Noah Feldman, Columnist

California Sanctuary Law Should Withstand Trump Challenge

In the 1990s, the state tried to block immigrants' rights. Today it is trying to protect them.

March 12, 2018 at 4:16 PM UTC

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

Supporting a state's rights.
Photographer: Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images

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Donald Trump’s first visit as president to the hostile territory of California highlights his struggle with the state. Most recently that battle has been over the sanctuary laws that the state Legislature has passed and that Trump’s lawyers have challenged in court.

Yet it’s worth recalling that California has a long history of acting like a republic unto itself on immigration — and that, not so long ago, the state was more hostile to immigrants than the federal government, not less.