Gavin Newsom just found out the Constitution has a pecking order. On Wednesday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that California cannot force federal immigration agents and other federal officers to wear visible ID while they do their jobs. The law is called the "No Vigilantes Act." Newsom signed it in September 2025 as part of his resistance campaign against President Trump's immigration enforcement. It made it a crime for non-uniformed federal officers to work in California without displaying identification. The court said no, and it wasn't close. The ruling was unanimous. Three judges heard the case, and one of them was appointed by Barack Obama. Judge Mark Bennett wrote that the law tries to "directly regulate the United States" in how it carries out its governmental functions. He also went further than the court did in April, when it first paused the law. In April the court said the federal government was likely to win. This time Bennett wrote that the United States is "certain to succeed." Certain. Appeals courts rarely use that word. California's main defense was that the law treats state and federal officers the same. The court rejected that argument too. Under the Supremacy Clause, states cannot directly regulate federal operations, even when they regulate their own officers the same way. Newsom never seemed to grasp this. He may be auditioning for the White House, but he's a governor, and governors don't get to write the rulebook for federal law enforcement. If California wants federal agents to wear visible ID, there's a way to get that. Convince Congress. That's how you change the way the federal government operates. A state can't pass its own criminal law and threaten to prosecute federal officers for doing their jobs. The Founders saw this coming. In Federalist No. 44, James Madison warned that without federal supremacy, the country would be "a monster, in which the head was under the direction of the members." Newsom tried to put the head under the direction of one of the members. Now a unanimous court told him no.