This section contains the nature of the case and procedural background.

The Byrne JAG grants are awarded annually to address the needs of state and local law enforcement. They are the primary source of federal criminal justice enforcement funding for state and local governments. The Byrne JAG grants are awarded annually to address the needs of state and local law enforcement. They are the primary source of federal criminal justice enforcement funding for state and local governments. D decided to attach three conditions to those grants: (1) A policy, or -practice, must be in place to ensure that, when a State (or State-contracted) correctional facility receives from DHS a formal written request authorized by the Immigration and Nationality Act that seeks advance notice of the scheduled release date and time for a particular alien in such facility, then such facility will honor such request and-as early as practicable-provide the requested notice to DHS; (2) A State statute, or a State rule, -regulation, -policy, or -practice, must be in place that is designed to ensure that agents of the United States acting under color of federal law in fact are given [] access [to] any State (or State-contracted) correctional facility for the purpose of permitting such agents to meet with individuals who are (or are believed by such agents to be) aliens and to inquire as to such individuals' right to be or remain in the United States; and (3) The applicant local government must submit the required 'Certification of Compliance with 8 U.S.C. § 1373' (executed by the chief legal officer of the local government). All of those conditions were imposed on applicants for the FY 2018 Byrne JAG grant. D imposed two additional conditions on the FY 2018 Byrne JAG grant that were distinct from those imposed on the FY 2017 grant; The harboring condition prohibits the recipient jurisdiction from making any 'public disclosure ... of any federal law enforcement information in a direct or indirect attempt to conceal, harbor, or shield from detection any fugitive from justice under 18 U.S.C. ch. 49, or any alien who has come to, entered, or remains in the United States in violation of 8 U.S.C. ch. 12-without regard to whether such disclosure would constitute (or could form a predicate for) a violation of 18 U.S.C. 1071 or 1072 or of 8 U.S.C. 1324(a);' and the additional certification condition requires the certification that 'neither the jurisdiction nor any entity, agency, or official of the jurisdiction has in effect ... any law, rule, policy, or practice that would apply to the 'program or activity' to be funded ... that would or does-(a) impede the exercise by federal officers of authority under 8 U.S.C. § 1357(a); or (b) impede the exercise by federal officers of authority relating to 8 U.S.C. § 1226(a) or (c), 8 U.S.C. § 1231(a), or 8 U.S.C. § 1366(1) or (3).' P’s Welcoming City Ordinance reflects P's determination that the cooperation of all persons, whether documented or undocumented, ''is essential to achieve the City's goals of protecting life and property, preventing crime and resolving problems.'' The Ordinance sets forth standards which include prohibitions on requesting or disclosing information as to immigrant status, as well as a prohibition on detaining persons solely based on a belief as to their immigration status or on immigration detainers based solely on violations of civil immigration laws. The Ordinance further provides that 'unless acting pursuant to law enforcement purposes unrelated to the enforcement of civil immigration law, no agency or agent shall permit Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents access to a person being detained or permit the use of agency facilities for investigative interviews, nor can an agency or agent while on duty expend time responding to ICE inquiries or communicating with ICE as to a person's custody status or release date.' Those restrictions in the Ordinance are inapplicable when the subject of the investigation 'has an outstanding criminal warrant, ... has been convicted of a felony, ... is a defendant ... where ... a felony charge is pending, ... or has been identified as a known gang member either in a law enforcement agency's database or by his or her own admission.' P challenges the conditions alleging: that the conditions were unconstitutional because the Byrne JAG statute does not provide the Attorney General with the statutory authority to impose the conditions, and that the imposition is therefore ultra vires and a violation of the separation of powers; that the conditions violate the Spending Clause of the Constitution; and that, independent of the Byrne JAG grant, § 1373 is an impermissible federal conscription of state power and is unconstitutional under the anticommandeering doctrine of the Tenth Amendment. P also sought a declaratory judgment providing that even if § 1373 is constitutional, P is in compliance with it. P alleged that the imposition of the conditions was arbitrary and capricious in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act and violated the Paperwork Reduction Act. D sought dismissal of the complaint asserting that the Department of Justice had not yet consummated any final agency action that was ripe for judicial review because it had not reached a final decision as to whether to award P funds under the Byrne JAG grant. P claimed its challenge was not to D's pending decision as to whether to award the grant funds, but rather to the decision to attach the conditions to the grant in the first instance. The court held that the action was not merely tentative or interlocutory, because D stated in his declaration that every FY 2017 award would include conditions identical to the ones in the grant already awarded, which included all of the challenged conditions. The court held that the conditions force P to choose between accepting the award with those conditions or forgoing the grant and the corresponding law enforcement benefit in favor of maintaining the policies that it believed would maximize law enforcement goals. P moved for partial summary judgment arguing that D acted ultra vires in imposing the conditions, and in violation of the separation of powers, and contending that even if the compliance condition was valid, Chicago was not in violation of § 1373. The district court granted the motion and determined that § 1373 was facially unconstitutional under the Tenth Amendment's anti-commandeering principle, that D exceeded the authority delegated by Congress in the Byrne JAG statute, and violated the separation of powers. The court enjoined the imposition of the three conditions program-wide but stayed the injunction beyond P pending the appeal. In the second of the two cases, P raises identical challenges to the notice, access, and compliance conditions, and also challenges the harboring condition and the additional certification requirement. As to the additional certification requirement, the court first recognized that the Executive possesses no inherent authority to impose conditions on the payment of federal funds authorized by the Legislature and that D had failed to identify any source of authority as to the imposition of the additional certification requirement. The court first noted that the Byrne JAG statute itself provided no such authority, and in fact, strictly delineated the formula for the distribution of grant funds. The court then noted that it had already held, with respect to the notice and access conditions, that § 10102(a)(6) did not provide such authority. The district court held that §§ 10102(a)(2) and (4) contain no delegation of authority to place a harboring condition on Byrne JAG grantees, but rather are more plausibly read as an instruction that the Assistant Attorney General maintain bilateral communications with state and local governments. D now appeals both cases.

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