California on Monday filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, accusing the US president of “unlawfully” federalizing the state’s national guard to quell immigration protests in Los Angeles.
Trump’s extraordinary deployment of troops to Los Angeles exceeds federal authority and violates the 10th amendment in an “unprecedented usurpation” of state powers, according to the court filing.
“The Governor of the State of California and the State of California bring this action to protect the State against the illegal actions of the President, Secretary of Defense, and Department of Defense to deploy members of the California National Guard, without lawful authority, and in violation of the Constitution,” the complaint states.
Previewing the suitearlier on Monday, the attorney general, Rob Bonta, said the move “trampled” the state’s sovereignty, overriding objections by the governor Gavin Newsom and going “against the wishes of law enforcement on the ground”. Bonta said the legal action will ask the court to declare Trump’s call deployment of the guard unlawful and will seek a restraining order to halt the use of its troops to manage the protests.
“We don’t take lightly to the president abusing his authority and unlawfully mobilizing California national guard troops,” the attorney general said during a virtual news conference on Monday.
The announcement came hours before the US military said it was activating a battalion of 700 marines to Los Angeles to protect federal property and personnel. On Monday evening, Newsom said he had been informed that Trump was deploying an additional 2,000 national guard troops to the city.
White House spokesperson Anna Kelly did not address specifics of the lawsuit, saying in a statement that California should “prosecute the anti-Ice rioters” and accusing the governor of being “more focused on saving face than protecting law enforcement and holding criminals accountable”.
“As the president said, Newsom should thank him for restoring law and order,” Kelly said.
Democratic officials have argued that local law enforcement agencies had been adequately managing the protests, which began on Friday in response to a series of immigration enforcement operations across the LA area.
“This was not inevitable,” Bonta said, arguing that the demonstrations had largely dissipated by the time Trump, on Saturday, announced his plans to assert federal control over at least 2,000 national guard troops for at least 60 days, which Bonta said inflamed the situation. On Sunday, roughly 300 California national guard troops arrived in Los Angeles, prompting an outpouring of anger and fear among residents.
Trump’s call-up order “skipped over multiple rational, common sense, strategic steps that should have been deployed to quell unrest and prevent escalation”, he said.
Newsom has accused Trump of intentionally sowing chaos, claiming Trump “wants a civil war on the streets” and appealing for protesters not to give the administration the spectacle of violence it is hoping to stoke.
“This is a manufactured crisis to allow him to take over a state militia, damaging the very foundation of our republic,” Newsom said in a statement announcing the lawsuit. “Every governor, red or blue, should reject this outrageous overreach. This is beyond incompetence – this is him intentionally causing chaos, terrorizing communities, and endangering the principles of our great democracy.”
On Sunday, Newsom formally requested that Trump rescind his order and return command of the guard to his office. In a letter to the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, the governor’s legal affairs secretary, David Sapp, argued there was “currently no need” for such intervention by the federal government and that local law enforcement was capable of “safeguarding public safety”.
In the court filing, California alleges that Hegseth acted “unlawfully” by circumventing the governor when he ordered the national guard into federal service.
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