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The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals handed command of Oregon National Guard troops to the president Monday, further raising the stakes in the ongoing multifront judicial battle over military deployments to cities across the U.S.

A three-judge appellate panel — including two members appointed by Trump during his first term — found that the law “does not limit the facts and circumstances that the President may consider” when deciding whether to dispatch soldiers domestically.

The judges found that when ordering a deployment, “The President has the authority to identify and weigh the relevant facts.”

The ruling was a stark contrast to a lower-court judge’s finding earlier this month.

U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut of Portland previously called the president’s justification for federalizing Oregon troops “simply untethered to the facts” in her Oct. 4 temporary restraining order.

The appellate judges said they were guided by a precedent set in the 9th Circuit this summer, when California tried and failed to wrest back control of federalized soldiers in and around Los Angeles.

Another proceeding in California’s case is scheduled before the appellate court this week and the court’s earlier decision could be reversed. At the same time, an almost identical deployment in Illinois is under review by the Supreme Court.

For now, exactly which troops can deploy in Portland remains bitterly contested in U.S. District court, where Immergut blocked the administration from flooding Portland with Guardsmen from California.

The issue is likely to be decided by Supreme Court later this fall.

The judges who heard the Oregon case outlined the dueling legal theories in their opinions. The two members of the bench who backed Trump’s authority over the troops argued the law is straightforward.

“The President’s decision in this area is absolute,” wrote Judge Ryan D. Nelson, a Trump appointee, in a concurrence arguing that the court had overstepped its bounds in taking the case at all.

“Reasonable minds will disagree about the propriety of the President’s National Guard deployment in Portland,” Nelson wrote. “But federal courts are not the panacea to cure that disagreement—the political process is (at least under current Supreme Court precedent).”

Susan P. Graber, a Clinton appointee, said the appellate court had veered into parody.

“Given Portland protesters’ well-known penchant for wearing chicken suits, inflatable frog costumes, or nothing at all when expressing their disagreement with the methods employed by ICE, observers may be tempted to view the majority’s ruling, which accepts the government’s characterization of Portland as a war zone, as merely absurd,” she wrote in her stinging dissent.

But the stakes of sending armed soldiers to American cities based on little more than “propaganda” are far higher, she wrote.

“I urge my colleagues on this court to act swiftly to vacate the majority’s order before the illegal deployment of troops under false pretenses can occur,” Graber wrote. “Above all, I ask those who are watching this case unfold to retain faith in our judicial system for just a little longer.”

President Trump has often locked horns with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, with the once left-leaning court putting a persistent drag on his first-term agenda.

And now, even after remaking the bench with his own appointees, the president is still tangling with the West Coast’s federal appellate court — a situation poised to boil over as the circuit juggles multiple challenges to his use of the National Guard to police American streets.

“I appointed the judge and he goes like that — I wasn’t served well,” Trump told reporters Sunday, lashing out at U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut of Portland after she temporarily blocked the deployment federalized troops.

“To have a judge like that, that judge ought to be ashamed of himself,” Trump said, referring to Immergut, who is a woman.

The president has long railed against judges who rule against him, calling them “monsters,” “deranged,” and “radical” at various points in the past.

Trump has also occasionally sniped at conservative jurists, including U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, whom he called “disgraceful” after the court rejected his bid to overturn the 2020 election.

But this weekend’s spat marked a shift in his willingness to go after his own appointees — a turn experts say could become much sharper as his picks to the appellate bench test his ambition to put boots on the ground in major cities across the U.S.

“The fact that a pretty conservative judge ruled the way she did is an indication that some conservative judges would rule similarly,” said Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University and a constitutional scholar at the Cato Institute.

The 9th Circuit handed the administration an early victory in the troop fight this spring, finding that courts must give “a great level of deference” to the president to decide whether facts on the ground warrant military intervention.

That ruling is set to be reviewed by a larger appellate panel, and could ultimately be reversed. The circuit is also now set to review a September decision barring federalized troops in California from aiding in civilian law enforcement, as well as Immergut’s temporary restraining order blocking the deployment over the weekend.

In the meantime, the 9th Circuit’s June decision has served as a guidepost for states seeking to limit what Oregon called a “nationwide campaign to assimilate the military into civilian law enforcement.”

