A divided panel upheld the order returning the Guard to Gov. Gavin Newsom, finding the Los Angeles unrest did not amount to a rebellion. The administration, which withdrew the troops last year, had asked the court to dismiss the appeal.
A federal appeals court ruled on Friday that President Trump exceeded his legal authority in June 2025 when he took control of the California National Guard and sent it into Los Angeles during protests against immigration enforcement.
In a 2-1 decision in Newsom v. Trump (No. 25-3727), a Ninth Circuit panel affirmed a lower-court order that barred the deployment and directed the administration to return control of the Guard to Gov. Gavin Newsom. Judge Jennifer Sung wrote the opinion, joined by Judge Eric D. Miller. Judge Mark J. Bennett dissented. The ruling has little immediate practical effect, because the troops left Los Angeles last year, but it is binding precedent for future deployments in the nine Western states the circuit covers.
The administration’s position
On June 7, 2025, the president invoked 10 U.S.C. § 12406 and ordered 4,000 California Guard members into federal service for 60 days “to protect federal property and personnel,” in the court’s summary. The court’s record describes what preceded the order: protesters threw “concrete chunks, bottles of liquid, and other objects” at Federal Protective Service officers, and in Paramount and Compton some threw rocks and a Molotov cocktail, burned a vehicle and looted a gas station. The president’s memo stated that “to the extent that protests or acts of violence directly inhibit the execution of the laws, they constitute a form of rebellion.”
The administration argued that the federalization was justified both because the president was unable to execute federal law with regular forces, under § 12406(3), and because there was “a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States,” under § 12406(2). It also argued that courts may not second-guess the president’s determination that those conditions exist.
The administration initially prevailed. In June 2025, the same panel stayed the district court’s order, concluding that the president “likely acted within his authority in federalizing the National Guard under 10 U.S.C. § 12406(3).” The White House has said the troops were activated to protect federal personnel and property from “violent rioters.” On Dec. 31, after the Supreme Court ruled against a similar deployment in Illinois, Trump said he was withdrawing Guard troops from Los Angeles, Chicago and Portland for now. “We will come back, perhaps in a much different and stronger form, when crime begins to soar again – Only a question of time!” he wrote. In January, the administration moved to dismiss this appeal.
What the court held
The majority declined to dismiss. According to the court’s summary, the panel found that the appeal was not moot because a ruling could affect future federalization of the California Guard under similar circumstances, that the court and the parties had already invested substantial time, and that refusing dismissal would discourage a party from dropping appeals that might produce adverse precedent. It did dismiss the administration’s separate appeal over later extensions of the deployment.
On the merits, the court relied on the Supreme Court’s December 2025 order in Trump v. Illinois, which held that § 12406(3) applies only if the president first shows he has authority to execute the laws with the regular military and is unable to do so with those forces. The panel said the administration had made neither showing.
It then rejected the rebellion rationale. The court said its review is “highly deferential” but must at least ask whether the president’s determination was a colorable assessment of the facts. It acknowledged that “there were bad actors who committed serious breaches of the peace and acts of violence.” But it cited the trial judge’s finding of “no evidence of organized, as apart from sporadic or impromptu, violence.” “On this record,” Sung wrote, “a determination that the conditions in Los Angeles on June 7, 2025, constituted ‘a rebellion or danger of rebellion’ does not reflect a colorable assessment within a range of honest judgment.”
Because neither provision applied, the majority concluded that the order “exceeded the President’s statutory authority and encroached on Congress’s calling forth power, in violation of the constitutional separation of powers,” and that California was likely to win its Tenth Amendment claim as well.
Miller, in a concurrence, wrote that the administration forfeited its argument that California could not bring this type of claim, while noting there is “room to debate” the circuit precedent allowing it.
The dissent
Bennett, like Miller an appointee of Trump’s first term, said the panel should have granted the administration’s motion and let the case proceed to trial. He pointed to the “scant briefing on the effect of directly relevant intervening Supreme Court authority,” Trump v. Illinois, and said and the majority relied “primarily on outdated briefs prepared amid a shifting legal landscape.” By issuing a published opinion “that will bind future three-judge panels,” he wrote, “the majority disregards the cardinal principle of judicial restraint.” He also said California’s Tenth Amendment claim was barely briefed and is unlikely to succeed.
Reaction
“Today is a crucial day for the rule of law, upholding the Constitution, and defending democracy,” Newsom said in a statement. Attorney General Rob Bonta, whose office represents the state, said: “Deploying the National Guard in Los Angeles with no rhyme or reason was a clear example of federal overreach, and it will not be tolerated.”
Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law, told The Inquirer the ruling followed the Supreme Court’s Illinois decision. “The 9th Circuit said that for the same reasons the federalization and deployment of the California national guard violated federal law,” he said. “This seems a clear and straightforward application of a Supreme Court precedent that was directly on point.”
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Courthouse News Service. The Pentagon, the California attorney general’s office and the ACLU of Northern California did not respond to The Inquirer’s requests for comment.
What comes next
The administration can ask the full Ninth Circuit to rehear the case en banc or petition the Supreme Court for review. Because the order is a preliminary injunction, the underlying case continues before U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer in San Francisco. Breyer’s September 2025 ruling that the deployment violated the Posse Comitatus Act is the subject of a separate appeal.
Adaeze Monroe covers Congress, the White House and federal agencies, with a focus on what Washington’s decisions mean for California, for the Washington Bureau. More from Adaeze Monroe
