In October 2025, following comments from President Donald Trump that his administration needed to “solve the crime problem fast” in Chicago, the administration deployed hundreds of National Guard troops in the Chicago area. The State of Illinois and the City of Chicago went to court to challenge this use of the National Guard, and a federal district court granted an injunction blocking it, which the administration appealed to the Seventh Circuit. The administration also sought a stay of the district court’s order pending appeal.

In October 2025, the Constitutional Accountability Center filed an amicus brief in support of Chicago and Illinois opposing the administration’s motion for a stay. The Trump administration maintains that under an 1827 Supreme Court decision, Martin v. Mott, courts cannot review a President’s determination that the statutory conditions for mobilizing the National Guard are met. Our brief showed why that argument is wrong.

As we explained, Mott held only that a militia member could not relitigate the outcome of his court‑martial by filing a civil lawsuit against the officers tasked with punishing him. Jacob Mott tried to use this tactic as a roundabout way of undermining the military order he was convicted of disobeying, asking the court to decide that President James Madison’s decision to call up the militia during the War of 1812 was unfounded. The Supreme Court refused to allow this type of lawsuit to be used as a means of escaping the consequences of military dereliction. Contrary to the Trump administration’s claim, however, the decision did not endorse the broader proposition that courts may never, under any circumstances, judge the legality of presidential decisions to call up the National Guard. The Mott opinion focused entirely on preserving the military chain of command, concluding that the President, not lower-level military officials, had the right to make the initial decision about whether the conditions for calling up the militia were met. That question was hotly debated during the War of 1812, after several states claimed that their own military leaders were in charge of deciding whether their militias could be called into federal service. Mott was understood as resolving that dispute. Neither its result nor its reasoning extends to the very different issues raised by the Chicago case.

As we next explained, later Supreme Court decisions that cite Mott also do not prohibit courts from reviewing presidential decisions to mobilize the National Guard. Nothing in the precedent since Mott has expanded that decision into a wholesale barrier against judicial review whenever statutes give authority to presidents that may be exercised under specified conditions.

Because there is no lawful basis for the administration’s unprecedented use of the National Guard, our brief urged the court to reject its arguments and uphold the rule of law.

In October 2025, the Seventh Circuit denied the administration’s motion for a stay, leaving in place the order that prevents troops from deploying in Chicago. (The court allowed the troops to remain under federal control, however.) In doing so, the Seventh Circuit adopted the reasoning of CAC’s amicus brief to conclude that Mott does not foreclose judicial review of the President’s determination. As the panel explained, closely echoing our brief, Mott’s “broad language must be understood in its context,” and the decision simply rejected “the prospect that every officer under the President’s command could make his own determination whether an imminent threat of invasion existed and could refuse to obey the President’s orders or be subject to civil liability if he enforced what was later deemed an invalid order.” In the Chicago case, “by contrast, the question is whether courts, not subordinate militiamen, may review the President’s determination.” Although the panel found that presidents deserve deference in making decisions to activate the National Guard, it concluded that, even granting such deference, the facts found by the district court do not support the existence of a rebellion or inability to execute the laws.

Shortly after the panel decision, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to step in and stay the order of the district court. CAC filed an amicus brief opposing the administration’s application, reiterating our arguments about why courts can review the President’s decisions to mobilize the National Guard and discussing history that illustrates judges’ capacity to do so.