A federal appeals court blocked California’s bid to make immigration agents display ID on the job, holding the state cannot regulate federal officers and handing the Trump administration a clear win.
A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday that Section 10 of California’s “No Vigilantes Act” violates the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The panel reversed a lower court and ordered a preliminary injunction that bars the state from enforcing the identification mandate against federal agencies and officers.
Judge Mark Bennett, writing for the panel with Judges Jacqueline Nguyen and Daniel Collins, said the government is “certain” to succeed on its constitutional challenge. The law had required non-uniformed officers operating in California, including federal immigration agents, to visibly display their agency and either a name or badge number while on enforcement duty. Officers who refused faced misdemeanor prosecution by the state.
Breitbart News reported that California enacted the measure in 2025 after federal immigration sweeps across the state, many involving masked agents in unmarked cars, drew objections from Democrat officials. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the No Vigilantes Act alongside the No Secret Police Act, which restricts officers from wearing face coverings and was separately blocked by a district judge earlier this year.
The panel had already paused the identification requirement in April. Wednesday’s decision went to the merits and shut the door on state enforcement against federal officers acting under federal authority.
The core holding is straightforward. The measure attempts to directly regulate the federal government as it performs its own functions. A state cannot do that without authorization from Congress.
Because law enforcement is a core government activity, the identification mandate is invalid in every application to federal officers acting under federal authority. Even minimal interference is beside the point when a state directly regulates federal governmental conduct.
The New York Post carried Judge Bennett’s language from the opinion:
"As before, we conclude... the No Vigilantes Act attempts to directly regulate the United States in its performance of governmental functions. No set of circumstances exist under which the Act would be valid."
California argued the law did not substantially interfere with federal operations. The panel rejected that framing. When a state tries to control how federal officers identify themselves in the field, the question is not how heavy the burden feels. The question is whether the state has any power to issue the order at all.
It does not. That is the Supremacy Clause at work, the same constitutional line that has drawn conservative attention in other fights over state mandates and higher-court review, including cases where parties have asked the Supreme Court to police contested state policy orders.
Fox News reported the panel’s sharper constitutional point: Section 10 explicitly overrides the federal government’s power to decide whether, how, and when to publicly identify its officers. States never had authority to directly regulate federal officials, so claims about operational burden do not save the statute.
"Section 10 explicitly overrides the federal government’s power to determine whether, how, and when to publicly identify its officers," the panel wrote.
That finding lands in a court often described as liberal-leaning. The panel included an Obama appointee and a Trump appointee alongside Bennett. The result still sided with the Trump administration’s challenge and against Sacramento’s attempt to police federal field tactics.
DOJ officials welcomed the outcome. Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate wrote on X that the Ninth Circuit agrees California cannot regulate federal law enforcement. First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli framed it as accountability for repeated state overreach.
"Huge win for the Supremacy Clause. California continues to violate the U.S. Constitution, and we will continue to hold them accountable."
Those reactions fit a broader pattern in which the administration has pressed courts to keep state governments from rewriting federal enforcement rules, a theme also visible when Trump has taken other legal fights toward the Supreme Court.
The statute’s Section 10 did not merely encourage courtesy badges. It imposed a visible-ID rule on non-uniformed law enforcement officers working in California and swept federal agents into that category during enforcement operations.
Refusal opened officers to misdemeanor prosecution by state authorities. In practical terms, California sought to attach criminal risk to federal agents who followed their own agencies’ identification protocols instead of Sacramento’s.
The Washington Examiner noted the Ninth Circuit barred California from enforcing the provision requiring federal immigration officers to identify themselves while on duty, granted the federal government a preliminary injunction, and reversed a lower-court ruling that had refused to block the law.
The companion No Secret Police Act, aimed at face coverings, had already hit a separate wall earlier this year when a district judge blocked it. Together, the two measures were California’s answer to federal immigration sweeps that Democrat officials disliked. Courts have now stripped both of force against the federal side.
Readers tracking how higher courts handle contested lower rulings will recognize the posture. Similar pressure appears when a Ninth Circuit judge urges the Supreme Court to reverse his own court’s Second Amendment decisions, or when gun-rights groups seek relief from state court treatment of lawful travelers. The through-line is simple: states do not get the last word when federal power and constitutional structure are on the line.
With the preliminary injunction in place, California cannot enforce the identification requirement against federal agencies and officers while the case proceeds. The state’s remaining paths are narrow: seek rehearing before a larger Ninth Circuit panel or petition the Supreme Court.
Neither path undoes the panel’s core logic overnight. The opinion treats the ID mandate as a direct regulation of federal governmental conduct, invalid across the board as applied to federal officers acting under federal authority. That is a structural holding, not a temporary scheduling dispute.
The timeline is clear enough. California passed the No Vigilantes Act in 2025. The Ninth Circuit paused the ID rule in April. The merits ruling arrived Wednesday, after the panel’s earlier stay, and converted the pause into an injunction grounded in the Supremacy Clause.
Newsom’s office and state lawyers had cast the law as a transparency measure that would not cripple federal work. The panel’s answer was that the interference test is the wrong test. Direct regulation of federal officers is the problem. Congress would have to authorize that kind of state control. It has not.
Federal immigration agents and other federal officers remain free, under this order, to follow federal identification rules rather than California’s criminal misdemeanor threat. That restores the ordinary chain of command: federal agencies set field protocols for their own people; states do not.
The ruling also closes a political loop. Democrat officials objected to masked agents and unmarked cars during immigration enforcement. Sacramento answered with statutes aimed at unmasking and labeling those officers. Federal courts have now blocked both tools as applied to the federal government. The enforcement operations California wanted to reshape continue under federal authority, not state redesign.
Conservatives who watch border and interior enforcement will read the decision as more than a technical win. It rejects the idea that a blue-state legislature can attach local criminal exposure to federal agents for doing their jobs the way Washington directs. That principle matters in California today and in any state that tries the same playbook tomorrow, much as other recent court fights have tested how far state rules can reach before higher courts push back, including disputes over armed travelers facing hostile state treatment.
Trump administration lawyers framed the case as a defense of constitutional structure and operational control. The panel agreed the government is certain to succeed. For officers in the field, the practical effect is immediate: no California misdemeanor hanging over a decision about whether a name tape or badge number must be visible during a federal enforcement action.
When states try to micromanage federal officers, the Constitution still draws a hard line, and this time the Ninth Circuit enforced it.