Judge extends restraining order barring National Guard deployment in Illinois as Supreme Court decision looms

Jason Meisner, Chicago Tribune on Oct 22, 2025

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CHICAGO — A federal judge in Chicago on Wednesday indefinitely extended her restraining order barring President Donald Trump from deploying National Guard troops to Illinois as both sides await a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that could upend the case.

At a status hearing before U.S. District Judge April Perry, lawyers for the Trump administration said they were asking to extend the restraining order, which technically expires Thursday, until there’s a final judgment on the merits of the case, which could take months.

But that extension comes with a caveat: The Supreme Court could decide any day to grant Trump’s request to stay Perry’s order, which would effectively allow the president to deploy troops as he pleases while the case is appealed.

Christopher Wells, a lawyer for the Illinois attorney general’s office, said his team agreed to the indefinite extension, but wanted to make it clear on the record that it was Trump’s lawyers who proposed it, saying they were “very concerned about possible gamesmanship in other courts and how what’s happening here is going to be portrayed.”

In the event the Supreme Court ruling “alters the status quo,” Wells said, the state will be seeking either an expedited injunction hearing or a quick trial on the merits, either of which could happen as soon as next month and would involve live witnesses testifying in court.

Perry agreed and said her order extending the restraining order would be entered Thursday. She also ordered both sides to confer within 10 days and come back with a plan for expedited discovery.

Earlier in the day, Perry told both sides that she wanted to move forward quickly toward resolving the injunction issue regardless of how the Supreme Court rules.

“The problem with waiting is, every day we wait for them, you are losing time” to prepare for a trial, Perry said. “So we will not wait. If they rule today, we may have to reset the schedule tomorrow.”

Despite the time crunch, Perry also said it was important to get it right given the issues at stake.

“It does make sense to me that we take a deliberative approach here,” the judge said. “These are complicated legal issues that have not been explored by the courts above us in a very long time.”

Department of Justice attorney Jody Lowenstein told the judge the same legal team defending this case has a trial over similar issues starting in Oregon next week, so any scheduling conflicts would have to be worked out.

Perry’s temporary restraining order barring National Guard troop deployment in Illinois was issued Oct. 9.

In its filing last week asking the Supreme Court to issue a stay on Perry’s order, the Trump administration called it part of a “disturbing and recurring pattern” that “improperly impinges on the President’s authority and needlessly endangers federal personnel and property.”

It asked that President Donald Trump be allowed to deploy some 700 troops in Illinois — 300 from the Illinois National Guard and another 400 federalized out of Texas earlier this month.

In the 46-page response, the state said it would be inappropriate for the high court to get involved at this stage in the proceedings, where a district court’s decision has yet to be decided on appeal.

The filing also said lawyers for Trump offered “no meaningful response” to the factual basis for U.S. District Judge April Perry’s Oct. 9 temporary restraining order, adding that declarations submitted by a series of immigration officials outlining purported violence against agents and out-of-control protests simply did not hold water.

“In fact, applicants do not even attempt to rebut that much of the activity the declarants complained about was constitutionally protected,” the state response stated.

The Supreme Court fight is playing out on an unusually fast track, with Trump appealing just a day after the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined to grant a stay to Perry’s order, ruling her findings were not “clearly erroneous” and that “the facts do not justify” Trump’s actions in Illinois.

The three-judge appellate panel unanimously agreed with Perry that, even giving the president “great deference” when it comes to his power to call up the military, there was no evidence that he needed troops to help enforce immigration law or quell any kind of organized rebellion.

“The spirited, sustained, and occasionally violent actions of demonstrators in protest of the federal government immigration policies and actions, without more, does not give rise to a danger of rebellion against the government’s authority,” stated the opinion by Judges Ilana Rovner, David Hamilton and Amy St. Eve.

The judges went on to note that while the Trump administration has claimed that protesters and local politicians are hampering immigration-enforcement efforts, the evidence — and even the administration’s own statements — doesn’t back that up.

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