Fourth Circuit grills DOJ on lawsuit over Virginia’s crackdown on local police cooperation with ICE

A federal appeals court grilled the Department of Justice on Tuesday over its challenge of Virginia laws that the Trump administration says unconstitutionally impede on federal immigration enforcement operations, as similar efforts to limit cooperation with federal immigration officials in other states also face legal battles.A three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit heard arguments in a lawsuit brought by the DOJ against Virginia officials over state laws barring federal law enforcement from wearing face coverings and blocking local police departments in the commonwealth from entering cooperation agreements with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. DOJ lawyer Megan Owen faced intense scrutiny from the panel over her arguments against the state law.The Virginia law challenged by the DOJ claimed to be a blanket termination of all of the agreements local law enforcement agencies had struck with ICE. U.S. Circuit Judge Toby Heytens, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, asked Owen a hypothetical question about whether Virginia could have enacted a law that instead ordered cities and counties to exit their agreements with ICE individually, instead of the state unilaterally canceling all the agreements. Owen did not directly answer Heytens’s hypothetical question, instead insisting that the law at the center of the lawsuit was a violation of the contracts clause of the Constitution, which bars states from passing laws impairing public contracts.The appeals court panel appeared more receptive toward Virginia officials’ defense of their state’s ban on ICE cooperation, while the same panel appeared more favorable toward the DOJ’s arguments against the state ban on face masks for federal officers. Multiple other states, including California and New York, along with some cities, such as Philadelphia, have passed laws banning federal immigration officers from wearing face masks, but federal courts have blocked all of those bans. The block on the California ban was upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.Virginia Solicitor General Tillman Breckenridge faced the sharpest questions from the panel regarding the mask ban. Heytens was deeply skeptical that the Virginia law purporting to regulate federal officers passes constitutional muster.“It strikes me that states have little, if any, ability to regulate the federal government qua the federal government,” Heytens said, appearing dubious of Virginia’s argument that it can regulate what federal officers wear.THE ‘COME-AND-TAKE-IT’ SUPREME COURT TERM: AT-HOME PRAYER, PLANES, AND HOME DISTILLINGThe panel did not indicate during the hearing how it would rule or when it would issue a ruling. The 4th Circuit panel included U.S. Circuit Judges Robert King, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton; Heytens; and DeAndrea Benjamin, also a Biden appointee.The Trump administration has had a mixed record on immigration-related cases in lower federal courts, but its record has gotten better the higher disputes have made it in the judiciary, being especially successful at the Supreme Court. The eventual ruling by the panel could be appealed to either the en banc 4th Circuit or the Supreme Court.