Appeals court halts ruling forcing Trump to return CA Guard to Newsom's control

Miami Herald

20-06-2025

A federal appeals court late Thursday temporarily blocked a judge's order that required President Donald Trump to relinquish control of California's National Guard, pausing a sweeping rebuke of the administration's decision to deploy troops to Los Angeles over the objections of Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued an administrative stay of the lower court's ruling, which had found Trump's use of National Guard and Marine personnel after federal immigration raids violated both statutory limits and the 10th Amendment.
The stay will remain in effect at least through a scheduled hearing next week.
Hours before, Senior U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer had given the Trump administration until noon Friday to relinquish control of the Guard, a rare and sweeping judicial repudiation of the administration's unprecedented use of military personnel to support deportation operations amid immigration protests in the south state.
'The court must determine whether the president followed the congressionally mandated procedure for his actions,' Breyer wrote in a 36-page decision granting Newsom's request for a temporary restraining order. 'He did not.'
'His actions were illegal — both exceeding the scope of his statutory authority and violating the 10th Amendment to the United States,' Breyer added.
Breyer, who expressed skepticism during oral arguments earlier in the day, concluded the Trump administration had failed to prove 'a violent, armed, organized, open and avowed uprising against the government as a whole.'
'The definition of rebellion is unmet,' Breyer, an appointee of President Bill Clinton, wrote.
Attorneys for the White House immediately requested an emergency stay at the appellate level, which was granted by the three-judge panel. Circuit Judges Mark J. Bennett, Eric D. Miller and Lucy H. Koh ordered the halt and set a hearing for Tuesday. Bennett and Miller were appointed by Trump during his first term; Koh was elevated to the 9th Circuit by Biden in 2022.
The legal back-and-forth set the stage for a high-stakes clash over executive power and states' rights, with Newsom casting the ruling as a pivotal moment for democratic accountability.
'Today's order makes clear that (Trump) is not above or beyond constitutional constraints,' Newsom said moments after the District Court's ruling from Los Angeles, 'Constitution sets forth limits; the president is a constitutional officer. The President of the United States works under the Constitution. And so we are very gratified by this decision. ... Clearly, there's no invasion, there's no rebellion. It's absurd. And so we're gratified. Today is a big day for the Constitution of the United States, for our democracy. And I hope it's the beginning of a new day in this country where we push back against overreach.'
Newsom also addressed the potential of an appellate hold.
'I'm confident in the rule of law. I'm confident in the Constitution of the United States. I'm confident in the wisdom and judgment of a very well-respected federal judge. And I'm confident, on the basis of the review of the 36 pages – absolutely it will stand,' he said.
Trump thanked the panel for its decision, saying in a social media post, 'The Appeals Court ruled last night that I can use the National Guard to keep our cities, in this case Los Angeles, safe. If I didn't send the Military into Los Angeles, that city would be burning to the ground right now. We saved L.A.'
Breyer's ruling on Thursday came after a heated hearing in federal court, at which lawyers for Newsom argued that the deployment of the National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles during protests over immigration raids was unlawful — a claim strongly disputed by White House attorneys.
The hearing was part of a lawsuit filed by Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta on Monday against Trump's move to deploy the Guard and Marines to the nation's second-largest city without the governor's approval.
'It is not the federal government's place in our constitutional system to take over a state's police power whenever it is dissatisfied with how vigorously or quickly the state is enforcing its own laws,' Breyer wrote.
Although Breyer said in his ruling that the deployment of the Marines to Los Angeles also was in conflict with the 10th Amendment, he did not order Trump to remove them in part because they were not in L.A. but training in Orange County.
The hearing took place against a backdrop of ongoing tensions in Los Angeles, where Trump has deployed 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines, a move that legal experts said was highly unusual and based on laws that could be interpreted in different ways.
Protests began on Friday after Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents swarmed a local Home Depot store, arresting day laborers, and raided businesses in the city's largely immigrant garment district.
The city has been under a nightly curfew since Tuesday night, when Mayor Karen Bass said it was necessary to stop vandalism and looting.
