
A three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit — two Trump appointees and one Obama appointee — ruled that California's "No Vigilantes Act" is unconstitutional in its entirety. Not partially. Not in specific applications. The court found that "no set of circumstances exist under which the Act would be valid."
That's the Ninth Circuit talking. About an immigration enforcement case. Against Gavin Newsom.
The law, which Newsom signed in fall 2025 alongside a companion bill called the "No Secret Police Act," required ICE agents to display visible identification during enforcement operations and banned them from wearing masks. The stated purpose was accountability. The actual purpose was obstruction — making it easier for activist networks to identify, photograph, and target individual federal agents and their families.
ICE had argued exactly that. Agents concealed their identities because of documented threats against their families. Newsom's office called that concern irrelevant. "These laws shouldn't even be necessary," a Newsom spokesperson said. "We shouldn't have unidentified, masked men terrorizing our communities."
The court wasn't persuaded. The panel wrote that "section 10 of the No Vigilantes Act attempts to directly regulate the United States in its performance of governmental functions. The Supremacy Clause forbids the State from enforcing such legislation." A federal judge had already blocked the mask ban back in February 2026. This ruling finished the job.
Newsom, for his part, had framed the fight as righteous from the start. "Trump's ICE agents need to be reined in and held to the same standards as any other law enforcement agency," he said in March. The Ninth Circuit's answer to that theory was unambiguous: states don't get to dictate how federal law enforcement conducts federal operations. Full stop.
White House Spokeswoman Abigail Jackson called the ruling "a win for the rule of law." Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche's DOJ had sued to block both California statutes, with First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli and DOJ Civil Rights Division head Harmeet Dhillon driving the federal challenge on the ground in California.
The Ninth Circuit has spent decades as the judicial arm of progressive wish-casting. This is the court that blocked Trump's first travel ban, tried to stop border wall construction, and issued so many nationwide injunctions during Trump's first term that the phrase "Ninth Circuit judge" became shorthand for judicial activism.
Newsom built these laws as political theater. They were designed to generate headlines about "masked federal agents" and "unaccountable enforcement." They were never designed to survive constitutional scrutiny, because surviving wasn't the point. The point was the fight itself — the press conferences, the defiance, the footage of a governor standing up to Washington.
The Supremacy Clause doesn't care about your press conference. California can appeal. The panel's language suggests they'd be wasting the court's time.
Two Trump appointees and one Obama appointee. Unanimous.


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