DC's bid to block Trump’s National Guard deployment hits basic legal snag: Can’t sue itself
FIRST ON FOX: A conservative watchdog urged a federal appeals court Wednesday to toss Washington, D.C.'s National Guard lawsuit, arguing the city cannot sue itself because it is part of...
By Fox News · Fox News
FIRST ON FOX: A conservative watchdog urged a federal appeals court Wednesday to toss Washington, D.C.' s National Guard lawsuit, arguing the city cannot sue itself because it is part of the federal government. "To start, one cannot sue oneself," Oversight Project lawyers wrote in a brief in the case. "And that is what this case ultimately is—the United States suing itself. Moreover, it is a foundational principle of the law that a municipal corporation cannot sue its sovereign creator." The appeal sits at the intersection of Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops in Washington last year and D.C.’s long-running fight over self-government. What began as a lawsuit over the president’s deployment of forces into the capital has now evolved into a threshold legal battle over whether the district has the right to challenge that move in federal court at all. Oversight Project lawyers told Fox News Digital in an interview that if the appellate court judges in Washington were to agree with them, the decision would reach far beyond the National Guard lawsuit, which arose last year when the Trump administration began deploying military forces to blue cities in several jurisdictions to support immigration officials and, in D.C.'s case, to make the city "safe and beautiful." NATIONAL GUARD TROOPS WILL LIKELY REMAIN IN DC THROUGH 2026, OFFICIAL SAYS "If the judges find our argument valid, it's going to kind of restore the normal system, which is D.C. is entirely subordinate to the federal government and these disputes are resolved politically," Oversight Project lawyer Sam Dewey said. The proper recourse for D.C. against the federal government on any issue would be for the D.C. Council to turn to the president and Congress, not the courts, Dewey said. The case stemmed from D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb suing last September, arguing Trump encroached on the city's perceived independence by disregarding "Congress’s decision, half a century ago, to afford the residents of…