The judge postponed the impact of her decision until Dec. 11 to give the Trump administration time to appeal her decision.
A federal judge ruled Thursday that President Donald Trump’s deployment of 2,000 National Guard troops to Washington, D.C., was illegal, concluding he lacks authority to send in troops “for the deterrence of crime.”
U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb said that while Trump may be the commander in chief of the Guard, his power is constrained by federal laws that limit how those troops can be federalized and deployed, particularly in Washington, D.C., which is controlled by Congress.
“The Court rejects Defendants’ fly-by assertion of constitutional power, finding that such a broad reading of the President’s Article II authority would erase Congress’s role in governing the District and its National Guard,” Cobb wrote in a 61-page ruling.
The Biden-appointed judge also concluded that the Pentagon lacked authority to send 1,000 out-of-state National Guard troops into the district to assist with the law enforcement mission.
Cobb postponed the impact of her decision until Dec. 11 to give the Trump administration time to appeal her decision. However, her decision lands just as the Supreme Court is set to issue its own ruling on the deployment of the National Guard to the Chicago area. Federal appeals courts are also weighing deployments in Portland and Los Angeles.
Trump has described large-scale violence and chaos to justify the deployments, saying the troops are necessary to protect federal functions, despite the fervent objections of state and local leaders.