A federal judge ruled Wednesday that the Trump administration must immediately end the deployment of the National Guard in Los Angeles, the latest legal blow to the president’s embattled efforts to police American streets with armed soldiers.
Senior U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer said in his ruling that command of the remaining 300 federalized National Guard troops must return to Gov. Gavin Newsom, who sued the administration in June after it commandeered thousands of troops to quell protests over immigration enforcement in Los Angeles.
Breyer ruled that deployment illegal — a decision that was challenged and ultimately reversed by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The court said the esoteric law Trump invoked to wrest command of the Guard from the governor afforded him “a great level of deference” to determine whether a rebellion was underway in Los Angeles, as the Justice Department claimed at the time.
The same sequence repeated this autumn in Oregon, where 200 California Guard troops were sent to help quash demonstrations outside an ICE facility. But unlike in California, the Oregon decision was subsequently vacated, and is now under review by the appellate court, with one of Trump’s appointees to the bench appearing to undercut his earlier order in lengthy filing Tuesday.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court is weighing an almost identical challenge to the deployment in Illinois.
A demonstrator interacts with U.S. Marines and National Guard troops standing in line at the entrance of the Metropolitan Detention Center following federal immigration operations in July.
(Etienne Laurent / AFP via Getty Images)
Department of Justice lawyers have argued that, once federalized, state Guard troops would remain under the president’s command in perpetuity, a position Breyer called “contrary to law” in his ruling Wednesday.
“Adopting Defendants’ interpretation … would permit a president to create a perpetual police force comprised of state troops, so long as they were first federalized lawfully,” Breyer wrote. “Defendants’ argument for a president to hold unchecked power to control state troops would wholly upend the federalism that is at the heart of our system of government.”
California leaders cheered the ruling as a turning of the tide in what until now has been an uphill legal battle to constrain the president’s use of state troops.
“The President deployed these brave men and women against their own communities, removing them from essential public safety operations,” Newsom said in a statement Wednesday morning. “We look forward to all National Guard servicemembers being returned to state service.”
Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta called it “a good day for our democracy and the strength of the rule of law.”
The order was set to take effect on Monday, though it was all but certain to be appealed to the 9th Circuit.
Times staff writers Kevin Rector and Jenny Jarvie contributed to this report.
