Donald Trump and administration officials violated the law by deploying the National Guard to Los Angeles in response to protests against his anti-immigration agenda, a federal judge in California ruled.
The president’s troop deployment violated the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which prohibits “the use of the U.S. military to execute domestic law,” according to Tuesday’s decision from District Judge Charles Breyer.
Nearly 140 years later, Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth deployed the National Guard and a cadre of U.S. Marines to Los Angeles, “ostensibly to quell a rebellion and ensure that federal immigration law was enforced,” Breyer wrote.
“There were indeed protests in Los Angeles, and some individuals engaged in violence. Yet there was no rebellion, nor was civilian law enforcement unable to respond to the protests and enforce the law,” he added.
Following a brief bench trial last month, the judge determined that the administration illegally and “systematically used armed soldiers (whose identity was often obscured by protective armor) and military vehicles to set up protective perimeters and traffic blockades, engage in crowd control, and otherwise demonstrate a military presence in and around Los Angeles.”
“In short, Defendants violated the Posse Comitatus Act,” Breyer wrote.
The judge’s order — in the face of Trump’s plans for what Breyer called “a national police force with the president as its chief” — further blocks the administration from sending troops into the state.
The Trump administration is blocked from “deploying, ordering, instructing, training, or using the National Guard currently deployed in California, and any military troops heretofore deployed in California, to execute the laws, including but not limited to engaging in arrests, apprehensions, searches, seizures, security patrols, traffic control, crowd control, riot control, evidence collection, interrogation or acting as informants,” according to the ruling.
Breyer’s order is paused until September 12, giving the Trump administration time to appeal.
White House spokesperson Anna Kelly blasted “far-left courts” and called Breyer a “rogue judge” who is “trying to usurp” Trump’s authority “to protect American cities from violence and destruction.”
“This will not be the final say on the issue,” she added.
“The military will remain in Los Angeles,” said California U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli, who called the judge’s ruling a “false narrative and a misleading injunction.”
“The military has never engaged in direct law enforcement operations here in LA,” he said. “They protect our federal employees our properties so our federal agents can safely enforce federal laws in the face of the thugs being unleashed and encouraged by state and local politicians.”
A series of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in the Los Angeles area in June sparked a wave of demonstrations, prompting Trump to deploy the National Guard and hundreds of Marines.
The administration sent in roughly 5,000 National Guard soldiers and Marines to the Los Angeles area, assisting with more than 170 law enforcement operations carried out by federal agencies, according to the Department of Defense.
The Pentagon has ended most of those operations, but hundreds of National Guard members remain active in southern California.
Despite that relatively smaller footprint, “they have already been improperly trained as to what activities they can and cannot engage in,” and “Trump’s recent executive orders and public statements regarding the National Guard raise serious concerns” as to whether he intends to continue violating the law, Breyer wrote.
Trump had federalized the normally state-authorized National Guard, going above the command and objections of Governor Gavin Newsom and state officials. Those troops still have only a limited mission in supporting federal law enforcement agents and protecting federal buildings at the center of protests against the administration’s mass deportation agenda.
Democratic officials and civil rights groups fear the president is testing the limits of his authority to send active-duty military into American streets — and violating service members’ commitments to stay out of domestic politics.
Newsom then sued the administration, teeing up a legal battle between the Democratic governor and an administration that has since deployed the National Guard into the streets of Washington, D.C., and is imminently prepared to enter other Democratic cities with large minority populations.
A federal appeals court had temporarily blocked an earlier ruling from Breyer, paving the way for a non-jury trial to investigate the basis and legal authority behind Trump sending in the troops.
“DONALD TRUMP LOSES AGAIN,” Newsom wrote on X after Tuesday’s ruling.
“The courts agree — his militarization of our streets and use of the military against US citizens is ILLEGAL,” he added.
