One Up On Arizona

The state with the toughest immigration laws?  No longer Arizona but Alabama as Republican Gov. Robert Bentley signs into law a measure that forces not only cops to check resident status on everyone they deal with, but schools and landlords as well.  The goal:  to force the Supreme Court to reconsider precedent striking down exactly what Alabama has signed into law.

The courts will likely find even more issues with the law Alabama just passed. Under this law, Alabama schools will now have to collect student citizenship information. The lawyers behind this type of legislation have already made clear that their goal is to “take on” Plyler v. Doe, a Supreme Court decision which struck down a state statute denying education funding to undocumented children.

In the majority opinion, Justice William Brennan wrote that the “denial of education to some isolated group of children poses an affront to one of the goals of the Equal Protection Clause: the abolition of governmental barriers presenting unreasonable obstacles to advancement on the basis of individual merit.” The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division has already made clear that “student enrollment practices that may chill or discourage” school enrollment based on immigration status is a violation of federal law.

Many Alabama school officials are worried that the new law will do just that. “Once you start asking that question, you get to the point where you’re tacitly trying to deny access to school,” explained an attendance coordinator for Elmore County Public Schools. Even in Arizona, an attempt to institute this policy failed miserably.

Yep, they're going after kids.  After all, education is key, and Alabama is drafting teachers, principals and school administrators into being their ICE cops.  And if scaring away Latinos from schools doesn't work, well just go after where they live.

In addition, Alabama has made it illegal for landlords to “knowingly” rent housing to undocumented immigrants. The Third US Circuit Court of Appeals blocked a similar law from going into effect in Hazleton, Pennsylvania on the basis of federal preemption. The Supreme Court recently vacated the decision, but that likely has more to do with the Hazleton law’s E-Verify provisions which mirror the Arizona law that the Court recently reviewed.

So in Alabama not only are local and state law enforcement officials now federal ICE cops, but school officials and landlords too...and the state knowingly crafted a law that the courts have struck down time and time again as unconstitutional.

But remember, Republicans are against intrusive government that unfairly monitors the people, are against wasteful government spending and bureaucracy and government power, and are firmly against judicial activist courts legislating from the bench and making decisions on laws.

You know, unless all that interferes with harassing people they don't like and want to see rounded up.