What to know about the legal battles over troop deployment

President Trump’s federal decision to deploy National Guard troops to both Oregon and Illinois faces a pair of legal tests — including one in the Supreme Court — that could be determined in the coming days.

At the heart of both challenges is whether to heed the president’s assessment that major cities in both places — Portland and Chicago — are lawless and need immediate military intervention to protect federal property and immigration officials, even though local leaders and law enforcement say otherwise. Both rollouts were conducted against the wishes of Democratic state governors, and were quickly blocked temporarily by district courts.

On Monday, a divided panel convened on Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals He overturned a temporary restraining order placed by a federal judge in Portland, siding with the Trump administration, but another temporary restraining order remains in effect.

This ruling came days after The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed A similar block from a federal judge in Illinois on the deployment of National Guard troops in Chicago. The Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court To intervene.

Action on both counts is expected in the coming days, in what has been a dizzying game of ping-pong for legal disputes over Trump’s use of the military domestically in the presidential election. Many Democratic-led cities across the country. Although any decision would only affect the deployment of troops in a particular country, it could affect how courts consider such cases — and embolden the administration, legal experts say.

“This could be a momentous week in terms of the larger legal battle over domestic deployments,” says Scott R. Anderson, a fellow at the nonpartisan Brookings Institution and senior editor of Lawfare magazine.

Ninth Circuit and Portland, Ore.

The Ninth Circuit’s decision earlier this week applies only to one of two temporary restraining orders U.S. District Judge Karen Immergut issued this month to prevent the deployment of the National Guard — meaning it is still not possible for troops to be on the streets in Portland. but The federal government requested Immergut to remove its second interim order. It was a court session Scheduled for Friday To discuss a solution to this matter.

The Ninth Circuit is also deciding whether or not to reconsider the ruling handed down earlier this week with a larger group of justices — and that decision could come before Emmergut’s deadline.

Trump said the Ninth Circuit’s decision made him feel empowered to send the National Guard to any city he deemed necessary.

“That was the decision. I can send in the National Guard if I see problems,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday. In recent days, Trump has renewed interest in it Send troops to San Francisco.

Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola Marymount University School of Law and an expert on constitutional law, is concerned by the Ninth Circuit’s ruling of “authoritative blindness to the facts.”

“It has been said that (Trump) can decide there is war when there are only bluebirds,” he says, suggesting that this is likely why there was an immediate call for a full review. “I fully expect a larger group of Ninth Circuit judges to say that we don’t have to be blind to what’s really going on in order to give the Trump administration great deference.”

Supreme Court and Chicago

At the same time, the Trump administration issued an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court on whether National Guard troops could be deployed in Illinois, after the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a district court’s ban.

It is not known when or if the Supreme Court will issue a decision, although experts expect one in the coming days as well.

This decision, while not setting a precedent, is likely to clarify the president’s authority to deploy federal military resources — and the extent to which courts respect his administration’s presentation of the facts — but only to an extent. Experts say emergency decisions are usually short, without many reasons given by judges.

“It ends up kind of putting the onus on district and appellate courts to read the details of those temporary orders to answer these much larger questions in very different real-world settings, you know, maybe months in the future,” says Chris Mirasola, a professor of national security law at the University of Houston Law Center.

He says that although the Supreme Court’s emergency rulings do not apply broadly, in recent months, some justices have begun to treat them as if they did.

“I think what we’re going to get in the medium term at least is a lot more confusion than we’ve seen so far,” he says.

But it is not clear how the Supreme Court would weigh this.

“I think the case for the Supreme Court is more difficult than some people might think, who go on to assume that the Supreme Court is naturally inclined toward the administration’s positions on matters — and that is the case in many contexts,” says Anderson of the Brookings Institution.

He says that although it is usual for courts to respect the president, it is also usual to believe the facts presented by domestic courts.

“This is a very difficult situation here,” Anderson says.

What could this mean for potential future deployments?

These two expected decisions will only directly affect Portland or Chicago. But the implications of both — especially what comes out of the Supreme Court — could have ripple effects in future lawsuits.

What’s particularly troubling is that the Justice Department has been Openly celebrating the high number of arrests by law enforcement in places like ChicagoWhile he still says the army is needed to help.

“If the bar is so low that a president can use the military while his administration is touting how effective civil law enforcement is, it becomes difficult to imagine a scenario in which he cannot deploy the military,” she says.

Experts say these legal challenges are just the beginning of what will surely be a long and winding road through the US court system.

“This is really just the first fight. There are a lot of legal questions that come after that,” Anderson says.

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