Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, seeking to block the deployment of National Guard members in Portland.
Rayfield’s lawsuit claims that the Trump administration has “infringed on Oregon’s sovereign power to manage its own law enforcement activity and National Guard resource. Far from promoting public safety, Defendants’ provocative and arbitrary actions threaten to undermine public safety by inciting a public outcry.”
The filing asserts that the federalization of the troops violates the Tenth Amendment, arguing that “police power—including the authority to promote safety at protests and deter violent crime— resides with the states, not the federal government.”
“And by singling out a particular disfavored jurisdiction for political retribution, these actions also eviscerate the constitutional principle that the states’ sovereignty should be treated equally,” it states.
Rayfield announced the lawsuit in a video statement, sharing that the filing was entered “less than 6 hours after receiving formal notice that the President had federalized Oregon’s National Guard in Portland.”
The lawsuit follows a memo issued by War Secretary Pete Hegseth, who wrote on September 28 that “200 members of the Oregon National Guard will be called into Federal service effective immediately for a period of 60 days.”
Hegseth’s memo stemmed from a June effort by President Trump to “call into Federal service members and units of the National Guard under 10 U.S.C. 12406 to temporarily protect ICE and other United States Government personnel who are performing Federal functions, including the enforcement of Federal law, and to protect Federal property, at locations where protests against these functions are occurring or are likely to occur based on current threat assessments and planned operations.”
