A federal appeals court blocked California’s law forcing ICE officers to display visible identification, a defeat for Gov. Gavin Newsom’s effort to restrict federal immigration enforcement.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled Wednesday that California’s No Vigilantes Act violates the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution and ordered a preliminary injunction against the state, The Hill reported.
The law required plainclothes officers operating in California to “visibly display identification.” State leaders framed it as transparency. The court treated it as something else: a direct attempt by a state to regulate how the federal government does its job.
Federal officers enforce immigration law under national authority. California tried to rewrite the ground rules for those officers inside its borders. The panel said that approach does not survive constitutional review.
The court did not leave much room for creative state lawyering. It held that the Supremacy Clause bars states from regulating federal operations even when the same rules would apply to state officers.
In the ruling, the panel wrote that the Constitution “prohibits States from directly regulating federal operations even when regulating state operations in the same manner.”
"In sum, if a state law directly regulates the governmental conduct of the United States without congressional authorization, it is void irrespective of whether the regulated activities are essential to federal functions or operations, and irrespective of the degree to which the state law interferes with such functions or operations."
Fox News reported that the panel put the point even more bluntly on the statute at issue.
"We conclude that [section 10] of the No Vigilantes Act attempts to directly regulate the United States in its performance of governmental functions. The Supremacy Clause forbids the State from enforcing such legislation."
That is the whole case in plain English. Congress did not authorize California to set identification rules for federal immigration agents. Without that green light, the state law falls.
California officials ushered in the No Vigilantes Act after ICE raids across the state last year. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed it. The Department of Justice sued California and Newsom last November.
A companion measure, the No Secret Police Act, banned federal officers from wearing masks during operations in the state. Both laws took effect on Jan. 1 and required officers to show identification while on duty.
The fight did not start this week. In April, the appeals court sided with the Trump administration and extended a pause on the law while the case moved forward. The Wednesday ruling turns that pause into a court-ordered injunction path against California.
Fox News noted that a federal judge had already blocked the related mask ban in February. The pattern is consistent. California passed rules aimed at ICE. Federal courts kept knocking them down.
Newsom has not hidden his view of federal immigration agents. In comments covered in the Fox report, he said Trump’s ICE agents “need to be reined in and held to the same standards as any other law enforcement agency” and argued that “federal accountability and clear identification shouldn’t be optional.”
The court’s answer was institutional, not political: states do not get to “rein in” federal officers by writing new operating codes for them.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office previously told The Hill that good law enforcement requires “transparency and accountability.” The same office accused the Trump administration of stepping “well outside the boundaries of normal practice” with federal law enforcement.
Newsom used similar language when he signed a later bill tied to ICE equipment. After ICE received a nearly $17 million contract for 6,000 pairs of electric shock gloves, he signed another state law last month and called the gloves “Orwellian.”
In a statement at the time, Newsom said California was “taking action to strengthen transparency, accountability, and oversight around immigration enforcement in our state.” He added, “This is about stepping up where the federal government has failed our communities.”
"California is taking action to strengthen transparency, accountability, and oversight around immigration enforcement in our state."
Those lines frame the state as a watchdog. The litigation record shows something narrower: Sacramento writing rules for federal agents who answer to federal law.
Just the News reported that the Ninth Circuit granted an injunction pending appeal and treated the statute as an improper regulation of federal governmental functions.
First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli called the decision a huge legal victory. That assessment matches the court’s own merits language: the United States is likely to succeed on its Supremacy Clause claim.
"We conclude that § 10 of the No Vigilantes Act attempts to directly regulate the United States in its performance of governmental functions. The Supremacy Clause forbids the State from enforcing such legislation. The United States is therefore likely to succeed on the merits of its Supremacy Clause claim..."
The backdrop includes more than statutes. In June 2025, President Trump deployed the National Guard in Los Angeles amid protests against ICE operations. A federal judge later ordered an end to that deployment in December. The legal fight over California’s ID and mask rules ran on a parallel track.
Blue-state leaders keep testing how far they can go in constraining federal immigration work. Courts keep returning to the same constitutional line. Federal functions are not a local menu item.
The 9th Circuit remanded the case with instructions to enter a preliminary injunction against California. That order stops the state from enforcing the challenged identification mandate while the dispute continues.
ICE officers will not have to follow California’s visible-ID rule under that injunction path. The state may still talk about oversight. It cannot commandeer the federal badge.
The panel’s composition, as covered by Fox News, included two Trump appointees and one Obama appointee. The legal holding did not turn on campaign rhetoric. It turned on whether a state statute can directly regulate United States officers doing United States work.
California’s answer was yes, if the label is transparency. The court’s answer was no, if Congress never authorized the intrusion.
That distinction matters beyond one statute. If every state can invent special rules for federal agents, national enforcement becomes a patchwork of local vetoes. Immigration law is federal law. The Supremacy Clause exists for exactly this collision.
Newsom’s office built a political brand on resisting federal immigration policy. The 9th Circuit just reminded Sacramento that resistance has a constitutional ceiling.
When states try to run federal officers by local script, the Constitution still has the last word.
