The Trump administration on Monday launched a legal challenge (opens in new tab) against a new California law that bans law enforcement agents from covering their faces.
Gov. Gavin Newsom in September signed Senate Bill 627 (opens in new tab), the No Secret Police Act, which came in response to raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents wearing facial coverings to hide their identity.
Federal officials promptly pushed back on the California measure, describing it as an attempt to dox federal agents and prevent the enforcement of immigration laws.
Acting U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli at the time instructed federal officers to ignore what he called an unconstitutional statute. Tricia McLaughlin, Homeland Security assistant secretary for public affairs, called it “despicable and a flagrant attempt to endanger our officers.”
In announcing the lawsuit Monday, the Department of Justice characterized the ban, which takes effect Jan. 1, as discrimination against the federal government that puts officers at risk of getting doxxed or assaulted. “These laws cannot stand,” U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said.
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State Sen. Scott Wiener, who authored SB 627, said the lawsuit is a desperate ploy by the White House to uphold its “unchecked power to kidnap and intimidate” instead of “lowering the cost of living, following the Constitution, or releasing the Epstein files.”
Wiener introduced the bill in June after federal immigration agents swarmed Los Angeles, San Francisco, and other California cities. Reports and videos emerged of ICE agents with face coverings wrangling people to the ground and whisking them away in unmarked cars. Wiener and Newsom compared the tactics to kidnapping.
Wiener said the federal government itself has acknowledged the problem with obscuring officers’ identity.
“Trump’s own FBI recently warned that ICE’s secret police tactics are undermining public safety and advised ICE to take the masks off and act like servants of the public instead of masked thugs preparing to rob a liquor store,” he said in a statement Monday. “Despite what these would-be authoritarians claim, no one is above the law. We’ll see you in court.”
California Attorney General Rob Bonta noted that “ICE agents obscuring their identity has led to a rise in copycats committing crimes.”
“My office is responsible for defending the laws of California,” Bonta said in a statement, “and we will do so here.”