President Trump illegally usurped Gov. Gavin Newsom\u2019s command of the California National Guard by ordering a surge troops deployed into Los Angeles and across the state amid protests against the White House\u2019s mass deportation program last year, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday. <\/p>\n
The 2-1 decision split the president\u2019s own appointees to the court, with Judge Eric D. Miller of Seattle siding with Judge Jennifer Sung of Portland, Ore., a Biden pick, and Judge Mark J. Bennett of Honolulu dissenting. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe order exceeded the President\u2019s statutory authority and encroached on Congress\u2019s calling forth power, in violation of the constitutional separation of powers,\u201d Sung wrote for the majority, calling Trump\u2019s order \u201cunconstitutional.\u201d <\/p>\n
The decision also appeared to foreclose what California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta called \u201cthe Trump Administration\u2019s transparent attempt\u201d to preserve its right to call up California troops again under the same obscure statute \u2014 a novel legal maneuver administration lawyers said let the president seize command without invoking the far stronger Insurrection Act. <\/p>\n
The 9th Circuit trio was among the first to weigh the law last June, after Trump federalized 4,000 National Guard soldiers in response to unrest over immigration enforcement in Los Angeles. <\/p>\n
California sued. U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer quickly ruled to block the deployment. But Sung, Bennett and Miller stayed his order, finding that the California deployment could go forward under an obscure and virtually untested subsection of the law. <\/p>\n
That decision set a \u201cgreat level of deference\u201d as the standard of review for deployments, meaning courts had very little power to test the president\u2019s rationale for sending troops into American streets. <\/p>\n
At the time, the decision represented one of the president\u2019s most sweeping second-term victories: a plug-and-play legal mechanism to deploy soldiers against civilians in cities across the country. <\/p>\n
In Portland that fall, another 9th Circuit panel stayed U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut\u2019s order to stand down troops, using the first trio\u2019s precedent. <\/p>\n
The Portland decision \u2014 based in part on data the Department of Justice later admitted was false \u2014 prompted an extraordinary filing by Judge Jay Bybee, who all but pleaded with the court to rehear the case and interpret the law differently. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no greater threat to the sovereignty of the states than an assertion of federal control over their domestic affairs,\u201d Bybee wrote. <\/p>\n
The issue quickly found its way to the Supreme Court, after a 7th Circuit panel found the president had provided \u201cinsufficient evidence\u201d for deployment even under the 9th Circuit\u2019s deference standard. <\/p>\n
On Dec. 23, the justices adopted a celebrated Georgetown scholar\u2019s academic reading of the statute, saying it allowed the president to commandeer National Guard troops only if the situation<\/a> had already outmatched the standing army. <\/p>\n