Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere – Los Angeles
Arizona's SB 1070
Scholars Eye SB 1070 as Among Court’s "Biggest Immigration Cases Ever"
01 month ago
On Monday the Supreme Court announced that it’s ready to settle the contentious dispute over whether states, and not just the federal government, get to have a hand in enforcing immigration law.
The Supreme Court will be examining Arizona’s SB 1070, the first law in the country that made it a state crime to be an undocumented immigrant. Technically, the Supreme Court is only examining four key provisions from the broad law, including the mandate that law enforcement officers question anyone they suspect to be an undocumented immigrant. But the high court’s ruling will likely have far-reaching impacts on the lives of undocumented immigrants, and those suspected of being undocumented.
“This case has the potential for being one of the biggest immigration cases decided by the Supreme Court ever,” said Kevin Johnson, dean of the UC Davis School of Law. “It touches on immigration. It touches on civil rights. It touches on state and federal power. And it’s got a real cast of characters too.”
One of them, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, who’s been an unapologetic backer of SB 1070 and the copycats it has spawned since it became law in April 2010, praised the Supreme Court’s decision to take up the case, and defended the controversial law’s constitutionality in the face of a forceful challenge from the Department of Justice.
“I signed SB 1070 in order to give our state and local law enforcement one more tool with which to combat illegal immigration, while acting in concert with federal law and the U.S. Constitution,” Brewer said in a statement this week. “As I [signed SB 1070], I was keenly aware of the need to respect federal authority over immigration-related matters.”
Not so, the federal government has argued. The DOJ, which sued Arizona, and has also filed separate lawsuits against Utah, Alabama and South Carolina over their unique SB 1070 copycat laws, has argued that under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, the federal government and the federal government alone have the right to create and enforce immigration laws. The DOJ has also argued that it has an enforcement plan, explained University of Texas law professor Denise Gilman, and that state laws that funnel more people into local immigration offices siphon away resources the federal government needs to focus on its actual priorities.
“What it signals is a decision by the Supreme Court that it is time to take up this question of where the boundaries lie between federal and state action on immigration enforcement,” said Gilman.
The case arrived in front of the high court because of a complex legal tussle; Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer is challenging a lower court’s decision to block SB 1070′s key provisions from being enforced while the courts deal with the actual constitutionality of the provision. Brewer’s argued that the law should go into effect anyway. Still, it’s likely that the court will address the broad range of issues SB 1070 raises, not just the injunction request.
“I think the Supreme Court understands that this is a pressing issue for the state and for immigrants as well, and these issues are coming across the country, and you can’t deny it if you wanted to,” Johnson said.
“There’s a record number of these types of laws getting passed right now,” he said, adding that the court likely took up the case now because it saw a need for clarity on the issue, especially given the number of disparate rulings on these state laws.
“Whatever the Supreme Court decides in the Arizona case will absolutely impact the other litigation that is taking place,” Gilman said.
For the meantime, she said, the federal government will likely keep pressing hard to reign in states that attempt to pass their own laws, even as ICE faces a similar problem of its own making.
Get Ready for Battle: Supreme Court Will Take Up SB 1070
01 month ago
The fight that both sides of the immigration debate have been itching for has finally arrived. The Supreme Court has decided to examine Arizona’s SB 1070, CBS reported.
The Supreme Court responded to a petition from Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer over her state’s trailblazing anti-immigrant legislation requesting that the high court void a lower court’s injunction that blocked parts of the law from being enforced. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals had affirmed a yet lower court’s ruling that the state must hold off on mandating that police officers question someone about their immigration status if they believed the person to be undocumented. Other provisions, including one that made it a state crime to be an undocumented immigrant, and another that allowed law enforcement officers to hold someone in police custody while officers determined that person’s immigration status, were enjoined while the courts dealt with the constitutionality of the provisions. U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton’s court ruling was a partial injunction though; there are provisions of SB 1070 that are currently being enforced in the state.
Arizona was the first state in the nation to attempt, and pass, such brazen anti-immigrant legislation. It’s also the first state that the federal government sued over its attempts to pass and enforce its own immigration laws. In its lawsuits, the Department of Justice has argued that under the Supremacy clause of the Constitution, the federal government and the federal government alone are allowed to create and enforce immigration law. Civil rights groups have also charged that the law relies on racial profiling.
