AG Brown joins opposition to Trump’s unlawful National Guard deployment to Chicago

Attorney General Nick Brown has joined a coalition of 24 attorneys general and governors in filing a brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in support of Illinois against President Trump’s unlawful, unconstitutional, and undemocratic deployment of the National Guard without approval from the state’s governor.

The coalition’s brief says the president’s actions break the law and threaten one of America’s most important principles — that our freedom depends on the subordination of the military to civilian authority — while also threatening state sovereignty and core constitutional principles of federalism.

In recent months, the Trump administration has repeatedly made false claims to justify ordering the National Guard into communities throughout the country to usurp the role of local law enforcement. First California, then Washington, D.C., recently Oregon, and now Illinois. The coalition’s brief makes clear that this violates the Constitution and federal law.

“Every state, red and blue, should be pushing back against the president’s illegal use of the military to intimidate Americans,” said Brown. “It’s terrible that we have to spend this much time protecting Americans from their own president, but there is no other option with so much at stake for our future.”

The brief urges the appeals court to reject the Trump administration’s request to move forward with the deployment. It explains that using federal troops in civilian communities is unlawful and harms both public safety and trust. The filing warns that turning the military into a domestic police force would blur the line between civilian and military power — the very abuse the Founders sought to prevent when creating our democracy.

Although it allowed for the federalization of the Guard during the pendency of the stay request, the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit on Saturday denied the Trump administration's request for an immediate administrative stay of the portion of the district court's decision that barred the deployment of any federalized National Guard in Illinois.

Brown and other attorneys general are calling on the court to deny the Trump administration’s request for a broad stay pending appeal, which would allow troops to be deployed to Chicago. The brief urges the Court of Appeals to uphold the lower court’s ruling that stopped this encroachment by the Trump administration, and to protect the balance of power between the states and the federal government.

A copy of the brief can be found here.

Joining Brown in filing the brief are the attorneys general of Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawai‘i, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Vermont. The governors of Kansas, Kentucky and Pennsylvania also joined the filing.