A federal judge ruled Tuesday that the Trump administration broke the law in its use of the military in Los Angeles. If upheld on appeal, the ruling will stand as a check on President Donald Trump’s use of the military for domestic law enforcement and serve as a broader reminder that Trump being commander in chief of the military doesn’t make him a national chief of police.
Sitting in San Francisco, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer said the administration violated the Posse Comitatus Act. The 1878 law prohibits the U.S. military from executing domestic laws.
Despite that prohibition, Breyer wrote, the federal government has “systematically used armed soldiers (whose identity was often obscured by protective armor) and military vehicles to set up protective perimeters and traffic blockades, engage in crowd control, and otherwise demonstrate a military presence in and around Los Angeles.” Breyer is a Clinton appointee and brother of retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.
His analysis in a 52-page ruling led him to issue an injunction barring the government from:
deploying, ordering, instructing, training, or using the National Guard currently deployed in California, and any military troops heretofore deployed in California, to execute the laws, including but not limited to engaging in arrests, apprehensions, searches, seizures, security patrols, traffic control, crowd control, riot control, evidence collection, interrogation, or acting as informants, unless and until [government] Defendants satisfy the requirements of a valid constitutional or statutory exception, as defined herein, to the Posse Comitatus Act. Breyer noted that his injunction only applies in California, not nationally, and that the government doesn’t have to withdraw the 300 guard troops currently stationed in L.A., nor is it barred from using troops consistent with federal law. The judge also said his injunction won’t take effect until noon Sept. 12, which gives the administration time to appeal. In related litigation, a federal appeals court panel previously lifted a temporary restraining order that Breyer had issued against the deployment itself. Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in the Trump administration’s legal cases.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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