Yet since Brewer signed SB 1070 into law last year, Utah, Indiana, Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina have passed copycat versions of SB 1070, clearly undeterred by the expensive and controversial legal battles they’ve instigated. Some, like Alabama’s HB 56, go further than SB 1070 in their attempts to criminalize every aspect of undocumented immigrants’ lives. And the federal government, in an effort to respond to these various individual laws, has chased down Utah, Alabama and South Carolina with separate lawsuits.
Now that the Supreme Court has agreed to take up SB 1070, they’ll attempt to settle the question of where the federal government’s territory ends and state power begins in the ongoing debate over immigration enforcement law.
Supreme Court Weighs Case That’s Likely Precursor to SB 1070
01 year ago
The Supreme Court heard arguments on Wednesday in a case that could have significant implications for the rights of state and local governments to impose their own immigration laws such as notorious Arizona’s SB 1080. The case considers the legality of another Arizona law, which enacts strict sanctions on employers that hire undocumented immigrants. It’s just one of a series of crucial immigration cases that are winding their way through the courts now.
On Wednesday, an unlikely cohort of litigants including the American Civil Liberties Union, the Obama administration and the United States Chamber of Commerce made oral arguments in Chamber of Commerce v. Whiting. The case considers the Legal Arizona Workers Act, a 2007 Arizona law that requires employers to check the immigration status of new hires through a federal employer database called E-Verify. Employers who fail to do so or knowingly hire undocumented immigrants are slapped with sanctions, including possible revocation of their business licenses.
The law was previously upheld by a circuit court. The Supreme Court is likely to allow the law to stand as well, either through a majority ruling or as a result of a tie, but how it does so will matter greatly.
The administration and others are challenging the law on several grounds. Mainly, they argue, it preempts federal law, specifically a section of the 1986 Immigration Control and Reform Act that grants the federal government full and exclusive rights to enforce immigration policy. Similarly, the challengers argue that the state oversteps its authority by requiring businesses to check E-Verify, because the the the federal government has deemed that program voluntary. These are the same arguments the Obama administration is making in its case against SB 1070.
Beyond the feds’ preemption arguments, civil rights groups say the law encourages racial discrimination. Omar C. Jadwat of the ACLU said in a statement to press, the law “creates an unacceptable risk of discrimination against lawful workers” who may not be hired because they are Latino or speak with an accent.
Arizona’s solicitor general has countered that the1986 law maintained a singular exception on the question of preemption that allows states to continue to administer business regulations through “licensing and similar laws.” Arizona posits that the exception also permits the state to revoke those licenses. Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer put it this way: “Certainly we do issue licenses, we do do that, and if we giveth, we can taketh away.”
Arizona also argues that the policy simply picks up the slack left by the federal government, which, the state says, has failed to enforce immigration laws. Again, that echoes the state’s defense in the suits against SB 1070.
The conservative Justice Antonin Scalia appeared to agree with the latter claims on federal inaction.
“Arizona and other states are in serious trouble financially and for other reasons because of unrestrained immigration,” said Scalia. “I agree this step is massive, and one wouldn’t have expected it to occur under this statute. But expectations change when the federal government has simply not enforced the immigration restrictions.”
Justice Breyer, on the other hand, expressed concern over the potential for the law to facilitate racial discrimination.
“How can you reconcile that intent to prevent discrimination against people because of their appearance or accent?” he asked. “How do you reconcile that with Arizona’s law?”
Only eight of the nine justices will rule. Justice Elena Kagan recused herself from the decision because she’d previously worked on the case when she served as solicitor general. Four Justices are poised to vote to uphold the law, while three appear to be against. Justice Anthony Kennedy is the likely swing vote, and his responses during the case did not clearly indicate which way he’d fall.
Kennedy said there is “no limitation on what the states can decide is a license,” reports the NY Times.
But, the NYT reports:
Justice Kennedy objected to a second part of the Arizona law, this one requiring employers to use an otherwise voluntary electronic federal system meant to verify employment status known as E-Verify.
