The Supreme Court docket has denied President Donald Trump’s request to raise a decrease court docket injunction towards his deployment of Nationwide Guard troops in Chicago and throughout Illinois to assist immigration enforcement operations.
In an unsigned order Tuesday, the court docket defined merely that the president has “didn’t determine a supply of authority that will permit the navy to execute the legal guidelines in Illinois.”
The ruling, by an obvious 6-3 vote, retains blocked the administration’s try to deploy 300 Illinois Nationwide Guard members to Chicago assigned to help federal immigration brokers and shield federal property whereas litigation continues.
It additionally calls into query the legality of present and future Guard deployments by Trump in different states as a part of his nationwide immigration crackdown. (The Washington, D.C., deployment is probably going not affected by this choice, authorized analysts stated, due to the distinctive nature of the federal district.)
Nationwide Guard members stroll on the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Broadview facility in Chicago, October 9, 2025.
Jeenah Moon/Reuters
Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch dissented.
The White Home stated nothing in at this time’s ruling “detracts” from Trump’s core agenda aimed toward defending federal personnel and implementing immigration legal guidelines.
White Home spokeswoman Abigail Jackson stated in an announcement in regards to the ruling, “[Trump] activated the Nationwide Guard to guard federal regulation enforcement officers, and to make sure rioters didn’t destroy federal buildings and property. Nothing in at this time’s ruling detracts from that core agenda.”
Democratic Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker praised the court docket’s choice.
“This is a crucial step in curbing the Trump Administration’s constant abuse of energy and slowing Trump’s march towards authoritarianism,” Pritzker stated in a collection of posts on X. “American cities, suburbs, and communities shouldn’t need to confronted masked federal brokers asking for his or her papers, judging them for the way they appear or sound, and residing in concern that President can deploy the navy to their streets.”
The court docket’s choice turned on the that means of a single phrase in Part 12406 of the federal code, which says a president can deploy members of a state’s Nationwide Guard when he’s “unable with the common forces to execute the legal guidelines of the USA.”
Trump administration attorneys argued that “common forces” embody federal regulation enforcement officers — resembling DHS and ICE brokers — and that they required reinforcements in Chicago to execute the legal guidelines.
However a majority of members of the court docket concluded “common forces” possible refers to active-duty navy, which might solely be legally deployed domestically in a slender record of circumstances, such to quell insurrections.
U.S. Supreme Court docket Constructing in Washington, December 10, 2025.
Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters
“Earlier than the President can federalize the Guard,” the court docket wrote, “he possible will need to have statutory or constitutional authority to execute the legal guidelines with the common navy and have to be ‘unable’ with these forces to carry out that operate.”
In brief: As a result of Trump had not first legally deployed common navy to assist regulation enforcement, he had no foundation to deploy the Guard, a minimum of below the federal regulation he invoked, the court docket stated.
President Donald Trump takes questions from journalists after saying the US Navy’s new Golden Fleet initiative, unveiling a brand new class of warships, at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Seaside, Florida, December 22, 2025.
Alex Brandon/AP
Beneath the Posse Comitatus Act, the navy is mostly prohibited from participating in home regulation enforcement, with a number of slender exceptions, together with deployments below the Rebel Act, which Trump has not invoked.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who agreed with the court docket’s choice however stated he would have accomplished so on narrower grounds, wrote a separate assertion to underscore that Trump has different authorized choices to guard federal personnel and property ought to he want to make use of them, together with use of the common armed forces.
“One obvious ramification of the Court docket’s opinion is that it may trigger the President to make use of the U.S. navy greater than the Nationwide Guard to guard federal personnel and property in the USA,” Kavanaugh noticed.
In a strongly worded dissent, Justice Samuel Alito stated the court docket had gone too far in limiting the president’s energy as commander in chief.
“No matter one might take into consideration the present administration’s enforcement of the immigration legal guidelines or the best way ICE has carried out its operations, the safety of federal officers from probably deadly assaults shouldn’t be thwarted,” Alito wrote.
Trump has described Chicago as a “battle zone” and fixated on protests towards immigration brokers conducting discipline operations and out of doors a migrant detention facility exterior the town.
Outdoors of Illinois, the president has deployed Guard members to Tennessee, Oregon, California and the nation’s capital. Troops are solely actively on the streets in Memphis, Los Angeles and D.C., based on the Division of Warfare.
ABC Information’ Michelle Stoddart and Oren Oppenheim contributed to this report.