“That decision is binding, and it does require a substantial degree of deference on the factual issues,” Somin said. “[But] when what the president does is totally divorced from reality, that limit is breached.”

Immergut appeared to agree, saying in her ruling that circumstances in Portland this fall were significantly different than those in L.A. in the spring. While some earlier protests did turn violent, she wrote, recent pickets outside Portland’s ICE headquarters have featured lawn chairs and low energy.

“Violence elsewhere cannot support troop deployments here, and concern about hypothetical future conduct does not demonstrate a present inability to execute the laws using nonmilitary federal law enforcement,” the judge wrote, addressing the 9th Circuit decision.

“The President is certainly entitled ‘a great level of deference,’” Immergut continued. “But ‘a great level of deference’ is not equivalent to ignoring the facts on the ground. … The President’s determination was simply untethered to the facts.”

But exactly where the appellate court may draw the line on presidential fact-finding is tricky, experts said.

“How much deference is owed to the president? That’s something we’re all talking about,” said John C. Dehn, a professor at Loyola University Chicago School of Law.

Whether courts can review the president’s judgment at all is a matter that splits even some of the president’s most conservative judicial picks from his current justice department attorneys.

So far, Trump has relied on an esoteric subsection of the U.S. Code for the authority to send soldiers on immigration raids and to control crowds of protesters.

Dehn and others have characterized that reading of the code as semantic and divorced from its legal context.

“They’re looking at the words in a vacuum and arguing the broadest possible meaning they could can think of,” Dehn said. “The administration is not engaged in good faith statutory interpretation — they’re engaged in linguistic manipulation of these statues.”

Immegur agreed, quoting Supreme Court precedent saying “[i]nterpretation of a word or phrase depends upon reading the whole statutory text.”

For some conservative legal scholars, Trump appointees’ willingness to push back on repeated deployments could signal a limit — or a dangerous new escalation in the administration’s attacks on jurists who defy them.

“It’s obvious the administration is trying to do this on a bigger scale,” Somin said. “Ideally we would not rely on litigation alone to deal with it.”

He’s never held public office or donned a judge’s robes, but an arch-conservative Los Angeles County attorney is racing toward confirmation on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, accelerating the once-liberal court’s sharp rightward turn under President Trump.

A competitive target shooter with a background in a cryptocurrency, Eric Tung was approached by the White House Counsel’s Office on March 28 to replace Judge Sandra Segal Ikuta, a Bush appointee and one of the court’s most prominent conservatives, who is taking senior status.

A new father and still a relative unknown in national legal circles, Tung found an ally in pal Mike Davis, a reputed “judge whisperer” in Trump’s orbit. Speaking to the New York Post in mid-March, Davis touted Tung as Ikuta’s likely successor.

The Pasadena lawyer appeared on a Federalist Society panel at the Reagan Library this year, debating legal efforts to restrain “ ‘agents’ of the left.”

“Eric is a Tough Patriot, who will uphold the Rule of Law in the most RADICAL, Leftist States like California, Oregon, and Washington,” Trump wrote on Truth Social when the nomination was announced in July.

The response from California senators was apoplectic.

“Mr. Tung believes in a conception of the Constitution that rejects equality and liberty, and that would turn back the clock and continue to exclude vast sections of the American public from enjoying equal justice under the law,” said Sen. Alex Padilla.

In the past, senators from a potential judge’s home state could block a nomination — a custom Trump exploded when he steamrolled Washington senators to install Eric D. Miller to the 9th Circuit in 2019.

Tung has been tight-lipped about his ascent to the country’s busiest circuit. He did not respond to inquiries from The Times.

A Woodland Hills native and conservative Catholic convert, Tung made a name for himself as a champion of the crypto industry and elegant legal writer, frequently lecturing at California law schools and headlining Federalist Society events.

After graduating from Yale and the University of Chicago Law School, he clerked for Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Neil Gorsuch before joining the white-shoe law firm Jones Day, a feeder to the Trump Justice Department.

Many lauded the nomination when it was first announced, including the National Asian Pacific American Bar Assn.

“Eric is a highly regarded originalist who would follow in the footsteps of Justice Scalia, for whom he clerked,” said Carrie Campbell Severino, president of the Judicial Crisis Network, a conservative legal advocacy group.

Groups on the left, including Alliance for Justice, Demand Justice and the National Council of Jewish Women, have lobbied against putting Tung on the appellate court.

