Circumventing the Regents - Part 4

As blog readers will know, a bill was introduced in the legislature that would compel UC to make undocumented student eligible for university employment. The Regents were seemingly moving to that objective when they received strong legal warnings about the perils of testing federal immigration law in that way. There is a theory that if UC was compelled to offer jobs to undocumented students by state law, it would be shielded from penalty. That is the thrust of AB 2586. 

There is now another approach, a bill - ACA 20 - that would create a constitutional amendment that would have to go before voters, that would have the same objective, i.e., compelling UC, presumably on the basis that the compulsion would provide legal protection. 

Both bills are at an early stage. They have't been heard in committee, let alone enacted by both houses. We will see. CalMatters has more about these approaches:

https://calmatters.org/education/higher-education/2024/05/undocumented-students-work/.