What Tostrud's Sanctuary City Ruling Means for Law Firms

Chief Judge Eric Tostrud’s July 20, 2026 dismissal gives municipal and state-government counsel a new citation point at the moment they need one: another federal district court has rejected the Department of Justice’s sanctuary-jurisdiction theory, this time in a case aimed at Minnesota, Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Hennepin County. As reported by Courthouse News and MPR News, the order held that the challenged policies were not preempted by 8 U.S.C. § 1373, treated immigration detainers as voluntary requests rather than binding commands, and concluded that forcing state and local officials to carry out federal immigration enforcement would run into the Tenth Amendment anti-commandeering rule associated with Printz and Murphy.[1][2]

That is the immediate legal significance for law firms advising sanctuary clients. The question is no longer only whether a city attorney can point to familiar anti-commandeering doctrine in the abstract. The question is whether a lawyer can tell a mayor’s office, county sheriff, DMV administrator, or state agency head that the DOJ’s current litigation model has repeatedly failed when federal judges have reached the merits. After Tostrud’s ruling, the district-court answer is stronger than it was last week. It is still not appellate law.

What Tostrud Held That Matters for Client Advice

The Minnesota case matters less because it adds another dismissal and more because of the route the court reportedly took to get there. The challenged provisions were not one tidy “sanctuary policy.” They included Minnesota’s driver’s license data restrictions, Minneapolis Code Title 2 Chapter 19, St. Paul Code Title III Chapter 44, and Hennepin County Sheriff’s Administrative Directive 21-02.[1] That mix looks like the real client file: state data rules, city noncooperation ordinances, and sheriff’s office operating instructions sitting next to one another, each written for a different local function.

For law firms, the useful part is the court’s reported treatment of detainers. If an immigration detainer is a voluntary request, then a local government’s refusal to hold a person solely on that request is not obstruction of a federal command. It is a refusal to donate local custody, personnel, and jail capacity to a federal enforcement choice. That distinction is not cosmetic. It changes the advice from “the city is defying federal law” to “the city is declining a voluntary assistance request unless another legal basis exists.”

Courthouse News reported that Tostrud connected that detainer point to the anti-commandeering doctrine, citing the principle that the federal government may not require state and local officers to administer or enforce a federal regulatory program.[1] MPR similarly reported that the court dismissed the Trump administration’s lawsuits against Minnesota and local officials.[2] Until counsel have verified the full 56-page order and its exact wording, the safest formulation is that the ruling, as reported, gives sanctuary jurisdictions a more developed district-court analysis to cite, not a final appellate shield.

Why the Voluntary-Detainer Point Carries So Much Weight

Many sanctuary disputes become muddled because the word “cooperation” does too much work. A city may share some information, refuse to use local funds for civil immigration enforcement, decline to honor detainers without a judicial warrant, restrict database access, or limit the circumstances under which jail staff notify federal agents of release dates. Those are different acts. They do not all raise the same preemption question, and they do not all create the same operational risk.

Detainers sit at the center of the practical dispute because they ask a local custodian to do something affirmative: keep custody of a person for federal immigration purposes after the local basis for custody may have ended. If the federal request is voluntary, a local refusal is not the same as blocking federal officers from enforcing federal law themselves. It is the local government declining to become the holding mechanism.

That is where the anti-commandeering doctrine becomes operational rather than decorative. A firm advising a county sheriff does not need a lecture on federal supremacy; it needs to know whether the sheriff must assign deputies, jail beds, records staff, and release procedures to a federal enforcement request. Tostrud’s reported reasoning helps on that narrower point. It supports the advice that local non-enforcement policies are on firmer ground when they are framed as refusals to provide affirmative local assistance, rather than as attempts to regulate federal officers.

That distinction should also shape policy review. A local ordinance that says city employees will not investigate immigration status, expend local resources on civil immigration enforcement, or prolong detention based only on a detainer presents a different risk profile than a provision that purports to forbid federal agents from operating, accessing federal information, or enforcing federal law directly. The reported Minnesota ruling strengthens the first category. It should not be stretched casually to bless the second.

The Five-to-Zero District Court Record Is Now the Advisory Baseline

The Minnesota dismissal now sits within a uniform district-court pattern. The ILRC federal litigation tracker identifies merits dismissals in the DOJ sanctuary cases involving Illinois and Chicago, Rochester, the New York Green Light Law, Colorado and Denver, and Minnesota.[3] The National Constitution Center likewise describes the sanctuary-jurisdiction question as having returned to the courts in a new litigation cycle.[4] For a risk memo, that pattern matters. One district-court win can be discounted as judge-specific. Five merits dismissals across different jurisdictions are harder to ignore.

The table is not a prediction machine. It is a counseling tool. A municipal client needs to know whether its policy position is isolated, whether the DOJ’s theory is gaining traction, and whether other courts have treated similar provisions as lawful exercises of local discretion. On the current district-court record, the answer favors sanctuary jurisdictions. No federal district court identified in the research record has accepted the DOJ’s merits theory in these cases.

That does not mean every sanctuary policy is equally safe. The stronger advice is more precise: policies that limit local participation in civil immigration enforcement, restrict use of local resources, or decline voluntary detainer compliance have repeatedly survived the DOJ’s current preemption and Supremacy Clause theory at the district-court level. Policies with different mechanics still require separate review.

