CHICAGO– Attorney General Kwame Raoul, as part of a coalition of 26 states, urged the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to uphold a lower court’s ruling blocking the unlawful deployment of National Guard troops to Washington, D.C.
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|In their amicus brief filed today, Raoul and the coalition argue that the deployment undermines the sovereignty of states and local jurisdictions and threatens the foundational principle of American democracy that the military must not be deployed for domestic law enforcement purposes.
“The American people, regardless of the city or state in which they reside, should not live under threat of military occupation simply because they live in a jurisdiction that has fallen out of a president’s political favor,” Raoul said. “I am proud to have successfully blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to illegally deploy the National Guard in Illinois, and I join my fellow attorneys general in asking the court to uphold the injunction on the administration’s unlawful deployment in the District of Columbia.”
The U.S. Supreme Court rejected the Trump administration’s attempt to deploy the National Guard in Illinois after Raoul filed a lawsuit challenging the deployment. Lower courts have also repeatedly ruled against the administration’s deployments in American cities. Yet the president has continued the deployment in the District of Columbia while the district court’s injunction has been stayed pending appeal, and he has stated his intent to send troops to more American cities “one by one.”
The brief documents serious harm in states that have already experienced these deployments, including disrupted law enforcement operations, economic damage to local communities, diverted National Guard resources and increased civil unrest.
The coalition urges the D.C. Circuit to uphold the district court’s ruling and affirm that the president does not have the authority to deploy the National Guard as a domestic police force.
Attorney General Raoul is joined in filing the brief by the attorneys general of Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin, as well as the governors of Kansas, Kentucky and Pennsylvania.