“It seems to me that’s almost a classic example of a state doing something that is inconsistent with a federal requirement,” he said.
If Kennedy opines in favor of the Arizona law, the court is likely to rule 5-3 to grant Arizona the right to impose employer sanctions. Such a ruling would also set a precedent for future cases that pertain to state’s ability to enforce immigration laws and would offer states and localities a green light to pass similar legislation.
If Kennedy agrees with the challengers, the court is likely to be tied in a 4-4 ruling. That would leave the lower courts previous decision intact and, in effect, let Arizona continue doing what it already does. But a tie would not set any precedent for future cases and, in as much as Justice Kagan is expected to rule in the future with the liberal side of the bench, might send some signal as to how the court will rule on future cases, like SB 1070, involving immigration and local enforcement.
Judge Advances Civil Rights Groups’ SB 1070 Lawsuit
01 year ago
On Friday a federal judge issued a ruling allowing a lawsuit against SB 1070 brought by a coalition of civil rights groups to move forward. U.S. District Court Judge Susan Bolton partially struck down motions from Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu to have the case dismissed. (Scroll down for a breakdown of the lawsuits against SB 1070.)
Bolton dismissed complaints from plaintiffs that said that SB 1070 would restrict immigrants’ speech and travel. The groups had argued that SB 1070 would make people afraid to speak languages besides English, and that is why it had to be struck down. Bolton rejected that complaint because she said the civil rights coalition was not the correct party to be bringing such claims. Nevertheless, civil rights groups are celebrating the broader ruling.
“Today’s order is an important first step in challenging this unconstitutional law,” the coalition said in a joint statement Friday. “The civil rights coalition will continue its legal fight until all of SB 1070 is taken off the books.”
The ACLU, National Immigration Law Center, Mexican American Legal Defense Fund, Asian Pacific American Legal Center, and NAACP filed their case against Arizona in May, charging that the state violated the Constitution by passing its own immigration law. The coalition of civil rights groups have argued that only the federal government has the right to create and enforce immigration policy.
SB 1070 would allow law enforcement to pull over and question anyone suspected of being in the state without papers. If the state prevails, people will be detained until their immigration status is determined and, if it turns out they don’t have the correct paperwork, they’ll face a new class of statutes that criminalize their undocumented status.
In July, Judge Bolton issued a partial injunction against SB 1070 in response to the Department of Justice’s suit, which charges that the law unconstitutionally preempts federal authority. Bolton blocked the most serious provisions. But other parts of SB 1070 are currently in effect. Portions of the law target day laborers, institute stricter employer sanctions and make it a crime to give a ride to someone who is undocumented.
Since then, Bolton has thrown out two other lawsuits against SB 1070. One was filed by a researcher in Washington, D.C., who said he feared racial profiling if he traveled to Arizona (Frisancho v. Brewer below). The second dismissed lawsuit was brought by a Tuscon police officer (Escobar v Brewer below). There are currently five pending legal challenges against the law.
Latin American Countries Stand Against SB 1070
01 year ago
Eleven Latin American countries want permission to urge the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to strike down SB 1070, Arizona’s anti-immigrant law. Mexico and a host of other countries petitioned the court on Monday in order to file friend of the court briefs that restate their opposition to the law.
In its original language, SB 1070 would have allowed officers enforcing state, local and even civil code to pull over anyone they had “reasonable suspicion” to believe was in the country without papers. It also created a new class of state crimes and punishments for federal civil immigration violations.
The law was met with international outrage and organizing. Seven lawsuits were filed challenging the law, including one by the Department of Justice. On July 29, U.S. District Court Judge Susan Bolton granted a partial injunction to block the most controversial parts of the law from going into effect, but the rest of the law, which includes crackdowns on day laborers and strengthened employer sanction laws, went into effect. At the time, Mexico, Bolivia, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Paraguay and Peru all filed amicus briefs urging Bolton to enjoin SB 1070. Since then, Bolton has thrown two other lawsuits out of court, including one brought by an Arizona police officer.
