Thread: AL Appeals court to consider arguments next week.

Appeals court to consider arguments against Alabama immigration law next week

Published: Friday, October 07, 2011,

ATLANTA, Georgia -- The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta has given attorneys for the State of Alabama until Tuesday morning to file arguments opposing requests to stay Alabama's far-reaching immigration law.

The requests to block the law came from the U.S. Department of Justice and a plaintiffs group who argue a stay is necessary to avoid irreparable harm.

In a preliminary motion this afternoon arguing against a stay, Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange said such an order would cause confusion for law enforcement personnel and the public.

In a brief order late this afternoon, the 11th Circuit said Alabama's arguments needed to be entered by 3 p.m. Tuesday. Any responses by the Justice Department or the plaintiffs group should be submitted by 10 a.m. Wednesday.

The motions seeking the stay included charged language, warning of the law's effects.

In a 28-page filing this morning to the appeals court, Justice Department attorneys argued Alabama's law contravenes the federal government's exclusive authority over immigration. The Justice Department said the federal government's immigration law enforcement priorities include aliens who pose a danger to national security or those who have committed crimes.

"States do not have the authority to disregard these priorities and create a patchwork of independent immigration policies," the Justice Department filing argues. "Similarly, neither the Constitution nor the federal immigration laws permit a state scheme avowedly designed to drive aliens out of the State - a program of de facto removal and a blunt instrument that can only impede federal law enforcement, obstruct the overall national regulation of immigration and present new concerns for the states to which aliens 'deport themselves.'"

The emergency stay request came nine days after U.S. District Judge Sharon Lovelace Blackburn refused to block several portions of the Alabama law from going into effect.

The Justice Department and the group of 36 plaintiffs had both sued to stop Alabama's law, but Blackburn determined several provisions in the law were not unconstitutional as the plaintiffs had argued.

Blackburn let stand measures requiring people to carry proof they have the right to be in the U.S.; directing police to check immigration status of people involved in traffic stops and arrests; barring entering contracts with illegal immigrants; requiring schools to check the immigration status of enrollees and prohibiting illegal immigrants from entering into business transactions with state and local government.

Blackburn found Alabama's law is aimed at cooperating with the federal government, as Congress requires. In Friday's filing the Justice Department disagreed with that conclusion and cited the traffic stop status checks as an example. It says that section of the law exposes even lawfully present aliens to the possibility of police surveillance.

Attorneys for the state of Alabama responded late this afternoon, arguing the government has shown no grounds on which the law should be stayed. And it said, a stay would create confusion in Alabama.

"After the District Court's ruling, the State began implementation of the portions of the Act in question, and it would create hardship, and disserve the public interest, for enforcement to be stopped on a temporary basis," Alabama's filing argues. "On-again / off-again enforcement will only confuse law enforcement and the public."

In arguing for the stay, the coalition of civil rights groups, unions, families and 12 illegal immigrants said the law has already had a widespread, negative effect.

"Alabama is in chaos," the plaintiffs argue. "It has been brought to this point by a state immigration statute of unprecedented breadth, and by a District Court ruling that is utterly at odds with recent decisions from other federal courts, including a Court of Appeals, preliminarily enjoining similar state-law provisions in Arizona, Georgia, and Indiana."

http://blog.al.com/breaking/2011/10/11t ... n_req.html

irreparable harm.

interesting word usage when it comes to those that break our laws and we fight to preserve the union

Sunday, October 9, 2011 6:49 PM EDT

Alabama Immigration Law Challenged Again: U.S. Government Seeks Injunction

By Dan Rivoli


The Obama administration's challenge to a strict Alabama immigration law escalated when the U.S. Department of Justice requested a federal appeals court to block the law from going into effect.

The Justice Department's bid for an injunction on a law it says steps on federal authority over immigration follows a judge's ruling that upheld the harshest provisions.

Lawyers in the Justice Department asked the appeals court to hear its argument quickly, as Hispanic immigrants and families are reportedly fleeing Alabama or taking their children out of school.

"The balance of harms and the public interest strongly mitigate in favor of an injunction pending appeal," the Justice Department wrote in a Friday filing with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. "The statute has the purpose, and has already begun to have the effect, of driving aliens from the State of Alabama, thus imposing burdens on other states."

At Issue: Alabama Law Designed to Make Life for Illegal Immigrants/Undocumented Workers Difficult

Alabama, along with other states including Georgia and Arizona, has implemented a law this year to make life for illegal immigrants difficult. Supporters of these laws say they are addressing an illegal immigrant problem in their state created by the federal government's inaction.

In Alabama, the law forces immigrants to carry registration documents, makes leasing property to illegal immigrants a crime, prohibits them from soliciting work, invalidates their contracts and requires local law enforcement officials to check the immigration status of those arrested or detained.

The law also requires public schools to determine a student's immigration status upon enrollment, as well as their parents' status. Illegal immigrants can still attend public school, but the data compiled and sent to the state.

The U.S. filed suit against Alabama, but U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Blackburn Sept, 28 upheld provisions requiring the collection of school children's status, preventing courts from enforcing contracts involving illegal immigrants and forcing police officers from holding suspected illegal immigrants without bond.

The judge also backed a provision requiring illegal immigrants to carry papers with them or face a misdemeanor.

Judge Blackburn did, however, block other parts of the law from being implemented, including a prohibition on illegal immigrants from soliciting work and criminalizing the harboring or transporting of an illegal immigrant.

The Justice Department said in its appeal that Judge Blackburn was correct in ruling that those provisions stepped into the federal government's domain.

"The district court erred, however, when it failed to apply this same analysis to the other provisions of [Alabama's immigration law], which equally intrude into the federal government's exclusive control over the federal immigration laws," the Justice Department wrote in its appeal.

Gov. Robert Bentley said in a statement Friday that an appeal from the Justice Department was expected.

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/227787/ ... appeal.htm

Lawyers in the Justice Department asked the appeals court to hear its argument quickly, as Hispanic immigrants and families are reportedly fleeing Alabama or taking their children out of school.

They don't want their state sponsored "settler/voters to get away.