RICHMOND, Virginia — Can a state tell a federal immigration officer to take off a mask and show identification? That question was argued on Tuesday, October 27, before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, and the judges did not make Virginia's task easy. Bloomberg Law reported that a lawyer for Virginia fielded tough questions before the appellate panel over the state's authority to require federal law enforcement officers to show their faces and identify themselves when enforcing immigration laws.

Source: Bloomberg Law

The National Law Journal, in its own report from the argument by reporter Avalon Zoppo, reached the same reading of the room: the justices on the panel were 'seemingly wary at times' of the Virginia law challenged by the Trump administration, and they questioned whether the law regulates the federal government in violation of the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution — the clause that makes federal law supreme over state law when the two collide.

Source: National Law Journal / Law.com

But Tuesday was not a one-sided day for Virginia. Bloomberg Law also reported that the Fourth Circuit appeared more receptive at argument to lifting a preliminary injunction so the state can enforce its second, companion law — the one dictating the terms for local cooperation with federal law enforcement. Virginia brought consolidated appeals seeking to undo district court orders that largely bar the state from enforcing both of the two recently enacted laws implicating Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity. A split outcome — mask-and-ID law blocked, cooperation law allowed — is therefore a real possibility, on the reporting of the argument.

The two laws at the centre of the case

The first is Virginia's Mask/Identity Law. As summarised in the district court's own ruling in U.S. v. Virginia, Governor Abigail Spanberger signed it on May 20, 2026, citing concerns that federal officers were 'undercutting basic expectations of accountability, sowing fear and confusion, and eroding the public trust.' The law makes it a misdemeanour, with some exceptions, for a 'law-enforcement officer' — a term that includes both state and federal officers — to wear a facial covering that conceals, obscures or otherwise covers his face while on official duty, and it adds identification requirements on top of that.

Source: Reason / Volokh Conspiracy, quoting U.S. v. Virginia (E.D. Va.)

The Justice Department's lawsuit names the two governing provisions as Virginia Code §§ 19.2-83.6:1 and 15.2-1726.1. In its announcement, the department said the package criminally prohibits federal officers from wearing masks, requires individual identifiers, and 'functionally bans' cooperative 287(g) agreements — the formal arrangements under which local jails and police help ICE identify and hold people for federal custody. The defendants are the Commonwealth of Virginia, Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones, and Fairfax Commonwealth's Attorney Steve Descano.

Source: U.S. Department of Justice

What the Justice Department argues

The federal government's position, stated when it filed suit, is that Virginia is not regulating its own officers but the federal government itself — and that this threatens officer safety. 'Law enforcement officers risk their lives every day to keep Americans safe, and they do not deserve to be doxed or harassed simply for carrying out their duties,' said Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. 'Virginia's anti-law enforcement policies regulate the federal government and are designed to create risk for our agents. These laws cannot stand.' Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward added: 'Governor Spanberger cannot tell Federal officers how to do their job, and she certainly cannot prohibit them from ensuring their own safety in conducting Federal law enforcement operations.'

Source: U.S. Department of Justice

The complaint, as described by the department, alleges the law threatens officers who 'have faced an unprecedented wave of harassment, doxing, and even violence,' and that threatening officers with prosecution for protecting their identities chills the enforcement of federal law and compromises sensitive operations. The department also notes that its Civil Division has brought a series of similar lawsuits against state and local policies it says thwart federal law enforcement, including in Virginia, New Jersey and California — so Virginia is one front in a national legal campaign, not an isolated dispute.

Why a district judge blocked the mask law first

Before the case reached the Fourth Circuit, Judge Robert Payne of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia concluded the Mask/Identity Law likely could not be applied to federal officers. The reasoning, set out in U.S. v. Virginia, rests on intergovernmental immunity: a state law that 'lays hold of' federal officers in their specific attempt to obey orders, and requires qualifications in addition to those the federal government has pronounced sufficient, directly regulates the federal government. The court relied heavily on the Ninth Circuit's decision in U.S. v. California, on a 1998 Fourth Circuit precedent striking down a Virginia law that tried to regulate the FBI's use of private contractors, and ultimately on Johnson v. Maryland (1920), where the Supreme Court held a federal postal employee could not be convicted under a state driver's-licence law.

Virginia's counter-arguments were considered and rejected at that stage. The state argued intergovernmental immunity is violated only when a law forces the federal government to fundamentally alter or abandon its operations; the court said the cases Virginia cited concerned regulation of federal contractors, not the government itself. Virginia also argued that it retains robust police powers to ensure accountability, public trust and safety — which the court accepted as a general proposition, while holding that no authority permits a state to use those powers to regulate the constitutionally delegated federal power to enforce immigration law. Whether masked, unidentified enforcement creates dangerous conditions, the court said, is an argument about the wisdom of federal policy — and federal, not state, authorities make that policy.

What this means for diaspora communities in Virginia

Virginia is home to large immigrant communities, including Punjabi families concentrated around Fairfax County, Richmond and the Washington suburbs — the same Fairfax County whose Commonwealth's Attorney is a named defendant in the case. For those readers, the dispute is practical, not abstract. If the mask-and-ID law survives, a resident approached by an immigration officer in Virginia would, under the state's design, be able to see the officer's face and individual identifier. If the federal position prevails, officers may continue to operate masked where federal policy allows, and residents' ability to identify individual officers in an encounter will remain governed by federal practice alone. Both sides frame the same facts in opposite terms: accountability and trust on one side, officer safety and protection from doxing on the other. The court — not either government — will decide which framing the Constitution permits.

What happens next

No ruling was issued on Tuesday. The Fourth Circuit panel will now decide the consolidated appeals in a written opinion. On the argument reporting, the two laws may not share the same fate: the mask-and-ID law faces the harder road under existing intergovernmental-immunity precedent, including the Ninth Circuit's California decision, while the local-cooperation law drew a more receptive hearing on the question of lifting its preliminary injunction. Whichever side loses in the Fourth Circuit can seek further review, and the Justice Department's parallel challenges in other states mean the underlying question — how far a state may go in regulating federal immigration enforcement inside its borders — is likely to keep moving through the federal courts. Awaaz Punjab will report the panel's decision when it is issued.