Judge Grants Preliminary Injunction to Pause California Law Banning Masks on ICE Agent
Snyder denied to issue a preliminary injunction to stop the No Vigilantes Act.
Judge Christina Snyder of the Central District of California issued a preliminary injunction enjoining California from enforcing a provision of the No Secret Police Act that prohibits ICE agents from wearing masks.
The Trump administration filed a lawsuit against California to stop the No Secret Police Act and the No Vigilantes Act.
Snyder refused to issue a preliminary injunction to stop the No Vigilantes Act, which requires the agents to identify themselves, and the other provisions of the No Secret Police Act.
Snyder said the No Secret Police Act violates the Supremacy Clause and discriminates against the federal government by singling it out.
Existing law makes it a misdemeanor to wear a mask, false whiskers, or any personal disguise, as specified, with the purpose of evading or escaping discovery, recognition, or identification while committing a public offense, or for concealment, flight, evasion, or escape from arrest or conviction for any public offense.
This bill would make it a crime for a law enforcement officer to wear a facial covering in the performance of their duties, except as specified. The bill would define law enforcement officer as anyone designated by California law as a peace officer who is employed by a city, county, or other local agency, and any officer or agent of a federal law enforcement agency or law enforcement agency of another state, or any person acting on behalf of a federal law enforcement agency or agency of another state. The bill would make a violation of these provisions punishable as an infraction or a misdemeanor, as specified. By creating a new crime, this bill would impose a state-mandated local program.
However, the law does not apply to California state law enforcement officers.
“Even though the United States has failed to demonstrate that the facial covering prohibition of the No Secret Police Act unduly interferes with federal functions, the Court acknowledges that it is nonetheless an incidental regulation on law enforcement officers,” wrote Snyder.
Snyder pointed out that the Supremacy Clause “prohibits imposing such a regulatory burden, albeit minimal and incidental to operations, in a discriminatory manner against the federal government.”
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Comments
It’s irrelevant. The state couldn’t enforce it anyway. The state was never proposing to arrest ICE officers in the street. Rather it would identify them and serve them with papers. If it ever did so, they would simply turn the papers over to their bosses, who would have the cases removed to federal court and there dismissed.
Milhouse, you are obviously a uncultured lout. You have no appreciation for theater.
You miss the point. Once they’re served with papers, then their names and faces can be published. Then people can follow them home, threaten their children, spouses and family.
You miss the point. There is a small army of leftists out there who are already doing exactly that.
Their names and faces can be published anyway. There’s no law against it.
Names and faces do not get published out of the blue. With ICE agents, the motive behind it is to create harrassment and injury. There’s a law for that.
No, there is no such law.
California Penal Code 653.2 PC, which makes it a misdemeanor to electronically distribute personal identifying information with the intent to cause fear, harassment, or unwanted contact.
Key Federal Laws Used to Prosecute Doxxing:
18 U.S.C. § 2261A (Federal Stalking Statute): Criminalizes using an interactive computer service or electronic communication to engage in a course of conduct with the intent to kill, injure, harass, or intimidate another person, causing substantial emotional distress or placing the victim in reasonable fear of death or serious bodily injury.
18 U.S.C. § 875 (Interstate Threats): Makes it a crime to transmit threats to kidnap or injure another person through interstate or foreign commerce.
18 U.S.C. § 119 (Protection of Individuals Performing Certain Official Duties): Prohibits knowingly publishing personally identifiable information of covered individuals—such as witnesses, jurors, or federal officers—with the intent to threaten, intimidate, or incite violence.
All of which are subject to the first amendment. The list of known exceptions to the freedom of speech is short, and it’s closed. No new exceptions are ever likely to be found.
Incitement and threats are both on that list, but both are very narrowly defined. Publishing this information is not a threat, and it is not incitement unless it is both intended and likely to cause someone imminently to commit a crime. Not if it’s merely intended to cause the subject to be concerned that someone might commit a crime at some unspecified future time. Even open advocacy of violent crimes is protected speech without that element of imminence; how much more so merely publishing neutral information on a web site.
And without fitting into one of those exceptions the law is void.
