Did South Carolina’s Governor Henry McMaster break the law by deploying the National Guard to DC?

National Guard
Written By Free DC

South Carolina’s Governor Henry McMaster is one of more than a dozen Republican governors who agreed to participate in Trump’s deployment of the National Guard to DC. This military occupation of the nation’s capital started in August 2025 and as of September 2026 it is still ongoing.

While the president claimed the purpose of this deployment was “to address the epidemic of crime in our Nation’s capital,” the facts did not bear that out. In 2025, violent crime in DC was at a 30-year low.

McMaster directed the National Guard to deploy twice. The second deployment launched in December 2025 and was supposed to last for 90 days. During that deployment Navy veteran James Weninger and the South Carolina Public Interest Foundation (SCPIF) filed a lawsuit asking the State Supreme Court to stop the deployment and bring the troops home from this blatant act of political theater. The ACLU of South Carolina and Democracy Forward represent the plaintiffs in this case. On September 15 the case heard oral arguments in the case.

As ACLU of South Carolina explains, South Carolina law (Section 25-1-1840) authorizes the governor to deploy the National Guard only under certain conditions like “war, insurrection, rebellion, invasion, tumult, riot or a mob” or similar events.

None of these have been present in DC since the start of Trump’s occupation. The troops in DC were “not repelling an invasion, putting down a riot, or quelling a tumult, but picking up trash, spreading mulch, and patrolling subway platforms,” said Allen Chaney, legal director at the ACLU of South Carolina, who represents the plaintiffs.

Gov. Henry McMaster did not even try to justify the deployments through an emergency interstate compact meant to encourage states to help each other in times of crisis, and the Court appeared deeply skeptical of the state’s arguments that the governor has total discretion to deploy the National Guard wherever he wants. The state’s lawyer, Grayson Lambert, focused primarily on a technicality, arguing that the plaintiffs didn’t have standing to bring the case because they didn’t suffer any “particularized harm” through the deployments.

Several justices seemed skeptical of the idea that the plaintiffs need to show a “particularized harm” to be able to bring the case. They acknowledged that if a public official or body breaks a law, anyone can ask the court to intervene.

Legal Director for ACLU of South Carolina Allen Chaney argued that the deployment of the military was a “diffuse constitutional harm that's borne by all citizens of the state.” He cited a West Virginia court, which found that “given that deployment of a standing army without the consent of the people was one of the many grievances identified by our founding fathers in the Declaration of Independence, any domestic deployment without clear justification involves substantial interests and results in constitutional injury of our citizenry sufficient to bring the action herein.”

In its summary of the case, the ACLU of South Carolina notes that “the first deployment took place during the peak of hurricane season, a time of year when National Guard members are frequently needed for rescue and recovery efforts in their home state” and that the second one “took place through the winter holidays, needlessly taking National Guard members away from their families.”

A ruling against South Carolina’s compliance with Trump’s baseless military occupation of DC would be a wake-up call to other states that have joined Trump’s illegal militarization of DC.

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