President Donald Trump’s fight to deploy National Guard troops into American cities against the will of local elected officials has reached the U.S. Supreme Court for the first time — and Illinois is right in the middle of it.
Solicitor General John Sauer asked the high court Friday to intervene in Trump’s legal battle with Illinois and Chicago, seeking an order that would let Trump continue the deployment of hundreds of Illinois and Texas National Guard troops he triggered earlier this month.
Sauer told the justices that U.S. District Judge April Perry in Chicago “impermissibly” substituted her judgment for Trump’s on military matters and accepted an “implausibly rosy assessment” from state and local officials when she originally blocked the deployment Oct. 9.
Now, Sauer argued, the lives of federal officers have been jeopardized both by Perry’s order and Thursday’s ruling from the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that mostly kept it in place.
“A federal district court lacks not only the authority but also the competence to wrest control of the military chain of command from the commander in chief,” Sauer wrote.
Perry was nominated to the bench in 2024 by President Joe Biden. The appeals court ruling came from a panel of three judges nominated by Presidents George H.W. Bush, Barack Obama and Trump himself.
In an 18-page opinion Thursday, that panel concluded that “the facts do not justify the president’s actions in Illinois” and that “political opposition is not rebellion.”
It’s not clear when the Supreme Court will rule on Trump’s request. It asked Illinois and Chicago to respond by Monday at 4 p.m., meaning deployment will likely remain blocked at least through the weekend.
The application will likely be handled initially by Justice Amy Coney Barrett. She oversees the 7th Circuit, where she once served as a judge. The 7th Circuit is made up of Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin.
Legal battles over guard deployment have also been brewing in California and Oregon, but Illinois’ lawsuit is the first to reach the Supreme Court.
Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat and likely 2028 presidential candidate, said in a statement that Trump “will keep trying to invade Illinois with troops — and we will keep defending the sovereignty of our state.
“Militarizing our communities against their will is not only un-American but also leads us down a dangerous path for our democracy,” Pritzker said.
U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, in a similar comment, said “our leaders, our communities and multiple judges have made it clear: We don’t need troops in Chicago.”
Duckworth, also a Democrat, cited the 7th Circuit’s “political opposition is not rebellion” line, which has been picked up as a mantra of Trump’s opponents since that court’s ruling.
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, another Democrat, said his office “remains steadfast in our commitment to upholding the rule of law, and we will vigorously oppose the Trump administration’s continued efforts to undo” the earlier court rulings.
Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth earlier this month ordered 300 members of the Illinois National Guard and 400 members of the Texas National Guard into a “protective mission” meant to safeguard federal personnel and property around Chicago.
Illinois and Chicago sued Oct. 6 and asked Perry to block the deployment. She did so three days later, finding that the Trump administration’s “perception of events” around Chicago is “simply unreliable.”
Lawyers in the case had given Perry incompatible portraits of the events on the ground. Ultimately, she pointed to “four separate, unrelated legal decisions from different neutral parties” that had recently been delivered at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse that “all cast significant doubt” on the Trump administration’s “credibility and assessment.”
Sauer wrote that Perry “acknowledged that violence against federal officers and property has occurred, but sought, indefensibly, to minimize it — refusing to credit sworn declarations from federal officials and instead accepting the implausibly rosy assessment of state and local officials.”
Much of Sauer’s brief recounts the same claims presented to Perry and the 7th Circuit. It claims a “disturbing and recurring pattern” has developed in states where Trump has sought to deploy National Guard troops.
He wrote that “federal agents’ efforts are met with prolonged, coordinated, violent resistance,” prompting only “tepid support from local forces.”
“They are often left to fend for themselves in the face of violent, hostile mobs,” Sauer wrote.
The solicitor general even seemed to acknowledge the case of a Chicago couple who had been charged with assaulting officers outside U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s facility in Broadview. The couple made headlines because they were found to be carrying loaded semiautomatic pistols, but they carried them lawfully.
In an extremely unusual event at Chicago’s federal courthouse, a grand jury refused to hand up an indictment against the pair.
But, Sauer argued, “in the current climate of hostility to federal law enforcement in Chicago — stoked by local political leaders, including the governor and the mayor — a grand jury’s decision not to indict a person accused of assaulting a federal officer is hardly proof that the assault did not occur.”