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.”
“In sum, 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.
The 9th Circuit’s decision reverses the district’s denial of a preliminary injunction and remands the case back to the lower court to enter such an injunction prohibiting California from enforcing the challenged law against federal officials.
[READ: Let’s Track Every Lie Dems And Media Invented To Demonize Immigration Agents]
The appellate court’s ruling comes amid Democrat activists’ attacks against ICE agents performing their duties in the field.
Last November, for example, a man with “anti-ICE” engravings on his bullet casings opened fire on an ICE transportation vehicle in Dallas, leaving two individuals dead. The shooting occurred shortly after Newsom called ICE’s operations “authoritarian” and called for people to “push back” during an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
Other anti-ICE attacks and ops have continued in the months since the Dallas incident.
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He is a co-recipient of the 2025 Dao Prize for Excellence in Investigative Journalism. His work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics and RealClearHealth. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood