The U.S. Supreme Court ruled against President Trump on Tuesday, refusing to reinstate, for now, Trump's ability to send National Guard troops into Illinois over the objections of its governor.
The administration argued in its appeal in October that it needed to federalize the National Guard to stop what Trump has said is unremitting violence against Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at detention facilities in the Chicago area. But two lower courts ruled against Trump's claim that the protests in the Chicago area constituted a "rebellion or danger of rebellion" against the United States government that the president has the right to put down.
The court's action is one of only a handful of such "emergency docket" cases in which the conservative court has ruled against Trump since he began his second term as president almost a year ago. Many legal experts thought this emergency decision would take days or weeks, not months, as ended up being the case. It's unclear why it took so long.
"At this preliminary stage, the Government has failed to identify a source of authority that would allow the military to execute the laws in Illinois," the majority wrote in its brief opinion. The court wrote that the president failed to explain why the situation in Illinois warranted an exception to the Posse Comitatus Act that limits the military's ability to execute laws on U.S. soil.
It's the first time the highest court has weighed in on the controversial deployments. While the decision does not set precedent, it brings some clarity about the president's power to deploy federal military resources.
In preliminarily rejecting the Trump administration's arguments, the court majority accepted the fact-finding and views of both the trial court judge in the case, and the views of a three-judge appeals court panel composed of one Trump appointee, one George W. Bush appointee, and an Obama-appointed judge.
Presumably, the case could return to the court after the court of appeals hears full arguments in the case and renders a decision months from now.
But for all practical purposes, the president for now at least, cannot send in National Guard troops in Illinois without the governor's permission.
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul praised Tuesday's ruling.
"The extremely limited circumstances under which the federal government can call up the militia over a state's objection do not exist in Illinois, and I am pleased that the streets of Illinois will remain free of armed National Guard members as our litigation continues in the courts," Raoul said in a statement.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from NPR. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote his own concurring opinion.
Dissenting from Monday's unsigned opinion were Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, who wrote that the court stepped beyond the bounds of its authority by opining on the underlying issue of the National Guard's legal deployment and what Trump can use the military for, rather than the narrower question the administration asked it to stay.
"On top of all this, the Court fails to explain why the President's inherent constitutional authority to protect federal officers and property is not sufficient to justify the use of National Guard members in the relevant area for precisely that purpose," Alito wrote in the dissent, which Thomas joined.
How we got here
Solicitor General D. John Sauer, the government's lawyer, had argued for the administration that troops are needed in the Chicago area to "prevent ongoing and intolerable risks to the lives and safety" of federal agents, particularly after an influx of federal immigration officers was sent to the city to carry out a federal immigration crackdown that started in September. That operation — and its increasingly aggressive tactics — led to protests.
The administration withdrew many of its law enforcement forces from Chicago in November and moved them to New Orleans and Minneapolis, as it launched new immigration crackdowns in those locations, but recently moved many back to Chicago and redoubled efforts in the city.
Trump has been saying for months that Chicago is lawless and in need of military intervention to quell protests and protect federal immigration facilities. He federalized the state National Guard against Democratic Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker's wishes in October.
Local and state officials in Illinois have condemned the troop deployments, calling them unnecessary and accusing the president of overstepping his authority.
Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott also sent 200 of his state's National Guard troops to help. They returned to Texas in November, after waiting for weeks while the deployment was blocked by the courts.
A unanimous three-judge panel on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the district court's ruling in mid-October, saying "that the facts do not justify the President's actions" in Illinois.
Repeated legal setbacks
The deployments have faced other legal setbacks.
In Oregon, a federal judge earlier blocked a deployment in Portland, finding that Trump "did not have a lawful basis to federalize the National Guard" and doing so violated states' sovereignty, member station OPB reported. The Trump administration is challenging the ruling, but recalled hundreds of troops from the state.
Troops have been deployed in Memphis since October, where Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Lee welcomed federal intervention. In November, a state judge temporarily blocked the use of troops, but that ruling was paused after the state appealed, The Associated Press reported.
In June, Trump seized control of California's National Guard against Gov. Gavin Newsom's wishes and deployed thousands of troops to Los Angeles in response to protests over immigration raids in the city. The administration then sought to extend that federalization and deployment several times, keeping around 100 troops in the city, until a federal judge ruled it had to end in December. A federal appeals court agreed, and troops were ordered out of Los Angeles.
Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., more than 2,000 troops have been on the streets since August after Trump said there was a "crime emergency" in the nation's capital city. In November, a federal judge ordered an end to the deployment – but only days later, a targeted attack on National Guard members near the White House killed one and wounded another. Trump ordered hundreds more troops to the city in the aftermath, and a federal appeals court later ruled that Guard members could remain for now.
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