Police and national guards take measures as thousands of anti-ICE protesters are gathered outside of the Federal Building in Los Angeles, California on June 9, 2025 amid protests over immigration raids.
Tayfun Coskun | Anadolu | Getty Images
President Donald Trump on Wednesday appealed a federal judge’s ruling, which found that his deployment of National Guard troops and Marines to Los Angeles to engage in law enforcement activities was illegal.
The appeal came a day after Judge Charles Breyer said that Trump’s deployment of thousands of Guard troops and hundreds of Marines in June violated the Posse Comitatus Act, which generally bars U.S. military forces from engaging in domestic law enforcement actions.
Breyer’s ruling barred the 300 remaining Guard troops in Los Angeles from making arrests, searching locations, and conducting crowd control while they are stationed in Los Angeles.
His ruling, which came in response to a lawsuit by California Gov. Gavin Newsom, also prohibits similar law enforcement duties by Guard troops or military forces anywhere else in the state.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the media in the Oval Office at the White House on September 2, 2025 in Washington, DC.
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The judge had paused the enforcement of his decision in San Francisco federal court to give the Trump administration time to file an appeal of the ruling with the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.
The appeal comes as Trump is considering whether to deploy National Guard troops to Chicago and other cities, after having recently done so in Washington, D.C., to deal with what he claimed was rampant crime there.
Breyer’s ruling noted Trump’s prior threats to deploy the Guard and troops in other cities, writing that doing so would create “a national police force with the President as its chief.”
“President Trump’s recent executive orders and public statements regarding the National Guard raise serious concerns as to whether he intends to order troops to violate the Posse Comitatus Act elsewhere in California,” the judge wrote.
