“The evidence at trial established that Defendants 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,” Senior U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer wrote in a 52-page order. “In short, Defendants violated the Posse Comitatus Act.”
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In the wake of the litigation, the Pentagon has withdrawn all but 300 troops, and this order does not force the remainder to leave. Instead, Judge Breyer’s narrow ruling orders the remainder to follow the nearly 150-year-old law.
“The injunction applies only to Defendants’ use of the National Guard in California, not nationally,” Breyer wrote. “Defendants are not required to withdraw the 300 National Guard troops currently stationed in Los Angeles, nor are they barred from using troops consistent with the Posse Comitatus Act.”
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“In fact, these violations were part of a top-down, systemic effort by Defendants to use military troops to execute various sectors of federal law (the drug laws and the immigration laws at least) across hundreds of miles and over the course of several months—and counting,” the ruling said. “The instructions to train Task Force 51 on the purported constitutional exception and thereby excuse unlawful military conduct came ‘all the way from the top’ of the Department of Defense.”
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Trial evidence showed that the task force knew that the Posse Comitatus Act prohibited these uses of the military, but the bullet points in red text were supposedly “constitutional exceptions” dictated from above the general.
“That instruction was incorrect,” Breyer wrote. “There is no exception to the Posse Comitatus Act for such conduct, and neither President Trump’s June 7 memorandum nor Secretary Hegseth’s June 23 memorandum changed that.”
The judge paused his ruling until Sept. 12 to make way for an inevitable appeal.
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“President Trump and Secretary Hegseth have stated their intention to call National Guard troops into federal service in other cities across the country—including Oakland and San Francisco, here in the Northern District of California—thus creating a national police force with the President as its chief,” the ruling states.
The Supreme Court and Ninth Circuit tied Breyer’s hands from offering more sweeping relief. With limited exceptions, the Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. CASA all but abolished nationwide injunctions earlier this year
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Although Trump routinely discusses using the military for civilian law enforcement, his Justice Department did not even claim the power to do so in court. Their legal defenses at trial involved denying Posse Comitatus Act violations and arguing that it could not be enforced through a civil injunction. If the ruling stands, it could serve as a blueprint for similar rulings across the country for other cities that Trump has placed in his crosshairs.
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