Gavin Newsom’s legislative minions just got a lesson in constitutional supremacy

A unanimous three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit—hardly a court known for siding with immigration enforcement—just dismantled one of California's signature pushback strategies against federal deportation operations. California's "Prohibition on Public Safety Officers Assisting Immigration Enforcement" law, passed in 2017, forbade local police and sheriffs from cooperating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents unless they had a judicial warrant signed by a judge. The law applied even when ICE agents were executing deportation orders. On Tuesday, the court found the law violated the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution: federal immigration authority simply outranks state restrictions on how federal agents operate within state borders.

The stakes here are concrete and immediate. California shelters roughly 2.2 million undocumented immigrants—more than any other state—and the law was designed to make ICE's job harder by cutting off the agency's informal access to local jails and police databases. When an ICE agent wanted to pick someone up from a county lockup, they needed a judicial warrant, not just an administrative deportation order. That distinction mattered: judicial warrants require probable cause, while deportation orders don't. The Ninth Circuit's ruling means California can no longer impose that extra procedural hurdle. ICE can now count on access to local facilities and information with far fewer legal obstacles.

This echoes the 2012 Arizona v. United States decision, when the Supreme Court struck down three of four provisions of Arizona's strict immigration law, also citing federal supremacy. But the Supreme Court upheld Arizona's "show me your papers" provision because it involved state police authority, not obstruction of federal agents. This Ninth Circuit ruling goes further—it's not just saying California can't create its own immigration enforcement; it's saying California actively cannot restrict federal enforcement.

The conservative case is straightforward: Newsom spent years loudly declaring California a "sanctuary state" and used this law as its legal backbone. The result was predictable—a state apparatus quietly designed to hamstring federal law enforcement. California's own police refused to help federal agents deport dangerous criminals. The Ninth Circuit's unanimous decision reads like a rebuke: you don't get to use state power to nullify federal law, no matter how much voters dislike the federal government's immigration policy. If California thinks deportation policy is wrong, change the federal law through Congress. Don't use state police as an obstruction.

What comes next: California's Attorney General Rob Bonta has not yet signaled whether the state will appeal to the Supreme Court, though the law's defenders will likely push for it. The Ninth Circuit decision is binding immediately across the circuit's nine-state jurisdiction, which includes Nevada, Oregon, and Washington—all states with sanctuary policies. Meanwhile, ICE will begin using the ruling to access California county jails without judicial warrants. Watch for whether California's legislature attempts to rewrite the law in a way that might survive a constitutional challenge—a tactical retreat rather than a full reversal.