The District of Columbia sued the Trump administration in federal court on Thursday, challenging the president’s deployment of National Guard troops in the city, describing their presence as a “military occupation.”
Thousands of Guard members from the city and seven states were mobilized last month as part of a sweeping federal intervention that has also brought hundreds of federal law enforcement agents to the city’s streets.
The intervention, which President Trump has said is a response to a “public safety emergency,” has prompted criticism and protests from many people in the city who say the president wants to use his power over the federal enclave to roll back the city’s limited self-governance and punish it for policies he objects to.
“No American city should have the US military — particularly out-of-state military who are not accountable to the residents and untrained in local law enforcement — policing its streets,” Brian Schwalb, D.C.’s elected attorney general, who brought the suit, said in a statement. “We’ve filed this action to put an end to this illegal federal overreach.”
In the suit, Mr. Schwalb asks the court to declare that the orders sending the National Guard troops to Washington were illegal.
The lawsuit comes two days after a federal judge in California ruled that the president’s decision to send National Guard soldiers to Los Angeles in June was illegal.
Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said in a statement that the lawsuit was “nothing more than another attempt — at the detriment of D.C. residents and visitors — to undermine the President’s highly successful operations to stop violent crime in D.C.”
Even as the Guard deployments have faced local pushback and legal challenges, Mr. Trump has been promising to send troops to other cities, including Baltimore and Chicago. Like Washington and Los Angeles, Baltimore and Chicago are led by mayors who are Black and are Democrats.
Unlike in states, where governors have considerable authority over the deployment of the state guard, the D.C. National Guard is under the president’s direct command.
But the suit argues that the deployment of the local guard for public safety reasons, and without the mayor’s consent, violated Washington’s autonomy under the 52-year-old Home Rule Act.
The key argument in the suit is similar to the one the judge in California based his ruling on: that the deployment of National Guard troops in the city runs “roughshod over a fundamental tenet of American democracy — that the military should not be involved in domestic law enforcement.”
Mr. Trump had made clear that such a role was his intention, saying on Aug. 11 that he was calling out the Guard to “reestablish law, order and public safety” in the city. Since then, even as federal law enforcement officers have been involved in hundreds of arrests and immigration agents have been detaining hundreds of Washington residents deemed to be in the country illegally, the National Guard troops have been patrolling Metro stations and around city landmarks. Some have been picking up trash.
Many if not most of the National Guard soldiers have been deputized as U.S. Marshals. That gives the soldiers the power to detain people, the lawsuit asserts, establishing “a massive, seemingly indefinite law enforcement operation in the District subject to direct military command.”
The suit is the second the attorney general has filed against the administration since Mr. Trump declared a “public safety emergency” in the city.
The first, filed days after the declaration, challenged the authority of the administration to take command of the D.C. police. The judge’s comments during the initial court hearing suggested the city was likely to prevail, but after several hours of negotiation, the U.S. Attorney General agreed to take a more limited role in compelling local police to cooperate on certain tasks.
Mayor Muriel Bowser of Washington was an outspoken supporter of that earlier lawsuit. While the mayor has expressed a willingness to work with federal law enforcement agents in addressing violent crime, she has criticized the presence of out-of-state National Guard troops in the city, saying they are not helping.
Still, the mayor deferred questions about Thursday’s lawsuit to Mr. Schwalb’s office. “My 100 percent focus is on exiting the emergency, and that’s where all of our energies are,” Ms. Bowser said to reporters at a school-related event.
The emergency that Mr. Trump declared in early August ends next week if Congress does not vote to extend it, and any authority that the Trump administration holds to direct local police actions expires with it.
But much of the federal intervention in D.C. in recent weeks, including the presence of National Guard troops, is not subject to the emergency declaration. Barring a judicial ruling, many of the soldiers and federal law enforcement agents now on the ground could remain indefinitely.
Republicans in Congress have applauded the intervention, and many are pushing to bring an even heavier federal hand onto Washington’s affairs.
The House Oversight Committee, whose jurisdiction includes D.C., is expected next week to take up a bill that would toughen the District’s crime laws with regard to juvenile offenders. It is also weighing a slate of bills to reshape Washington’s criminal justice system by adding tougher penalties for some offenses and rolling back sentencing reforms passed by local lawmakers, according to a draft summary that was shared with congressional offices and viewed by The New York Times.
Among the bills being considered are legislation that would lengthen or establish mandatory minimum sentences for many crimes and repeal second-chance legislation meant to allow some people to have their criminal records sealed or expunged. Another measure under discussion would impose a $500 fine or a prison sentence of up to 30 days on people who camp outdoors on public property in the District, a measure that appears designed to target homeless encampments that Mr. Trump has repeatedly cited in justifying his efforts in Washington. The legislation was reported earlier by The Washington Post.
There is also a measure that would significantly increase congressional oversight of D.C.’s elected government, giving federal lawmakers the authority to veto local regulations and mayoral executive actions, as well as broadening the veto power Congress already has regarding laws passed by the D.C. Council. That piece of legislation, which expands on a similar bill proposed last year, is tentatively called “The District of Columbia Home Rule Improvement Act.”
Campbell Robertson reports for The Times on Delaware, the District of Columbia, Kentucky, Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia.
Michael Gold covers Congress for The Times, with a focus on immigration policy and congressional oversight.
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