DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—A major California city is suing the state over its sanctuary law, arguing that it violates the Constitution and prevents local officials from protecting their community.
The City of Huntington Beach filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against SB 54, otherwise known as the California Values Act, which dramatically restricts how local and state law enforcement can cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The lawsuit argues that the policy not only violates the Constitution, but also directs city officials to violate federal immigration laws.
“We are fighting the Sanctuary State Law because it obstructs our ability to fully enforce the law and keep our community safe,” Huntington Beach Mayor Pat Burns said in a public statement. “When the stakes are currently so high, with reports of increases in human trafficking, increases in foreign gangs taking over apartment buildings in the U.S., killing, raping, and committing other violent crimes against our citizens, we need every possible resource available to fight crime, including federal resources.”
“Huntington Beach will not sit idly by and allow the obstructionist Sanctuary State Law to put our 200,000 residents at risk of harm from those who seek to commit violent crimes on U.S. soil.,” Burns continued.
The California Values Act was signed into law by then-Gov. Jerry Brown in 2017, which into effect the following year and has since remained controversial. The law—which was viewed at the time as an act of resistance by California Democrats against President Donald Trump’s first administration—placed limitations on state and local law enforcement’s ability to help deportation officers enforce immigration violations.
“As a matter of law, the State’s ‘Sanctuary State Law’ is unconstitutional and violates other Federal laws; as a matter of enforcement policy, it is a clear and present danger to the health, safety and welfare of the City of Huntington Beach,” reads a section of the city’s lawsuit, which went into on to identify rising crime in the state since 2018, the year the statewide sanctuary law went into effect.
This isn’t the first time California has been sued over the law. The Trump administration filed a lawsuit against the state in 2018, also arguing that the sanctuary law violated the Constitution’s supremacy clause, which would render invalid any state law that conflicts with federal law. However, that challenge was ultimately struck down in court.
“The Attorney General is committed to protecting and ensuring the rights of California’s immigrant communities and upholding vital laws like SB 54,” a spokesperson for California Attorney General Rob Bonta stated to the Voice of OC. “Our office successfully fought back against a challenge to SB 54 by the first Trump administration, and we are prepared to vigorously defend SB 54 again.”
The California Attorney General’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Brown, now retired from public office, defended SB 54 during a sit-down interview in December, noting that it made a number of exceptions for heinous criminals. However, the former governor also distanced himself from a number of sanctuary cities in the state that, he suggested, have taken anti-ICE policies too far since he signed his original state-wide bill into law.
