More Fallout From the Alabama Immigration Law Ruling

Here is more criticism — this from Immigration Impact — of the district court rulings in the challenges to the Alabama immigration law. Several parts of the ruling are somewhat surprising, upholding: (1) the provision requiring immigrants to carry alien registration documents; (2) the requirement that state and local law enforcement verify the immiugration status of persons stopped who they have a “reasonable suspicion” of being undocumented; and (3) the requirement that school officials collect information on the immigration status of enrolling students. The first two conflict with the Ninth Circuit’s ruling (and the Ninth Circuit was unanimous on (1)) and the third seems to be in tension with Plyler v. Doe (1982), in which the Supreme Court struck down a Texas law that in effect barred undocumented children from a K-12 public education. Indeed, collecting the immigration status information seems designed to chill or inhibit the parents of undocumented students from enrolling in the public schools and thus of exercising a federal right.

As Immigration Impact summarizes, the district court did not uphold all of the Alabama law:

“Judge Blackburn did in fact enter a preliminary injunction against a slew of provision in H.B. 56, including: Section 8, which would have prevented many legal immigrants from attending state colleges, including refugees and persons with Temporary Protected Status; Section 11, which would have outlawed the solicitation or performance of work by “unauthorized aliens”; Section 13, which would have made transporting or renting to an undocumented immigrant a state crime; and Sections 16 and 17, which would have forbidden employers from deducting compensation paid to undocumented workers as business expenses, and allowed other workers to sue the companies for damages in court. “

KJ