Supreme Court Rejects Trump Bid To Deploy National Guard In Chicago

The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected Trump’s emergency request to allow National Guard troops to be deployed in Chicago, dealing a setback to the admin’s attempts to curtail high crime rates in major cities.

The 6-3 decision left in force a judge’s ruling that has blocked the deployment since Oct. 9.

“At this preliminary stage, the government has failed to identify a source of authority that would allow the military to execute the laws in Illinois,” the majority said.

The government hadn’t shown the president could legally “federalize the Guard in the exercise of inherent authority to protect federal personnel and property in Illinois.”

It is an unusual loss on the Supreme Court’s emergency docket for the Trump administration.

In more than 20 other emergency appeals this year, the administration has won short-term rulings that allowed Trump to swiftly enact an array of policies that lower courts had blocked.

Justice Samuel Alito dissented from the high court’s ruling Tuesday, saying he had “serious doubts” about the majority’s reasoning.

“The Court fails to explain why the President’s inherent constitutional authority to protect federal officers and property is not sufficient to justify the use of National Guard members in the relevant area for precisely that purpose,” Alito wrote, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas.

Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote a separate dissent, contending that the challengers to the National Guard deployment – the state of Illinois and the city of Chicago – had forfeited the argument about the meaning of “regular forces” by failing to present that issue in the lower courts.

Trump contends military force is needed to protect federal immigration agents from what he claims are violent protests.

The court deliberated over the case for more than two months, an unusually lengthy review for a request that claimed government officials were facing an imminent threat.

Trump told the justices in his Oct. 17 application that troops were needed “to prevent ongoing and intolerable risks to the lives and safety of federal personnel.”

Bloomberg reports that the case marked the high court’s first look at Trump’s fight to dispatch troops to cities where his immigration crackdown has drawn widespread protests.

The ruling means Trump, at least for now, can’t deploy hundreds of troops in the Chicago area.

The case is Trump v. State of Illinois, 25a443.