California’s ‘No Vigilantes Act’ requiring ID from immigration agents blocked by 9th Circuit

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The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals nixed a trailblazing California law on Wednesday, permanently barring the state’s efforts to force federal immigration agents to display identification while on duty.

“As before, we conclude … the No Vigilantes Act attempts to directly regulate the United States in its performance of governmental functions,” Judge Mark J. Bennett wrote for the panel. “No set of circumstances exist under which the Act would be valid.”

The Justice Department first sued to block the ID requirement alongside a related law attempting to ban masks for federal agents and local police last fall.

The joint case hit Los Angeles federal court at the beginning of this year amid a surge of immigration enforcement in Minneapolis that led to the shootings of civilians Renee Good and Alex Pretti by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

By then, more than a dozen other states were pursuing similar statutes in an effort to reign in what many saw as lawlessness in President Trump’s sprawling deportation force.

Judge Christina A. Snyder ultimately blocked California’s law prohibiting the use of masks by law enforcement, on the grounds that it unfairly carved out an exception for state peace officers, but allowed the ID requirement for ICE agents and others to go forward, agreeing with the state that it was more akin to a speed limit on the highway than a direct regulation of the federal government.

“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,” Bennett wrote.

The decision comes as ICE is quietly shedding many of the 12,000 new recruits it hired last year. Although public outrage over Trump’s militarized mass deportation efforts has dimmed somewhat since the winter, it remains a potent election issue.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll from September showed more than 40% of Americans strongly disapprove of the president’s handling of immigration. Meanwhile, the share who fret over unauthorized immigration is nearly identical to the proportion who worry over the unchecked spread of measles — anxieties that pale in comparison to stress over the cost of living, the proliferation of data centers and the war with Iran, data show.

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Sonja Sharp is a legal affairs reporter for the Los Angeles Times and a founding member of the Society of Disabled Journalists. Before joining the newsroom in 2019, she worked as an NYPD-credentialed member of the New York City press corps, writing stranger-than-fiction stories of crime and culture for VICE, the Wall Street Journal and the Village Voice, among others. She is a Bay Area native, a graduate of UC Berkeley and Columbia, and a proud Jewish mother.

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