California Steps Up Its Role as Voice of Trump ‘Resistance’: New at Reason

How does the Tenth Amendment apply in California’s efforts to assert itself against the federal government?

Steven Greenhut writes:

“States’ rights” has long had a reactionary connotation because of its connection to segregation. Defenders of Jim Crow-era policies hid behind the rights of states to do as they choose as they backed noxious policies that denied basic liberties to African-Americans. The most iconic imagery comes from 1963, when Gov. George Wallace stood in front of a University of Alabama door in defiance of a federal order demanding the entry of black students.

These days, however, progressive officials in California have, ironically, become the most zealous defenders of that age-old doctrine, although for entirely different and arguably more noble purposes. The state of California, for instance, has (along with some other states) filed 22 lawsuits in recent months against the Donald Trump administration, as a means to defy federal policies that they believe undermine Californians’ rights as a self-governing people.

It’s not the first time in recent years that California has served as a bulwark against the federal government. In 2013, Gov. Jerry Brown defied federal court orders demanding the release of prisoners from the state’s then-overcrowded prisons—an act that garnered various media comparisons to Wallace’s stance. Our unpredictable Democratic governor was standing up against liberal judges to protect the public from criminals. It was weird.

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