Supreme Court Rejects Trump Use of National Guard in Chicago (2)

The US Supreme Court refused to let President Donald Trump start deploying National Guard troops in Chicago, dealing a setback to his drive to use the military in liberal cities across the country.

Rejectinga Trump request in a 6-3 decision, the court on Tuesday left in force a judge’s ruling that has blocked the deployment since Oct. 9. The president wanted to use hundreds of troops to aid immigration enforcement in the third-largest US city.

The court said the legal provision Trump sought to invoke probably doesn’t permit deployment of the National Guard in situations where the president wouldn’t have authority to send in active-duty military. The court said that under federal law, the president can deploy the armed forces to help execute the laws only in “exceptional” circumstances.

“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 said. It also hadn’t shown the president could legally “federalize the Guard in the exercise of inherent authority to protect federal personnel and property in Illinois.”

The case marked the high court’s first look at Trump’s fight to dispatch troops to cities where his immigration crackdown has drawn widespread protests.

Read More: US Agents Moved From Patrolling Border to Join Chicago Crackdown

Conservative Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch dissented. Justice Brett Kavanaugh said that he agreed with the decision but that the majority’s reasoning went too far in restricting the president.

Although the majority decision was unsigned, the breakdown meant that Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson in backing the opinion.

The court deliberated over the case for more than two months, an unusually lengthy review for a request that claimed government officials were facing an imminent threat. Trump told the justices in his Oct. 17 application that troops were needed “to prevent ongoing and intolerable risks to the lives and safety of federal personnel.”

“The President promised the American people he would work tirelessly to enforce our immigration laws and protect federal personnel from violent rioters,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement. “He activated the National Guard to protect federal law enforcement officers, and to ensure rioters did not destroy federal buildings and property. Nothing in today’s ruling detracts from that core agenda.”

In issuing a temporary restraining order against Trump, US District Judge April Perry said the administration hadn’t shown that a protest outside a Chicago-area Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility had risen to a level that would warrant a military deployment.

‘Simply Unreliable’

Perry said the Department of Homeland Security’s characterization of the Chicago area as ridden with violence couldn’t be squared with facts on the ground, including the assessment of local law enforcement agencies. At an Oct. 9 hearing she pointed to “the growing body of independent and objective evidence that DHS’s perceptions of events are simply unreliable.”

The Chicago-based 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals left Perry’s order largely intact.

Chicago became less of an immigration flashpoint in the weeks after Perry issued her ruling. The administration shifted resources to other cities, first with an arrest blitz in Charlotte, North Carolina, and then with a surge in New Orleans. More recently, US Border Patrol has picked up again in Chicago with the return of Gregory Bovino, the agency’s at-large commander.

“American cities, suburbs, and communities should not have to face masked federal agents asking for their papers, judging them for how they look or sound, and living in fear” that the “President can deploy the military to their streets,” Illinois Governor JB Pritzker said in a statement. “While we welcome this ruling, we also are clear-eyed that the Trump Administration’s pursuit for unchecked power is continuing across the country.”

Under federal law, the president can call state National Guards into service when the US is facing a “rebellion or danger of rebellion” or the president “is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.”

A key legal question was whether “regular forces” referred to active-duty military or to civilian law enforcement officers. Rejecting Trump’s interpretation, the majority said the phrase “likely refers to the regular forces of the United States military.”

‘Judicially Micromanaging’

Trump contends military force is needed to protect federal immigration agents from what he claims are violent protests. Government lawyers said in a Supreme Court filing the 7th Circuit was “controlling the military chain of command and judicially micromanaging the exercise of the president’s commander-in-chief powers, including the decision about which military forces the president can deploy.”

In his dissent Tuesday, Justice Alito said he had “serious doubts” about the majority’s reasoning. “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.

Democrats say Trump is engaging in a power grab and ignoring the largely peaceful nature of the protests.

“State and local law enforcement officers have handled isolated protest activities in Illinois, and there is no credible evidence to the contrary,” Illinois and Chicago officials told the Supreme Court.

Perry said in October that tactics used by immigration agents in Chicago so far have only increased the risk of protests, and “evidence demonstrates that the deployment of the National Guard will lead to civil unrest.”

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson welcomed the ruling, which he said was a rebuke to “Trump’s attempts to militarize and demonize our city. ” In a statement Tuesday, he said the high court’s decision “doesn’t just protect Chicago — but protect cities around the country who have been threatened by Trump’s campaign against immigrants and Democratic-led cities.”

The case is one of several over Trump’s attempts to deploy the National Guard. The administration is appealing a judge’s order that blocked Trump from deploying National Guard troops in Portland, Oregon, a city he has claimed without evidence is “burning to the ground.” A different judge has ruled that he can’t deploy the National Guard in Memphis.

In addition, a federal judge in Washington, DC, ruled that Trump’s deployment of troops there was probably unlawful, though an appeals court ruled last week that they can remain there for now.

The case is Trump v. State of Illinois, 25a443.

(Updates will court’s breakdown in seventh paragraph.)

--With assistance from Alicia A. Caldwell, Miranda Davis and Hadriana Lowenkron.

To contact the reporter on this story:
Greg Stohr in Washington at gstohr@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Elizabeth Wasserman at ewasserman2@bloomberg.net

Steve Stroth, Peter Blumberg

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