The state of California on Monday filed suit against the Trump administration over its move to take control of the state’s National Guard and deploy its troops to Los Angeles to protect immigration enforcement agents.
Gov. Gavin Newsom had foreshadowed the filing in a social media post earlier on Monday. Before the complaint was filed, the state’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, said in a news conference on Monday that the lawsuit would ask a court to hold unlawful and set aside Mr. Trump’s order.
“We don’t take lightly to the president abusing his authority and unlawfully mobilizing California National Guard troops,” Mr. Bonta said.
The lawsuit argues that Mr. Trump’s federalization of the state’s National Guard was illegal because he bypassed Mr. Newsom, Mr. Bonta said, and because it violated the Tenth Amendment, which protects state rights.
He argued that local law enforcement had been capable of handling the situation and could have requested support from state partners had it been necessary. Mr. Bonta also said that the situation had been calming before Mr. Trump’s move incited new unrest.
“Trump and Hegseth jumped from 0 to 60,” Mr. Bonta said, referring to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. “Bypassing law enforcement expertise and evaluation, they threw caution to the wind and sidelined strategy in an unnecessary and inflammatory escalation that only further spurred unrest.”
The U.S. Justice Department press office declined to comment.
Mr. Newsom’s office foreshadowed the litigation in a letter to Mr. Hegseth on Sunday.
“In dynamic and fluid situations such as the one in Los Angeles, state and local authorities are the most appropriate ones to evaluate the need for resources to safeguard life and property,” Mr. Newsom’s legal affairs secretary, David Sapp, wrote in the letter. “Indeed the decision to deploy the National Guard, without appropriate training or orders, risks seriously escalating the situation.”
Mr. Trump said on Saturday that he was imposing federal control over at least 2,000 National Guard troops for at least 60 days in order to quell the protests, and directed Mr. Hegseth to determine which ones to use. The order did not specify that the troops needed to come from California, but so far the California National Guard has been used, according to the U.S. Northern Command.
Mr. Trump’s order suggested that protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids and detention facilities were interfering with federal functions, and that they constituted a rebellion against the federal government’s authority and its ability to enforce federal law. That is the standard for invoking the Insurrection Act to use the military for domestic policing.
But the order did not invoke the Insurrection Act. Instead, it cited only a statute that allowed the president, under certain circumstances, to federalize a state’s National Guard. It also appeared to gesture toward a claim of inherent presidential power to use troops to protect federal functions.
Mr. Bonta acknowledged that isolated pockets of trouble have surfaced amid protests that remained peaceful, and he suggested that it was Mr. Trump’s provocation that caused them to deteriorate into violence. Mr. Bonta also said his office had studied the 1807 Insurrection Act and was prepared to respond if Mr. Trump later tried invoking it as an alternate legal authority to deploy the U.S. military to address the protests.
But Mr. Bonta reiterated that he was not aware of any conditions suggesting that the protests in Los Angeles necessitated federal troops, and that the local authorities were “completely prepared” to address any developments.
Mr. Trump’s order raises many legal complexities, including whether a rebellion against federal authority is indeed taking place, and whether a court could reject a president’s claim that the situation rises to the level that would make it lawful to send in troops.
But there is also a basic procedural issue: whether it was lawful for Mr. Hegseth to cut Mr. Newsom out of the administration’s decision-making process.
Mr. Trump’s order instructed Mr. Hegseth to consult with state governors about calling up National Guard units, and the call-up statute Mr. Trump cited said that orders for National Guard call-ups “shall be issued through the governors of the states.”
But Mr. Sapp’s letter complained that Mr. Hegseth had sent a directive to the general in charge of California’s National Guard informing him that the federal government was taking control of 2,000 of its troops without consulting Mr. Newsom or relaying the order through the governor.
In the letter to Mr. Hegseth on Sunday, Mr. Sapp focused on that procedural problem and added that local law enforcement authorities in Los Angeles had the matter in hand. He also invoked the principle of states’ rights.
“There is currently no need for the National Guard to be deployed in Los Angeles, and to do so in this unlawful manner and for such a lengthy period is a serious breach of state sovereignty that seems intentionally designed to inflame the situation, while simultaneously depriving the state from deploying these personnel and resources where they are truly required,” Mr. Sapp’s letter said.
Mr. Trump’s move was the first time in about 60 years that a president had sent troops under federal control into a state to quell unrest without a request from the state’s governor. That last happened during the civil rights movement, when state governors were resisting court orders to desegregate public schools.
The last time a president used military force to carry out police functions on domestic soil was in 1992, when President George H.W. Bush sent troops into Los Angeles to calm widespread rioting that followed a jury’s acquittal of police officers who had been videotaped beating a Black man, Rodney King. But in that case, both the California governor and the mayor of Los Angeles had requested the federal assistance.
Laurel Rosenhall is a Sacramento-based reporter covering California politics and government for The Times.
Charlie Savage writes about national security and legal policy for The Times.
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