethnic minorities and women to boost diversity among sworn officers.
The administration's new conditions, Donato said, would prohibit what Congress had mandated.
"There is no way to reconcile the conditions with the statute short of engaging in doublethink that forbidding considerations of race and gender is the same as taking them into account," he said.
The DOJ also insisted that executive orders carry the weight of federal law and that grant recipients must follow them. Donato rejected that claim.
"The suggestion that executive orders are on parity with statutes is bereft of any meaningful support in the government's briefs," he wrote.
San Diego was also approved for $1.25 million in combined grants for officer hiring and crisis response training. Tucson was set to receive $175,000 specifically to recruit candidates from diverse backgrounds. Santa Clara County was granted $200,000 for mental health services for sheriff's office staff as the county projects losing $1 billion in funding this fiscal year.
The four cities had until Friday to accept all grant conditions or lose the funding. The award terms mandated acceptance of the full offer, leaving no room for negotiation.
Donato's ruling restores the cities' access to the funds. The preliminary injunction prevents the DOJ from enforcing the challenged conditions or denying funding because the cities didn't accept them. The order will remain in place until a trial set for August.
Neither the Department of Justice nor representatives for the four cities immediately responded to requests for comment.
Source: Courthouse News Service
