The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled on Friday that former President Donald Trump acted illegally when he ordered a deployment of California National Guard troops to Los Angeles amid protests last year. The court found that the president exceeded his statutory authority by assuming control over the National Guard without the proper constitutional basis, infringing on both state sovereignty and Congress’s authority.

The decision, issued by a 2-1 majority, overturned previous rulings that had allowed the deployment to proceed. Judges Eric D. Miller and Jennifer Sung formed the majority, with Sung, appointed by President Joe Biden, authoring the opinion. Judge Mark J. Bennett, a Trump appointee, dissented. The case concerned a lesser-known provision of federal law that the Trump administration had invoked to mobilize the troops, arguing that it permitted presidential control of state National Guard forces without activating the more demanding Insurrection Act.

The court rejected this interpretation, emphasizing the need for a clear, armed rebellion to justify such federal military intervention. The majority opinion noted there was no credible evidence supporting claims that Los Angeles faced a “violent, armed, organized, open and avowed uprising against the government as a whole.” Instead, the protests, which were largely peaceful, did not meet the high threshold required to authorize the president’s intervention under the statute. The court warned that allowing the administration's broad definition of “rebellion” could enable military action against nearly any form of resistance, including nonviolent demonstrations.

This ruling came after significant legal challenges and conflicting decisions in different federal courts. Earlier district court orders had temporarily blocked or allowed the deployment, while the Ninth Circuit initially sided with the Trump administration’s view last June, granting a deferential standard that made it difficult to challenge presidential troop deployments. That early decision was seen as a considerable expansion of executive power to use military forces domestically.

However, subsequent developments—including a dissenting opinion by Judge Jay Bybee, who highlighted the constitutional risks of federal overreach into state affairs, and a Supreme Court ruling in December—significantly curtailed that broad interpretation. The Supreme Court adopted an academic analysis limiting the president’s authority to call up National Guard troops only in scenarios where a rebellion had overwhelmed the military, leading to the withdrawal of federalized troops from Los Angeles.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta criticized the Trump administration’s actions as an attempt to improperly federalize state forces. The Ninth Circuit’s latest ruling reinforces the principle that federal military intervention within states must meet strict legal criteria and respect the traditional balance of federal-state authority.