Judge Halts Sections of the Arizona Immigration Law (S.B. 1070)

Immigrant Rights News 07.29,10

U.S. District Court Judge Susan Bolton issued a preliminary injunction yesterday preventing Arizona from implementing sections of controversial immigration law S.B. 1070. The injunction will stand until the courts have the ability to review the case in its entirety.  Other parts of the law took effect today.

In a statement on the injunction, Wade Henderson, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights called the law “bad policy.”


“Permitting this law to go forward would have opened the door to a drastic increase in racial and ethnic profiling, singling out minorities based simply on how they look or speak. It also would have wasted valuable law enforcement resources while driving a wedge between the police and the communities they work to protect,” said Henderson.


The injunction affects provisions that civil rights community has said violate the basic civil rights of Arizonans and would lead to racial and ethnic profiling, including:  



  • Requiring an officer to make a reasonable attempt to determine the immigration status of people stopped;

  • Making it a crime for undocumented immigrants apply for and perform work; and

  • Allowing police officers to arrest a person without a warrant based on probable cause that the individual committed a public offense that makes them removable from the United States.

Bolton ruled in a case brought by the U.S. Department of Justice challenging the constitutionality of S.B. 1070.  Several civil and human rights groups filed a similar suit in May.


S.B. 1070, signed by Governor Jan Brewer on April 23, has been widely denounced as extreme, unconstitutional, and likely to lead to discrimination.