In a 1994 referendum, 5 million Californians sought to deny welfare benefits to illegal immigrants, giving the state’s Proposition 187 an 18-point landslide at the polls. But district court judge Mariana Pfaelzer decided they were wrong—on the grounds that limiting state welfare payments amounted to setting immigration policy, which was a prerogative not of the states but of the federal government. And that did it for Prop 187.
