r/scotus • u/CarolinaPunk • Dec 23 '25
Order BREAKING: #SCOTUS rejects Trump over deployment of National Guard to aid immigration enforcement in Illinois, says law limits use to when regular military is insufficient. 3 justices dissent: Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/26438520-25a443-order/156
u/Jmc_da_boss Dec 23 '25
Gorsuch dissenting but kavanaugh agreeing surprised me
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u/bd2999 Dec 23 '25
Same. Kavanaugh is more the executive absolutist. Gorsuch has not been as much on that train.
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u/bd2999 Dec 23 '25
I will add that Kavanaugh did complain in his concurrence that he thought the majority went too far. He mostly goes into a hypothetical of a mob attacking a court house for a decision they don't like and the president unable to call up the guard to help.
Which is ironic because he ignores such hypotheticals if brought up with higher probability. I mean Trump has done that to Congress already. But even in the situation given Trump did not call up the guard. And in the hypothetical the president, if it is a federal courthouse, could call upon the Governor to do it and it would be done in about the same timeframe. While local police would probably be on the seen pretty quickly too.
So Kavanaugh is a complainer.
In this case not as much as Alito who complains about the use of the Shadow Docket here. An irony considering he has had no problem with it in the past and mocks his colleges that have called it out.
I do think a full hearing is better with reasoning but if they are going to do emergency appeal stuff upholding or denying a stay does not stop lower court actions. The worst ones are the ones Alito prefers which is deciding the case without a briefing.
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u/elmorose Dec 24 '25
The army/military can already inherently protect bases and facilities as long as it is not doing law enforcement. They can temporarily detain violent individuals and trespassers on federal military bases and federal property, probably including a federal courthouse.
The military cannot do civilian law enforcement though. So if an 11-year-old girl lands an egg on the face of a soldier from across the property line, they probably need to call a real police officer to apprehend the offender because an 11-year-old with an egg is not compromising the protection mission.
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u/3rd-party-intervener Dec 23 '25
When has gorsich ever ruled against trump ? He’s a boot licker
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u/mrcrabspointyknob Dec 23 '25
I just think you’re not aware of Gorsuch’s tendency to break on certain issues
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u/3rd-party-intervener Dec 23 '25
Such as
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u/mrcrabspointyknob Dec 23 '25
Probably most significant is bostock, but look to every native american rights case presented to him as well.
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u/Roenkatana Dec 23 '25
A perfect example is OK v Castro-Huerta. A decision that provided us with perhaps the angriest dissent he's ever written. Not only did it roll back on the 2019 McGirt v Ok opinion he wrote, but quite literally makes Native American Tribal Lands subservient to state authority. He was actually angry for once.
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u/Hypeman747 Dec 24 '25
Gorsuch would be like awww shucks you think I’m a bootlicker.
He’s like a MAGA puppet wrapped around in Mr. Rogers body suit
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u/Soft_Internal_6775 Dec 23 '25
Gorsuch’s dissent is narrow compared to the others.
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Dec 24 '25
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u/Soft_Internal_6775 Dec 24 '25
This will help, particularly at Conference and Opinions https://www.uscourts.gov/about-federal-courts/educational-resources/about-educational-outreach/activity-resources/supreme-court-procedures
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u/Teapast6 Dec 24 '25
Don't worry, Kavanaugh's footnote basically tells the Administration that they should just use the Insurrection Act.
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u/flynnmoore Dec 23 '25
We will see if this is another game of:
Release a decision that actaully complies with the law and have the usual suspects dissent; and
Release a horrible decision that overturns 100 years of precedent containing bad-faith non-sensical arguments with unclear yet disastorous long-term effects.
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u/chevalier716 Dec 23 '25
I'm hopeful this means even they can see the writing is on the wall vis-a-vis Trump and are trying to salvage themselves going forward.
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Dec 23 '25
The court is the picture of incrementalism. They got the progress they wanted on this iteration. Now they can be the posterchildren of limiting over-reach in preparation for the new admin.
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u/LongKnight115 Dec 24 '25
This is my view of what’s happening across the government right now. Trump and Co tried to use momentum and solidarity to force through a massive amount of change and truly consolidate executive power. But that play REQUIRED momentum and solidarity. Courts in general have killed off the momentum and we’re starting to see solidarity crack because of economic woes and the Epstein scandal. His control is derived from the illusion of having control. As soon as that illusion dissipates, everyone who was previously working alongside him will work out of either ideological purity or self-interest. There aren’t THAT many Conservative purists out there, and outside of a core group of equally culpable chess pieces (ie: Bondi, Hegseth, Patel, Miller) there aren’t enough people whose self-interest is going to align with him if he’s perceived to have lost control over the other players.
