Sanctuary city laws are mentioned in The Bob Zadek Show only in passing, as illustrative examples within episodes devoted to other subjects. No excerpt treats sanctuary city laws as its main topic, and no guest is identified as an authority on immigration law or local-government policy. The two episodes that touch the subject do so from different directions: one invokes sanctuary city laws to show how a California union-speech restriction could reach factual statements, and the other describes sanctuary city laws as a limit on data sharing that other arrangements can circumvent.
Sanctuary city laws as a union-speech example
In the episode on California’s union gag order, Bob Zadek, speaking as a lawyer, describes reading the language of 3550, which he says provides that elected board members and public employers cannot say anything that would “deter or discourage” someone from union membership. He reasons that almost anything could meet that standard, and offers an example: telling someone that they are no longer compelled to pay union dues, as the Janus decision ruled, could itself deter or discourage union membership. On that reading, even factual statements about a Supreme Court ruling are off-limits California’s New Union Gag Order Violates 1st Amendment (2020).
Zadek then extends the point to sanctuary city laws. He states that the California Teachers Association supports the sanctuary city laws, and asks what would happen if members of a board he was advising were to point that fact out: it might deter or discourage some teachers and other employees from joining the union. He frames the problem as vagueness — the only reasonable advice an attorney could give elected officials is to refrain from saying anything — and says this creates a legal cloud over anyone who wants to criticize the union along factual lines. He adds that elected officials who support the union are free to say whatever they want, while those who disagree must be careful, and that a board attorney would likely advise silence rather than face the tens of thousands of dollars it would cost to defend against an unfair labor practice charge California’s New Union Gag Order Violates 1st Amendment (2020).
In this episode, sanctuary city laws function as a stand-in for a contested political position. The claim is not about what sanctuary city laws do or whether they are sound; it is that merely stating the union’s position on them could expose an elected official to liability under a vague standard. The excerpt does not describe the content of any sanctuary city law, name a city or statute, or say which jurisdiction’s laws are at issue beyond the reference to California.
Sanctuary city laws and data sharing
The two ALPR episodes, drawn from the same conversation with Jonathan Hofer, treat sanctuary city laws as a data-sharing question. Hofer says that California, for example, has sanctuary city laws, and that part of that is not handing over data to, let’s say, Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He characterizes this as kind of a Jeffersonian principle, while saying he is not saying anything about sanctuary cities, and adds that there is something to be said for people explicitly saying their local government should not be tasked with enforcing federal law. He also notes the possibility that this diverts valuable law enforcement resources The Mass Surveillance nobody is talking about (2022).
Hofer’s argument is that data-sharing arrangements skirt those laws. He gives a hypothetical: a jurisdiction with loose privacy regulations can be used to get data from that place, or someone can say to ICE, here is access to all our license plates, while maintaining that they are not helping enforce immigration The Mass Surveillance nobody is talking about (2022). The same passage appears in the second ALPR episode, where Hofer repeats the description of California’s sanctuary city laws as including not handing over data to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Jeffersonian framing, the point about local government not being tasked with enforcing federal law, the diversion of resources, and the claim that data-sharing arrangements skirt those laws A PSA on ALPRs (2022).
Neither ALPR excerpt names a specific sanctuary city law, city, or ordinance. The description is general: California has such laws, and a component of them concerns not handing data to ICE. Hofer’s concern is not with the laws’ substance but with how easily they can be bypassed through inter-jurisdictional data access.
Across episodes
The topic appears in two episodes, and the excerpts show no development in how sanctuary city laws are treated. In the union gag order episode, Bob Zadek uses the California Teachers Association’s support for sanctuary city laws as an example of a fact that could deter or discourage union membership if stated by an elected board member California’s New Union Gag Order Violates 1st Amendment (2020). In the ALPR episodes, Jonathan Hofer describes California’s sanctuary city laws as including a limit on handing data to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and argues that data-sharing arrangements skirt that limit The Mass Surveillance nobody is talking about (2022) A PSA on ALPRs (2022). The two treatments are unrelated to each other: one concerns speech about the laws, the other concerns data flows around them. No speaker in the later episode responds to or revises the earlier use, and no excerpt indicates that either speaker returned to the subject.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state what any sanctuary city law provides beyond the general description of not handing data to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, nor do they name a city, county, statute, ordinance, or bill. They do not describe the legal basis for such laws, any court decision upholding or invalidating one, or the arguments for and against them as immigration policy. No guest is identified as an immigration-law scholar or litigator, and no episode in these excerpts takes sanctuary city laws as its subject.