It was an is against the law, too. What they warrant is prison, where we've got a lot of them and intend to put more of them every day until this complete disregard of the law stops.
Laws that violate basic concepts of freedom and justice need to be repealed and anyone who speaks out in favor of that is fully justified.
If your state passed a law that mandated you to house a homeless person for four weeks a year, that would be injust and you'd be right to argue against it, resist it, and/or ignore it if you could.
Lest you think this is a hypothetical scenario, you don't know some of the most notorious liberal politicians very well.