DOJ Sues Los Angeles Over Sanctuary City Ordinance; Federal Judge Dismisses Suit June 2026

The Department of Justice filed suit against the City of Los Angeles, Mayor Karen Bass, and the Los Angeles City Council on June 30, 2025, challenging the city’s sanctuary city ordinance limiting local cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. This is DOJ suing a city directly — the reverse posture from El Cajon’s suit against the state (see 2026-04-29–el-cajon-sues-bonta-sb54-sanctuary-law-afpi-counsel), and distinct in defendant from DOJ’s later state-level campaign (Maryland, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, New York — see 2026-07-09–doj-sues-maryland-community-trust-act-21st-state).

What DOJ’s complaint asserted (allegations, not established facts): coverage headlines (Bloomberg: “Sanctuary City Policy Fueled Riots”) indicate DOJ’s complaint connected the sanctuary ordinance to unrest — plausibly the June 2025 Los Angeles immigration-enforcement protests, though the exact causal claim in the complaint text was not independently confirmed. Mayor Bass publicly characterized the suit as an “all-out assault” (CBS News); the city defended the ordinance rather than settling.

Docket (recovered 2026-10-27): United States v. City of Los Angeles et al., No. 2:25-cv-05917-FMO-AYP, C.D. Cal., CourtListener docket id 70672257. Defendants: the City, Mayor Karen Bass, the City Council and Council President Marqueece Harris Dawson. Judge Fernando M. Olguin. The ordinance is the City’s 2024 “Prohibition of the Use of City Resources for Federal Immigration Enforcement” (L.A. Admin. Code §§ 19.190-19.192). DOJ pleaded intergovernmental immunity and preemption (Dkt. 1, ¶¶ 65-83, as cited in the order).

Docket sequence (dates are docket entry dates): FAIR (Federation for American Immigration Reform) moved for leave to file an amicus brief (Dkt. 32, 2025-09-24); DOJ moved to stay pending appropriations (Dkt. 35, 2025-10-21), granted 2025-11-07 (Dkt. 38); the stay was vacated 2025-12-02 (Dkt. 40) and the motion to dismiss (Dkt. 25) taken under submission; the court granted the motion on 2026-06-20 (Dkt. 44).

Outcome, from the order itself. Olguin granted the motion to dismiss: Bass, the Council and Harris Dawson were dismissed with prejudice as redundant of the City (DOJ “did not oppose” that point), and the complaint was otherwise dismissed with leave to amend, with a first amended complaint or a notice of intent to stand on the original due 2026-07-03. This is a dismissal with leave to amend, not a final termination at the time of the order. On 2026-07-01 DOJ filed a “Notice of Intent to Stand on Original Complaint and Unopposed Request for Entry of Final Judgment” (Dkt. 46; docket text only, document not in RECAP). Under the Ninth Circuit rule the order itself cites (WMX Techs. v. Miller), such a notice is what makes a dismissal appealable. As of the RECAP copy read 2026-10-27 (latest entry #50, 2026-10-19; entries 47-50 are counsel notices), no judgment entry or notice of appeal appears; RECAP only holds what someone has pulled from PACER, so a later entry may exist unseen.

The reasoning, from the order (Dkt. 44): the court held that 8 U.S.C. § 1357(g)(10) “does not set forth any requirements at all”; that § 1373 reaches only immigration-status information (citing City & County of San Francisco v. Garland, United States v. California and City & County of San Francisco v. Barr); that § 19.191(a) “merely restricts a City employee from inquiring into or collecting information about a person’s citizenship or immigration status” and “says nothing about the City’s ability to maintain or share such information”; that § 19.192 carries a savings clause permitting compliance with § 1373; and that DOJ failed to plausibly allege intergovernmental immunity because the ordinance “controls the actions of [the City’s] own agents and agencies” and the complaint did not plausibly allege discrimination against the federal government. That is a merits ruling on the pleadings, which resolves the earlier open question of whether the ground was jurisdictional or merits.

That distinction matters beyond this case: it separates collecting from sharing, which is precisely the seam § 1373 addresses — and it is why the § 1373 theory keeps failing against ordinances drafted this way.

LA City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto: the order “reinforces the well-established principle that local governments have the authority to decide how to use their personnel and resources.” Then-Attorney General Pamela Bondi, at filing: “Sanctuary policies were the driving cause of the violence, chaos, and attacks on law enforcement that Americans recently witnessed in Los Angeles.” That confirms the “fueled riots” framing was DOJ’s own causal claim — the open question the entry correctly refused to assume from headlines.

The dismissal was reported contemporaneously from Courthouse News, Bloomberg Law, the Los Angeles Daily News, Police1, the Washington Examiner, and the Guardian — a striking cross-spectrum convergence (left, right, and legal-trade outlets all reporting dismissal within a 48-hour window, June 22-24, 2026). This is a ruling, not an allegation; the order text is now recovered (Dkt. 44, above). A separate July 2026 timeline entry on DOJ’s Maryland suit (2026-07-09–doj-sues-maryland-community-trust-act-21st-state) independently corroborates the June 2026 LA dismissal date and states DOJ’s suits rely on 8 U.S.C. §§ 1373 and 1644 preemption theory — consistent with, though not confirmed identical to, the LA complaint’s theory.

Pattern: This LA case sits within a documented, much larger DOJ litigation campaign against sanctuary jurisdictions that by July 2026 had reached at least 21 state-level suits (per the Maryland entry) plus city-level suits against Chicago/Illinois, four New Jersey cities, Minnesota, Colorado/Denver, and Boston — nearly all reported dismissed on similar grounds (Illinois/Chicago July 25 2025; four NJ cities and Minnesota reported dismissed around July 20-24 2026; Colorado/Denver dismissed March 31, 2026). The recurrence of near-identical suits and near-identical dismissals across many jurisdictions is strong evidence of a limited legal move-set (a single preemption theory DOJ’s Civil Division is running repeatedly), not evidence of coordination among the defendant cities/states — the cities did not choose to be sued using the same theory; DOJ chose to file it repeatedly.

Gaps: The text of DOJ’s complaint (Dkt. 1) and of the 2026-07-01 notice (Dkt. 46) were not read; Dkt. 1 is cited here only through the order. Whether final judgment was entered and whether DOJ appealed after 2026-10-19 is unchecked (RECAP latest entry #50). justice.gov (DOJ’s press release) was not accessible. The “fueled riots” causal framing rests on the Bondi quotation above and the Bloomberg headline; the complaint text was not read.