In recent weeks, President Donald Trump deployed National Guard troops to Washington, D.C., and — some months prior — to Los Angeles in an effort he says is aimed at reducing crime.
The president has also said he intends to send military personnel to Chicago, despite a California federal judge ruling last week that the administration’s deployment of troops violated federal law, specifically the Posse Comitatus Act.
What is the Posse Comitatus Act, and how does it apply to Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in California and Washington, D.C.?
Passed in 1878 after the end of Reconstruction — the post-Civil War era when federal troops enforced laws in the former Confederacy — the act prohibits the U.S. military from carrying out domestic law enforcement.
Dan Urman, director of the law and public policy minor at Northeastern University, who teaches courses on the Supreme Court, says the National Guard is often caught between state and federal authority. The guard generally reports to their respective state governors, “but if they get called into federal service, then the Posse Comitatus Act applies to them.”
Read more at Northeastern Global News
