The Steady State Files Supreme Court
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE October 20, 2025
The Steady State Files Supreme Court Amicus Brief Opposing Chicago National Guard Deployment
Washington, D.C. — The Steady State, a network of more than 340 former senior U.S. national security, diplomatic, intelligence, and defense officials, today announced the filing of an amicus curiae brief in the United States Supreme Court opposing the Trump Administration’s application for an emergency stay in Donald J. Trump et al. v. Illinois et al. (No. 25A443).
The brief warns that the Administration’s attempted use of the National Guard for domestic law enforcement in Chicago represents “a dangerous acceleration of authoritarian trends” and risks the normalization of military deployments against U.S. civilians for political purposes. “Many of us spent our careers abroad confronting regimes that misused military or security forces to suppress lawful dissent,” the filing states. “We now see similar patterns emerging here at home.”
The Steady State argues that the President’s claimed authority to deploy the National Guard domestically—without state consent and without judicial review—violates both constitutional and statutory limits, including the Posse Comitatus Act and 10 U.S.C. § 12406. The brief draws heavily on Justice Robert Jackson’s landmark separation-of-powers concurrence in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer (1952), cautioning that “comprehensive and undefined presidential powers” carry “grave dangers for the country.”
“The Constitution’s framers designed a system in which no single leader can unilaterally employ military force inside our own borders,” said Steven Cash, Executive Director of The Steady State. “The principle that the military serves the law, not politics, is fundamental to every functioning democracy.”
The Steady State previously submitted similar amicus briefs in Newsom v. Trump, challenging similar domestic deployments in Los Angeles, and in District of Columbia v. Donald J. Trump in Washington D.C.. Today’s filing builds on that analysis in light of what it calls “an unprecedented expansion of militarized federal power directed inward at the American public.”
The organization’s brief concludes by urging the Court to deny the Administration’s emergency stay and reaffirm that the President remains bound by law when invoking military power within the United States.
The full brief, The Steady State Amicus Curiae in Opposition to Application for Stay, is available HERE