The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on April 22 permanently blocked California from enforcing a new law requiring federal immigration officers to display identification when on duty in the state, ruling that the law was unconstitutional.

“We conclude that ... the No Vigilantes Act attempts to directly regulate the United States in its performance of governmental functions,” the appeals panel wrote in its order. “The Supremacy Clause forbids the State from enforcing such legislation.”

The appeals panel found that the federal government was likely to succeed on the merits of its argument that the lower state law conflicted with the U.S. Constitution and federal law.

First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli in Los Angeles called the ruling a “huge legal victory” in an X post.

The state law, which was signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom on Sept. 20, 2025, required any nonuniformed federal law enforcement officer operating in California, with few exceptions, to “visibly display identification” while performing federal law enforcement duties. Officers who violated the law faced criminal prosecution by the state.

The state also passed a No Secret Police Act at the same time, banning federal officers from wearing masks while on duty.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) immediately announced that officers would not comply with the laws, accusing Newsom of encouraging division and dehumanization of federal law enforcement. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a lawsuit in November challenging the laws.

DHS and DOJ didn’t immediately return requests for comment on the ruling.

Following the appeals court’s decision, Newsom’s office said the state depends on trust between law enforcement and the communities they serve, but that has been undermined during Trump’s administration.

“These laws shouldn’t even be necessary,” Newsom’s spokesperson Diana Crofts-Pelayo told The Epoch Times in an email. “We shouldn’t have unidentified, masked men terrorizing our communities.”

Federal immigration agents detain an individual during demonstrations in downtown San Francisco on Aug. 20, 2025, in this screengrab taken from video. (Reuters TV)

Officials in California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office said they were still reviewing the order and were unable to comment on a potential legal strategy, but they remained critical of White House policy.

“Transparency and accountability are the foundation of good law enforcement,” the Attorney General’s Office told The Epoch Times in an email. “The Trump Administration has stepped well outside the boundaries of normal practice, deploying masked and unidentified agents to carry out immigration enforcement, despite the risks these tactics pose to public safety and basic civil liberties.”

In June, Democratic state lawmakers claimed that a rise in public fear and confusion caused by the Trump administration’s immigration operations and an increase in claims of police impersonation justified creating the new requirements.

Judge Christina Snyder, of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, blocked the state’s mask ban in February, saying the law did not apply equally to all law enforcement officers in the state and therefore “unlawfully discriminates against federal officers.”

Snyder found that the law also violated the Supremacy Clause.