A liberal-leaning Ninth Circuit panel blocked California’s push to force plainclothes federal agents to show identification, ruling the Trump administration is certain to succeed against Gov. Gavin Newsom’s law.

Federal immigration officers in California no longer have to bare their badges on demand under a state statute that tried to revise how they work. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit put a hard stop on the identification mandate in the state’s No Vigilantes Act, finding the measure runs straight into the Constitution’s supremacy clause.

Fox News reported the court held the Trump administration was “certain to succeed” in its lawsuit and barred enforcement of the ID rule against federal agents while the case proceeds. The decision lands as a clear courtroom win for the administration’s immigration enforcement drive and a setback for Newsom’s effort to hem in federal operations.

California had cast the law as community protection. The panel treated it as something else: a state attempt to regulate federal officers in the middle of their jobs.

California tried to dictate how federal agents identify themselves

Newsom signed a package of measures aimed at shielding immigrant communities and tightening oversight of federal agents. One of them, the No Vigilantes Act, ordered plainclothes federal law enforcement to display badges and identification during operations. Another, the No Secret Police Act, targeted face coverings.

The Trump administration sued California over those provisions in November 2025. At the district court, Clinton-appointed Judge Christina Snyder blocked the mask restriction for federal officers but left the identification requirement in place. The Justice Department appealed the ID piece.

The Ninth Circuit temporarily blocked enforcement of the identification rule in February and later granted an injunction pending appeal. The latest panel action kept that bar in force and underscored why the state statute fails.

Section 10 of the law, the court said, does not merely add a paperwork burden. It seizes a power that belongs to the federal government.

The panel wrote that the provision crosses a bright constitutional line:

"Section 10 explicitly overrides the federal government’s power to determine whether, how, and when to publicly identify its officers,"

California had argued a state law only goes too far when it “impose[s] substantial burdens on federal operations.” The appeals court rejected that test.

The burden, the judges said, is not the point:

"The burden of the regulation on federal operations, whether substantial or otherwise, is irrelevant,"

Breitbart reported that Judge Mark Bennett framed the problem in plain terms: the measure attempts to directly regulate the federal government as it performs its own functions, something a state cannot do without authorization from Congress. The panel declared the government certain to succeed on its supremacy-clause challenge and ordered a preliminary injunction blocking the ID requirement for federal agencies.

Justice Department frames the ruling as officer-safety win

Justice Department leaders treated the order as validation of a basic principle. Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate, who leads the Civil Division, put it bluntly on X.

"The Ninth Circuit agrees that California cannot regulate federal law enforcement,"

Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward, Jr. went further, tying the result to both officer safety and the president’s immigration mandate.

"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 called the decision a huge win for protecting the safety of the nation’s law enforcement officers and for keeping the president’s promise to enforce immigration laws. That framing tracks the administration’s core claim in the suit: state ID and mask rules expose agents to harassment and make routine enforcement harder.

Los Angeles’ top federal prosecutor struck a similar note after related relief from the same circuit. The New York Post reported First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli hailed a “huge legal victory” as the court enjoined California’s unconstitutional restrictions targeting federal agents, with the opinion stating the Supremacy Clause forbids the state from enforcing such legislation.

Those comments sit alongside other high-stakes Trump administration fights that have moved through the federal courts, including when the Supreme Court cleared Trump’s mail-in voting executive order in a 6-3 ruling ahead of the midterms.

Newsom’s office keeps the confrontation frame

Newsom, widely viewed as a 2028 presidential hopeful, has positioned himself as a leading opponent of the administration’s immigration agenda. His office did not soften after the Ninth Circuit’s move.

A spokesperson for the governor’s office answered with a direct attack on federal tactics:

"California is proud to fight for the safety of our communities against the federal government’s campaign of terror and weaponized incompetence,"

The same spokesperson added that those tactics “continue to harm our families every day.” That language treats federal immigration enforcement itself as the threat. The court’s order treats California’s attempt to micromanage federal officers as the constitutional problem.

The clash is not abstract. Photos and local scenes referenced in coverage have shown residents confronting Border Patrol and other federal agents in places such as the Los Angeles suburb of Bell. California last year also passed a law banning authorities from wearing masks, part of the same political project to raise the cost of federal operations on the ground.

State officials say they are defending neighborhoods. Federal officials say Congress, not Sacramento, sets the rules for how federal officers do the jobs Congress assigned them.

Supremacy clause leaves little room for state workarounds

The Ninth Circuit’s logic is institutional, not stylistic. Once a state tries to tell federal officers whether, how, and when they must identify themselves, it is no longer regulating private conduct or purely local police. It is regulating the United States.

That is why the panel brushed aside California’s “substantial burden” defense. Under the supremacy clause, states do not get to redesign federal field operations because local leaders dislike the mission. The federal government decides how its officers present themselves while carrying out federal law.

The same circuit has tangled with Trump-era immigration policy before. In 2017 it refused to reinstate a travel ban targeting several predominantly Muslim countries. In 2018 it blocked efforts to withhold federal funding from sanctuary cities and restricted attempts to tighten asylum eligibility. Those earlier fights fed the court’s reputation as a liberal-leaning check on Republican administrations. This panel still drew the line at direct state control of federal agents.

Legal pressure on parallel fronts continues elsewhere. Trump has also petitioned the Supreme Court to revive a dismissed lawsuit against Hillary Clinton, another reminder that major disputes in this era rarely end at the first courthouse.

Lower-court skirmishes in California have cut both ways. Separate captioned matters in the record include a June 12, 2025, emergency order from U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer temporarily stopping a California National Guard deployment, an episode outside the No Vigilantes case but part of the wider state-federal standoff Newsom has chosen to lead.

What the injunction does, and what it leaves open

The operative result is practical. While the appeal moves forward, California cannot enforce the No Vigilantes Act’s identification mandate against federal law enforcement. Agents carrying out immigration and related operations are not required by state law to show badges and ID on the state’s terms.

The mask provisions followed a different path at the trial level, where Snyder already blocked the No Secret Police Act’s face-covering restriction for federal officers. The identification rule was the piece the administration had to take up on appeal, and the piece the Ninth Circuit has now locked down with an injunction pending appeal.

Open questions remain in the broader docket: how far any remaining state rules can reach, what further appeals California may try, and how parallel statutes in other blue states will fare under the same supremacy analysis. New York’s separate fights over ICE face coverings have already drawn national notice as part of the same trend.

For now, the Ninth Circuit has answered the core question in California. A state does not get to draft the dress code and ID protocol for federal officers executing federal law.

Court fights over executive power and enforcement rarely travel alone. Trump has likewise asked the Supreme Court to revive a dismissed Clinton Russia lawsuit after sanctions-related developments, keeping multiple lanes of litigation active at once.

The political stakes are obvious. Newsom’s brand rests on maximal resistance to federal immigration policy. The administration’s brand rests on actually carrying that policy out. When those agendas collide in statute form, someone has to lose on the constitutional text. This time it was Sacramento’s ID mandate.

Readers tracking the pattern of Trump-era petitions will also note earlier coverage of how Trump petitioned the Supreme Court to reopen the dismissed Clinton lawsuit over 2016 Russia claims, another long-running dispute headed toward the highest court rather than settled in the states.

California can call federal enforcement whatever it wants in press statements. It cannot conscript federal agents into a state-designed visibility regime and expect the supremacy clause to look the other way. The Ninth Circuit just said so.