A liberal-leaning Ninth Circuit panel blocked California’s push to force plainclothes federal agents to show badges on operations, a supremacy-clause win for the Trump administration over Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Federal appeals judges in San Francisco temporarily barred enforcement of a key piece of California’s No Vigilantes Act after finding the Trump administration was certain to succeed in its challenge, Fox News reported.
The panel held that the identification rule for plainclothes federal officers runs straight into the Constitution’s supremacy clause, which puts federal law above conflicting state commands. California may not tell federal agents when and how they must identify themselves while doing jobs Congress authorized.
That outcome lands as a direct setback for Newsom, a Democrat widely viewed as a 2028 presidential hopeful, who has signed a run of state laws meant to shield immigrant communities and tighten state oversight of federal immigration agents.
The fight centers on Section 10 of the No Vigilantes Act. That provision required plainclothes federal law enforcement officers to display badges and identification while carrying out operations in the state.
California also passed the No Secret Police Act, which restricted face coverings for officers. Last year the state moved to ban authorities from wearing masks in related contexts, heightening the clash with federal agents including ICE and Border Patrol.
Newsom’s office has framed the package as community protection. A spokesperson for the governor’s office said California is “proud to fight for the safety of our communities against the federal government’s campaign of terror and weaponized incompetence,” and added that “Their tactics continue to harm our families every day.”
"California is proud to fight for the safety of our communities against the federal government’s campaign of terror and weaponized incompetence,"
Those lines treat lawful federal immigration enforcement as a menace. The court treated the ID mandate as a state attempt to regulate the federal government itself.
The Trump administration sued California in November 2025 over provisions in both the No Vigilantes Act and the No Secret Police Act.
U.S. District Judge Christina Snyder, a Clinton appointee, initially blocked the No Secret Police Act’s mask restriction as applied to federal officers. She declined to block the No Vigilantes Act’s identification requirement, leaving that piece alive and forcing an appeal.
The Ninth Circuit then stepped in. It temporarily blocked enforcement of the ID rule in February and later granted an injunction pending appeal in April, before the Wednesday action that deepened the administration’s win.
Judicial fights over Trump-era priorities have become routine, including separate battles in which a Biden-appointed judge clashed with the Justice Department on unrelated federal matters.
California argued a state law crosses the constitutional line only when it imposes substantial burdens on federal operations. The appeals court rejected that test.
The panel wrote that Section 10 “explicitly overrides the federal government’s power to determine whether, how, and when to publicly identify its officers.” It added that the burden on federal operations, “whether substantial or otherwise, is irrelevant.”
"Section 10 explicitly overrides the federal government’s power to determine whether, how, and when to publicly identify its officers,"
In plain terms, the state never had authority to directly regulate federal officials. Once California tried to script how federal agents identify themselves in the field, the supremacy clause did the rest.
The same constitutional hierarchy has shaped other high-stakes Trump administration legal strategies, including efforts that kept billions in Biden-era green bank grants frozen while further review played out.
Justice Department leaders moved quickly to claim the decision. Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate, who leads the Civil Division, posted that the Ninth Circuit agrees California cannot regulate federal law enforcement.
"The Ninth Circuit agrees that California cannot regulate federal law enforcement,"
Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward, Jr. went further, calling the outcome a huge win for officer safety and for the president’s promise to enforce immigration laws.
"Today, the Ninth Circuit again affirms what common sense makes clear: California cannot regulate how Federal law enforcement officers carry out their jobs authorized by Congress,"
Woodward also wrote that the decision protects the safety of the nation’s law enforcement officers and backs the White House commitment to enforce immigration statutes. Field agents who already face hostile confrontations during enforcement work gain from clear federal control over their own identification practices.
The Ninth Circuit has repeatedly clashed with Trump administration immigration policies. In 2017 it refused to reinstate the travel ban aimed at several predominantly Muslim countries. In 2018 it blocked efforts to withhold federal funding from sanctuary cities and restricted attempts to tighten asylum eligibility.
That history makes this ruling sharper. A court often described as liberal-leaning still held that California cannot conscript federal officers into a state identification regime.
Separate coverage in the New York Post described the appeals court as permanently nixing the No Vigilantes Act ID mandate on supremacy-clause grounds and quoted Judge Mark J. Bennett’s conclusion that the act attempts to regulate the United States in its governmental functions, with no set of circumstances under which it would be valid.
First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli called it a huge win for the supremacy clause and said California continues to violate the Constitution while federal lawyers keep holding the state accountable.
Newsom has positioned himself as a leading opponent of the Trump immigration agenda. The No Vigilantes and No Secret Police measures fit a broader pattern: use state statutes to slow, expose, or politically brand federal interior enforcement.
Residents have confronted federal and Border Patrol agents in places such as the Los Angeles suburb of Bell, feeding the political theater around masks, IDs, and street-level operations. State lawmakers answered with rules aimed at the agents, not at the illegal immigration those agents are charged with policing.
Federal courts keep answering with the same basic point. States do not supervise the United States. When California create scripts for federal officers, it is not “oversight.” It is a power grab the Constitution does not allow.
That is why the administration’s broader legal posture matters, from immigration to other fights in which Trump has sought Supreme Court review after lower-court setbacks in unrelated cases.
With the identification requirement blocked, plainclothes federal agents regain control over whether, how, and when they display credentials during California operations. The state cannot force a badge-out routine that would telegraph tactics, compromise undercover work, or hand street agitators a state-law pretext to interfere.
The mask-related No Secret Police restriction had already been blocked at the district level for federal officers. Together, the rulings strip away two of Sacramento’s sharpest tools for micromanaging ICE and related agencies.
Additional Fox News coverage underscored the same core holding: the administration was certain to succeed because the ID rule overrides federal authority over its own officers.
Open questions remain on the full panel makeup, the precise docket label, and how far a final merits decision will reach. The operative reality for now is simpler. California’s experiment in regulating federal immigration agents hit a constitutional wall.
Parallel pressure campaigns elsewhere show the same instinct to use process and state power against Trump priorities, including cases where Trump has demanded a prosecutor’s removal from a contested probe.
When state politicians try to run federal cops, the Constitution still has the last word, and this time even the Ninth Circuit said so.