Since when does a state have the power to oversee the conduct of federal officers enforcing federal law? Outside of a certain period in the mid 19th century, when has a state attempted and been allowed to do this?
Key Federal Laws Used to Prosecute Doxxing:
18 U.S.C. § 2261A (Federal Stalking Statute): Criminalizes using an interactive computer service or electronic communication to engage in a course of conduct with the intent to kill, injure, harass, or intimidate another person, causing substantial emotional distress or placing the victim in reasonable fear of death or serious bodily injury.
18 U.S.C. § 875 (Interstate Threats): Makes it a crime to transmit threats to kidnap or injure another person through interstate or foreign commerce.
18 U.S.C. § 119 (Protection of Individuals Performing Certain Official Duties): Prohibits knowingly publishing personally identifiable information of covered individuals—such as witnesses, jurors, or federal officers—with the intent to threaten, intimidate, or incite violence.
It doesn’t (with some trivial exceptions that don’t apply here). But it does have the independent power to enforce its laws by filing charges against the officers; it’s then up to the federal courts to inquire into whether the acts complained of were done in the course of the officers’ duties, and if so to remove the case to their own jurisdiction.
That doesn’t mean the charges are automatically dismissed, it just means they must be pursued in federal court. But if there is no equivalent federal law that the officers are alleged to have violated, or if the US Attorney simply decides that it’s not in the USA’s interest to pursue the case, then it is dismissed.
There are some exceptions, where federal officers, even in the course of their duties, are expected to obey state law, such as traffic laws. But those aren’t relevant here.
Your comments below suggest you don’t understand how this works. You say below that, upon proper removal, it’s “up to the US Attorney to decide whether to prosecute.” That’s not so. The state prosecutors continue to prosecute. Removal doesn’t put the US Attorney’s Office in charge.
There are lots of examples that you can see of that. Let’s use a famous example: Idaho v. Horiuchi (the Ruby Ridge shooting). Here’s the district court docket to see that Idaho’s prosecutors continued to do the case: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/17366595/state-of-idaho-v-horiuchi/
The “Attorneys and Parties” tabs shows you that Denise Woodbury and Stephen Yagman were counsel.. Woodbury still works as an Idaho prosecutor. Here’s Yagman’s Wikipedia page explaining the history that he was “sworn in by U.S. District Judge Robert M. Takasugi as Special Prosecutor for the State of Idaho.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Yagman
You can also pick your favorite example of choice where this happens. Removal simply never changes who is counsel (unless the party wants to change lawyers of course). I don’t think you’re a lawyer. But this is a basic reality of federal court procedure that anybody who has ever had a case removed knows.
I stand corrected. Thank you.
Still, in federal court such a prosecution could never proceed, because it would be for “an act done in pursuance of a law of the United States”. If their orders are to wear masks, or explicitly permit them to wear masks, then they’re immune from a state law that says they can’t, and a federal court would tell the state prosecutor to stand down. See Ohio v Thomas; if a federal dining facility is exempt from state food labeling laws, then surely a federal LEO is exempt from state laws telling him how to do his job.
What I’m saying is that even if the CA law hadn’t exempted state officers; even if it applied equally to all officers, federal, state, and local, and thus wouldn’t be struck down ab initio as this one was, it still could not be used to prosecute federal officers who acted reasonably in performing their duties.
Marxist meat puppet states and cities have been burping up these threats to unmask ICE for months (yet never an effort to unmask antifa orcs).
My question was always ‘How will they enforce it?’ Send the city cops to arrest the feds wearing a mask??
Total stupidity.
And a guaranteed trigger to an Insurrection Act implementation. Because it’s very unlikely the incident wouldn’t turn hot in a hurry.
No, Newsome explicitly said at the time that no cops would be trying to arrest ICE agents. He explained that the law would be enforced by identifying the agents on video, and serving them with papers. That was the plan. And it was an obviously futile plan, since as I explained above they would just get those papers transferred to federal court and dismissed.
