A federal judge in the United States has ruled that President Donald Trump’s decision to deploy the military to tamp down on protests in California was illegal.

On Tuesday, Judge Charles Breyer, who serves on the US District Court in Northern California, issued an injunction to block the deployment, though the ruling will not take effect until September 12 and no troops will be immediately withdrawn.

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Still, Breyer wrote that Trump’s deployment to southern California was “unprecedented”. He also questioned Trump’s rationale that the protests constituted a “rebellion” that needed to be quashed.

“There were indeed protests in Los Angeles, and some individuals engaged in violence,” Breyer wrote.

“Yet there was no rebellion, nor was civilian law enforcement unable to respond to the protests and enforce the law.”

The decision came as the result of a case known as Newsom v Trump, named for California Governor Gavin Newsom, whose administration filed the lawsuit in June.

A violation of Posse Comitatus

Newsom has emerged as one of Trump’s most prominent critics, and he has been floated as a possible Democratic contender in the 2028 presidential elections.

He and California Attorney General Rob Bonta had argued that Trump’s decision to send nearly 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 US Marines to the Los Angeles area in June violated the Posse Comitatus Act, which restricts the use of the military for civilian law enforcement.

“The Trump Administration far overreached its authority with its unprecedented and unlawful federalization of the California National Guard and deployment of military troops into our communities,” Bonta wrote in June.

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In Tuesday’s 52-page decision, Judge Breyer largely agreed with that assertion, ruling that Trump had indeed overstepped his presidential authority.

“Defendants violated the Posse Comitatus Act willfully,” Breyer wrote of the Trump administration.

“Defendants knowingly contradicted their own training materials, which listed twelve functions that the Posse Comitatus Act bars the military from performing.”

Breyer also expressed scepticism of the Trump administration’s “top-down” approach, describing it as a “complete sidelining of state and local authorities”.

June’s deployment was the first time since 1965 that a president had federalised National Guard troops to address unrest in a state without a governor’s permission.

The last time that happened, it was under President Lyndon B Johnson, and troops were sent to Selma, Alabama, to shield civil rights protesters from violence.

Protests against deportation push

In the case of California, protests erupted in and around Los Angeles in response to Trump’s strong-armed approach to immigration enforcement, which saw workplace raids happening around the state.

Trump has pledged to carry out the “largest deportation programme” in the history of the US, but critics have expressed concern that his treatment of immigrants violates their rights and places them in harm’s way.

On June 7, as the demonstrations swelled in Los Angeles, Trump issued a memo placing the state’s National Guard under his command, ostensibly for the purposes of protecting federal property.

He justified his action by comparing the protests to a rebellion.

“To the extent that protests or acts of violence directly inhibit the execution of the laws, they constitute a form of rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States,” the memo explained.

But Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass quickly denounced the decision as anti-democratic and said the presence of the troops inflamed the protests, rather than abating them.

“The federal government is now turning the military against American citizens,” Newsom said in a statement at the time. “Donald Trump is behaving like a tyrant, not a president. We ask the court to immediately block these unlawful actions.”

The federalisation was slated to last 60 days, but as Judge Breyer pointed out, at least 300 National Guard troops remain stationed in southern California under Trump’s command.

Breyer also pointed out that Trump has threatened to deploy federal troops to other parts of the country, including the midwestern metropolis of Chicago, Illinois.

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He quoted Trump as telling a cabinet meeting in August, “I have the right to do anything I want to do. I’m the president of the United States. If I think our country is in danger, and it is in danger in these cities, I can do it.”

But Breyer said that perspective does not reflect the separation of powers set out in the US Constitution.

While the Constitution establishes the president as the commander-in-chief, Breyer explained that title only comes into effect when the military is called into service — and that it is Congress, not the presidency, that has the “bulk of the federal authority over the military”.

“There is little support in the Founding Era [of the US] for an inherent constitutional authority for the President to call forth the militia, or to use the military generally, to execute the laws,” Breyer wrote.

The judge also dismissed the Trump administration’s claims that the executive branch should decide the limits of the Posse Comitatus Act, calling that assertion a “conflict of interest”.

Trump eyes Chicago for deployment

The Trump administration has repeatedly accused judges of bias against its immigration agenda.

Breyer’s ruling is limited to the troop deployment in California, and it places a stay on the injunction against the troop deployment there until noon local time on September 12.

That pause allows for an expected appeal from the Trump administration. Otherwise, the injunction would prevent the troops from participating in arrests, searches, crowd control and other forms of law enforcement normally barred under the Posse Comitatus Act.

Still, while Tuesday’s ruling is a setback for Trump’s far-reaching claims to presidential authority, the president has continued to threaten a similar military deployment to Chicago.

“Chicago is the worst and most dangerous city in the World, by far,” he wrote on social media on Tuesday morning. “I will solve the crime problem fast, just like I did in DC. Chicago will be safe again, and soon. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Already, in August, Trump deployed the National Guard to the streets of Washington, DC, on the basis that the capital was suffering from a “crime emergency“.

Federal law, however, largely allows such a deployment to Washington, DC, as the US government holds greater powers over the capital district.

But critics point out that a deployment to Chicago would likely raise many of the same constitutional concerns that the mobilisation in southern California did.

So far, Trump’s military deployments to address crime have only targeted Democrat-led cities.

Governor Newsom, who has repeatedly trolled Trump on social media in recent weeks, applauded Tuesday’s decisions as a rebuke against the president’s overreach.

“The ruling is clear: Trump is breaking the law by trying to create a national police force with himself as its chief,” Newsom wrote.