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A federal judge halted President Trump’s deployment of California National Guard soldiers in Los Angeles, finding that he broke the law in ordering them to put down urban unrest without consulting Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The judge, Charles Breyer, wrote that Trump’s “actions were illegal—both exceeding the scope of his statutory authority and violating the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.”
The ruling is scheduled to take effect on Friday at noon and last until June 20. Breyer did not intervene to stop the president from calling in the U.S. Marines — at least for now.
Lawyers representing the Newsom administration sought an immediate order to prevent the troops from performing law-enforcement duties and to instead limit their role to protecting federal property.
The judge seemed to take a dim view of the Trump administration’s argument that presidents have broad, unreviewable authority to commandeer state National Guard personnel.
“The president is of course limited to his authority,” Breyer said. “That’s the difference between a constitutional government and King George.”
Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth sent the National Guard into L.A. last weekend and readied the Marines to do the same, over the objections of Newsom and elected officials in Los Angeles. Today’s pending ruling is not expected to speak to the legality of those orders.
It remains unclear how the White House or Department of Defense will respond to the hearing. Earlier today Hegseth refused to say whether he would follow the courts if they ruled against the deployment of active-duty Marines to Los Angeles during a congressional hearing Thursday.
Breyer seemed to have that in mind when he stressed to the administration’s lawyers that parties in a lawsuit are obligated to follow court orders.
“That’s right, isn’t it?” he said.
The federal attorney representing Trump nodded to the judge.
“The federal government is agreeing with me on this issue,” Breyer said.
Throughout the proceedings, which ranged from heady constitutional analysis to a deep semantic debate over the word “through,” Breyer seemed unconvinced by the federal government’s key arguments: That the president did not need to consult Newsom before seizing control of the National Guard and that judges have no power to second-guess his decision to do so.
“How is that any different from what a monarchist does?” Breyer said when discussing those arguments.
In calling in the troops, the administration argued that the armed forces will do what local law enforcement has so far been unable to do: Bring order to the streets of L.A. Critics, including Newsom, counter that sending soldiers — especially Marines trained for the battlefield — to quell a civil disturbance is just as likely to inflame the situation and ratchet up the risk of violence.
Trump called up the National Guard to Los Angeles on Saturday after protests broke out in response to federal immigration officers raiding work sites and arresting individuals they say are in the country without authorization. Trump’s order cited “incidents of violence and disorder” in his message. The soldiers will “temporarily protect” the immigration enforcement officers, the memo said.
The president has so far ordered 4,000 National Guard and 700 U.S. Marine troops to L.A. Breyer, who was appointed to the bench by President Bill Clinton, seemed unwilling to weigh in on the question of the Marines, if only because they have yet to arrive in Los Angeles.
“I don’t want to talk about the Marines because I’m not quite sure what they’ll do,” he said.
Trump has not yet invoked the Insurrection Act, a law that would give him more authority to deploy troops domestically and use them for law enforcement. As is, the National Guard soldiers are charged with protecting federal agents and building.
Core to Trump’s justification was a federal statute that only one president had previously used, Bonta’s legal team wrote. President Richard Nixon employed it so that the National Guard could deliver the mail during the U.S. Postal Service strike of 1970. It’s also the first time since 1965 that a president federalized a state National Guard without the request of a governor.
Newsom and Bonta sued Monday after the governor formally asked Trump to rescind his activation of the Guard. They filed the suit just as news outlets began reporting that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth would deploy the U.S. Marines to Los Angeles, as well. On Tuesday Newsom and Bonta sought a temporary restraining order to halt both deployments.
Generals side with Newsom
The California challenges argued that involving the Marines and National Guard harms state sovereignty, drains California's resources and "escalates tensions and promotes (rather than quells) civil unrest."
That argument earned the endorsement of two former service secretaries and six retired four-star admirals and generals on Wednesday night. In a court filing, the former leaders, who have collectively served each president from John F. Kennedy to Barack Obama, argued that because Trump did not invoke the Insurrection Act or clearly define the role of the troops, the deployment “poses multiple risks to the core mission of the National Guard and the Marines, and to the well-being of the troops.” They add that the deployment risks “inappropriately politicizing the military.”
Newsom's suit says the city does not need the military to keep the peace. "To put it bluntly, there is no invasion or rebellion in Los Angeles; there is civil unrest that is no different from episodes that regularly occur in communities throughout the country, and that is capable of being contained by state and local authorities working together," the suit said.
He also maintains that a president cannot deploy the National Guard without approval from the state governor. Newsom and Bonta cite the government code that permits Trump to deploy the National Guard, which says federalizing the troops is “issued through” the governor.
Lawsuit tests executive power
The Trump legal team offers the opposite interpretation of the government code: “The statute is thus clear that the orders are issued by the President, and they are conveyed through State officials. Nothing in the statute entitles a Governor to veto or impede a valid presidential order,” the team wrote in their filing on Wednesday.
Breyer seemed to look upon that argument with deep skepticism.
“I’m trying to figure out how something is ‘through’ somebody if in fact you didn’t give it to them,” he said to federal attorney Brett Shumate.
Shumate had argued that “the governor is merely a conduit, He's not a roadblock, the President doesn't have to call up the governor.”
The judge also shot down Shumate’s argument that Trump properly briefed Newsom on his plans to federalize the National Guard, saying that without a clear record of what Trump told Newsom, there's no evidence that Newsom was briefed.
This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.