Or they just ignore/refuse service entirely, assert the Supremacy Clause and the local US Attorney convenes a grand jury for malfeasance against whichever local official tries to initiate service. Followed by a civil rights action against the individual and the govt entity which tried to assert this
discriminatory claim. Or maybe the poor guy attempting to serve the docs get blasted b/c he makes a furtive movement in the attempt. I sure as heck wouldn’t want to be trying to serve Fed LEO who are all keyed up from a long day with the added stresses of nut jobs harassing and stalking them and hyper vigilant from threats and a few attacks.
I don’t think bringing the charges can possibly be an offense. Nor, of course, can serving them be. And as far as I know they can’t refuse service. States are entitled to bring charges against federal officers; it’s just that the officers can appeal to a federal court to take the case over, which the court will do if the charged actions were taken in the course of their duties.
The court can always say no, this wasn’t an official act, you did that for your own private purposes, so the state can charge you. Of course in this case that would be inapplicable, since the CA only bans mask-wearing in the course of enforcing the law! If an officer wears a mask on his own time he’s not breaking that law.
So how do you square the circle when it’s clearly a situation where the State has no justification to serve federal LEOs, certainly not for something as trivial as this? Just more lawfare/harassment and they know it.
Square what circle? The state has the right to make whatever laws it likes, and it has the right to file charges against anyone who breaks them. If the person is a federal agent, and he was acting in the course of his duties, he (or his bosses on his behalf) immediately file in federal court to transfer the case there. If the court agrees that the charge is concerning an official act of the accused, then it transfers the case, and it’s then up to the US Attorney to decide whether to prosecute. In this case, of course, the USA would immediately drop the case. That’s how it’s supposed to work.
An unconstitutional law is void ab initio. The Judiciary isn’t the only arbiter of what is/isn’t unconstitutional. If it were then a LEO or other agent of the govt given a patently obvious unconstitutional directive would be bound to follow the unconstitutional directive instead of rejecting it. If the law is void from the beginning then enforcement actions are also an illegal use of govt power to support it.
I’m sorry, but when they State intentionally files bullsh*t challenges, that should never reach the level of a formal process that has to be adjudicated. It’s one thing when there is a disagreement about aspects of a law, but in this case the State has no business even passing such a law, knowing full well that it’s BS. Lawfare. Bad faith. Malicious prosecution. Call it what you will.
Quite simply, it’s a matter of degree. If the State sends the Federal Agent a post-card saying (in effect) “Naughty, don’t do that” the card is a trivial obstruction of a Federal agent’s job and the courts will ignore it. If the State sends a five-hundred page indictment against every Federal Agent spotted in public in a mask, every time they show, threatening arrest and imprisonment, that’s an OBVIOUS obstruction of a Federal Agent’s job and an OBVIOUS violation of the supremacy clause. Much like the ‘protesters’ have been trained to go right up to the edge of harassment to antagonize Fed, this is the legal version of the same repulsive tactic, and deserves to have a Fed court feed it back to CA with great force. (Makes me wish the Fed judges could actually say what they mean like “The prosecutor in this case is an abject idiot and should be kicked out of the courtroom for bringing this kind of garbage into my court.”)
Think about the people involved in this. We all know why certain groups are trying to make ICE and Border Patrol employees easier to identify.
You all bicker over legalities, while the actual people in the field have to hide themselves and their families from networks of violent leftists.
The left is preparing for a hot war while the right sits and bickers over what laws are enforceable.
Never bring a pen to a gun fight.
Well, at least one judge is not a complete retard. More than I expected
Call it the nanosecond pause. Gone before it happened.
We know from history what violent insurrection will evoke in this society, and the Democrats simply don’t have the firepower to prevail in any military contest. There is no way that the rank and file of the National Guard and Police nominally under their control will take up arms against their own comrades, so best they will be able to to is to mob limited urban areas and declare them to be “free zones” temporarily until the Feds chase them out, which didn’t work out that well the last time they tried it. The gloves will come off, and they simply don’t have enough suicidal and homicidal lunatics to accomplish anything of significance, beyond justifying invocation of the Insurrection Act that will allow prosecution of the politicians responsible.
wow!
still believing that???
the ng etc wont take up arms against their own
that has already been disproven in recent very recent events
CA law will no doubt allow only for squirt guns when facing their street thuggs and only important elected mamdami types will be allowed for their guards to have actual crowd stopping power