Oregon lawmakers have resurrected a bill aiming to restrict deployment of the Oregon National Guard for immigration enforcement and block other states’ guards from performing military duties in Oregon, framing their effort as a reinforcement of states’ rights, not a challenge to the federal government’s authority.
Support coalesced around the bill following President Donald Trump’s attempt to deploy troops to Portland, a move which offered legislators a more concrete example of the scenarios they wish to avoid in comparison to when they considered a similar bill in the prior legislative session.
“I don’t want another Kent State. I don’t want another situation where folks have to live with the decisions that they made because they were scared and untrained in the wrong moment,” said Rep. Paul Evans, D-Monmouth and a former member of the Oregon Air National Guard. “And I know we should never pass legislation because of one particular case, but in this case, it is a big enough deal.”
Evans and Democratic Reps. Willy Chotzen and Shannon Isadore of Portland and Dacia Grayber of Beaverton, as well as Sen. Mike McLane, R-Powell Butte, spoke to the House Emergency Management and Veterans Committee Tuesday about House Bill 4091. Most have experience with the military, emergency response or both.
Two dozen Democrats and one Republican lawmaker, former Oregon Army National Guard specialist and state Rep. Alek Skarlatos of Winston, have sponsored the measure.
It’s a broader re-run at a similar piece of legislation introduced in last year’s legislative session that would have given Oregon’s adjutant general and Gov. Tina Kotek more power to control the use of Oregon’s National Guard in the wake of attempts to deploy troops by the federal government. The bill would not undo the existing authority the president holds under the Insurrection Act or in the case of a rebellion or inability to execute laws. If passed and signed into law, the new legislation would take effect immediately due to an emergency clause.
Both the past and new versions of the legislation would block the Oregon National Guard from providing federal law or immigration enforcement except for “indirect support or surveillance duties that are part of a border security operation.” They also would prevent the adjutant general from allowing National Guard members to be called into active service if it would leave the guard incapable of responding to statewide emergencies like wildfires or an act of terrorism.
The 2025 legislation passed the House but died in the Senate after procedural maneuvering by Republicans that ran out the clock at the end of the legislative session. But the renewed effort has taken on new significance after Trump’s attempted fall deployment of Oregon and other states’ National Guard troops to Portland.
U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut permanently blocked those efforts in a November court order, ruling that there was no threat of a rebellion justifying deployment related to protests at the city’s waterfront Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility. The reintroduced legislation also comes as the state continues to brace for an incoming wildfire season.
“We need clear guardrails that keep our communities safe and as we prepare for what looks to be another catastrophic wildfire season, and I hope and pray it is not,” said Grayber, a firefighter. “I just want to say it is quite possible we need those guardrails now. In fact, I would say we needed those guardrails last year.”
New bill gets tweaked
The Oregon National Guard operates under dual control of the federal and state government, but there are various circumstances under which its members can be activated for a mission. A governor can marshal them under their command or receive authority from the president to mobilize guard members for a federally-funded operation during a natural disaster or national security threat.
The new proposed bill specifies conditions under which the adjutant general can allow use of the Oregon National Guard and offers fewer circumstances under which they cannot. Rather than immediate termination under a version of the previous bill, the governor would have to determine whether to replace the adjutant general should they not comply with the legislation.
“The National Guard is military force. The National Guard is not a substitute for civilian law enforcement,” said Isadore, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran. “This bill allows support, logistics and surveillance rules tied to federally-authorized missions, while making clear that immigration enforcement and routine law enforcement are not the guard’s primary role.”
The new bill also would prevent other states’ National Guard troops from entering the state for “the purpose of performing military duty within the borders of this state” unless approved by the governor or if the troops are serving under Title 10 of the U.S. Code, which allows the president to activate the National Guard in the case of a danger of foreign invasion or threat of rebellion. It also applies if the president can’t use his existing military forces to execute the nation’s laws.
“Worst case scenario is armed conflict,” Christopher Allnatt, senior deputy legislative counsel, told lawmakers. “That’s a hypothetical, but in terms of if somebody (like) California sent their National Guard into the state of Oregon to perform military duty, the governor could file a lawsuit or the attorney general for the state of Oregon could file a lawsuit, get a federal court order, and that’s generally how this could be enforced.”
Legislation addresses ‘area that is yet to be fully developed’
Chotzen pointed out that other states, such as Texas, Idaho and North Dakota, have laws that mandate state approval or a president’s order to have another state’s National Guard enter their state. But Republican lawmakers on the committee and one who testified on Tuesday raised questions about whether the legislation would run into legal hurdles, particularly in light of the ongoing appeal of Immergut’s decision to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, for which a hearing is set in June.
“While we have these ongoing cases — and they’ve not necessarily been consistent across our country since President Trump took office in 2025 — I would urge the committee to recognize that this court process, and of course the balance of our three branches is ongoing” said McLane, a colonel in the Oregon Air National Guard and former Crook County Circuit Court judge. “The uncertainty that many people believe exists as to how much facts are needed by the president in order to exercise the authority given by Congress for the use of National Guard troops, that is going to be a question ultimately resolved by the judiciary branch of the federal government.”
In November, Immergut found that “the evidence demonstrates that these deployments, which were objected to by Oregon’s governor and not requested by the federal officials in charge of protection of the ICE building, exceeded the president’s authority.” The U.S. Supreme Court also held in a December decision that the Trump administration “failed to identify a source of authority that would allow the military to execute the laws in Illinois,” when it came to use of the National Guard in Chicago.
Skarlatos, who supported legislation last session that would have restricted the Oregon National Guard from being deployed overseas, took issue with the fact that his previous bill never got a hearing.
“It just seems like this is in response directly to what’s going on federally,” he said Tuesday. “I would have just preferred we do it based on what’s principled and correct instead of what’s timely.”
Evans, meanwhile, acknowledged that the legislation deals with “an area that is yet to be fully developed and explored.” He cited a 1990 U.S. Supreme Court case in which the justices upheld that Congress can allow the mobilization of the National Guard for training outside of the United States even without the consent of a governor or a national emergency. In the decision, the justices wrote that their interpretation “does not significantly affect either the state’s basic training responsibility or its ability to rely on its own guard in state emergency situations.”
“It simply tries to clarify in big bold lines that where the federal government has declared it, we’re going to declare it too,” Evans said. “So if somebody tries to move the goal post later, everybody knows where we put the line down.”
