In and out of court, more than half of the amendments contained in the Bill of Rights are being fought over as a direct result of President Donald Trump’s intervention in Minnesota.
In his second term, Trump and his administration have been aggressive in expanding the boundaries of political conventions, leading to numerous court challenges. Trump’s push to end birthright citizenship, freeze federal funding and bypass Congress through executive orders has tested the separation of powers.
The Twin Cities campaign, however, was epic, with at least six battles – the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and tenth – of the first 10 battles being fought. Conservative-leaning scholars see both lawyers and judges overstepping their bounds in fiery filings and opinions, while their liberal-leaning colleagues see the Trump administration’s remarkable disregard for the provisions of the Bill of Rights.
“You can educate a constitutional convention about the Bill of Rights for violations that occurred only in Minneapolis,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., former constitutional law professor. “There have been serious violations of the civil rights of minority groups in the past, such as Native Americans and African Americans and Asian Americans, but it is difficult to summarize any historical parallels in the systematic violation of all the basic constitutional rights of people in a broad and indiscriminate manner.”
Randy Barnett, director of the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, said he saw the battle over the Bill of Rights in Minneapolis as “unprecedented” in terms of how many absurd claims he believed were made by lawyers that found favor with district court judges.
“As a scholar of the Ninth Amendment, I’m a little disappointed that this provision has yet to be thrown against the wall to see if it sticks,” joked Barnett, who represented the National Federation of Independent Businesses in its constitutional challenge to the Affordable Care Act.
Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said the administration is “working to legally implement President Trump’s immigration enforcement authority and to conduct the largest illegal alien deportation campaign in history.”
“The real issue should be the endless illegal decisions issued by lower court judges pushing their policy agendas,” he continued. “President Trump will not waver on the agenda he was elected on.”
The Fourth, Fifth and 10th Amendments
In court, the Fourth, Fifth and 10th Amendments have been legal disputes over certain immigration enforcement measures.
John Yoo, who worked in President George W. Bush’s Department of Justice, said that many constitutional battles are happening because of how the areas of immigration law have not been reformed.
“There are very few Supreme Court cases about it, and very few about the federal and state government’s responsibility,” said Yoo, a staunch presidential power attorney who helped author the “torture documents” in interrogations after the Sept. 11 attacks. “So anytime you have that kind of uncertainty, that’s when people come in — the lower courts, the plaintiffs — and they just start creating.”
Yoo added that Fourth Amendment contests may be particularly important as an area where individual liberties may be most at risk. That amendment protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures and requires the federal government to obtain warrants based on the probable cause to enter a person’s home. It was tested under a Trump administration policy that allows Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to enter people’s homes with executive warrants issued by the executive branch, instead of a judge.
The question about the use of administrative guarantees has already come up in court. Fred Biery, a Texas federal judge appointed by President Bill Clinton, accused the Trump administration of ignoring the Fourth Amendment in a ruling last month that ordered the release of five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his father, Adrian Conejo Arias, who was seeking asylum from Ecuador, from a Texas immigration detention center. The two have returned home to Minneapolis.
Biery said the administration is treating the Fourth Amendment as “a strange distraction.”
“A public lesson in government: Executive orders issued by the executive branch do not by themselves override probable cause,” Biery wrote. “That’s called the fox guarding the henhouse. The Constitution requires an independent executive.”
In that same opinion, Biery also pointed to the Fifth Amendment, which provides due process rights. The judge wrote that the father and son “want nothing more than some due process and the rule of law.”
Another federal judge appointed by Clinton, Michael J. Davis in Minnesota – who has handled many appeals from Operation Metro Surge – wrote last month of “the Government’s undeniable action last month to defy court orders or at least stretch the legal process to a dead end in an attempt to deny non-citizens their due process rights.”
Moderate Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., a frequent critic of Trump who may seek re-election this year, said he hopes the courts will intervene to stop the unconstitutional activity involving Minneapolis and ICE.
“I think the warrants are going to lose in court,” Bacon said. “Ultimately, I think the courts are going to be an effective court. But I don’t know why they want to push the envelope. I’m not going to do that, but ultimately I think our Constitution is going to be protected and we have a good court to do that. The problem is it just takes a little while to do that.”
