Gov. Jerry Brown of California dissented from his Democratic colleagues in the State Legislature on Monday and vetoed a bill that would have made California that first state to allow immigrants to serve on juries.
Gov. Brown said that the responsibility of serving on a jury should only come with citizenship, The New York Times confirms. Brown recently signed into law a number of measures that puts California, which has 3.6 million noncitizens who are legal permanent residents, at the forefront of expanding rights for immigrants, including granting driver's licenses to undocumented immigrants.
He signed numerous bills into law on Saturday, such as a bill that prohibits local law officers from detaining immigrants and transferring them to federal authorities unless they have committed serious crimes. In August, he signed a bill allowing noncitizens to monitor polls in elections.
Yet, the progressive governor would not sign a bill allowing legal immigrants to serve jury duty. "Jury service, like voting, is quintessentially a prerogative and responsibility of citizenship," Mr. Brown said in a veto message. "This bill would permit lawful permanent residents who are not citizens to serve on a jury. I don't think that's right."
The veto has raised debate about which responsibilities belong to citizens alone. A number of newspapers published editorials imploring the governor to veto the bill after it was passed by the Democratic-controlled legislature, with most Republicans opposing.
In August, The Sacramento Bee wrote that the law "calls into question the very meaning of citizenship," saying the passage of the bill would prevent immigrants from becoming citizens. "Why should green-card holders become citizens if they can enjoy the rights of citizenship?"
Supporters of the bill said that the legislation would make it easier to provide legal immigrants with a jury of their peers.
Yet, while Brown was pressured by Democrats and other supporters of the immigrants rights bill to pass other legislation, there was not a significant campaign advocating for noncitizens to serve on juries. Contrastingly, immigrants' rights groups held rallies and letter-writing campaigns for the bill stopping law enforcement officials from sending immigrants to federal authorities unless they committed serious crimes. The bill, called the Trust Act, allows local authorities to hold onto arrested immigrants if they commit crimes such as felony domestic violence or a D.U.I. Unless they have committed certain serious crimes, they cannot be detained past when they would normally be eligible for release.
Another new law allows legal noncitizens to be admitted to the state bar and practice law in the state of California.
"While Washington waffles on immigration, California's forging ahead," Mr. Brown said in a statement on Saturday. "I'm not waiting."
Although Gov. Brown vetoed the jury selection law, immigrants' groups were not dismayed; they instead praised Brown for signing bills that they said yield "enormous momentum for immigrants."
"We have really created a counterweight to other states like Arizona, that's really the story," said Jon Rodney, a spokesman for the California Immigrant Policy Center.
Assemblyman Bob Wieckowski, a Democrat from the Bay Area and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, which wrote the bill, said that the veto of the bill was just a "temporary mistake."
"He [Gov. Brown] has shown some enlightened thinking - he has just signed a bill that says even if you're undocumented you can go in front of a jury, so I hope he gets some more thoughts from constitutionally enlightened people around the country, and is convinced this is the right thing to do," Wieckowski said.
Assemblyman Rocky Chavez, a Republican from San Diego and an outspoken opponent of the jury duty bill, lauded the governor for vetoing a bill that "attempted to solve a problem that did not exist."
"The debate over this bill attempted to create a social wedge in our communities over our justice system," he said in a statement.