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San Francisco is suing President Donald Trump’s against “sanctuary cities.” A federal court hearing is set for Friday, and a decision is expected soon after.

The order, signed in January, defined “sanctuary jurisdictions” as any that “attempt to shield aliens from removal from the United States.” It lists several actions the federal government may take, including denial of federal funds and other “appropriate enforcement action.” Attorney General Jeff Sessions the threat in March.

According to San Francisco’s , the order “commandeers state and local governments in violation of the 10th Amendment to the Constitution.” In other words, the federal government intends to enlist the help of the law enforcement officers who work for state and local governments to enforce federal immigration laws.

This is cheaper for the federal government than hiring more agents, but it is costly to unwilling state and local governments. That’s the “commandeering” problem at the heart of this legal challenge.

San Francisco’s challenge to President Trump’s immigration policies draws on an unlikely precedent: a Montana sheriff’s challenge to federal gun control policy. More cities are similar challenges. The city of has filed suit.

In my work on constitutional law, I study how established by deep red rural counties against a liberal national policy agenda are now serving deep blue urban cities resisting a conservative national policy agenda.

Federalism: Reconciling Red And Blue States

In these legal challenges, red and blue states agree on at least one thing – the federal government’s powers are limited under the Constitution. This principle might save what have called a “bad marriage” between increasingly polarized red and blue states. Our federal system of government allows diverse state . Under federalism, state and local retain some power to govern themselves. This can help soften the blow of for losing parties.

San Francisco’s against Trump cites a lawsuit filed in rural Ravalli County, Montana, in the first year of President Bill Clinton’s term. Clinton lost the county in a , though not as badly as Trump San Francisco. In his first term, Clinton signed the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993, or the “.”

The law requires background checks for handgun purchases. It required local law enforcement officers to run the background checks until the federal system was up and running. That did not sit well with , an old-school Montana sheriff who eventually would join the National Rifle Association’s board of directors. The Brady Bill’s mandate conflicted with , which prohibited Printz from regulating firearm purchases.

So, he sued. He took his case all the way to the Supreme Court and . In a 5-4 opinion authored by the late Justice Antonin Scalia, the court held that the “Federal Government may neither issue directives requiring the States to address particular problems, nor command the States’ officers, or those of their political subdivisions, to administer or enforce a federal regulatory program.”

It relied on the to the U.S. Constitution, which states: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” The justices interpreted the Constitution as reserving control over state officials to the states alone. The ruling prohibited federal of state officials like Sheriff Printz by enlisting them to enforce federal law.

It also meant that as long as the federal government is not coercive, making an offer the states can’t refuse, it can persuade them with the promise of federal funding. For example, in 1987, South Dakota challenged the federal government’s withholding of a small share of highway funding if the state did not raise its drinking age to 21. The Supreme Court as a “relatively mild encouragement” to follow federal policy. Yet, it warned that at some point, “pressure turns into compulsion.”

The Supreme Court the government reached that point in 2012, when it struck down the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of Medicaid. Under the act, holdout states were faced with losing around 10 percent of their total budgets if they refused to accept the Medicaid expansion.

In the Affordable Care Act case, the court extended the reasoning of the Printz case to federal spending programs. In a metaphor Sheriff Printz might appreciate, Chief Justice Roberts wrote that the threat of losing so much federal funding was “a gun to the head.” It was as good as commandeering the states themselves. Two of the more liberal justices joined Chief Justice Roberts and the four more conservative justices in a 7-2 decision on the issue.

From Rural County To Sanctuary City

San Francisco now that if the Brady Bill’s requirement that Sheriff Printz conduct background checks is unconstitutional, then President Trump’s sanctuary city policy is too. Making federal funds conditional on compliance with federal immigration enforcement, San Francisco argues, would be “a gun to the head.”

Federalism allows for people in the states to reach local compromises that cannot be reached at the national level in the current political climate. Other state and local governments may seek sanctuary from federal laws, for example. The anti-commandeering rule lets people in the states resist some federal mandates, or even the threatened loss of federal funds.

Today, a conservative administration in Washington is ruling over a in the states. One consequence is the appointment of conservative , who typically states’ federalism arguments. Given these shifts, we can expect more liberal jurisdictions to find common ground with Sheriff Printz’s resistance in years to come.

This article was originally published on . Read the .