The primary legal challenge against SB 1070 has since moved to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, where both sides have spent the summer refiling documents and motions to argue about the law’s constitutionality in the appeals court. This time, Mexico has been joined by Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Paraguay and Peru, who are all prepared to say that SB 1070 would harm international relations between their countries and the U.S.
The DOJ is arguing that the federal government alone has the right to create and enforce immigration law, and that Arizona is overstepping its state powers by writing its own immigration policies.
In August, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton included the Department of Justice’s lawsuit against Arizona in a document of U.S. achievements to protect human rights that was presented before the U.N. human rights commissioner. Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, who signed SB 1070 into law on April 23 and has since become the primary spokesperson of the law, shot a letter to Clinton and demanded that the lawsuit be taken off the list.
Hey Arizona, Looks Like Boycotts Are Bad for Business!
01 year ago
I always thought conservatives were fiscally conservative, but it seems that holding on to discriminatory laws like SB1070 don’t strike them as bad business deals. According to Elise Foley of The American Independent, the tourism industry warns that the SB1070 boycotts could have lasting impacts on the economy for years to come, and it’s something other states should take into account when introducing their copycat bills.
“I think in the coming year or two we will probably see the biggest effects because … the people who have contracts that they are about to sign or are in negotiations … are the ones who are backing off,” Debbie Johnson of the Arizona Hotel and Lodging Association told an Arizona TV station yesterday.
Foley points out that the state’s tourism office awarded a $1 million dollar contract to a public relations firm to try to repair its image.
Early last month ColorLines’ Julianne Hing reported on the impact of the boycott in cities across the country. While dozens of cities have passed resolutions meant to show their solidarity with protestors in Arizona, some are still hanging on to questionable connections with the state. For instance, despite Chicago’s well-intentioned stance against SB 1070, it still holds lucrative contract deals with the brown bashing state.
Still, the boycott’s impact can’t be denied. According to Hing:
USA Today reported that Phoenix hotels had lost $11.8 million to conference cancellations since SB 1070 became law, though individual hotel reservations haven’t been hurt. The Arizona Republic reported that one Arizona-based medical records business had to relocate to Las Vegas because it was losing so much business. And local business has been hurt badly enough that Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer set aside $250,000 of city funds to create a tourism task force to combat the boycott talk–though the governor’s constant warnings about phantom headless bodies melting in the Arizona desert probably isn’t boosting tourism either.
Foley writes that it may be hard to gauge the real economic impact of the boycotts. But whether they’re actually depressing the economy or just depressing the minds of legislators, if the efforts are slowly de-clawing copycat bills, I think it’s safe to say it’s working out just fine.
MLB Still Refuses to Move Arizona All-Star Game
01 year ago
Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig remains steadfast in his refusal to move the 2011 All-Star game from Phoenix. Groups protesting Arizona’s anti-immigrant law SB1070 have been protesting the state’s baseball team and demanding that Selig make a statement by moving the game elsewhere. When pushed on the issue, Selig had a predictably arrogant answer: he’s done more for players of color than anyone else. Ever.
Dave Zirin wrote this week in The Nation that in July three prominent Milwaukee activists, Christine Neumann-Ortiz, the executive director of Voces de la Frontera, Michael D. Rosen, president of the American Federation of Teachers Local 212, and former Wisconsin Secretary of State Vel Phillips addressed a letter to Selig, arguing that the MLB had a moral obligation to take a stand against Arizona’s new law. An excerpt of the letter reads:
We believe that MLB plays a special role in the United States. Our ‘national past time’ has been instrumental in promoting the American ideals of justice, fair play and equality for all. In the words of former Commissioner Faye Vincent “MLB is a moral force.”
[snip]
Many of these athletes, like Hank Greenberg and Hank Aaron during their pursuits of Babe Ruth’s home run record in vastly different eras, were subject to racist abuse from fans and even other players, abuse that MLB championed against and which you personally found abhorrent. ….Throughout your life you have demonstrated a commitment to justice and fair play. You have the opportunity, in your capacity as Commissioner of Major League Baseball, to help heal America and ensure that Latino and other people, fans and players included, are not victimized because of how they look, their accents or what they wear.