If confirmed, Tung will be Trump’s 11th appointment to the 9th Circuit, a court the president vowed to remake when he first took office in 2017.

During Trump’s first term, Judge Ikuta was part of a tiny conservative minority on the famously lopsided bench, a legacy of President Jimmy Carter’s decision to double the size of the circuit and pack it with liberal appointees.

Many Trump judges ruffled feathers at first, and most have shown themselves to be “pretty conservative and pretty hard nosed,” said Carl Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law.

Their ranks include the former Hawaii Atty. Gen. Judge Mark J. Bennett, as well as the circuit’s first openly gay member, Judge Patrick J. Bumatay.

Trump’s appellate appointees helped deliver him several controversial recent decisions, including the finding in June that Trump had broad discretion to deploy the military on American streets. Another 9th Circuit ruling this month found that the administration could all-but eliminate the country’s refugee program via an indefinite “pause.”

But they’ve also clashed sharply with the Justice Department’s attorneys, even in cases where the appellate panel ultimately sided with the administration.

That’s what the president is trying to avoid this time around — particularly with his picks headed in the west, experts said.

“People on the far right are pushing [Trump] to have people who will be ‘courageous’ judges — in other words, do things that are really unpopular that Trump likes,” Tobias said.

Tung may fit the bill. In addition to his crypto chops and avowed support for constitutional originalism, he has been an ardent defender of religious liberty and an opponent of affirmative action. He shoots competitively as part of the International Defensive Pistol Assn.

Both Tung and his wife Emily Lataif have close ties to the anti-abortion movement. Tung worked extensively with the architect of Texas’ heartbeat bill; Lataif interned for the Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion policy group that seeks to make IUDs and emergency contraception illegal and opposes many forms of in-vitro fertilization.

“Emily is the epitome of grace under pressure, as was evidenced … when she and Eric had to evacuate their home during the California wildfires, only days after welcoming their first child,” Severino said. “She’s worked at the highest levels, from the White House to the executive team at Walmart, and her talent is matched only by her kindness and love for her family.”

When asked by Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware whether he believed IVF was protected by the Constitution, Tung declined to answer.

It wasn’t the only question the nominee ducked. Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee accused Tung of giving only “sham answers” to their inquiries, both in chambers and through written follow-ups.

After pressing him repeatedly for his position on landmark cases including Obergefell vs. Hodges and Lawrence vs. Texas — privacy right precedents Justice Clarence Thomas wrote should be reconsidered after the fall of Roe vs. Wade — Sen. Adam Schiff pushed the nominee for his opinion on Loving vs. Virginia, the 1967 case affirming interracial marriage.

“Was that wrongly decided?” the California lawmaker asked the aspiring judge.

“Senator, my wife and I are an interracial couple, so if that case were wrongly decided I would be in big trouble,” Tung said.

“You’re willing to tell us you believe Loving was correctly decided, but you’re not willing to say the other decisions were correctly decided,” Schiff said. “That seems less originalist and more situational.”

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Thursday that California’s policy of background checks for bullet-buyers violates the 2nd Amendment, effectively killing a 2016 ballot measure meant to strengthen the state’s notoriously stringent gun laws.

Writing for two of the three judges on the appellate panel, Judge Sandra Segal Ikuta said the law “meaningfully constrains the right to keep operable arms” guaranteed by the constitution, by forcing California gun owners to re-authorize before each ammunition purchase.

“The right to keep and bear arms incorporates the right to operate them, which requires ammunition,” the judge wrote.

The ruling is the latest blow to statewide efforts to regulate guns.

Both the 9th Circuit and the U.S. Supreme Court have significantly restricted gun control measures in just the last decade. Two of the three controlling cases Ikuta cited in her decision were handed down in the last three years.

Thursday’s ruling drew primarily from a 2022 Supreme Court decision that sharply limited gun control measures passed by individual states, finding that such laws must be “consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”

California had attempted to sidestep that test in part by pointing to Reconstruction-era loyalty oaths some Americans were required to make before buying guns.

But that didn’t sway the panel.

“The problem of ensuring that citizens are loyal to the United States by requiring a one-time loyalty oath is not analogous to California’s recurring ammunition background check rules,” Ikuta wrote. “These laws are not relevant.”

Judge Jay Bybee disagreed.

