It’s probably not as clear-cut as your making it out to be. These would be actually armed forces personnel, subject to all of the rules, regulations, chain of command, disciplinary consequences, etc. that come with that.
Yes, they could possibly make an argument that they have a duty to disobey illegal orders, but not a totally clear-cut, black-and-white one, they’d likely still be looking at arrest, courts-martial, etc. if they straight-up refuse to deploy to Texas. They’re people with lives, family, regular jobs, etc. that would very likely have to get put on hold while everything gets sorted out and they may not necessarily come out on top. Depending on the exact context, it’s probably going to be hard to make an argument that simply going to Texas would be an illegal order.
So if it happens, you can probably expect damn-near every guardsman from those states to go to Texas if they’re ordered to.
What they’re ordered to do once they’re there is probably where they’d have a stronger case, but even still they’d have to carefully thread that needle if they want to avoid prison, dishonorable discharge, etc. There’s a lot they could be ordered to do that would be very objectionable but not quite meet the legal bar of being an illegal order that they’d be obligated to disobey.
It’s probably not as clear-cut as your making it out to be. These would be actually armed forces personnel, subject to all of the rules, regulations, chain of command, disciplinary consequences, etc. that come with that.
Yes, they could possibly make an argument that they have a duty to disobey illegal orders, but not a totally clear-cut, black-and-white one, they’d likely still be looking at arrest, courts-martial, etc. if they straight-up refuse to deploy to Texas. They’re people with lives, family, regular jobs, etc. that would very likely have to get put on hold while everything gets sorted out and they may not necessarily come out on top. Depending on the exact context, it’s probably going to be hard to make an argument that simply going to Texas would be an illegal order.
So if it happens, you can probably expect damn-near every guardsman from those states to go to Texas if they’re ordered to.
What they’re ordered to do once they’re there is probably where they’d have a stronger case, but even still they’d have to carefully thread that needle if they want to avoid prison, dishonorable discharge, etc. There’s a lot they could be ordered to do that would be very objectionable but not quite meet the legal bar of being an illegal order that they’d be obligated to disobey.