And the commissioner’s response, via Carl Mueller from Mueller Communications, Inc., an organization that specializes in “Crisis & Corporate Communications”:
It’s hard to imagine a Milwaukeean more committed to social justice, fair play, and equal protection under the law who believes that Major League Baseball plays a special role in the United States and who has been instrumental in promoting the American ideals of justice, fair play, and equality for all. He is a hero in Milwaukee, in baseball, in America, and amongst those who believe in social unity and corporate responsibility.
[snip]
Your energies would best be spent tackling the issue at its core–it’s a political issue to be resolved by politicians. Thank you again for your letter. Sincerely,
W CARL MUELLER.”
Whether or not the MLB decides to cooperate, players, fans, musicians and others say they’ll continue to boycott Arizona until the law is repealed.
DOJ vs. Joe Arpaio: Here Comes the Lawsuit
01 year ago
The Department of Justice announced today that it is taking Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio to court for obstruction of justice. According to the DOJ complaint, Arpaio’s office has refused to cooperate with a federal investigation into his office over allegations that Arpaio abused prisoners and relied on racial profiling to fill his jails.
The DOJ and Arpaio have been tussling in public for months, but it came to a head in August, when the DOJ sent a letter to Arpaio threatening legal action unless the sheriff complied. After Arpaio failed to turn over files to the Justice Department by their August 17 deadline the two parties had a joint meeting that sounded hopeful.
On August 25, the Arizona Republic reported that the DOJ has set two new deadlines in September and October for Arpaio; the Justice Department is trying to gain access to six of Arpaio’s jails to tour the facilities and interview staff. Investigators also demanded that Arpaio turn over arrest records. On August 27 Arpaio’s office responded by saying it would not cooperate.
The DOJ has been investigating the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office for alleged civil rights abuses since 2009. Arpaio, who’s already responsible for one quarter of all the deportations in the country, has had his arrest powers restricted by the federal government. But that hasn’t stopped the cowboy sheriff from his very liberal interpretation of his powers.
Arpaio’s well known for his immigration sweeps through his juristiction–he ran his seventeenth on the day that SB 1070 went into effect. Arpaio’s been known to parade detainees down Phoenix streets, hold immigrants in tent cities and force people to wear pink underwear for the fun of it. But his jails also have a well-documented history of abuse. Settling all the various lawsuits against the MCSO have cost the county $42 million in the 16 years that Arpaio’s been in power.
“The actions of the sheriff’s office are unprecedented. It is unfortunate that the department was forced to resort to litigation to gain access to public documents and facilities,” said Thomas E. Perez, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division. This is the first time the DOJ has sued to gain access to public facilities and documents.
Read the DOJ’s complaint here.
The Jan Brewer Post-Primary Victory Tour
01 year ago
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer has staked her political career on the anti-immigrant law SB1070, and by all accounts, it’s already paved her way to election. Last week Brewer won her gubernatorial primary handily against two other Republican challengers whose names most election watchers could barely be bothered to remember. And today, the Tucson Sentinel reports that Brewer leads her Democratic challenger, Arizona attorney general Terry Goddard, by 19 points.
Last week, Brewer also filed her state’s opening brief in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, where the courts are hearing the federal government’s legal challenge against SB 1070. The federal government maintains that it alone has the power to create and enforce immigration law, while Arizona says that it is not overstepping its legal rights to create a new class of crimes that target immigrants in the state.
And, in a sign of Brewer’s sure-footedness, last Friday the AP reported that Brewer decided to take on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The State Department included its lawsuit against Arizona in a greatest hits list of ways the United States is protecting human rights.
Brewer wants mention of the DOJ’s lawsuit against SB1070 taken out of the report, which will be sent to the United Nations Human Rights Council. “The idea of our own American government submitting the duly enacted laws of a state of the United States to ‘review’ by the United Nations is internationalism run amok and unconstitutional,” Brewer wrote in her letter to Clinton.
Last week, one of the seven legal challenges to SB1070 was thrown out of court. Some have the dismissal a victory, but it was the weakest of the seven lawsuits to be let go. Washington, D.C. researcher Roberto Frisancho charged that he would be racially profiled if he went to the state later this year; he filed his lawsuit just four days after SB1070 became law, and was representing himself. Six other lawsuits, including one from a coalition of civil and immigrant rights groups, continue to plug along.