“California, which has administered the scheme since 2019, has shown that the vast majority of its checks cost one dollar and impose less than one minute of delay,” the judge wrote in his dissent. “The majority has broken with our precedent and flouted the Supreme Court’s guidance.”

Data from the California Department of Justice’s Bureau of Firearms shows the program approved 89% of purchases, most within about three minutes. It rejected slightly more than 10% on technicalities that were later resolved, and fewer than one percent because the buyer was banned.

Although the 2022 case had “ushered in a new era for Second Amendment jurisprudence,” Bybee wrote, it didn’t preclude the bullet-background check scheme.

“We have repeatedly rejected the majority’s boundless interpretation of the Second Amendment,” Bybee wrote. “It is difficult to imagine a regulation on the acquisition of ammunition or firearms that would not ‘meaningfully constrain’ the right to keep and bear arms under the majority’s new general applicability standard.”

It was not immediately clear if the ruling would lift restrictions in place for the last six years. California leaders have not yet said whether they would appeal the decision.

Gun rights activists were thrilled by the news.

“Today’s ruling is a major step forward for the Second Amendment and the rights of every law-abiding citizen,”said Dan Wolgin, CEO of Ammunition Depot, one of the plaintiffs in the case.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided Thursday to leave troops in Los Angeles in the hands of the Trump administration while California’s objections are litigated in federal court, finding the president had broad — though not “unreviewable” — authority to deploy the military in American cities.

“We disagree with Defendants’ primary argument that the President’s decision to federalize members of the California National Guard … is completely insulated from judicial review,” Judge Mark J. Bennett of Honolulu, a Trump appointee, wrote for the appellate panel. “Nonetheless, we are persuaded that, under longstanding precedent interpreting the statutory predecessor … our review of that decision must be highly deferential.”

Legal scholars said the decision was expected — particularly as the 9th Circuit has moved from the country’s most liberal to one of its most “balanced” since the start of Trump’s first term.

“It’s critically important for the people to understand just how much power Congress has given the president through these statutes,” said Eric Merriam, a professor of legal studies at Central Florida University and an appellate military judge.

“Judges for hundreds of years now have given extreme deference to the president in national security decisions, [including] use of the military,” the expert went on. “There is no other area of law where the president or executive gets that level of deference.”

The appellate panel sharply questioned both sides during Tuesday’s hearing, appearing to reject the federal government’s assertion that courts had no right to review the president’s actions, while also undercutting California’s claim that President Trump had overstepped his authority in sending troops to L.A. to quell a “rebellion against the authority of the United States.”

“All three judges seemed skeptical of the arguments that each party was making in its most extreme form,” said Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Liberty and National Security Program at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice.

“I was impressed with the questions,” she went on. “I think they were fair questions, I think they were hard questions. I think the judges were wrestling with the right issues.”

The ruling Thursday largely returns the issue to U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer.

Unlike Breyer, whose temporary restraining order on June 12 would have returned control of the National Guard to California, the appellate court largely avoided the question of whether the facts on the ground in Los Angeles amounted to a “rebellion.”

Instead, the ruling focused on the limits of presidential power.

Bennett’s opinion directly refuted the argument — made by Assistant Atty. Gen. Brett Shumate in Tuesday’s hearing — that the decision to federalize National Guard troops was “unreviewable.”

“Defendants argue that this language precludes review,” the judge wrote. “[But Supreme Court precedent] does not compel us to accept the federal government’s position that the President could federalize the National Guard based on no evidence whatsoever, and that courts would be unable to review a decision that was obviously absurd or made in bad faith.”

He also quoted at length from the 1932 Supreme Court decision in Sterling vs. Constantin, writing “[t]he nature of the [president’s] power also necessarily implies that there is a permitted range of honest judgment as to the measures to be taken in meeting force with force, in suppressing violence and restoring order.”

Shumate told the judge he didn’t know the case when Bennett asked him about it early in Tuesday’s hearing.

“That is a key case in that line of cases, and the fact he was not aware of it is extraordinary,” Goitein said.

Merriam agreed — to a point.

“That’s a nightmare we have in law school — it’s a nightmare I’ve had as an appellate judge,” the scholar said.

However, “it’s actually a good thing that the attorney representing the U.S. was not planning to talk about martial law in front of the 9th Circuit,” Merriam said.

