California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) and the state’s attorney general filed their much-anticipated lawsuit over President Trump’s decision to send in California National Guard troops to Los Angeles to quell immigration protests, calling it an “unprecedented power grab.”
Filed in federal court in San Francisco on Monday afternoon, the suit asks a federal judge to block Trump’s authorization as an unconstitutional incursion into state authority under the 10th Amendment.
“One of the cornerstones of our Nation and our democracy is that our people are governed by civil, not military, rule,” the 22-page complaint reads.
“The Founders enshrined these principles in our Constitution that a government should be accountable to its people, guided by the rule of law, and one of civil authority, not military rule,” it continues.
As protests erupted in Los Angeles, Trump signed the order on Saturday authorizing the deployment of 2,000 National Guard troops.
Neither the state nor city officials requested the deployment, and Newsom formally asked the administration to rescind the announcement. Late Sunday, Newsom announced he would be filing the lawsuit.
Trump is the first president to deploy a state’s National Guard without the consent of a governor since President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965 sent troops to Alabama to protect civil rights protesters.
Beyond the constitutional argument, the lawsuit claims the statute Trump invoked to deploy the troops required Newsom’s consent, which he did not give.
“Only under the most exigent of circumstances can the President, over the objections of a State, call the National Guard into federal service,” the complaint reads.
The Los Angeles protests intensified over the weekend, devolving at times into violence.
White House officials have highlighted images of burning vehicles and clashes with law enforcement to make the case that the situation had gotten out of control, maintaining Trump intervened after the demonstrations had already escalated.
California has pinned the blame on the administration, insisting the deployment injected chaos into the situation.
“This was not inevitable. We’ll never know what might’ve been had the president left our state and local authorities to continue the important work they were already doing and were more than capable of doing,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta (D), whose office is suing alongside Newsom, said at a press briefing earlier Monday.
The demonstrations continued Monday, and the Pentagon has announced it is set to move about 700 Marines to the city.
The lawsuit is one of two California launched against the Trump administration Monday.
Earlier in the afternoon, Bonta’s office sued the Justice Department for threatening to revoke federal funding over a 16-year-old transgender track and field athlete who qualified over the weekend for the high school state championship meet.