The DOJ List Makes the Ruling Useful Outside Minnesota

The Minnesota order landed against a broader enforcement framework. The DOJ announced an August 2025 sanctuary-jurisdiction list covering 13 states, 4 counties, and 18 cities, following Executive Order 14287 in April 2025.[5] That list is why the ruling has immediate value for firms whose clients are not parties to the Minnesota case. A city on the list, or one with comparable policies, can reasonably ask whether the DOJ’s model complaint has been working. At the district-court level, the answer is no.

The enforcement framework also affects how firms should communicate with clients. A listed jurisdiction faces political and operational pressure even before a complaint is filed. The legal advice therefore has to separate three questions that public debate often blends together: whether the DOJ can publish and criticize a jurisdiction’s policies, whether the federal government can enforce its own immigration laws within that jurisdiction, and whether it can compel local officials to assist. Tostrud’s reported ruling is most important on the third question.

That separation is not defensive lawyering; it is necessary lawyering. Federal immigration authority remains federal immigration authority. The anti-commandeering argument does not say federal officers must stand down. It says the federal government cannot convert state and local officials into mandatory instruments of federal administration unless Congress has validly imposed a duty that survives constitutional limits. The DOJ’s current sanctuary theory has not yet persuaded the district courts on that point.

How Firms Should Translate the Ruling Into Policy Review

The immediate client work is not to announce that sanctuary policies have “won.” It is to update the risk assessment with a cleaner district-court record and then test the client’s actual policy language against the reasoning that has been succeeding.

• Identify the local actor: sheriff, police department, DMV, mayor’s office, clerk, data custodian, or state agency.
• Separate information-sharing limits from detention, notification, investigative, and resource-allocation rules.
• Flag any provision that regulates local employees differently from any provision that purports to restrict federal officers.
• Review detainer language carefully, especially whether the policy treats detainers as requests and whether it requires a judicial warrant or other independent authority before continued custody.
• Preserve the administrative record explaining local resource, liability, and public-safety rationales without overclaiming immunity from all federal pressure.

A firm representing a county sheriff, for example, should not stop after citing Minnesota. It should ask whether the sheriff’s directive mirrors the detainer posture that courts have treated favorably, whether jail staff have a release-time protocol they can actually follow, and whether the written policy avoids unnecessary language suggesting hostility to federal enforcement as such. The anti-commandeering cases protect refusals to administer federal programs. They do not reward sloppy drafting.

For state licensing or driver-data rules, the review is different. The New York Green Light Law and Minnesota driver’s license data issues make data restrictions part of the current litigation pattern, but counsel still need to examine the particular statutory language, categories of data withheld, exceptions, and interaction with 8 U.S.C. § 1373. Tostrud’s reported rejection of the DOJ’s § 1373 preemption theory helps, but it is not a substitute for a provision-by-provision read.

The Appellate Risk Is the Part No Risk Memo Should Soften

The district-court record is uniform. The appellate record is not yet written. The DOJ has appealed the Illinois dismissal to the Seventh Circuit in No. 25-2904 and the New York Green Light Law dismissal to the Second Circuit in No. 26-387, with no appellate rulings issued as of this writing.[3] The Minnesota dismissal is expected to be appealed to the Eighth Circuit, but no appeal has been filed yet.

That posture should control the confidence level. A law firm can now tell a sanctuary client that every identified merits ruling in the current DOJ campaign has gone against the federal government. It should not tell the client that the issue is settled. A Seventh Circuit affirmance could give the district-court pattern appellate weight. A reversal could force immediate redrafting in jurisdictions with similar provisions. A Second Circuit ruling on the Green Light Law could be especially important for data-access and licensing provisions. An Eighth Circuit appeal from Tostrud’s order, if filed, would test the ruling that may be most useful to local-government counsel because of its reported anti-commandeering analysis.

Pending DOJ cases against New Jersey, Connecticut, Boston, New York City, and Washtenaw County, Michigan should be monitored in the same frame. They are not all the same client problem. Some will turn on state-level rules, some on city ordinances, some on jail or law-enforcement practice, and some on data access. Tostrud’s ruling is a strong addition to the defense-side brief bank, but the next practical question is which appellate court speaks first and how broadly it writes.

The Narrow Advice After Tostrud

For law firms, Tostrud’s ruling is significant, but not unlimited. Firms now have a stronger, source-cited basis to advise sanctuary jurisdictions that current district-court doctrine favors anti-commandeering defenses to the DOJ’s sanctuary litigation theory. They can also point to a five-to-zero merits pattern rather than a single favorable order.

The disciplined advice is to keep policies tied to local nonparticipation, voluntary-detainer treatment, resource allocation, and carefully drawn data rules; avoid language that looks like direct interference with federal officers; and update client memos as soon as the Seventh Circuit, Second Circuit, or a future Eighth Circuit appeal produces an appellate ruling. The monitoring burden now belongs squarely on counsel’s calendar.

References

1. Judge tosses feds' suit over Minnesota 'sanctuary city' policies, Courthouse News, July 20, 2026.
2. Judge dismisses Trump administration lawsuits against Minnesota and officials, MPR News, July 20, 2026.
3. Federal Litigation Tracker, ILRC.
4. The question of sanctuary jurisdictions returns to the courts, Constitution Center.
5. Justice Department Publishes List of Sanctuary Jurisdictions, U.S. Department of Justice, August 2025.