What to know about legal battles over National Guard deployments : NPR
A member of the Texas National Guard stands at a military reserve training center October 7, 2025 in Elwood, Illinois.
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President Trump’s federalization and deployment of National Guard troops to Oregon and Illinois face two legal litmus tests — including one before the Supreme Court — that could be decided in the coming days.
At the heart of both challenges is the question of whether or not to defer to the president’s assessment that major cities in both places — Portland and Chicago — are lawless and in need of immediate military intervention to protect federal property and immigration agents, despite local leaders and law enforcement saying otherwise. Both deployments were made against the wishes of Democratic state governors and were quickly temporarily blocked by district courts.
On Monday, a panel divided on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a temporary restraining order put in place by a federal judge in Portland, siding with the Trump administration, but another temporary restraining order remains in effect.
This decision came a few days after Confirmation from the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals a similar blockage by an Illinois federal judge on the deployment of National Guard troops to Chicago. The Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to intervene.
Changes in both cases are expected in the coming days, in what has been a dizzying ping-pong of legal disputes around Trump’s use of the military domestically. several Democratic-run cities across the country. And while any decision will only impact troop deployment in an individual state, it could impact how courts rule on such cases in the future — and embolden the administration, legal experts say.
“This could be a pivotal week in terms of the broader legal battle over domestic deployments,” says Scott R. Anderson, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Brookings Institution and editor-in-chief of Lawfare.
The 9th Circuit and Portland, Oregon.
The 9th Circuit’s decision earlier this week only applies to one of two temporary restraining orders that U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut issued this month to block National Guard deployments — meaning troops still can’t take to Portland’s streets. But the the federal government requested Immergut to remove its second temporary command. A court hearing took place scheduled for Friday to discuss the dissolution of this order.
Karin J. Immergut, nominated for U.S. District Judge for the District of Oregon, attends a judicial nomination hearing held by the Senate Judiciary Committee October 24, 2018 in Washington, DC
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The 9th Circuit is also deciding whether to review the ruling issued earlier this week with a broader group of judges — and that decision could come before the Immergut deadline.
Trump said the 9th Circuit’s decision made him feel empowered to send the National Guard to any city where he deemed it necessary.
“That was the decision. I can send in the National Guard if I see problems,” Trump told reporters Tuesday. In recent days, Trump has renewed his interest in send troops to San Francisco.
Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola Marymount University Law School and an expert on constitutional law, is concerned about the 9th Circuit’s ruling of “permissible blindness to the facts.”
“He said [Trump] “I expect a broader group of 9th Circuit judges to say that we don’t need to be blind to what’s actually happening to give the Trump administration great deference.”
The Supreme Court and Chicago
At the same time, the Trump administration made an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court on whether National Guard troops can be deployed to Illinois, after the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a district court’s block.
It is unclear when or if the Supreme Court will issue a decision, although experts also expect it in the coming days.
The ruling, while not precedent-setting, will likely clarify the president’s authority to deploy federal military resources — and the degree of deference courts should show to his administration’s presentation of the facts — but only up to a point. Emergency rulings are typically short, without much motivation provided by judges, experts say.
“It kind of ends up forcing district and appellate courts to read the tea leaves of these interim orders to shed light on these much larger questions in very different factual environments, you know, maybe months in the future,” says Chris Mirasola, a professor of national security law at the University of Houston Law Center.
National Guard troops arrive at an immigration processing and detention center October 9, 2025 in Broadview, Illinois.
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He says that while the Supreme Court’s emergency rulings don’t apply broadly, in recent months some justices have begun treating them as if they do.
“I think what we’re going to have, at least in the medium term, is even more confusion than we’ve experienced so far,” he says.
But it’s unclear how the Supreme Court might intervene.
“I think this is a tougher case for the Supreme Court than some might think, who assume that the Supreme Court is just naturally inclined to the administration’s positions on things — and that’s the case in many contexts,” says the Brookings Institution’s Anderson.
He says that while it is common for courts to show deference to the president, it is also common to believe the facts presented by local courts.
“It’s a delicate, delicate situation here,” Anderson says.
What could this mean for possible future deployments?
These two expected decisions will only directly affect Portland or Chicago. But the implications of both – particularly those of the Supreme Court – could have implications for future litigation.
Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, says what’s particularly concerning is that the Justice Department has been expressly celebrating the high number of arrests by law enforcement in places like Chicagowhile continuing to assert that the military is needed to help.
“If the bar is so low that the president can resort to the military at a time when his administration is touting the effectiveness of civilian law enforcement, it becomes difficult to imagine a scenario in which he could not deploy the military,” she said.
Experts say these legal challenges are just the beginning of what is sure to be a long and winding path through the U.S. justice system.
“This is really just the first battle. There are a lot of legal issues that come up after that,” Anderson said.
