Will Newsom let immigrant college students without legal status work at their campuses?

Is this the year that Gov. Gavin Newsom allows students without legal status to legally work at California’s public colleges and universities?

A state bill with wide support from Democrats but opposed by Republicans seeks to do just that by adopting an untested legal theory that argues a 1980s federal law banning employment for people without legal status doesn’t apply to state agencies. But university leaders and Newsom worry that acting on the theory could put the state on another collision course with the Trump administration.

The bill easily cleared the Legislature Friday, including a "yes" vote from one Republican. The bill now heads to Newsom’s desk.

Assembly Bill 713 by Assemblymember José Luis Solache, a Democrat from Lakewood, is seemingly straightforward: The University of California, California State University and community colleges cannot disqualify students without legal status from campus employment. If it becomes law, it would kick in Jan. 6.

The 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.

Leading the charge for this right to work on campuses are students without legal status, immigration rights groups and legal scholars. Access to safe working conditions for students without legal status is a high priority because they’re ineligible for federal Pell grants — up to $7,400 annually — and federal student loans that come with more borrower protections than ones offered by private lenders. California awards eligible in-state students tuition waivers regardless of immigration status, so many students without legal status can at least attend a public institution tuition-free.

“While California has a longstanding commitment to expanding access, affordability, and student success in higher education, our undocumented students continue to face significant financial and structural barriers,” Solache said at a bill hearing in June.

Newsom vetoed a similar bill in 2024, echoing a chief worry put forward by the University of California: Any effort to employ students without proper status would incur the wrath of the Trump administration, which could attempt to pull some or all of the $17 billion in annual federal support the system gets.

The state’s Department of Finance is recommending a "no" vote on Solache’s bill. The fear of federal litigation and budget cuts are the main reasons why.

The University of California abandoned its own review of employing students without legal status in 2024 for those reasons. Students at the public meeting cried and shouted at the board’s regents when they made the decision.

Some Republicans cited the risk of the Trump administration cutting federal higher education funding as a reason for their opposition to the current bill.

“If we're going to move something forward like this that then threatens 100% of all of the students, I think that's irresponsible for us as legislators,” said Assemblymember David Tangipa, a Republican from Fresno, at a January bill hearing. He voted "no" on the bill Friday.

After Newsom vetoed the 2024 bill, which sailed through the Legislature with minimal opposition, some students sued the University of California. 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 court ordered UC to pay more than $500,000 in legal fees on behalf of the plaintiffs, a student and a former lecturer.

It’s unclear if Solache’s bill can even force the UC to comply if it becomes law. Since 1879 the state constitution has granted the system a high degree of autonomy.

What is the legal theory being tested?

The bill, like its predecessor that Newsom vetoed, takes its cues from a team of UCLA scholars who advanced a theory in 2022 that a federal law banning employers from hiring workers without legal status doesn’t apply to state employers. The architects of the legal argument say the law in question, 1986’s Immigration Reform and Control Act, never actually listed state agencies as employers covered by the law.

Other laws passed by Congress clearly included states in restrictions that also applied to the private sector or federal employers. The omission, the UCLA scholars say, means Congress never intended to tie the hands of state agencies on whom they can hire. 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.

Student advocates then persuaded the UC Board of Regents to consider adopting that legal theory so students without legal status could obtain campus jobs. But momentum for that policy stalled, culminating with the UC dropping the plan.

Student voice

Some students have found a way to work while enrolled despite the ban on campus jobs.

Working without proper immigration status is not illegal, but employers cannot knowingly employ individuals who lack proper legal status, wrote University of Oklahoma law professor Kit Johnson in a 2022 law article. Employers often take advantage of the legal precarity of immigrants without legal status by paying them less than they’d earn with proper legal status.

A legal workaround, she writes, is for such immigrants to form limited liability companies, or LLCs. That business structure makes them consultants hired for a job, as opposed to employees.

Some students without legal status at the UC did just that, or they formed similarly structured cooperatives. But not every campus student can form an LLC or knows to do that.

Is student data safe from federal inquiry?

Backers of Solache’s bill and the Senate’s judiciary committee analysis say students without legal status employed at a campus aren’t at greater risk of immigration action despite concerns raised by skeptics of the proposed policy to hire them. The judiciary committee wrote that state agencies arguably aren’t required to verify employment eligibility for roles that aren’t funded by the federal government. They also say federal and state laws bar universities from sharing personal student information without that student’s consent.

But public California universities have shared student and personnel information with the federal government under the Trump administration’s investigations into alleged campus antisemitism. Critics say the administration exploited antisemitism accusations to coerce campuses across the country into settlements that align with the conservative values of the White House. The Cal State system settled with staff and faculty unions after they sued over the disclosure of personal information, promising to alert workers before their information is released to federal authorities investigating antisemitism.

Advocates of the bill also argue that the risk of apprehension and deportation is not reason enough to oppose it. Students understand the risk and that doesn’t change if they work legally or not.

Bill addresses questions the appellate court wouldn’t

As a result of the lawsuit students and advocates filed against the UC, the court sided with the plaintiffs because it found that the university’s employment policy discriminated against students based on their immigration status, which state law prohibits. It challenged the UC to provide an argument for why it thinks the federal government would go after the system for establishing this policy. Importantly, the court did not order the UC to begin hiring students without legal status.

“The UC now has to either end the discrimination against undocumented students or defend its decision to do so by reference to federal law, neither of which it has done to date,” wrote Ahilan Arulanantham in an email. Arulanantham is one of the UCLA scholars behind the legal theory and a counsel in the plaintiffs’ lawsuit against the University of California.

Omar Rodriguez, a UC spokesperson, wrote in an email that the "UC is evaluating its options in light of the court’s ruling and will take appropriate action when that evaluation has concluded.”

“UC does not have a position on AB 713,” he added.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.