It is no surprise that a unanimous of the Ninth Circuit just enjoined the blatantly unconstitutional attempt by the “No-Longer-So-Golden State” to impose restrictions on the ability of ICE and other federal agents to enforce federal immigration law. That panel was doing exactly what federal courts are supposed to do â uphold the U.S. Constitution.
On October 14 in U.S. v. California, the court tossed the so-called “No Vigilantes Act” (NVA) onto the ash heap. This law was part of the states continuing effort to obstruct federal immigration enforcement, which has included relentless public attacks by the governor and state officials on federal agents just trying to do their job of enforcing the law. That includes noxious claims like Newsom likening them to the thuggish “secret police” of an “authoritarian” state.
The NVA required any non-uniformed “federal law enforcement officer” operating in California to “visibly display identification” when carrying out federal law enforcement duties. A federal agent violating this requirement could be criminally prosecuted by the state.
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As the Ninth Circuit pointed out, the Supremacy Clause in Article VI makes the “Constitution, and the Laws of the United Statesâ¦the Supreme Law of the Land.” In other words, federal law not only overrides any state law to the contrary, but it requires what is called “intergovernmental immunity.” Under “the intergovernmental immunity component of the Supremacy Clauseâ¦states may not directly regulate the Federal Governments operations or property.” The panel cites to a 1996 Ninth Circuit decision, Blackburn v. U.S., on this issue, but then points out that this basic legal principle â that states cannot interfere in federal functions â goes all the way back to one of the most seminal Supreme Court cases in our history, McCulloch v. Maryland (1819). “It is the very essence of Supremacy,” said the Court in McCulloch, “to remove all obstacles to its action within its own sphere, and so to modify every power vested in subordinate governments, as to exempt its own operations from their own influence.” That is why “States have no power ⦠to retard, impede, burden, or in any manner control the operations of the constitutional laws enacted by Congress to carry into execution the powers vested in the General Government.”
California tried to argue that the NVA was constitutional because it did not “substantially burden” federal law enforcement. But the Ninth Circuit shot that down, too, saying any attempt by a state law to directly regulate “the conduct of the United Statesâ¦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.”
What made this law even worse was its threat to criminally prosecute federal agents. This is especially ironic because California attempted to do with the NVA what the Supreme Court specifically told the state it couldnt do 136 years ago in another seminal case, In re Neagle (1890), also cited by the Ninth Circuit panel. That decision reads like a Hollywood movie but also demonstrates just how bizarre state officials have acted in California for a long time, not just in todays heated political arena.
In re Neagle involved the state of California trying to prosecute a U.S. Marshal for murder. Marshall David Neagle was acting as a bodyguard for Supreme Court Justice Stephen Field, a job the U.S. Marshals Service
