The Supreme Court on Tuesday said no to the Trump administration's plan to send National Guard troops to the Chicago area to help with its immigration policies, which is a big loss for the president's efforts to deploy troops in U.S. cities.
Reuters
The justices turned down the Republican administration's urgent request to overturn a decision by U.S. District Judge April Perry, who had stopped the troop deployment.
An appeals court had also refused to intervene. The Supreme Court took more than two months to make a decision.
Three justices—Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Neil Gorsuch—publicly disagreed with the court's decision.
The court's order isn't a final ruling, but it might influence other legal challenges against President Donald Trump's attempts to use the military in other cities led by Democrats.
The majority opinion said, "At this early stage, the government hasn't shown where the military gets the permission to carry out laws in Illinois."
Justice Brett Kavanaugh agreed with blocking the Chicago troop deployment, but he would have given the president more room to deploy troops in future situations.
This result is a rare loss for Trump at the Supreme Court, especially since he has had many wins in emergency appeals since he came back to office in January.
The court, which is mostly made up of conservative judges, has allowed Trump to ban transgender individuals from the military, take back billions of federal funds approved by Congress, take strong action against immigrants, and remove Senate-confirmed leaders of independent federal agencies.
The White House hasn't yet responded to an email asking for a comment.
In a dissent, Alito and Thomas said the court had no reason to reject Trump's argument that the administration couldn't enforce immigration laws without help from troops.
Gorsuch said he would have supported the government based on the statements of federal law enforcement officials.
In California, a judge in September ruled that sending troops to the Los Angeles area was against the law.
At that time, only 300 of the thousands of troops sent there were still present, and the judge didn't order them to leave.
The Trump administration has appealed those California and Oregon rulings to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.