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In June 2025, armed federal agents in paramilitary gear began conducting brutal immigration raids in Southern California, spreading fear and devastation through communities. The people of Los Angeles came together in overwhelmingly peaceful protests against their neighbors being hauled from their homes and workplaces. In response, President Trump forcibly took control of thousands of members of the California National Guard and deployed them—along with active-duty military troops—to quell the protests and later to accompany federal agents on operations in Southern California .

The Governor and state of California filed suit against the President, the Secretary of Defense, and the Defense Department, challenging as unlawful both the President’s forced activation of the California National Guard and the activities troops were ordered to carry out.

The ACLU, its three California affiliates, and other free-speech organizations filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of California with the Ninth Circuit. As our brief explains, the President’s decision to deploy federal troops in response to the protests in Los Angeles would have shocked the founders of this country. The founding generation knew, from history and personal experience, that using federal military forces to regulate the civilian population posed a dire threat to individual liberties. Limiting the president’s power to turn the military upon the people was among the Founders’ foremost concerns when they drafted the Constitution and enacted the United States’ earliest laws.

Our brief also explains that deploying federal troops to suppress protest is incompatible with the First Amendment. Protest is essential to the American system of self-governance—part of the fabric of our society. Courts have long recognized that the government is responsible for facilitating lawful protest, and any response to unlawful activity that occurs during a protest must be narrowly tailored to ensure that it does not silence protected speech.

We urged the court to find that President Trump’s deployment of federal troops to suppress political opposition was unlawful.