DOJ sues Connecticut over law regulating ICE agents

Connecticut's General Assembly passed Senate Bill 397 on a near-party-line vote — 91-53 in the House on May 1, 2026, with four Democrats joining all Republicans in opposition, and 24-10 in the Senate on April 14. Governor Ned Lamont signed the bill in his office on May 4, 2026, then walked across the street to sign a ceremonial copy in front of the state Supreme Court — a deliberate gesture toward the constitutional fight he expected.

The law targets federal immigration agents directly. It bans any law enforcement officer, including ICE and CBP agents, from wearing face coverings while on duty in Connecticut unless responding to a fire or water rescue. It requires agents to clearly display their badge and name tag. It links federal agents to Connecticut's use-of-force standards, which prohibit force during search warrants and Terry stops — encounters the DOJ says are routine in federal immigration work. And it creates protected areas where no one can be arrested solely because of a civil immigration violation: schools, hospitals, social service agency facilities, houses of worship, and courthouses.

On May 15, 2026, the Department of Justice filed a civil complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut against Governor Lamont, Attorney General Tong, Chief State's Attorney Patrick Griffin, and Deputy Chief State's Attorney Eliot Prescott. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche — who took over the role in April 2026 after Trump fired Pam Bondi — said in a written statement Friday that Connecticut's anti-law enforcement policies regulate the federal government and are designed to create risk for our agents. These laws cannot stand.

The DOJ asked the court for a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of SB 397 while the case proceeds. The complaint argues three theories: the Supremacy Clause bars states from regulating how federal officers perform federal duties; the intergovernmental immunity doctrine makes state laws that directly regulate the federal government void; and field preemption in immigration means Congress has so thoroughly occupied the field that Connecticut has no room to act.

The DOJ's central legal argument draws on the Supremacy Clause of Article VI, which says federal law is the supreme Law of the Land and binds state judges even when state constitutions or laws say otherwise. The clause has been interpreted to bar states from obstructing or conditioning federal operations. As a three-judge Ninth Circuit panel ruled unanimously on April 22, 2026, blocking California's similar identification law: If a state law directly regulates the conduct of the United States, it is void irrespective of whether the regulated activities are essential to federal functions or operations. That panel included two Trump appointees and one Obama appointee.

The DOJ also cited intergovernmental immunity — the doctrine from McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) that bars states from imposing discriminatory burdens on the federal government. Connecticut's law applies to all law enforcement but exempts Connecticut state troopers, creating an asymmetry that courts have previously used to find discriminatory intent against federal actors.

Connecticut's defense rests primarily on the Tenth Amendment, which reserves to the states powers not delegated to the federal government. Senate President Martin Looney, Majority Leader Bob Duff, and Sen. Gary Winfield said in a joint statement that the law asserts legitimate state power under the police power to regulate public safety: We are seeking to impose no restrictions on federal law enforcement which are not also required of state and municipal law enforcement.

AG Tong argued the law is both lawful and necessary. He pointed to cases that prompted the legislation: the arrest of 18-year-old Esdras R. at Wilbur Cross High School in New Haven during a workplace raid in 2025, and the April 2026 detention of 19-year-old Rihan, a Cheshire High School student whose father served as a U.S. military interpreter in Afghanistan and whose family came to the U.S. on humanitarian parole after direct Taliban threats. Rihan was held at a Plymouth, Massachusetts detention facility for weeks before an immigration judge granted bond on April 22, 2026.

The DOJ's lawsuit leans heavily on the agent safety argument. The complaint quotes directly: Increasingly, members of the public photograph, film, and publish federal enforcement actions online and include the personal identities of federal officers for the sole purpose of intimidation and harassment. This content is directly used by members of organized crime and transnational criminal organizations in serious and potentially deadly ways. The DOJ argued that requiring agents to follow Connecticut's use-of-force standards would cause hesitation, indecision, or second-guessing at critical moments and effectively discourage criminal investigations.

On the use-of-force point, legal scholars at the University of Wisconsin's State Democracy Research Initiative noted in a May 2026 analysis that mask bans stand a fighting chance against Supremacy Clause and intergovernmental immunity challenges where they apply equally to all officers — but Connecticut's exemption for state troopers creates the discriminatory asymmetry that courts have found fatal.

The DOJ's pattern of suing blue-state sanctuary-type laws accelerated through 2025-2026. The department filed suit against New Jersey in late April 2026 over its Law Enforcement Officer Protection Act, which similarly banned masks and required agent identification. It challenged California's No Vigilantes Act and No Secret Police Act — and on April 22, 2026, the Ninth Circuit granted a preliminary injunction blocking California's identification mandate. New York lawmakers advanced a comparable bill in May 2026, setting up a potential fourth lawsuit.

The Congressional Research Service's 2026 report on federal preemption and state immigration authority noted that while the Supreme Court has consistently held that the power to admit, exclude, or remove noncitizens belongs exclusively to the federal government, the doctrine of anti-commandeering — established in Printz v. United States (1997) — means the federal government can't compel states to enforce federal law either. Connecticut argues SB 397 stays on the right side of that line: it doesn't try to enforce immigration law itself, but sets conditions on how federal agents behave on Connecticut soil.

Connecticut Republicans opposed the law from the start. Sen. Ryan Fazio, R-Greenwich — the Republican candidate running against Lamont in the 2026 governor's race — voted against SB 397 in the Senate and called it unconstitutional. He argued the law would prevent law enforcement from arresting people convicted of serious crimes. In the House, Republican members tried multiple times to amend or delay the bill during the two-day floor debate before the final 91-53 passage.

Governor Lamont drew a sharper line. Speaking to WTNH on Sunday May 17, he said he didn't foresee a settlement and framed the dispute as a moral one: What we're trying to do is say, ICE, stay away from our courthouses. Stay away from our schools. Stay away from our houses of worship. And for God's sake, stay away from our voting areas.

The protected areas provision is legally distinct from the mask and identification provisions. Courts have long recognized that certain locations carry heightened constitutional protection — schools, churches, and medical facilities appear in established case law as places where the government's interest in enforcement must be weighed against community trust and access. The DOJ complaint doesn't directly attack the protected areas doctrine by name but argues the provision conflicts with federal immigration authority because Congress hasn't created those exemptions in statute.

State Democracy Research Initiative scholars and the Brennan Center have argued that states do have a legitimate interest in protecting community trust in institutions, and that protected area laws rest on a different legal footing than mask bans — they don't regulate how federal agents dress or identify themselves, but instead limit where a particular class of arrest can occur. That argument hasn't been tested in the Second Circuit, which covers Connecticut.

The legal stakes extend beyond Connecticut. As of May 2026, at least 33 states had proposed or enacted some form of legislation restricting masked federal law enforcement officers, according to the State Court Report at the Brennan Center. The DOJ's use of Supremacy Clause preemption to block these laws is a federal power play: it asks federal courts to set the floor for how states can respond to immigration enforcement tactics that communities argue are unconstitutional. If the DOJ wins in Connecticut, a Second Circuit ruling could create binding precedent for New York and other northeastern states. A Connecticut win would give state legislatures a roadmap for structuring laws that survive federal challenge.