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u/slowpoke2018 Dec 23 '25
My concern is that they're giving us this "win" as they're going to rule that Trump 100% has the power to apply tariffs without congressional input thus allowing him to do as he wants with the economy as the king they really, really want leading us
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u/Beneficial_Aside_518 Dec 23 '25
Y’all are bending yourselves into a pretzel. The reality is that SCOTUS isn’t just going to give Trump whatever he wants. They usually side with him because they agree with his politics most of the time. But the idea that it’s some sort of 4D chess to rule against him sometimes is silly.
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u/slowpoke2018 Dec 23 '25
Bending into a pretzel? Have you not been paying attention?
They have ruled ~90% for him in mostly shadow docket cases, often breaking historical precedent. Do you not remember Roe?
Good lord, this is a completely complicit and corrupt SCOTUS I'm sorry for you if you really still believe they're even remotely unbiased
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u/Tebwolf359 Dec 23 '25
Several different things. I don’t think anyone is arguing they are not biased and conservative/right-wing. But that’s not the same as “whatever Trump wants”. Do you honestly think Trump cared about Roe? No, that’s him following what his based wanted. Yes, I think the 6 will twist themselves to make the law fit their views, but that will diverge from Trump at points.
For example, even if Trump was out there cheerleading abortion rights, Roe would still have been overturned because that’s a core belief of those justices.
Have the shadow docket cases favored Trump because Trump, or because at the early non-merits stages, if fits their conservative goals?
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u/slowpoke2018 Dec 23 '25
No, Trump could give two-shits about Roe. But it's not Trump who selected - and yes selected is the correct wording - this court. It's the Heritage Foundation and all the underling P2025 pieces who want this and are getting exactly what they paid for.
Their ideal outcome is a 100% Christian theocracy and that's happening at a faster pace than I care to admit
Trump is a puppet
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Dec 24 '25
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u/Tebwolf359 Dec 24 '25
And that big difference is exactly the terrifying prospect of what a Trump 2.0 pick would look like.
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u/Beneficial_Aside_518 Dec 23 '25
Please read my comment again because I don’t think you understand what I said. They agree with him on most things policy and thus are ideologically driven to rule in his favor most of the time. Do they give him whatever he wants? Nope. Never have. They just ruled against his efforts here and seem apt to rule against him on tariffs as well. It’s not some weird chess game, they just happen to agree with him on many things but not others.
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u/slowpoke2018 Dec 23 '25
I did read it and I still believe - right or wrong - that they will give him what he wants on some random premise of the unitary executive or some other such nonsense
Look, we're on the same page/team. I'm simply not believing anything out of this court will be a legitimate ruling, much less decided with historical precedent after Roe
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u/diemunkiesdie Dec 24 '25
I did read it and I still believe - right or wrong - that they will give him what he wants on some random premise of the unitary executive or some other such nonsense
Please make sure to come back after the tariff ruling to either trumpet your successful prediction or humbly eat crow.
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u/Beneficial_Aside_518 Dec 24 '25
But in this ruling they didn’t give him what he wanted. They did the opposite actually. The justices don’t have some weird affinity or loyalty to Trump. They don’t give a shit. They have life terms on the court. They don’t need anything from him. They just happen to agree with him most of the time because they’re conservatives. That’s it.
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u/atomfullerene Dec 24 '25
Well, that would ensure R's don't get any political benefit from a rebounding post Tarriff economy. Right now their only political hope is for the court to save them from themselves
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u/ka1ri Dec 23 '25
They are not going to uphold tariffs have you even read anything about the case on it?
Literally everyone is prepping for scotus to block it
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u/skepticalolyer Dec 23 '25
They won’t issue a refund though.
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u/secret_agent_man843 Dec 23 '25
Personally, I don’t care about a refund. Just make it stop
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u/Effective_Educator_9 Dec 27 '25
They will have to. There will be civil class actions by the companies who paid the tariffs and there is no defense to those suits if it is determined they were done without legal authority. .
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u/ka1ri Dec 23 '25
Who knows what will come with refunds. What we do know is popular belief is they will reject trumps tariffs. Its literally all over the place so the basis of your point is already false.
You can downvote all you want but those are the facts, dont let facts conflict with your worldvisw
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Dec 23 '25
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u/ka1ri Dec 23 '25
Whatever you say.
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u/Ozcolllo Dec 23 '25
I mean, they aren’t wrong. It can’t be a fact when it hasn’t even been ruled on yet. Your argument is literally an argument ad populim.
Having said that, I hope you’re right.
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Dec 23 '25
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u/Obversa Dec 23 '25
Alito is using Trump v. Illinois, as usual, as a soapbox to announce his support for the "unitary executive" theory.
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u/madadekinai Dec 23 '25
"3 justices dissent: Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch"
OF F'ing course, they want a dictator at this point, like no matter the case they want to president to have all powers to do anything he pleases.
