A federal judge in San Francisco on Tuesday rejected California’s request for an immediate injunction to block the Trump administration from deploying Marines and National Guard troops to assist with law enforcement, including immigration operations, in the state.
Senior U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer, a Clinton appointee, instead set a hearing for 1:30 p.m. Thursday to consider California’s motion for a temporary restraining order that would prohibit federal officials from directing service members to participate in certain enforcement activities, CNN reported.
State attorneys had urged the judge to issue the order without waiting for a response from the Trump administration. However, Breyer requested additional written arguments from both sides ahead of the scheduled hearing.
In a brief filing to the court Tuesday afternoon, the Justice Department called the state’s request “legally meritless” and argued that if granted, it “would jeopardize the safety of Department of Homeland Security personnel and interfere with the Federal Government’s ability to carry out operations.”
Constitutional scholar Alan Dershowitz said Monday that Newsom’s lawsuit aiming to block Trump’s deployment of the National Guard to Los Angeles is unlikely to succeed. Newsom, along with Democratic Attorney General Rob Bonta, filed the lawsuit after Trump ordered the deployment in response to riots that broke out following a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid at a Home Depot.
Speaking on The Dershow, Dershowitz expressed skepticism that the Supreme Court would be willing to “second-guess” the president’s authority to deploy the National Guard in such a situation. “The Supreme Court will not second-guess the President of the United States on this issue,” Dershowitz said. “They will say, whether right or wrong, the president had the authority to make this decision and he had the authority to make it over the lack of consent of the governor,” Dershowitz continued.
As riots continued on Monday, Trump ordered an additional 700 Marines to support the National Guard deployment in Los Angeles. A video posted to social media over the weekend showed a person wearing a motorcycle helmet hurling rocks at the windshields of vehicles carrying ICE agents. The FBI is offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to the suspect’s arrest.
Importantly, per CNN, Newsom’s lawsuit only seeks to bar Trump’s use of troops to enforce immigration laws, which would likely be a violation of the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act barring use of the military for civilian or federal law enforcement. But Trump, who the Constitution names as the commander-in-chief of all military forces, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who is also named in the suit, did not task the military with law enforcement—only with protecting federal property and federal agents.