One thing Thursday’s ruling did not touch is whether the administration violated the Posse Comitatus Act by deputizing the military to act as civilian law enforcement — an allegation California leveled in its original complaint, but which Breyer effectively tabled last week.

“The Posse Comitatus Act claim has not been resolved because it was essentially not ripe last Thursday,” when troops had just arrived, Goitein said. “It is ripe now.”

“Even if the 9th Circuit agrees with the federal government on everything, we could see a ruling from the district court next week that could limit what troops can do on the ground,” she said.

In the meantime, residents of an increasingly quiet Los Angeles will have to live with the growing number of federal troops.

“[Congress] didn’t limit rebellion to specific types of facts,” Merriam said. “As much as [Angelenos] might say, ‘This is crazy! There’s not a rebellion going on in L.A. right now,’ this is where we are with the law.”

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court’s favorite target again this year was the California-based U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which saw 15 of 16 rulings overturned on review.

For decades, the high court’s conservatives have trained a skeptical eye on the historically liberal appeals court and regularly reversed its rulings, particularly on criminal law and the death penalty.

But by some estimates, this year saw the most Supreme Court reversals of 9th Circuit decisions since 1985. And the range of issues was broad, including immigration, religion, voting rights, property rights and class-action lawsuits.

In four years, President Trump appointed 10 judges to the appeals court, a sprawling Western jurisdiction that includes nine states and two U.S. territories. Presidents Obama and George W. Bush each named seven judges to the 9th Circuit in their eight years in the White House.

Trump’s 9th Circuit picks appeared to have played a significant role this year by pressing for internal review of rulings they didn’t like and joining sharp dissents that drew the interest of the Supreme Court.

“The more people who join the dissents, the more it gets the attention of the conservatives,” said one 9th Circuit judge, speaking on the condition of not being identified by name.

“This year was different,” another judge said. “This year was really different.”

When two owners of fruit-growing operations sued over a 1975 California state regulation that allowed union organizers to enter their property to speak to workers, they lost before a federal judge and the 9th Circuit.

Judge Richard A. Paez of Los Angeles, a Clinton appointee, said in a 2-1 decision that the state rule did not authorize “physical taking” of farmers’ property, as the lawsuit claimed, but rather temporary access to it.

Judge Sandra S. Ikuta of Los Angeles, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote a dissent arguing that the ruling was wrong and should be overturned. She said the state rule takes “an easement from the property owners” and gives it to union organizers, who are free to enter when they choose. In a dissent from the full court’s refusal to reconsider the panel’s decision, seven other 9th Circuit judges, six of them Trump appointees, agreed.

When the Supreme Court ruled 6 to 3 for the property owners last month, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. cited Ikuta’s dissent. “The access regulation appropriates a right to invade the growers’ property,” he wrote in Cedar Point vs. Hassid. The high court was split along ideological grounds.

The same divide was on display in the justices’ 6-3 decision shielding big donors to conservative charities and nonprofits from having their names disclosed to the California attorney general.

The 9th Circuit, in a 3-0 decision, had upheld the state’s policy of checking donors as an anti-fraud measure, but Ikuta wrote a dissent, joined by four Republican appointees, two of them nominated by Trump. The dissent said the full appeals court should “correct this error.” She argued that experience had shown that conservative donors have suffered “harassment and abuse” when their names have been disclosed.

The Supreme Court agreed to review the ruling, and Roberts cited Ikuta’s dissent in his opinion reversing the 9th Circuit in Americans for Prosperity Foundation vs. Bonta.

“There is still a large cohort of liberal judges” on the 9th Circuit, said Ed Whelan, a conservative legal analyst in Washington, “but there are now many conservative appointees who are vigilant in calling them out.”

In total, 47 judges sit on the 9th Circuit — 24 appointed by Republicans going back to President Nixon, and 23 named by Democrats starting with President Carter.

Many of those judges work part time. Of the full-time jurists, 16 are Democratic and 13 are Republican appointees.

The size of the circuit — the nation’s largest — partly explains why its cases are often subject to Supreme Court review.

“The 9th Circuit is so vastly larger than any other circuit that it is inevitable they are going to take more 9th Circuit cases,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of UC Berkeley’s law school.

Although this year’s 9th Circuit reversal rate was unusually high, the high court in fact overturned 80% of all the cases it reviewed, Chemerinsky noted.

