TRENTON, N.J. — New Jersey Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin announced Saturday that he has joined a coalition of 24 attorneys general and governors in filing a brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, supporting Illinois in its legal challenge against President Trump’s deployment of the National Guard without state approval.
According to the filing, the coalition argues that the President’s actions violate the Constitution and federal law, undermining the principle that the military must remain under civilian and state control and threatening state sovereignty and federalism.
The brief follows a series of federal orders deploying National Guard troops to multiple states, including California, Washington, D.C., Oregon, and most recently, Illinois. The coalition contends that these deployments exceed executive authority by usurping the role of local law enforcement.
“Judges across the country have made clear what is laid out in the Constitution – Trump’s domestic National Guard deployments are illegal,” said Attorney General Platkin. “The President is using our armed forces as his personal army, sending them into places that he has deemed insufficiently loyal or not politically aligned with him, acting no differently than authoritarians around the world. The courts must stop this blatant abuse of power and stand up for our democracy.”
The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday denied the Trump Administration’s request for an immediate administrative stay of a lower court’s decision blocking the federalized deployment of National Guard troops in Illinois, though the court did allow federalization of the Guard to continue during the stay request proceedings.
Attorney General Platkin and other coalition members are urging the court to deny the Trump Administration’s request for a broad stay pending appeal, which would allow troops to be deployed to Chicago, and to uphold the lower court’s ruling that prevents the federal government from overriding state control of the Guard.
In addition to New Jersey, the brief was joined by attorneys general from Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawai‘i, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington, along with the governors of Kansas, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania.
