A U.S. court granted a motion to dismiss the Trump administration's lawsuit challenging Los Angeles' sanctuary city ordinance, according to the Los Angeles City Attorney's office on June 23, 2026 — a ruling that cuts against a broad federal legal campaign to dismantle local non-cooperation policies on immigration enforcement.

The dismissal is the latest turn in a sustained conflict between the federal executive and sanctuary jurisdictions that has played out across courts and city halls since early in the Trump administration's second term. The Justice Department filed suit against Los Angeles in June 2025, seeking to compel the city's compliance with federal immigration law enforcement. That action was part of a wider offensive: DOJ subsequently sued New York City in July 2025 and Minnesota in September 2025, while also publishing a formal list of sanctuary jurisdictions it considered out of compliance with federal law.

The Ordinance Under Challenge

Los Angeles' sanctuary framework rests on two pillars. The older is Special Order 40, issued in 1979, which curtailed LAPD contact with federal immigration authorities. The newer is a City Council ordinance passed in November 2024 that formally codified the city's sanctuary status and explicitly prohibits local officials and law enforcement agencies from assisting federal immigration agents. Together, they created a durable legal and operational barrier — one the Justice Department argued was preempted by federal immigration statutes and inconsistent with the Supremacy Clause.

The federal preemption argument is the core of most DOJ sanctuary litigation: that the Immigration and Nationality Act and related statutes impose affirmative cooperation duties on sub-federal governments, and that local non-cooperation policies obstruct federal law. Los Angeles, like other defendant jurisdictions, has countered that the anti-commandeering doctrine — derived from Printz v. United States and reinforced in Murphy v. NCAA — bars the federal government from conscripting state and local resources for federal enforcement purposes.

The court's decision to dismiss rather than allow the suit to proceed on the merits is a procedural victory for the city, though the precise grounds for dismissal matter for how durable it will prove. A dismissal on standing or ripeness grounds leaves the substantive preemption question open; a dismissal that engages the anti-commandeering framework carries more precedential weight. The City Attorney's public update does not detail the specific grounds, and the full opinion will be the document to watch.

A Federal Campaign Under Pressure

This dismissal follows another setback for the administration's sanctuary enforcement strategy. In January 2026, a federal judge denied the Trump administration's motion to dismiss a lawsuit challenging its executive orders targeting sanctuary cities through funding conditionality — meaning that challenge was allowed to proceed. The two rulings together sketch a federal judiciary that has been, at minimum, unreceptive to the administration's legal theories in this space.

Mayor Karen Bass had moved on the political front as well. In July 2025, she issued an executive directive directing city departments to support immigrant communities, framed as a direct response to what the city characterized as unlawful federal raids. That directive put the city's executive branch formally on record alongside the council's ordinance.

The broader landscape of sanctuary litigation is unsettled. DOJ's suits against New York City and Minnesota remain active, and the administration retains the option of appealing the Los Angeles dismissal. The funding-conditionality track — attaching immigration cooperation requirements to federal grants — remains a parallel pressure point that the courts have not yet fully resolved. What the June 23 ruling does, concretely, is remove one legal instrument from the federal toolkit against Los Angeles, at least at this stage of litigation.

For practitioners tracking federal-local preemption doctrine, the question going forward is whether courts will treat sanctuary ordinances as passive non-cooperation — shielded by anti-commandeering — or as affirmative obstruction subject to preemption. That line, not drawn cleanly in current Supreme Court precedent, is where the remaining cases will be fought.