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.
Sacramento, California – California Attorney General Rob Bonta on Thursday praised a federal court’s decision allowing the state to move forward with its challenge to President Donald Trump’s deployment of federalized National Guard troops and Marines in Los Angeles. The lawsuit, centered on potential violations of the Posse Comitatus Act, took a crucial step this week when U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer granted California’s request for expedited discovery while denying a federal attempt to shift the case to another court.
The court’s ruling sets up a clash over a law with roots stretching back to the bloody aftermath of the Civil War. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 restricts the use of federal military forces for domestic law enforcement — a safeguard born of fears of military overreach, but one whose relevance has repeatedly resurfaced during periods of American crisis.
“President Trump continues to needlessly — and unlawfully — pull California National Guard servicemembers off counterdrug and wildfire missions just to advance his political agenda,” Bonta said. “We need to know how these troops are being deployed in Los Angeles communities.”
Judge Breyer’s order permits targeted evidence-gathering on how the Guard and Marines are being used in California, specifically whether they have been drawn into enforcing civilian laws — a key prohibition under the Posse Comitatus Act.
The Trump administration has argued that the act does not apply to the National Guard once federalized, and even if it did, the deployed forces are not engaging in law enforcement. Officials have also pointed to a 9th Circuit ruling earlier this year, which upheld broad presidential authority to mobilize the Guard, as making California’s claims moot.
Yet the origins of the Posse Comitatus Act — passed by a Congress exhausted by the violent resistance to Reconstruction in the South — remain a vivid backdrop. At the end of the 19th century, federal troops had occupied parts of the former Confederacy to protect Black citizens and secure voting rights. In response, Southern Democrats, eager to reclaim power and keep Black men from the polls, pushed to bar the Army from domestic law enforcement.
“It is a moment in which white Northern congressmen surrender the South back to ex-Confederates,” said Jacob Calhoun, a historian at Wabash College.
Though the law went dormant for decades, its bedrock principle — that federal soldiers should not police Americans — has endured. “Our nation was forged in large part because the British military violated colonists’ civil rights,” noted Emory law professor Mark Nevitt.
Legal scholars say California faces long odds, with appeals courts and potentially the Supreme Court likely to side with the executive branch. Still, the case stands as a rare 21st-century test of a Reconstruction-era law — one with consequences for military power, civilian policing, and the fragile balance between security and democracy.