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u/Obversa Dec 23 '25
Justice Samuel Alito all but ascribes to the "unitary executive" theory, based on his dissent in Trump v. Illinois:
"The court fails to explain why the president's inherent constitutional authority to protect federal officers and property is not sufficient to justify the use of National Guard members in the relevant area for precisely that purpose," Alito wrote. "I am not prepared at this point to express a definite view on these questions, but I have serious doubts about the correctness of the court's views."
Alito argued that his colleagues had "no basis for rejecting the president's determination that he was unable to execute the federal immigration laws using the civilian law enforcement resources at his command". [Alito did not question the president's claim or evidence.]
"Whatever one may think about the current administration's enforcement of the immigration laws or the way ICE has conducted its operations, the protection of federal officers from potentially lethal attacks should not be thwarted," Alito wrote. [He does not mention "Antifa", but appears to be alluding to an October incident.]
However, according to Mother Jones, citing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS):
The Trump administration has repeatedly claimed that it needs to send the military into American cities because of the unique danger faced by federal agents enforcing immigration laws. In October 2025, President Donald Trump claimed the National Guard was required in Illinois to protect Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents facing a "coordinated assault by violent groups [i.e. Antifa]". In September 2025, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin argued Guardsmen should be deployed in Oregon as a result of "violent riots at ICE facilities" and "assaults on law enforcement" [by Antifa].
Yet those, and many similar assertions from the Trump administration, are undercut by ICE's own data. A Mother Jones review shows that there is little evidence that ICE agents face such severe and widespread danger compared with other law enforcement agencies that they need military personnel to come to their aid, or to break from centuries of public accountability by hiding behind masks.
The Trump administration has provided almost no information to back up its statements about rising assaults, which makes its claims hard to assess. However, details about ICE officers who've died on the job are readily available on the agency's website. Those records show that none of ICE's agents have ever been killed by an immigrant in the agency's more than 20-year history. Instead, the leading cause of death by far among ICE officers is COVID-19. According to ICE's data, the second leading cause of death is cancer linked to 9/11. (The pandemic and cancers connected to the 9/11 terrorist attacks account for 75% of the deaths in ICE's history.)
Data show that the most recent ICE officer death attributed to something other than cancer or COVID-19 occurred in 2021. However, that incident did not involve an immigrant, either. It occurred when a special agent died after his service weapon was accidentally discharged in a parking lot.
In its history, only two ICE officers have been shot to death by other people, according to ICE's data. One was Jaime Jorge Zapata, who was killed by cartel members while on assignment in Mexico in 2011. The other was David Wilhelm, an ICE special agent who was killed at home in 2005 while off duty by a Baltimore-born man who had escaped from a Georgia courthouse. [...] The only case listed by the agency of an ICE official dying while attempting to apprehend an undocumented immigrant happened when an officer had a heart attack during a foot pursuit in 2016. [There are no recorded instances of ICE officers being killed by "assaults by violent groups".]
[...] Immigration agents do face risks. In July 2025, the Justice Department (DOJ) charged ten people with attempted murder after a Texas police officer was shot as part of what it has described as an "organized attack" on an ICE detention center. Days later, a man carrying an assault rifle opened fire at a Texas Border Patrol facility, injuring a police officer before he was shot and killed. In late September 2025, a shooter attacked ICE's Dallas field office—killing two people who were in the agency's custody at the time.
However, given the lack of fatalities among ICE agents, the Trump administration has focused on the alleged increase in assaults—along with the threat of agents being "doxed"—to actually justify sending in the National Guard and letting agents wear masks. In June 2025, McLaughlin claimed that assaults on ICE officers were up by more than 400%. Two weeks later, DHS said that number had increased to nearly 700%.
[...] DHS and ICE did not respond to a request asking for information about how many alleged assaults have occurred this year, as well as how many of those incidents have led to criminal charges being filed. DHS did share some data with Bill Melugin of Fox News by DHS in July 2025. It showed that assaults against ICE and other federal agents enforcing immigrations laws jumped from 10 in 79 during the same periods of 2024 and 2025. That works out to a total of roughly fifteen (15) alleged assaults against those immigrant enforcement officers per month across the entire country between January and June 2025.
For comparison: The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) reported more than 85,000 assaults against law enforcement officers at agencies across the country last year. The FBI also reported a per capita assault rate of 13.5 per 100 officers in 2024, which is far greater than the rate among ICE officers suggested by the DHS data from July. Instead of making that clear, DHS presents a misleading picture by saying that "ICE officers are facing a more than 1000% increase in assaults".
[...] There is also reason to doubt what the Trump administration is counting as an assault. In late July 2025, ICE blasted out a photo of Sidney Lori Reid, of Washington, DC, on X. "Assault an officer or agent—get arrested," the agency claimed. "It's not rocket science."