Moreover, only a tiny percentage of appellate decisions are reviewed by the Supreme Court. Typically, the 9th Circuit hands down about 13,000 rulings a year.

Chemerinsky noted the Supreme Court overturned several 9th Circuit cases on immigration and habeas corpus, the legal vehicle for releasing someone from detention. “The 9th Circuit is historically more liberal on immigration and habeas cases,” he said.

Some reversals occurred in cases that were not ideological, however: The high court overturned a 9th Circuit decision by Republican appointees on what constitutes a robocall.

Though the Supreme Court split along ideological lines on property rights, voting rights and conservative donor cases from the 9th Circuit, the justices were unanimous in reversing the 9th Circuit in several immigration cases.

On June 1, they overturned a unique 9th Circuit rule set by the late liberal Judge Stephen Reinhardt. Over nearly 20 years, he had written that the testimony of a person seeking asylum based on a fear of persecution must be “deemed credible” unless an immigration judge made an “explicit” finding that they were not to be believed.

In one of his last opinions, Reinhardt approved of asylum for Ming Dai, a Chinese citizen who arrived in the U.S. on a tourist visa and applied for refugee status for himself and his family. He said they were fleeing China’s forced abortion policy.

Only later did immigration authorities learn that his wife and daughter had returned to China because they had good jobs and schooling there, but the husband had no job to return to.

An immigration judge had set out the full story and denied the asylum application, only to be be reversed in a 2-1 ruling by a 9th Circuit panel. The panel cited Reinhardt’s rule and noted that although evidence emerged casting doubt on Dai’s claims, there had been no “explicit” finding by an immigration judge so his story had to be accepted.

“Over the years, our circuit has manufactured misguided rules regarding the credibility of political asylum seekers,” Senior Judge Stephen S. Trott wrote in dissent. Later, 11 other appellate judges joined dissents arguing for scrapping this rule.

Last fall, Trump administration lawyers cited those dissents and urged the Supreme Court to hear the case. They noted the importance of the 9th Circuit in asylum cases. Because of its liberal reputation, “the 9th Circuit actually entertains more petitions for review than all of the other circuits combined,” the lawyers said.

In overturning the appeals court in a 9-0 ruling, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch began by noting that “at least 12 members of the 9th Circuit have objected to this judge-made rule.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor delivered another 9-0 ruling holding that an immigrant arrested for an “unlawful entry” after having been deported years ago may not contest the basis of his original deportation. The 9th Circuit had said such a defendant may argue his deportation was “fundamentally unfair,” but “the statute does not permit such an exception,” Sotomayor said in U.S. vs. Palomar-Santiago.

The high court’s furthest-reaching immigration ruling did not originate with the 9th Circuit, but it nonetheless overturned a 9th Circuit decision.

At issue was whether the more than 400,000 immigrants who had been living and working in the U.S. under temporary protected status were eligible for long-term green cards. The Philadelphia-based 3rd Circuit said no, rejecting a green card for a Salvadoran couple who had entered the country illegally in the 1990s and had lived and worked in New Jersey ever since.

The 9th Circuit had taken the opposite view; Trump lawyers cited this split as a reason the high court should take up the New Jersey case. On June 7, Justice Elena Kagan spoke for the high court in ruling that the 3rd Circuit was right and the 9th Circuit wrong. To obtain lawful permanent status, the immigration law first “requires a lawful admission,” she said in Sanchez vs. Majorkas.

The 9th Circuit’s sole affirmance came in a significant case: By a 9-0 vote in NCAA vs. Alston, the justices agreed with the 9th Circuit that college sports authorities could be sued under antitrust laws for conspiring to make billions of dollars while insisting the star athletes go unpaid.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments Tuesday questioning both President Trump’s decision to deploy federal troops to Los Angeles and the court’s right to review it, teeing up what is likely to be a fierce new challenge to presidential power in the U.S. Supreme Court.

A panel of three judges — two appointed by President Trump, one by President Biden — pressed hard on the administration’s central assertion that the president had nearly unlimited discretion to deploy the military on American streets.

But they also appeared to cast doubt on last week’s ruling from a federal judge in San Francisco that control of the National Guard must immediately return to California authorities. A pause on that decision remains in effect while the judges deliberate, with a decision expected as soon as this week.

