Marines and National Guard troops communicate as they deal with protesters on the front steps of the Edward Roybal Federal Building in Los Angeles, Calif., June 14, 2025.
Los Angeles, California – California’s legal battle with the Trump administration over the deployment of National Guard troops to Los Angeles returned to federal court Friday, just one day after a federal appeals court handed President Donald Trump a key procedural victory.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday allowed Trump to retain control of more than 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 active-duty Marines deployed to Los Angeles, pausing a lower court’s ruling that had briefly blocked the president’s move. The deployment followed protests sparked by aggressive federal immigration raids at workplaces across Southern California earlier this month.
While the unrest that followed the raids saw moments of vandalism and isolated violence, most of the activity remained concentrated within a few blocks of downtown Los Angeles. The protests have since quieted, but federal troops remain on the ground, a fact that has drawn criticism from California officials who view the ongoing military presence as an overreach.
Governor Gavin Newsom has argued the deployment was unnecessary, provocative, and a violation of state sovereignty. “The president is not a king and is not above the law,” Newsom said in a statement Thursday night. “We will press forward with our challenge to President Trump’s authoritarian use of U.S. military soldiers against citizens.”
California’s legal team returned to the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco Friday, seeking a preliminary injunction to return control of the National Guard troops to the state. Breyer, a former Watergate prosecutor appointed to the bench by President Bill Clinton, had ruled earlier that Trump’s actions violated federal law, which allows the president to federalize state National Guard troops only in times of “rebellion or danger of a rebellion.”
“The protests in Los Angeles fall far short of ‘rebellion,’” Breyer wrote in his original order. But the Ninth Circuit disagreed, ruling Thursday that while presidents do not have unlimited authority to seize control of state forces, Trump had cited enough violent incidents to offer a plausible justification for his decision.
It is the first time a president has deployed a state’s National Guard without the governor’s approval since President Lyndon Johnson sent troops to protect civil rights marchers in 1965.
Trump hailed the ruling on social media as a “BIG WIN,” writing, “If our Cities, and our people, need protection, we are the ones to give it to them.” Newsom, however, warned that California’s case may soon become a national precedent. “If Trump succeeds here,” he said, “no state will be safe from federal intrusion.”
