A split U.S. appeals court delivered a significant legal win to Donald Trump on Monday, October 20, 2025, affirming his authority to send National Guard troops into Portland, Oregon. This ruling came despite strong opposition from city and state leaders, as the former Republican president continued his practice of deploying military forces to increasingly Democratic-governed areas.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, through a three-judge panel, approved the Justice Department’s appeal, effectively pausing a lower court’s injunction that had temporarily halted the deployment. This allows the contentious legal battle over Trump’s directive to proceed.
According to the court, deploying the National Guard was a justified response to protestors who had caused damage to a federal building and issued threats against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) personnel.
Circuit Judges Bridget Bade and Ryan Nelson, both appointed by Trump during his first term, supported the anonymous majority opinion. Judge Nelson further elaborated in a concurring opinion, arguing that courts lack the jurisdiction to even review a president’s decision to deploy troops.
However, Circuit Judge Susan Graber, an appointee of former Democratic President Bill Clinton, strongly dissented. She criticized the decision, stating that authorizing troop deployment in response to “merely inconvenient” protests was not only “absurd” but also inherently dangerous. Judge Graber urged the full 9th Circuit to reconsider and overturn the ruling before Trump could proceed with the deployment.
Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield echoed Judge Graber’s concerns, also calling for a review by the 9th Circuit, warning that the ruling steers America onto a “dangerous path.”
“If today’s ruling is allowed to stand,” Rayfield stated, “it would grant the president unchecked authority to deploy Oregon’s soldiers on our streets with virtually no justifiable cause.”
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson, on the other hand, praised the court’s decision. She asserted that Trump had acted within his legal rights to safeguard federal property and personnel from the ongoing protests.
This development follows a previous setback for Trump, as another U.S. appeals court had ruled against his decision to send troops to Chicago. Consequently, Trump has since sought the U.S. Supreme Court’s opinion on the scope of his authority to deploy troops in cities led by Democratic officials.
Judicial Opinions Clash on Necessity of Troop Deployment
Earlier, on October 4, U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut, also a Trump appointee based in Portland, had determined that Trump’s order to deploy troops in the city was likely unlawful. Her ruling temporarily prevented Trump from sending National Guard personnel to Portland until at least the end of October. A non-jury trial is scheduled for October 29 to assess whether a more permanent injunction should be implemented.
On September 27, Trump had initially commanded the deployment of 200 National Guard troops to Portland. This move was part of his administration’s controversial and unparalleled strategy of using military personnel in U.S. cities to quell protests and reinforce domestic immigration policies. Describing Portland as “War ravaged,” Trump had famously declared, “I am also authorizing Full Force, if necessary.”
In response, city and state authorities filed a lawsuit to block the Portland deployment. They contended that Trump’s actions not only infringed upon various federal laws concerning the use of military forces but also violated the state’s sovereign rights as protected by the U.S. Constitution’s 10th Amendment.
The lawsuit further alleged that Trump had inflated the intensity of the protests against his immigration policies, using this exaggeration as a pretext to unlawfully commandeer state National Guard units.
However, police records supplied by the state painted a different picture, indicating that protests in Portland had been “small and sedate.” These records showed merely 25 arrests in mid-June, followed by no arrests at all in the three-and-a-half months subsequent to June 19.
The National Guard typically operates as state-controlled militia forces, answering to their respective state governors. The only exception is when they are federalized by the President for national service. In his orders to deploy troops in California, Oregon, and Illinois, Trump invoked Section 12406 of Title 10 of the U.S. Code. This law grants the President authority to deploy state National Guard units to repel invasions, quash rebellions, or enforce federal law.
When evaluating Trump’s September declaration that protests in Portland had rendered federal law unenforceable, the 9th Circuit judges found themselves divided on the relevance of the presented evidence.
The majority of judges considered evidence dating back to June, when more intense protests led to the closure of ICE headquarters in Portland for three weeks. They also factored in seemingly unrelated incidents, such as a shooting at an ICE facility in Dallas.
Conversely, Judge Graber contended that no genuine emergency existed in Portland. She noted that protests had remained peaceful for several weeks prior to Trump’s troop deployment, largely consisting of individuals “wearing chicken suits or inflatable frog costumes” – a stark contrast to the depiction of dangerous rioters by Trump administration officials.
Judge Immergut had previously delivered two rulings against the administration on October 4 and October 5. First, she ruled that Trump could not assume control of Oregon’s National Guard. Subsequently, she further decreed that he could not bypass this decision by deploying National Guard troops from other states.
Her rulings emphasized a lack of evidence that recent protests in Portland amounted to a rebellion or significantly obstructed law enforcement. She concluded that Trump’s characterization of the city as “war-ravaged” was “simply untethered to the facts.”
Notably, Judge Immergut is one of three district court judges who have ruled against Trump’s utilization of the National Guard, with no district court judge yet ruling in favor of his stance on these deployments.