On Thursday, Alex Padilla, one of California's two U.S. Senators, was forcibly removed from a press conference given by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, forced to kneel and then lie on the ground before being handcuffed.
Newsom has blamed Trump for fanning the protests and violence, saying both the immigration raids and the activation of troops were deliberately provocative in a city where a third of the residents are immigrants.
On Tuesday, he filed the request for a temporary restraining order, asking the judge to immediately limit the military's activities to support roles: protecting federal property and personnel. Newsom said in a court filing on Thursday that troops had moved beyond those allowable duties to actively assist ICE agents in making arrests, in violation of a federal law known as the Posse Comitatus Act, which is designed to prevent the military from being used as a domestic police force.
At the hearing on Thursday, Breyer questioned the Trump administration's lawyers sharply on whether the president had followed the law when taking over control of the Guard over Newsom's objections. In particular, he asked Assistant U.S. Attorney General Brett Shumate about a clause in the law that says orders to federalize the National Guard 'shall' come through the governors of the states.
He also pressed the administration on its claim that even if Trump had not adhered to conditions laid out in the law for federalizing the National Guard, the courts don't have the jurisdiction to overturn his decision because the president has the discretion to interpret those conditions in his own way.
He appeared to show some sympathy to Newsom's point of view when he asked California Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Green to address the question of Trump's discretion.
'That's the difference between a constitutional government and King George,' Breyer said, referring to the British monarch against whom the American Revolution was fought. 'It's not that a leader can simply say something and it becomes' the truth.
But he questioned Green about Newsom's argument that the court had jurisdiction over what he called speculative concerns about how Trump might use the Marines, which are already under federal control.
Much of the discussion at the hearing revolved around the law invoked by Trump when he activated the military in Los Angeles, which limits his power to do so unless there is an invasion, a rebellion, or the president is unable to enforce the laws of the United States.
In documents submitted to the court this week, the president's lawyers argued that such conditions did exist in Los Angeles, making the deployments legal. Moreover, they argued that the federal government was following the law by limiting such military intervention to protection of federal property and personnel.
But in his claim, Newsom alleges that Trump broke laws against the domestic deployment of military troops without consent from the state's governor. Newsom said he did not approve of the deployment and did not request it. He pointed to a clause in the law that says orders to deploy the National Guard by the federal government must be made through the governors of the states.
Trump's lawyers argued for a different interpretation of the statute, saying it required the order to go through the governor or a representative, but not be made by the governor, court documents show. In this case, they argued, the order went through a top commander at the California National Guard, who responded to the president's directive.
Breyer disagreed, saying in his ruling that California officials and 'the citizens of Los Angeles face a greater harm from the continued unlawful militarization of their city, which not only inflames tensions with protesters, threatening increased hostilities and loss of life.'
In his ruling, the judge harshly criticized the White House for attempting to justify the Guard deployment after the fact. Breyer warned that 'the federal executive could unilaterally exercise military force in a domestic context and then be allowed to backfill justifications for doing so' — a precedent he labeled dangerous.
Ultimately, the judge found Trump's takeover of the Guard violated the 10th Amendment by undermining state sovereignty. The court said Trump lacked both legal justification and procedural authority, rejecting the idea that immigration protests amounted to a 'rebellion' and calling the deployment an illegal federal overreach.
'To put a finer point on it,' Breyer wrote, 'the federal government cannot be permitted to exceed its bounds and in doing so create the very emergency conditions that it then relies on to justify federal intervention.'
In a court filing, Newsom and Bonta criticized the appellate stay as 'unnecessary and unwarranted,' citing what they called Breyer's 'extensive reasoning' and his conclusion that California faced irreparable harm without immediate relief. They also questioned the timing of Tuesday's appellate hearing, noting it falls just before Breyer's hearing the following Friday on a preliminary injunction.
A White House spokesperson told the Associated Press on Friday that Trump acted within his powers and that the original injunction 'puts our brave federal officials in danger. The district court has no authority to usurp the President's authority as Commander in Chief.'