A federal appeals court has permanently nixed a California law that would have forced ICE agents to wear identification, saying that the state can’t regulate actions by the federal government.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday agreed with the Trump administration that the California law violated the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause by interfering with federal officers’ duties.
The court previously had blocked the law in April.
“As before, we conclude … the No Vigilantes Act attempts to directly regulate the United States in its performance of governmental functions,” Judge Mark J. Bennett wrote. “No set of circumstances exist under which the Act would be valid.”
Trump officials cheered the ruling. First Assistant US Attorney for the Central District Bill Essayli condemned California on Wednesday.
“Huge win for the Supremacy Clause,” Essayli said. “California continues to violate the U.S. Constitution, and we will continue to hold them accountable.”
The Justice Department had sued to block the ID requirement alongside a related law attempting to ban masks for federal agents and local police last fall. A federal judge blocked the mask rule but had let the ID requirement proceed.
Now, the appellate court has stepped in to invalidate the ID rules.
“If a state law directly regulates the governmental conduct of the United States without congressional authorization, it is void irrespective of whether the regulated activities are essential to federal functions or operations, and irrespective of the degree to which the state law interferes with such functions or operations,” Bennett wrote. --->READ MORE HERE
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| Tia Dufour/DHSgov/Wikimedia Commons |
A federal appellate court shot down a California law on Wednesday that sought to require ICE agents to show identification while conducting immigration operations in the state.
In its unanimous ruling, a three-judge panel for the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals held that Section 10 of the state’s No Vigilantes Act violates the U.S. Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, which specifies that federal law supersedes state law. The panel was comprised of Judge Jacqueline Nguyen, an Obama appointee, and Judges Mark Bennett and Daniel Collins, both Trump appointees.
According to The Hill, the Justice Department sued the Golden State last year after Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the No Vigilantes Act, “which demands that plainclothes law enforcement officers operating in California ‘shall visibly display identification.'” In conjunction with California’s No Secret Police Act — “which banned federal law enforcement officers from wearing masks while carrying out operations in the state” — “the law took effect on Jan. 1 and required officers to show identification while performing their duties.”
The 9th Circuit previously granted the Trump administration’s emergency request to block the contested statute while the court considered the merits of the issue.
In affirming that blockade, Bennett and his colleagues concluded that the Trump administration is “certain to succeed” on the merits of its supremacy clause argument because Section 10 of the No Vigilantes Act “attempts to directly regulate the United States in its performance of governmental functions, and Congress has not authorized such regulation.” The Supremacy Clause, the Trump appointee noted, explicitly bars states “from directly regulating federal operations even when regulating state operations in the same manner.” --->READ MORE HERE
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