A Ninth Circuit panel blocked California from forcing federal immigration agents to show ID, holding the state's No Vigilantes Act violates the Constitution's Supremacy Clause.

A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that California cannot require federal immigration agents and other federal officers to display identification during enforcement operations in the state.

The court held that Section 10 of the “No Vigilantes Act” violates the Supremacy Clause, reversed a lower court, and ordered a preliminary injunction barring California from enforcing the identification rule against federal agencies and officers. The decision hands the Trump administration a clear win over Gov. Gavin Newsom’s effort to police how federal officers do their jobs.

Judge Mark Bennett wrote for the panel, which included Jacqueline Nguyen and Daniel Collins. Bennett and Collins are Trump appointees; Nguyen is an Obama appointee. The same panel had paused the requirement in April before ruling on the merits.

State law tried to regulate federal officers on the job

California enacted the No Vigilantes Act in 2025 after federal immigration sweeps across the state, many carried out by masked agents in unmarked cars. Those operations drew objections from Democrat officials. Newsom signed the measure alongside a companion bill, the No Secret Police Act, which sought to restrict officers from wearing face coverings.

Section 10 required non-uniformed law enforcement officers operating in California, including federal agents, to visibly display their agency and either a name or badge number while carrying out enforcement duties. Officers who refused could face misdemeanor prosecution by the state.

California argued the law was permissible because it did not substantially interfere with federal operations. The appeals court rejected that defense. A Washington Examiner account of the ruling noted the panel barred the state from enforcing the identification provision and reversed a lower-court decision that had refused to block it.

The companion face-covering law was separately blocked by a district judge earlier this year. California’s remaining options on the ID rule now narrow to seeking a rehearing or petitioning the Supreme Court.

Panel says the Constitution leaves no room for the mandate

Bennett’s opinion cut to the constitutional core. The measure, the panel held, attempts to directly regulate the federal government as it performs its own functions, something a state cannot do 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 panel declared the government “certain” to succeed on its constitutional challenge.

The New York Post reported Bennett’s holding in fuller form:

"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."

That language leaves little daylight. The Supremacy Clause settles conflicts between federal and state power in favor of the federal government when Congress has occupied the field or when a state tries to command federal officers in their official work. Immigration enforcement is a federal function. California tried to attach conditions to it anyway.

In parallel fights over who controls the machinery of justice, the Ninth Circuit has also weighed in on Trump administration authority over court-appointed prosecutors during pending appeals. The pattern is the same: federal power, tested in court, and states or lower courts pushing back.

Newsom’s two-track pressure campaign hit a wall

Newsom’s package was never subtle. One bill targeted face coverings. The other targeted visible identification. Together they aimed to make federal immigration work harder to conduct and easier to disrupt. Democrat officials objected to masked agents and unmarked cars. The response was state criminal exposure for federal officers who did not comply with California’s display rules.

Fox News described the panel’s conclusion this way:

"We conclude 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."

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche called the outcome “another decisive victory in this administration's effort to remove illegal aliens from this country.” Bill Essayli framed it as a constitutional accountability moment:

"Huge win for the Supremacy Clause. California continues to violate the U.S. Constitution, and we will continue to hold them accountable."

Those reactions match the holding. The court did not balance policy preferences. It applied a structural rule: states do not get to revise the operating conditions for federal officers carrying out federal law.

Newsom has separately floated bigger institutional changes. He has signaled openness to court-packing and scrapping the Electoral College, moves that would further reshape the rules when Democratic priorities meet constitutional limits. The No Vigilantes fight fits that larger habit of pressing state and political power against federal constraints.

Immigration enforcement keeps running into courtroom crossfire

Federal immigration policy has spent years in the courts. Judges have frozen projects, paused removals, and rewritten notice rules. A federal judge halted border wall construction work in Texas’s Big Bend sector. Another blocked deportations of noncitizen students tied to protest speech. An appeals court struck down a DHS third-country removal policy and demanded additional process for migrants.

This Ninth Circuit ruling runs the other direction. It tells a blue state it cannot criminalize or condition the visible identity of federal officers doing federal immigration work. The injunction is preliminary, but the panel’s constitutional language is categorical: no set of circumstances makes the Act valid as applied to federal officers under federal authority.

California cast the law as a transparency measure and a response to public anger over masked sweeps. The court treated it as what the text does, a direct regulation of federal governmental functions. Lawful residents, taxpayers, and agents tasked with removing illegal immigrants from the country are the people who live with the results when states try to slow federal enforcement through local criminal rules.

The lower court had refused to block the ID requirement. The appeals court reversed that choice and put the injunction in place. For federal agencies operating in California, the practical effect is immediate: the state cannot prosecute non-uniformed federal officers for declining to display agency identifiers and a name or badge number while on enforcement duty under federal authority.

Constitutional structure is not a suggestion. When a state tries to put federal agents under its own ID rules and misdemeanor threat, the Supremacy Clause is the answer, and this panel delivered it.