President Trump’s executive order to cut funding to sanctuary cities has injected huge uncertainty in San Francisco’s budget, City Attorney Dennis Herrera alleged Wednesday as he asked a federal judge to freeze the order until a lawsuit challenging its constitutionality is resolved.

If “defendants strip all federal funds from San Francisco, the result will be ‘catastrophic,’” Herrera wrote in seeking an injunction in U.S. District Court. “Under this cloud of uncertainty and budgetary sword of Damocles, San Francisco must adopt an annual budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2017.”

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“You can’t challenge something that hasn’t happened. The executive order is an order to do something in the future, but we don’t know what that is and it hasn’t happened,” said Michael McConnell, a Stanford law professor and a former federal appeals court judge.

“Maybe it’s nice for states and cities to have more predictability, but I don’t think they have any legal entitlement to predictability,” McConnell said.

He also said it’s impossible to rule on the executive order’s constitutionality without knowing what federal grant money is cut.

“A grant that is closely related to immigration enforcement might be constitutional (to cut), but an unrelated grant for education or street improvement is not related and probably not constitutional,” McConnell said.