The Posse Comitatus Act is a United States federal law (18 U.S.C. § 1385, original at 20 Stat. 152) signed on June 18, 1878, by President Rutherford B. Hayes which limits the powers of the federal government in the use of federal military personnel to enforce domestic policies within the United States. The Act was passed as an amendment to an army appropriation bill following the end of Reconstruction and was updated in 1956 and 1981.
The Act specifically applies only to the United States Army and, as amended in 1956, the United States Air Force. Although the Act does not explicitly mention the United States Navy or the United States Marine Corps, the Department of the Navy has prescribed regulations that are generally construed to give the Act force with respect to those services as well. The Act does not prevent the Army National Guard or the Air National Guard under state authority from acting in a law enforcement capacity within its home state or in an adjacent state if invited by that state's governor. The United States Coast Guard (under the Department of Homeland Security) and United States Space Force (under the Department of the Air Force) are not covered by the Act either, primarily because although both are armed services, they also have maritime and space law enforcement missions respectively.
The title of the Act comes from the legal concept of posse comitatus, the authority under which a county sheriff, or other law officer, can conscript any able-bodied person to assist in keeping the peace.
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