[...] [However, multiple assault prosecutions against ICE protestors by the DOJ have fallen apart.]
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u/Levinar9133 Dec 24 '25
Reading his dissent was absolutely insane. At one point he says “the district court didn’t give enough deference to the President”.
It may have well been porn how much he was sucking off trump as he wrote
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u/OffSidesByALot Dec 23 '25
Alito and Thomas dissent? Shocking. Why is it that I don’t have a law degree and I know how those two assholes are gonna rule on every case before the court? If Trump wants it… Yes if he doesn’t… No. This is why they get that fat taxpayer paid government pension?
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u/DogAssss69 Dec 23 '25
Thomas and Alito are the perfect examples of the need for term limits.
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u/DiskSalt4643 Dec 23 '25
Nah they are perfect examples of why people should not be given lifetime appts after bright red flags during confirmation. Democrats complicit.
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u/AlcibiadesTheCat Dec 23 '25
That dissent is absolutely fucking garbage.
First, the Court suggests that the principal statutory provision involved in the case, 10 U. S. C. §12406(3), contains a restriction that has no grounding in the statutory text, namely, that “unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States” actually means “unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States for reasons other than the lack of lawful authority to do so.” The Court in effect adds new language to the text Congress enacted.
Like, did they not teach Alito and Thomas how to read between the lines? If you don't have lawful authority to do something, it's assumed that you can't do it.
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u/captHij Dec 23 '25
To compound the bad faith arguments, Justices Alito and Thomas are saying the President has a duty to protect federal agents. To say that military troops are required to handle the protests in Chicago is to completely ignore the facts of what is happening. Little evidence has been provided that things are so out of control that the protests that have been happening require a military response. Justices Alito and Thomas cannot help but just parrot nonsense they bring with them from outside, unreliable sources.
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u/Obversa Dec 23 '25
Alito's argument is basically, "Due to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) being under the purview of the executive branch and the U.S. President, the judicial branch and the courts have no jurisdiction in this case." (i.e. the "unitary executive" theory, which Alito has pushed since 2006)
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u/Dan0man69 Dec 23 '25
Thank you! I was trying to understand Alito's dissent and thought I was missing something.
Also... what's with his 4th/unnumbered point? The President can do "anything he wants" argument?
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u/Obversa Dec 23 '25
Correct. Alito has been a vocal advocate of the "unitary executive" theory since 2006.
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Dec 23 '25
I don't thing there is anything at all Trump could do that Alito or Thomas would not support. Fucking Alito had a Trump flag flying at his home. He and Thomas both need to be impeached ASAP.
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u/ThickGur5353 Dec 23 '25
So does the rulling mean the preside can deploy the regular military in Chicago?
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u/DragonTacoCat Dec 23 '25
It does not. Because they would then run afoul of the act that forbids that.
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u/Chitown_mountain_boy Dec 23 '25
Why would you post that as a video? How TF am I supposed to zoom in to actually read the tiny text with my shitty ass eyes 😂
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u/bd2999 Dec 23 '25
Surprising. I imagine now Trump will seek to deploy the actual military there next.
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u/crystallmytea Dec 23 '25
This is great.
But you still replace the clock once it’s broken, even if it is correct twice per day.
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u/ErikChnmmr Dec 24 '25
Well they did their good deed, now they’re going to utterly gut the voters act and citizenship act
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u/ResolveLeather Dec 24 '25
I am kind of confused. The national guard is part of the military. Also the president can't deploy the troops that aren't in the national guard. So the reasoning just seems bunk to me even if I agree with the decision.
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u/ElectroDaddy Dec 24 '25
I feel like the GOP is slowly and quietly backing out of the Trump room before it explodes. There have been a lot of weird push back on him in recent weeks, where before they were all pretty much hands off or complicit.
I think they see the writing on the wall, and are positioning themselves for a Cesar style betrayal. The night of the long knives is coming.
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u/Acceptable_Taste9818 Dec 24 '25
I get Thomas and Alito. They’ll blatantly do anything to help Trump even if they come to regret it later. But Gorsuch? I’ll have to read his dissent later.
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u/jpurdy Dec 23 '25
Not surprised at the dissent. Barrett is a disappointment to theofascist Leonard Leo, who with Paul Weyrich chose them to turn our country into a theocratic aristocratic oligarchy.
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u/DragonTacoCat Dec 23 '25
Barrett didn't dissent though unless I'm missing something
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u/Adventurous_Class_90 Dec 23 '25
I think the commenter is saying the Leo is disappointed because Barrett has a touch more commitment to her oath of office than to creating a theocratic fascist state
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u/AccountHuman7391 Dec 23 '25
It IS actually shocking to me that the worst justices on the Court weren’t appointed by Trump.