“The crucial question … is whether the judges seem inclined to accept Trump’s argument that he alone gets to decide if the statutory requirements for nationalizing the California national guard are met,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law.

The questions at the heart of the case test the limits of presidential authority, which the U.S. Supreme Court has vastly expanded in recent years.

When one of the Trump appointees, Judge Mark J. Bennett of Honolulu, asked if a president could call up the National Guard in all 50 states and the District of Columbia in response to unrest in California and be confident that decision was “entirely unreviewable” by the courts, Assistant Atty. Gen. Brett Shumate replied unequivocally: “Yes.”

“That couldn’t be any more clear,” Shumate said. “The president gets to decide how many forces are necessary to quell rebellion and execute federal laws.”

“It’s not for the court to abuse its authority just because there may be hypothetical cases in the future where the president might have abused his authority,” he added.

California Deputy Solicitor General Samuel Harbourt said that interpretation was dangerously broad and risked harm to American democratic norms if upheld.

“We don’t have a problem with according the president some level of appropriate deference,” Harbourt said. “The problem … is that there’s really nothing to defer to here.”

The Trump administration said it deployed troops to L.A. to ensure immigration enforcement agents could make arrests and conduct deportations, arguing demonstrations downtown against that activity amounted to “rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.”

State and local officials said the move was unjustified and nakedly political — an assessment shared by Senior District Judge Charles R. Breyer, whose ruling last week would have handed control of most troops back to California leaders.

Breyer heard the challenge in California’s Northern District, but saw his decision appealed and put on hold within hours by the 9th Circuit.

The appellate court’s stay left the Trump administration in command of thousands of National Guard troops and hundreds of Marines in L.A. through the weekend, when demonstrators flooded streets as part of the nationwide “No Kings” protests.

The events were largely peaceful, with just more than three dozen demonstrators arrested in L.A. Saturday and none on Sunday — compared to more than 500 taken into custody during the unrest of the previous week.

Hundreds of Marines still stationed in L.A.”will provide logistical support” processing ICE detainees, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement Tuesday. Under last week’s executive order, National Guard troops will remain deployed for 60 days.

Arguing before the appellate panel Tuesday, Shumate said the military presence was necessary to defend against ongoing “mob violence” in L.A. streets.

“Federal personnel in Los Angeles continue to face sustained mob violence in Los Angeles,” the administration’s lawyer said. “Unfortunately, local authorities are either unable or unwilling to protect federal personnel and property.”

Harbourt struck back at those claims.

“[Violence] is of profound concern to the leaders of the state,” the California deputy solicitor general said. “But the state is dealing with it.”

However, the three judges seemed less interested in the facts on the ground in Los Angeles than in the legal question of who gets to decide how to respond.

“In the normal course, the level of resistance encountered by federal law enforcement officers is not zero, right?” Judge Eric D. Miller of Seattle asked. “So does that mean … you could invoke this whenever?”

While the appellate court weighed those arguments, California officials sought to bolster the state’s case in district court in filings Monday and early Tuesday.

“The actions of the President and the Secretary of Defense amount to an unprecedented and dangerous assertion of executive power,” California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta wrote in a motion for a preliminary injunction.

Marines push back anti-ICE protesters in front of the Federal Building during “No Kings Day” in Downtown on Saturday.

(Carlin Stiehl/Los Angeles Times)

“The President asserts that [the law] authorizes him to federalize State National Guard units and deploy armed soldiers into the streets of American cities and towns whenever he perceives ‘opposition’ or ‘disobedience of a legal command,’” the motion continued. “He then asserts that no court can review that decision, assigning himself virtually unchecked power.”

The president boasted he would “liberate Los Angeles,” during a speech to troops at Fort Bragg last week.

In court, Bonta called the deployment a “military occupation of the nation’s second-largest city.”

Los Angeles officials also weighed in, saying in an amicus brief filed Monday by the City Attorney’s office that the military deployment “complicates” efforts to keep Angelenos safe.

“The domestic use of the military is corrosive,” the brief said. “Every day that this deployment continues sows fear among City residents, erodes their trust in the City, and escalates the conflicts they have with local law enforcement.”

The appellate court largely sidestepped that question, though Bennett and Judge Jennifer Sung in Portland appeared moved by Harbourt’s argument that keeping guard troops in L.A. kept them from other critical duties, including fighting wildfires.

