The Trump administration’s push to lift a lower court’s order barring the deployment of the National Guard to Chicago relies on “mischaracterizations” of the facts on the ground, lawyers for the city of Chicago and state of Illinois wrote in a brief to the Supreme Court on Monday.
They urged the high court to keep in place the current order that allows the Trump administration to federalize the Illinois National Guard but prohibits them from deploying into Chicago.
“Applicants’ contrary arguments rest on mischaracterizations of the factual record or the lower courts’ views of the legal principles. As the district court found, state and local law enforcement officers have handled isolated protest activities in Illinois, and there is no credible evidence to the contrary,” they argued.
With the temporary restraining order set to expire in three days, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul encouraged the court to reach the same conclusion reached by two lower courts — that that Illinois would be irreparably harmed and Trump was unlikely to prove the takeover of the National Guard was justified.
National Guard members walk at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Broadview facility in Chicago, October 9, 2025.
Jeenah Moon/Reuters
They argued that the current arrangement barring the deployment but allowing the federalization of the National Guard “safeguards the careful balance of power struck by the Constitution and affords the federal government appropriate solicitude while this fast-moving case proceeds in the lower courts.”
“The Framers carefully apportioned responsibility over the ‘militia’ — today, the National Guard — between the federal government and the States, granting the federal government the authority to call up the militia only for specific purposes and at specific times,” they wrote.