And that seems just fine to Arizonans. According to the Tucson Sentinel poll, 65 percent of Arizonans approve of the job Brewer’s doing in the state, up from a 41 percent approval rating in her pre-SB1070 days. When Brewer signed SB 1070 into law on April 23, she catapulted her state, and personal brand, onto the national political scene. Since then she has been criss-crossing the country parroting anti-immigrant rhetoric and spreading falsehoods about her own state.
The original language of SB1070 made it a state crime to be undocumented in Arizona. The law allowed police officers to pull over and question anyone they thought might be in the state without papers, which many civil rights advocates said would surely lead to racial profiling. Since then, the state has been sued by seven different parties, including the federal government. And even though portions of the law were enjoined by a federal judge this summer, the rest of the law which strengthened employer sanctions and included strict punishments for day laborers, went into effect.
“If the federal government secured the entire border and enforced our immigration laws, these human rights problems would not be occurring for citizens, legal residents and illegal immigrants,” Brewer wrote to Clinton. But Brewer confuses the point; SB 1070 is neither an attempt at a solution to the country’s immigration impasse, nor a stopgap. The federal government doesn’t need Arizona’s help cracking down on immigrants; it does that fine all on its own. SB1070 is a straight-up attack on immigrants and people of color, a demagogue’s answer to a national immigration system in serious need of overhaul.
Don’t expect Brewer to connect the dots anytime soon though, so long as xenophobia remains a reliable rallying cry for her election campaign.
SB 1070 Protestors Take a Swing at Major League Baseball
01 year ago
Since SB 1070 became law in Arizona, dozens of cities and musicians have joined a boycott against the state. The Arizona Diamondback baseball team has also become a target since the team’s owner, Ken Kilpatrick, is a well-known donor to the state’s Republican party, which has backed some of SB 1070′s most fervent supporters. Protestors are boycotting the team until MLB commissioner Bud Selig moves the 2011 All Star game out of Phoenix.
The boycott’s brought to a life an interesting question: Are sports a legitimate site of political struggle?
Valeria Fernandez reports for New America Media that while the MLB boycott has struck out with some fans, the message is becoming clear to others.
“I think it makes no sense. Sports have nothing to do with political discussions,” said Simon, a Latino who lives in Tucson. “It’s fun and it’s supposed to be fun. There shouldn’t be any type of political involvement.”
Many of his friends agree with that assessment, including his father-in-law, who is Mexican and often travels from the city of Hermosillo in the Mexican state of Sonora to watch baseball games with him.
[snip]
Some fans who are in favor of repealing the law frankly just don’t see the benefits of boycotts:
Fred Michaels and his wife, Sherry, said they were in favor of repealing the law, calling it “a dry fascism” and “redundant” in trying to take on the job of the federal government. Yet, Michaels believes the effort to boycott the team is “foolish, because there are so many companies that supported SB 1070″ that it’s difficult to know which ones were more involved.
But as chairman of the Somos America boycott committee explains in the article, boycotts can force companies to reevaluate who they chose to do business with, and see the connection between how profits affect people and policy:
“The intent of the business boycott is not to punish companies by asking our supporters to not purchase their products. It is to get Arizona business to realize that their support of these individuals for even ‘strictly business’ purposes is creating conditions of hate, fear, and violence against Latinos and immigrants in Arizona,” said former Arizona Senator Alfredo Gutierrez, chairman of the Somos America boycott committee.
In a clever video posted on Presente.org, there are clips spliced together that show Selig saying, “baseball is a social institution.” As reported in ColorLines last month, the commissioner’s also said that the major league baseball would only “do things when baseball can influence decisions.”
Though Selig refuses to move the game, there is already a long list of Latino players who have said they will boycott the All Star game if it stays in Arizona. And history may be on the protestor’s side. When Arizona rejected adding Martin Luther King, Jr. Day to its calendar, the move cost the state the 1993 Super Bowl along with a ton of revenue when the game was moved from Tempe to Pasadena.