The 10th Amendment, on the other hand, was the basis for Minnesota officials to challenge the temporary decision to block the administration from conducting Operation Metro Surge. That amendment reserves powers not expressly delegated to the federal government – or denied to the states – to the states or to citizens at large. Minnesota officials alleged that the plan was intended to force changes in immigration policies, as opposed to an amendment.
Katherine Menendez, a federal judge in Minnesota appointed by President Joe Biden, rejected the request of Minnesota officials, writing last month that their arguments were not strong enough to justify blocking the administration.
The First Amendment
First Amendment rights came up prominently in the indictment of journalist Don Lemon. The former CNN anchor last month followed protesters into a Minnesota church and aired a protest against a pastor who protesters say works for ICE. Lemon, who denied all the charges against him, was arrested last month and charged along with 8 others involved in the church protest.
Lemon and free speech advocates argued that his behavior was protected by the First Amendment. He was charged with conspiring against the right to freedom of religion in a place of worship and harming, threatening and interfering with the exercise of the right to freedom of religion in a place of worship.
“I wanted to say that this is not just about me. This is about all journalists, especially in the United States,” Lemon said outside a Minnesota court last week. “I have been a journalist for more than 30 years, and the power and protection of the First Amendment has been the foundation of my work.”
Sen. Mike Rounds, RS.D., said he has reviewed Lemon’s case but has not reached a conclusion as to whether his arrest and prosecution were justified.
“If there is a disruption of a church service and someone knows about it, gets involved, and is actually in the middle of asking people questions when their church service is disrupted, are they exercising their First Amendment rights? It’s making rounds. “I don’t know the answer to that, but again, it’s a question of fact but also a question of the courts.”
Separately, a class-action lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union against the Department of Homeland Security alleges that DHS agents violated the First Amendment rights of protesters in Minnesota. (It is incredibly difficult to win damages by suing individual state agents for constitutional violations.)
The Second Amendment
Tom Homan, the Trump administration official who took over to lead the immigration crackdown in Minnesota, called Operation Metro Surge, announced earlier this month that he would be ending it. The DHS said this month that 4,000 people have been arrested since the campaign began in November. Immigration authorities shot and killed two US citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both 37 years old, in separate confrontations.
Those murders, especially Pretti’s, had Second Amendment implications. After Pretti’s death last month, the president and administration officials criticized the ICU nurse for carrying a concealed handgun — which she was legally allowed to do — when she went to law enforcement before the shooting. Eyewitness videos showed government agents apparently finding and removing a gun during the altercation, and did not appear to show Pretti holding a weapon during the altercation.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said she “doesn’t know of any peaceful protestor who comes with a gun and bullets rather than a sign.”
The idea, shared by other administration officials, sparked controversy among gun rights activists. At the time, the White House pointed to comments made by Border Patrol officer Gregory Bovino in an interview with CNN where he said: “We respect Second Amendment rights, but those rights don’t count when you protest and attack, delay, obstruct and obstruct law enforcement.”
Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., whose family put guns in their Christmas photo, said he had strong objections to comments by top Trump officials about restricting gun rights.
“The administration is including all the statements of the Second Amendment,” said Massie, who has clashed with Trump and drawn anti-Trump. “Carrying a gun in protest is not a death sentence – it’s a constitutional right.”
Some writers disputed this statement following Pretti’s shooting.
“Yes, you can carry the protest at all. Anyone who tells you otherwise is anti-2A [Second Amendment] statistics,” Dana Loesch, a conservative broadcaster and TV host, wrote on X, adding, however, that people “can’t disrupt a federal meeting armed.”
The Third Amendment
Then, there’s the rarely cited Third Amendment, which was a topic of debate in Minneapolis, too. That amendment prevents the government from forcing Americans to deploy troops without their consent. It came when Minneapolis hotel staff apparently canceled a room reservation for ICE agents – highlighted by the DHS episode.
Beth Colgan, a law professor at UCLA, agreed that the amendment comes up so rarely that it’s “a trivial question like ‘What is the Third Amendment?'”
Looking at the constitutional battles stemming from the Twin Cities as a whole, Colgan said it’s unclear what the long-term impact will be.
“I think that’s something that people should be very concerned about,” he said.
Regarding whether these wars were unusual, Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California, Berkeley’s law school, said they definitely were.
“It’s unusual,” said Chemerinsky, who worked at the Justice Department during the Carter administration, “that a collection of government actions clearly violated so many provisions of the Constitution.”
