A federal appeals court has permanently invalidated California’s bid to force ICE agents to wear identification on the job, holding that the state has no power to police how federal officers do their work.
The New York Post reported that the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the Trump administration and found that California’s “No Vigilantes Act” violated the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause by interfering with federal duties. Judge Mark J. Bennett wrote the opinion that left the identification mandate with no lawful path forward.
The ruling lands as Sacramento keeps writing new statutes aimed at immigration enforcement. It also lands after months of litigation in which the Justice Department challenged the ID rule and a companion measure targeting masks for federal agents and local police.
Bennett’s opinion was blunt. The panel did not treat the dispute as a close policy call. It treated the statute as an attempt by a state to regulate the United States itself.
Judge Mark J. Bennett wrote:
“As before, we conclude… the No Vigilantes Act attempts to directly regulate the United States in its performance of governmental functions,”
He went further on the statute’s legal fate.
Bennett also wrote:
“No set of circumstances exist under which the Act would be valid.”
And he restated the governing rule in plain constitutional terms:
“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,”
Just the News reported that the 9th Circuit blocked the identification mandate after concluding the United States had shown a Supremacy Clause violation, and that the public interest and balance of equities tipped decisively toward an injunction. California lawmakers had passed the measure in response to President Trump’s mass deportation efforts.
That sequence matters. State politicians cast the bill as “transparency.” The court cast it as regulation of the federal government without Congress’s permission.
The Justice Department sued last fall to block the ID requirement and a related law that sought to ban masks for federal agents and local police. A federal judge blocked the mask rule but had allowed the identification requirement to proceed. The appellate court had already stepped in once before, blocking the law in April. On Wednesday, the panel finished the job and invalidated the ID rules.
Fox News reported that the panel found the Trump administration certain to succeed against the identification mandate and that Section 10 unconstitutionally overrides the federal government’s power to decide whether, how, and when to publicly identify its officers. Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate said the Ninth Circuit agrees California cannot regulate federal law enforcement.
First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District Bill Essayli cheered the outcome and framed it as constitutional enforcement, not partisan scorekeeping.
Essayli said:
“Huge win for the Supremacy Clause,”
He added that California continues to violate the U.S. Constitution and that federal officials will continue to hold the state accountable.
Federal-state collision is not new in immigration politics. Democratic governors keep testing how far they can go before courts push back, a pattern also visible when a major Supreme Court immigration fight was undercut by a governor’s pardon in another high-profile case.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office had previously defended the law as a matter of “transparency and accountability,” and had argued that the federal practices at issue sat “well outside the boundaries of normal practice.” The Post reached out again after the ruling.
A spokesperson for Gov. Gavin Newsom had answered earlier court setbacks with a different message. The spokesperson said “these laws shouldn’t even be necessary,” claimed “we shouldn’t have unidentified, masked men terrorizing our communities,” and pledged to keep “demanding federal accountability and fighting against Trump and Miller’s reign of terror against our communities.”
That is the political pitch. The judicial holding is narrower and harder. A state does not get to draft the rules for federal officers simply because state leaders dislike the mission those officers carry out.
Pressure on Newsom over federal enforcement and election integrity has kept rising on other fronts as well, including after a DOJ election-fraud arrest in California renewed scrutiny of the state’s voter rolls.
Even as the ID fight moved through the courts, California enacted additional measures this year. Those laws would ban “wearable electroshock devices,” prohibit ICE agents accused of serious misconduct from state employment, and allow residents to sue ICE officials.
Legislative analysts warned that Wednesday’s ruling could land as a blow to those newer statutes too. The legal theory is not exotic. If a state statute tries to regulate federal officers and federal functions without congressional authorization, it collides with the same constitutional wall.
Staff of the California Senate Public Safety Committee had already flagged the risk on a related shock-device ban bill. They wrote that provisions seeking to regulate federal agencies and their agents “will undoubtedly be subject to legal challenge under the doctrines of intergovernmental immunity and conflict preemption.”
In other words, lawmakers were on notice. They advanced the project anyway.
Court fights over institutional power keep defining the larger map of American politics, whether the dispute is immigration enforcement or a Supreme Court decision leaving a contested congressional map in place after an emergency appeal failed.
The No Vigilantes Act’s identification mandate was sold as a check on federal power in local communities. Supporters pointed to tense encounters and public anger around immigration arrests. Background coverage of the dispute also referenced the killing of anti-ICE protester Renee Good in Minneapolis, who was shot four times during a standoff with officers while she was in her SUV.
None of that revise the constitutional assignment of roles. Immigration enforcement is a federal function. ICE agents are federal officers. Congress, not a state legislature, sets the terms on which the United States performs governmental duties of that kind.
California’s theory required courts to accept that Sacramento may dictate when and how federal officers identify themselves in the field. The 9th Circuit rejected that theory. It did not need to decide whether the state’s preferences were popular. It decided whether the state had authority. It did not.
Separate election-rule fights show the same institutional pattern from another angle, including when the Supreme Court blocked an administration push on mail-ballot standards before the midterms. The forum changes. The question of who holds the power does not.
The 9th Circuit is often cast as hostile terrain for Republican administrations. This time the panel agreed with the Trump administration that California overreached. The Justice Department’s lawsuit, the earlier April block, and the final invalidation of the ID rules now form a clean timeline: state statute, federal challenge, constitutional ruling.
Essayli’s office presented the outcome as routine constitutional maintenance. California had tested a boundary. The court enforced it. That is how a system of enumerated powers is supposed to work when a state tries to manage federal officers like municipal employees.
Related circuit-court battles continue to feed larger Supreme Court dockets, including an Arizona voter-citizenship dispute headed upward after a 9th Circuit ruling drew sharp criticism from election groups. Immigration is not the only field where state experiments meet federal law. It is one of the clearest.
For lawful residents and taxpayers who expect the federal government to enforce immigration law, the practical stake is simple. Field officers cannot be redesigned by state statute every time a governor wants a different political posture. If identification rules, mask rules, hiring bans, and private lawsuits can be invented one session at a time, national enforcement becomes a patchwork of local vetoes.
Wednesday’s decision rejected that model. The No Vigilantes Act tried to put California above federal operations. The Supremacy Clause put the Constitution back on top.
States that dislike federal immigration law still have politics, petitions, and Congress. What they do not have is a blank check to revise the chain of command for ICE.
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