Civil Rights Groups’ Lawsuit Challenging the Constitutionality of S.B. 1070 Advances

Last week, U.S. District Court Judge Susan Bolton upheld key parts of a class action lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Arizona’s anti-immigrant law, S.B. 1070, brought by a coalition of civil rights groups on behalf of labor, domestic violence, day laborer, human services, and social justice organizations.

Bolton found that the civil rights groups’ claim that “racial discrimination was a motivating factor for [S.B.] 1070’s enactment” is strong enough to challenge the constitutionality of the law.

The case was brought by the ACLU, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Asian Pacific American Legal Center, National Immigration Law Center, and the NAACP. The groups argue that S.B. 1070 is unconstitutional on the grounds that the authority to enforce and implement immigration policy lies solely in the hands of the federal government. They also assert that the law would allow racial and ethnic profiling to be a legitimate means to enforce state law.

The coalition of civil rights groups called Bolton’s decision “an important first step” toward dismantling S.B. 1070 and vowed to “continue its legal fight until all of S.B. 1070 is taken off the books.”

S.B. 1070, signed by Governor Jan Brewer on April 23, will make racial profiling the norm in Arizona by requiring law enforcement officers to stop, question, detain, and arrest anyone that they have a “reasonable suspicion” to believe is in the United States without documentation. The law has been widely denounced as extreme, unconstitutional, and fundamentally unfair and discriminatory.