UC may want to lose this case

Remember the controversy when the Regents - after several sessions in which they seemed ready to test the proposition that UC, as a state entity, could hire undocumented students - decided the legal risk was too great? The governor vetoed a bill that seemed intended to force UC to go ahead with the hiring, but suggested some kind of litigation could be a better way to test the concept. Well, now there is such litigation.

From the LA Times: After Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill that would have allowed undocumented students to be hired on public universities, a legal effort has been launched to force open this doorway. On Tuesday, a UCLA alumnus and a lecturer filed a lawsuit accusing the University of California system of discriminating against students based on their immigration status. They are seeking a court order requiring the system to consider undocumented students for on-campus jobs.

“As an undocumented undergraduate student at the University of California, I experienced firsthand the pain and difficulty of being denied the right to on-campus employment,” said petitioner and UCLA alumnus Jeffry Umaña Muñoz on Tuesday. “Losing these opportunities forced me to extremely precarious and dangerous living situations, always moments from housing and food insecurity.”

The suit argues that federal law barring the hiring of undocumented people does not apply to public universities. A UC spokesperson said on Tuesday afternoon that the university system had yet to be served with the filing but will respond as appropriate when served.

The suit is being coordinated by the Opportunity4All campaign, which led the charge behind Assembly Bill 2486, or the Opportunity for All Act, this year...

Full story at https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-10-01/lawsuit-seeks-to-open-uc-jobs-to-undocumented-students-after-newsom-vetoes-bill.

The question now is what will be the UC stance in this litigation. UC may well want to lose and be ordered by a court to undertake hiring undocumented students. Following a court order would provide some legal protection. Of course, a lot would depend on who wins the White House in November, something that will be known long before the litigation gets very far.