Have any Supreme Court filings or petitions since 2017 sought resolution of the circuit split over conditioning grants on §1373, and what is their status?
Executive summary
Since 2017 multiple federal appellate courts have come out on different sides of whether the federal government may condition certain grants on compliance with 8 U.S.C. §1373, creating a circuit split the Second Circuit acknowledged in 2020—but the reporting provided contains no direct evidence of a Supreme Court certiorari petition filed to resolve that split, and the available commentary notes only that the issue is one the Supreme Court could ultimately decide [1] [2].
1. The split on §1373: who’s in which camp
The Second Circuit in 2020 reversed a lower-court injunction and held that conditioning criminal-justice grants on a certification of compliance with §1373 was permissible, explicitly recognizing that its view conflicts with decisions from the Ninth, Third, and Seventh Circuits and flagging the resulting circuit split as a question “ultimately to be decided by the Supreme Court” [1].
2. Has anyone asked the Supreme Court? What the sources show—and don’t
None of the documents and commentaries provided record a specific certiorari petition filed at the Supreme Court since 2017 on the §1373 grant-conditioning split; the materials instead summarize appellate rulings and doctrinal debate and point readers to the Supreme Court docket and case‑document system for tracking filings [1] [3] [4].
3. Why the absence of a clear Supreme Court filing in this reporting matters
Because the law on commandeering and preemption in the §1373 context is unsettled and the circuits have split, commentators treat the issue as cert-worthy, but the evidence here shows only that courts and scholars expect the Supreme Court could be the final arbiter—not that a cert petition has been lodged—so any claim that the Supreme Court has agreed to resolve the split is unsupported by these sources [1] [2].
4. Competing narratives and potential agendas in the reporting
Advocacy-oriented outlets that laud the Second Circuit ruling frame the decision as a repudiation of “sanctuary” arguments and a victory for federal enforcement prerogatives, which aligns with their policy goals [1]; academic and legal‑analyst sources emphasize doctrinal uncertainty and the limits of existing Supreme Court precedent on commandeering and preemption, signaling caution about easy conclusions [2].
5. How to verify whether a cert petition exists and what to watch for next
The Supreme Court’s public docket and case-document pages are the authoritative sources to confirm any certiorari petitions or grants; the Court’s docket system and case‑document repository list filings and the status of cases, so anyone seeking up-to-the-minute confirmation should search those systems rather than rely on secondary summaries [3] [4].
6. Bottom line and reporting limits
Based on the materials supplied, appellate disagreement over conditioning federal grants on §1373 is real and widely noted [1] [2], but there is no contemporaneous evidence in this packet that a Supreme Court petition since 2017 seeking to resolve that specific split has been filed or granted; this account is limited to the supplied reporting and directs readers to the Supreme Court docket for definitive, current filing status [3] [4].