BUZZ
Some say legislation contradicts federal law, could cause legal trouble for state
A California bill that could cause trouble with the Trump administration passed the state legislature on Friday, prohibiting public colleges and universities from refusing to hire students because they are illegal immigrants.
However, the final fate of Assembly Bill 713 is not yet known. Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, vetoed a similar bill in 2024 due to legal liability concerns.
Newsom also previously expressed fears that the Trump administration could cut federal higher education funding from California over the legislation, Cal Matters reports.
The legislation, which is headed to Newsom’s desk, prohibits public colleges and universities in California from “disqualifying a student from being hired for an employment position due to the student’s failure to provide proof of federal work authorization,” according to the bill summary.
Additionally, it would require institutions to “treat a specified prohibition in federal law on hiring undocumented noncitizens as inapplicable because that provision does not apply to any branch of state government.”
This language is based on a legal theory by scholars at the University of California Los Angeles’ Center for Immigration Law and Policy. Hiroshi Motomura and Ahilan Arulanantham argue the 1986 federal law does not specifically designate government entities as “employers.”
More recently, according to Cal Matters., “An analyst at the state Senate’s judiciary committee also noted that Congress may be unable to dictate whom states can hire, because that undermines protections for states’ rights.”
However, the theory has not been tested, and it’s uncertain how the courts would rule if the California bill becomes law.
Cal Matters reports more:
The [state higher education] systems together enrolled an estimated 60,000 students without legal status in 2023 and most were in the community colleges. Some attend private colleges and wouldn’t be covered by the bill. …
After Newsom vetoed the 2024 bill, which sailed through the Legislature with minimal opposition, some students sued the UC. A state appellate court ruled that UC’s argument that the federal government might sue the system was an abuse of discretion under the state’s law banning employment and housing discrimination. The court said UC’s policy of not hiring students without legal status was legally indefensible unless it can show that federal law requires the UC to continue its policy of not hiring them. The UC appealed, but the state Supreme Court let the appellate ruling stand. Still, the court ruling was silent on the soundness of the legal theory that the state can hire workers without legal status.
The University of California System is not taking a position on the bill.
As The Fix reported earlier this month:
UC’s position also did not sit well with several “undocumented” students.
Diego Castro told the Bruin that his dream “was to always pursue grad school [and] potentially become a professor one day.” But UC Merced asked him for additional documentation after being accepted to grad school, and it ultimately reduced the amount of his “acceptance package” by 80 percent.
“The school had created these disparities and all these unequal practices,” Castro said.
UCLA Education and Information Studies doctoral student Jerusalen Davila, who served as an “undocumented community council undergraduate student representative” at UC Berkeley according to her LinkedIn page, claimed “educational institutions have historically neglected undocumented students.”
She added that UC is “using a lot of language or fear of any federal actions” and is “just avoiding their institutional accountability or responsibility.”
MORE: University of California illegal immigrant hiring ban is ‘discriminatory,’ court rules
