Voters Say States Shouldn't Be Allowed to Shirk Federal Law
The U.S. Department of Justice is suing California over its actions to shield illegal immigrants from federal immigration laws. Most voters continue to agree that states shouldn't be able to pick and choose when it comes to which federal laws they follow.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that just 24% of Likely U.S. Voters think states should have the right to ignore federal laws that they don’t agree with, down from 44% when we first asked this question five years ago. Fifty-four percent (54%) disagree and say states don't have that right, but that's down from a high of 62% last July when California was on the brink of declaring itself a sanctuary state. A sizable 22%, however, are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
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The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on March 7-8, 2018 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.
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