The Trump administration’s push to lift a lower court’s order banning the deployment of the National Guard in Chicago is based on “mischaracterizations” of the facts on the ground, attorneys for the city of Chicago and the state of Illinois wrote in a brief to the Supreme Court on Monday.
They urged the high court to uphold the current order that allows the Trump administration to federalize the Illinois National Guard but prohibits them from deploying to Chicago.
“Petitioners’ counterarguments are based on mischaracterizations of the factual record or lower courts’ opinions of legal principles. As the district court concluded, state and local law enforcement officials have handled isolated protest activities in Illinois, and there is no credible evidence to the contrary,” they argued.
With the temporary restraining order set to expire in three days, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul encouraged the court to reach the same conclusion reached by two lower courts: that Illinois would suffer irreparable harm and that Trump was unlikely to show that the takeover of the National Guard was justified.
Members of the National Guard walk at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Broadview facility in Chicago, Oct. 9, 2025.
Jeenah Luna/Reuters
They argued that the current agreement prohibiting deployment but allowing federalization of the National Guard “safeguards the careful balance of power established by the Constitution and provides the federal government with appropriate request as this rapidly evolving case moves through the lower courts.”
“The drafters carefully apportioned responsibility for the ‘militia’ (today, the National Guard) between the federal government and the states, giving the federal government the authority to call up the militia only for specific purposes and at specific times,” they wrote.