“The judges were sensitive to that, and so if they’re ultimately going to land on a ‘no’ for the troops, they’ll do it sooner rather than later,” said professor Carl Tobias of the University of Richmond. “If they’re persuaded I think they’ll move fast.”

With the issue all but certain to face further litigation and a fast-track to the Supreme Court, observers said the 9th Circuit’s decision will influence how the next set of judges interpret the case — a process that could drag on for months.

“Both sides seem in a hurry to have a decision, but all [the Supreme Court] can do this late in the term is hear an emergency appeal,” Tobias said. “Any full-dress ruling would likely not come until the next term.”

May 24 (UPI) — A Texas public library did not violate patrons’ right to free speech by removing books due to their content, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled on Friday.

The entire appellate court, in a 10-7 decision, overturned federal district court and appellate court rulings finding the Llano County (Texas) Library System erred in removing 17 books due to their content.

The courts initially ruled that library officials violated plaintiffs’ right to receive information under the Constitution’s Free Speech Clause by removing the books and ordered that they be returned to the library’s shelves.

The plaintiffs are seven library patrons who in 2022 filed a lawsuit challenging the removal of 17 books due to their “content on race, gender and sexuality as well as some children’s books that contained nudity,” the Austin American-Statesman reported.

A federal district court and a three-judge appellate court panel each ruled against the library.

The Fifth Circuit appellate court’s en banc panel on Friday reversed the prior court decisions and dismissed the free speech claims against the Lloyd County Library System for two reasons.

No right to receive information

“Plaintiffs cannot invoke a right to receive information to challenge a library’s removal of books,” Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan wrote in the majority decision.

“Supreme Court precedent sometimes protects one’s right to receive someone else’s speech,” Duncan continued.

“Plaintiffs would transform that precedent into a brave new right to receive information from the government in the form of taxpayer-funded library books,” he said. “The First Amendment acknowledges no such right.”

Instead, a patron could order a book online, buy it from a bookstore or borrow it from a friend, Duncan wrote.

“All Llano County has done here is what libraries have been doing for two centuries: decide which books they want in their collection,” he said.

Such decisions are very subjective, and it’s impossible to find widespread agreement on a standard to determine which books should or should not be made available, the majority ruling says.

“May a library remove a book because it dislikes its ideas? Because it finds the book vulgar? Sexist? Inaccurate? Outdated? Poorly written?” Duncan wrote. “Heaven knows.”

The plaintiffs “took the baffling view that libraries cannot even remove books that espouse racism,” Duncan added.

Public library collections are ‘government speech’

The majority decision also ruled that the library’s collection decisions are government speech and not subject to First Amendment-based free speech challenges.

Duncan said many precedents affirm that “curating and presenting a collection of third-party speech” is an “expressive activity.”

Examples include editors choosing which stories to publish, television stations choosing which programs to air and museum officials deciding what to feature in exhibits.

“In the same way, a library expresses itself by deciding how to shape its collection,” Duncan wrote.

He cited another court’s ruling that said governments speak through public libraries by selecting which books to make available and which ones to exclude.

“From the moment they emerged in the 19th century, public libraries have shaped their collections to present what they held to be worthwhile literature,” Duncan said.

“Libraries curate their collections for expressive purposes,” he said. “Their collection decisions are, therefore, government speech.”

He called arguments made in the case “over-caffeinated” and said plaintiffs warned of “book bans,” “pyres of burned books,” and “totalitarian regimes.”

“Where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people,” one brief filed by plaintiffs claimed, according to Duncan.

“Take a deep breath, everyone. No one is banning (or burning) books,” he said.

Won’t ‘join the book burners’

Judge Stephen Higginson was joined by six others in a lengthy dissenting opinion.

The Supreme Court in prior rulings affirmed the right to receive information and the right to be “free from officially prescribed orthodoxy,” Higginson said.

“Public libraries have long kept the people well informed by giving them access to works expressing a broad range of information and ideas,” Higginson wrote.

“But this case concerns the politically motivated removal of books from the Llano County Public Library system by government officials in order to deny public access to disfavored ideas,” he said.

The majority “forsakes core First Amendment principles and controlling Supreme Court law,” he wrote.

“Because I would not have our court ‘join the book burners,'” Higginson said, “I dissent.”