A federal court on Tuesday has blocked a California law that bans private prisons, finding it violated federal law. The California law “impeded the federal government’s immigration policy,” a panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in its majority ruling granting a preliminary injunction and overturning a lower court’s decision. The law in question, Assembly Bill No. 32, bars the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation from entering into or renewing a contract with private, for-profit prisons to incarcerate inmates. It also says that after Jan. 1, 2028, no state prison inmates can be imprisoned in a private facility and bars, with limited exceptions, the operation of any private detention facility within the state. The Democrat-controlled California legislature passed the bill in 2019 and Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, signed it into law later that year. “During my inaugural address, I vowed to end private prisons, because they …