Federal appeals court backs Trump on National Guard deployment in DC

A federal appeals court has ruled in favor of the Trump administration’s bid to continue the deployment of the National Guard in Washington, D.C., signaling that it may find the troop’s deployment within the nation’s capital to be lawful. 

In a unanimous decision issued Wednesday, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals’ three-judge panel indefinitely paused a previous order issued by a lower court requiring President Donald Trump to send thousands of Guardsmen home after they were deployed to the nation’s capital. 

The move comes after the court had previously frozen the same order while it weighed whether to extend the pause for a longer period of time, with Trump now permitted to keep members of the National Guard in D.C. through the end of February.  

The appeals court determined that the city’s unique status as a federal district created by Congress makes it likely that Trump will be successful in a lawsuit brought by D.C.’s attorney general over the deployment of Guardsmen in the nation’s capital and other states, according to the order.

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In September, D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb sued the Trump administration over the troops’ deployment, arguing the move was an illegal infringement on the city’s law enforcement. Schwalb also previously asked a judge to pause the deployment as the case remained pending. 

Had the court not intervened, Judge Patricia Millett, an appointee of Former President Barack Obama, warned there would be a “profound level of disruption to the lives of thousands of service members who have been deployed for four months already.”

Millett also pointed to D.C.’s attorney general failing to identify “any ongoing injury to its statutory interests.”

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“The President’s order implicates a strong and distinctive interest in the protection of federal governmental functions and property within the Nation’s capital,” Millett added. 

The other two judges presiding over the panel were appointed to the bench by Trump during his first term in office. 

Despite Wednesday’s win for the Trump administration, the court also indicated that while the deployment of the Guard within D.C. is likely within the president’s realm of responsibility, the same cannot be said for cities that have not requested troops to be deployed.

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“Deploying an out-of-state Guard to a non-consenting State to conduct law enforcement would be constitutionally troubling to our federal system of government,” the order states.

However, the judges wrote their order was preliminary and their assessment of the case was “hurried,” but the panel added that the stay pending appeal is an “extraordinary remedy” that was the result of the Trump administration making “a strong showing that [the case] is likely to succeed” in its appeal of the lower court ruling. 

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“The Defendants have demonstrated on this preliminary record that they will likely succeed in showing that the guard deployments are lawful” under both local and federal law, the judges wrote. 

In a statement to Fox News Digital, the Office of the Attorney General for the District of Columbia expressed its confidence in the strength of the case, adding, “This is a preliminary ruling that does not resolve the merits. We look forward to continuing our case in both the District and appellate courts.”