A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked the federal government’s mobilization of the California National Guard to protect immigration agents from protesters in Los Angeles. He ruled that the Trump administration had illegally taken control of the state’s troops and ordered the troops to return to taking orders from Gov. Gavin Newsom.
In an extraordinary 36-page ruling, Judge Charles Breyer of the Federal District Court in San Francisco severed Mr. Trump’s control of up to 4,000 National Guard troops, many of whom are already deployed in the streets of Los Angeles on his orders. The judge said the administration’s seizure of them violated required procedures in a federal statute.
President Trump’s “actions were illegal — both exceeding the scope of his statutory authority and violating the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution,” Judge Breyer wrote. “He must therefore return control of the California National Guard to the governor of the state of California forthwith.”
The temporary restraining order takes effect at noon Pacific time on Friday. That gives the Trump administration an opportunity to ask the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to block it from taking effect beyond that point.
The ruling was the latest in a series of judicial rebukes to Mr. Trump’s expansive claims of wartime or emergency powers over matters ranging from deporting people without due process to unilaterally imposing widespread tariffs. Court rulings blocking his actions as likely illegal have enraged the White House.
Judge Breyer’s ruling on the National Guard went beyond what California had asked for. While the state’s lawsuit had contended that Mr. Trump’s mobilization of the National Guard was illegal, its specific motion was for a temporary restraining order limiting military forces under federal control to guarding federal buildings in the city and no other law enforcement tasks.
Judge Breyer blocked Mr. Trump from using California’s National Guard at all. But he also rejected a request by the state and Governor Newsom to restrain a separate group of active-duty Marines, which the administration has also mobilized to counter the protesters.
Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, is deploying 700 Marines from a base in California to participate in suppressing protests, and the state had wanted the judge to restrict them from accompanying immigration agents on the workplace raids that sparked the protests. But the active-duty troops so far have merely been staged in a neighboring county and have not gone into the city.
Judge Breyer said it would be inappropriate to issue any order restricting the Marine’s actions when they have not done anything that would violate the Posse Comitatus Act, which generally makes it illegal to use federal troops for law enforcement on domestic soil. He said that the state would need to come back within a week to try to turn his temporary order into a longer-lasting injunction, allowing time for events to develop.
“As of now, the court only has counsel’s speculation of what might happen,” the judge wrote.
Judge Breyer, who was nominated by President Bill Clinton in 1997, opened the hearing with a heavy focus on whether the National Guard had been improperly activated. The statute President Trump cited as the authority for his move says that such orders must go “through” governors. But Mr. Hegseth instead sent the directive to the general who oversees the National Guard, bypassing Governor Newsom.
Through the first hour of court proceedings, Mr. Breyer, sporting a light-blue bow-tie, seemed skeptical of the Trump administration’s arguments. He interrupted the Justice Department’s lawyer repeatedly and at one point waved a small copy of the Constitution in the air. Some of his pointed replies drew laughs from the packed courtroom of more than 100 people.
Though the State of California initially requested an order limiting the military to guarding federal buildings, it also made a broader argument in its lawsuit filed on Monday that Mr. Trump has far exceeded his authority.
“The version of executive power to police civil communities that the government is advancing is breathtaking in scope,” said Nicholas Green, the state’s lawyer. “That is an expensive, dangerous conception of federal executive power.”
The Justice Department lawyer, Brett Shumate, argued that Mr. Hegseth had complied with the National Guard call-up statute. But even if he hadn’t, Mr. Shumate said, Mr. Trump had the legal authority to order the National Guard into federal service anyway.
He also argued that the judge had no authority to second-guess Mr. Trump’s determinations that factual conditions listed in the call-up statute — such as whether there is a rebellion against federal authority — were actually true.
The judge seemed deeply skeptical of that argument, suggesting that it would give a president the powers of a king.
“This country was founded in response to a monarchy, and the Constitution is a document of limitations,” he said.
Since being federalized and deployed, some National Guard troops have accompanied ICE agents on raids while others have primarily stood outside federal buildings in downtown Los Angeles during protests.
The legal face-off comes amid escalating political tensions between the Trump administration and the California governor. After Mr. Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, threatened to arrest Mr. Newsom, Mr. Trump endorsed the idea on Monday, saying, “I’d do it.” Mr. Newsom on Tuesday said in a televised speech that “democracy is under assault right before our eyes.”
No president has deployed troops under federal control over the objections of a state governor since the Civil Rights era, when Southern governors were resisting court-ordered desegregation.
Charlie Savage writes about national security and legal policy for The Times.
Kellen Browning is a Times political reporter based in San Francisco.
Laurel Rosenhall is a Sacramento-based reporter covering California politics and government for The Times.
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