A win for Trump as appeals court rejects order barring Guard troops in Portland
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- 9th Circuit overturned a ban on federalizing Oregon Guard, allowing troop use.
- A separate lower-court injunction remains active but may be vacated soon.
- The dissent accused administration of using false pretenses; en banc review was urged.
A federal judge’s order barring the Trump administration from deploying the Oregon National Guard to Portland was overturned by an appellate court on Monday, opening the door to the use of military troops to quell sporadic protests against immigration sweeps in the liberal city.
The ruling by a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals does not immediately affect the situation in Portland because a separate lower-court order barring the use of the Guard there remains in place. However, that ruling could soon be dissolved because it is based on the same legal reasoning as the one that was overturned.
The 2-1 ruling relied in part on a determination that Portland-based District Judge Karin Immergut was wrong when she accepted as factual reports from the state and the city saying that protests there were mostly small and peaceful in September, when the Trump administration called up the Guard. It followed a contentious hearing last week where attorneys for both sides sparred with the judges over whether Trump had exaggerated violence in Portland to call up the guard, among other issues.
“Since June 2025, there have been regular protests at the Lindquist Federal Building, an ICE facility in Portland,” the panel’s two Trump-appointed judges, Bridget Bade and Ryan Nelson, wrote in their majority opinion. “Some of these protests have been peaceful, but many have turned violent, and protesters have threatened federal law enforcement officers and the building.”
It listed several incidents, most of which took place in June, including the placement of wood, rocks and a traffic barrier in front of the building, throwing rocks and sticks at a guard shack and lighting two fires in front of the building.
“Officers were forced to barricade themselves inside the building and protesters placed chains on the exterior doors,” the ruling said.
Far from helping, the order said, the city of Portland issued a notice of zoning violation to the federal government when officials covered the building’s windows with plywood for protection, they noted.
The ruling is the latest victory for President Donald Trump in his high-profile efforts to send troops to cities and states run by Democrats where he claims that crime and violent protests are out of control. In June, a different panel of the 9th Circuit ruled against California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, in a lawsuit filed against the Trump administration over its decision to federalize the California Guard to protect immigration officers conducting sweeps in Los Angeles from protesters there.
Monday’s action drew a scathing dissent from Judge Susan Graber, the lone jurist on the panel who was appointed by a Democrat.
Graber, who is located in Portland and was appointed by former President Bill Clinton, called the deployment illegal and suggested that the government’s arguments and her colleagues’ acceptance of them relied on “fabrication and propaganda.”
Trump, she said, had falsely called Portland “war-ravaged” in a social media post that his lawyers later said could be considered as a part of the record in his decision to federalize the state’s Guard. Conditions on the ground in September were mostly peaceful, she said, and it was misleading to cite on incidents from months earlier when deciding to bring in troops in the fall.
“We rule on facts, not on supposition or conjecture, and certainly not on fabrication or propaganda,“ Graber wrote. Although Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek has not yet requested that a larger panel of appellate judges hear the case again, Graber urged her colleagues to do so and stop the deployment before it can be made.
“I ask those who are watching this case unfold to retain faith in our judicial system for just a while longer,” she wrote.
But in a concurring opinion filed with the order, Nelson expressed views that aligned more with the arguments that the Trump administration had made, saying he agreed with their contention that the courts did not even have the right to review the president’s decision to call up the Guard in this case.
Moreover, he wrote, Trump showed he was acting in good faith by only calling up 200 soldiers, compared to the 2,000 deployed over Newsom’s objections in Los Angeles.
Under an order issued last week by Immergut, the administration now has 48 hours to request that her second temporary restraining order against the deployment be dissolved. That order was issued after Trump threatened to send Guard personnel from California to Portland, and bars the use of National Guard members from any state to the Pacific Northwest city.
