The Trump administration will square off with the state of California in a federal district courthouse on Thursday over the White House’s deployment of federal troops to Los Angeles in the name of protecting immigration enforcement operations from protesters.
In a hearing scheduled for 1:30 p.m. Pacific time, a Federal District Court judge in San Francisco will hear arguments in a lawsuit filed on Monday by the state and its governor, Gavin Newsom, against President Trump’s move, which included taking control of up to 4,000 California National Guard troops and sending in 700 Marines.
The Democratic-controlled state has requested a temporary restraining order that would limit the troops to guarding federal buildings in Los Angeles, with no other law enforcement responsibilities.
That would mean the troops could not accompany Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on the sort of workplace raids in the region that sparked the protests. Thus far, National Guard troops have primarily stood outside federal buildings in downtown Los Angeles during protests, while the Marines have been preparing for deployment in the region.
Mr. Newsom has argued that the troops are unnecessary and inflaming a situation that local law enforcement officers can handle, and that he would deploy the state’s National Guard himself should more force become necessary. The lawsuit says the Trump administration has violated federal law by bypassing Mr. Newsom in seizing control of the guard and is trammeling states’ rights under the 10th Amendment.
The Justice Department in turn has argued that the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, did not need to ask Mr. Newsom to consent to the guard call-up. More broadly, it has argued that Mr. Trump has inherent constitutional power to use troops to protect federal agents and federal law enforcement functions.
The state has also cited a 19th-century law, the Posse Comitatus Act, that generally makes it illegal to use federal troops for law enforcement on domestic soil unless the president invokes the little-used Insurrection Act of 1807. So far, Mr. Trump has not done so.
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 Mr. Trump was destroying American democracy “right before our eyes.”
Similar sentiments percolate through the legal filings. In a brief filed on Thursday, California accused Mr. Trump of advancing “a breathtaking vision of unlimited, unreviewable executive power.”
Meanwhile, a Justice Department brief on Wednesday maintained that neither the state government nor federal courts had a right to second-guess Mr. Trump’s judgment that federal military reinforcements were necessary.
“That is precisely the type of sensitive judgment that is committed to the president’s discretion by law, and to which courts owe the highest deference,” the Justice Department wrote. “The statute empowers the president to determine what forces ‘he considers necessary’ to ‘suppress’ a ‘rebellion’ or to ‘execute’ federal ‘laws’ — not the governor, and not a federal court.”
The legal challenge was assigned to Judge Charles S. Breyer, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1997. The brother of the retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer, Judge Breyer has overseen several prominent cases over the years, including class-action lawsuits over Volkswagen’s use of software on diesel vehicles to cheat on emissions tests.
But the high-profile legal fight currently before him is at a different level. No president has deployed troops under federal control over the objections of a state governor since the civil rights movement era, when Southern governors were resisting court-ordered desegregation.
Charlie Savage writes about national security and legal policy for The Times.
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