California officials on Monday filed a federal lawsuit over the mobilization of the state’s National Guard during the weekend’s immigration protests in Los Angeles, accusing President Trump of overstepping his federal authority and violating the U.S. Constitution.
As thousands of people gathered in the streets to protest raids and arrests by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Trump mobilized nearly 2,000 members of the National Guard over the objections of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who said that state officials could handle the situation and that Trump was sowing chaos in the streets for political purposes.
California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said the decision by Trump and U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth violated the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which spells out the limits of federal power. Bonta said the state will seek a restraining order for the “unlawful, unprecedented” deployment of the National Guard, and argues in the 22-page lawsuit that an impending deployment of U.S. Marines was “similarly unlawful.”
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Experts and state officials say Trump’s actions and the subsequent lawsuit have thrust the U.S. into uncharted legal territory. Bonta said there have not been many court rulings on the questions at play because the statute Trump cited “has been rarely used, for good reason.”
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Trump and the White House say the military mobilization is legal under Section 12406 of Title 10 of the U.S. Code on Armed Forces. The statute gives the president the authority to federalize the National Guard if there is “a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the government of the United States,” but says the Guard must be called up through an order from the state’s governor.
Because founders distrusted military rule, the Constitution allows the president to deploy the military for civil law enforcement only in “dire, narrow circumstances,” Bonta’s complaint argues. But, the lawsuit says, the Trump administration appears to be using the statute “as a mechanism to evade these time-honored constitutional limits.”
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