Groups to drop opposition to SB 1070's 'papers, please' provision


  • Howard Fischer Capitol Media Services
  • Updated 14 min ago





  • Mark Henle / The Arizona Republic 2010


A protest in 2010 in downtown Phoenix attempted to draw attention to SB1070, the tough immigration law that provoked an economic boycott against Arizona that year.


PHOENIX — Immigrant rights groups are giving up their bid to void the "papers, please'' provision of Arizona's controversial SB 1070 in exchange for some state-issued informal — and non-binding — guidance on how police should enforce it.

In an agreement being unveiled this afternoon, the organizations are dropping their appeal of a ruling last year by U.S. District Court Judge Susan Bolton that there is nothing inherently illegal about the provision in the 2010 law requiring that police officers, when possible, check the immigration status of people they have stopped for any other reason.

Foes had tried to show the law was racially motivated. But Bolton said while it may be that most of the people affected in Arizona are Hispanic, the law itself is racially neutral.


In exchange, the state attorney general's office is issuing an informal legal opinion spelling out for police officers how they can — and cannot — enforce the statute. That will include cautions against racial profiling.

Potentially more significant, it will remind officers that they cannot detain anyone for longer than necessary for the original reason they were stopped.

That means no delay while waiting for a radioed response from federal immigration agencies about whether the person is legally entitled to be in this country. And it also means that even if the person is not here legally, police cannot keep them from leaving while awaiting an immigration officer to come and take custody unless they are under arrest for some state offense.

As an informal opinion, though, it cannot be used to bring actions against police who do not follow the guidelines.

The deal also leaves in place Bolton's 2015 ruling that requires verification of whether someone who already has been arrested is in this country illegally. She said that does not illegally expand the right of police officers to make warrantless arrests as the person already is in custody.

But the state will no longer try to resurrect another provision of SB 1070 aimed at day laborers.

That provision would have made it a crime for someone to stop a motor vehicle on a street and impede traffic in attempting to hire someone to work at another location. It also would have made it illegal for someone looking for work to enter such a vehicle.

Arizona had not been enforcing that because a federal appeals court had issued a preliminary injunction even before Bolton's 2015 ruling.

The groups that brought the lawsuit and agreed to the deal are the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the National Immigration Law Center.


While the deal announced today ends the last bit of this lawsuit, it does not mean there will be no future battles over SB 1070.

Bolton, in refusing to void the "papers, please'' provision, said only that the law is facially valid because there are ways of enforcing it which do not single out Hispanics or other minority groups.

"Plaintiffs have admittedly not produced any evidence that state law enforcement officials will enforce SB 1070 differently for Latinos than a similarly situated person of another race or ethnicity,'' the judge wrote.

What was not before the judge — and what remains an option — is what attorneys call an "as applied'' challenge, where evidence is presented that a police agency enforces the law in a discriminatory fashion.

Attorneys for the challenging groups said they intend to continue to monitor what happens in Arizona and will file a new lawsuit if such discrimination occurs.


Attorney General Mark Brnovich said he hopes the informal opinion being issued by his office ensures that does not happen.

"I don't want any law enforcement official, whether they work for me or another law enforcement agency, to be racially profiling,'' he said. "I don't want law enforcement officials to be unnecessarily detaining people inconsistent with Supreme Court precedent.''

Brnovich conceded the opinion has no legally binding effect — and local police agencies can still do what they want. But he said that any department that racially profiles or purposely detains someone without cause is probably breaking the law, opinion or not.

This deal comes nearly two years after the U.S. Department of Justice, which had filed its own lawsuit against SB 1070, dropped its own bid to void that "papers, please'' provision.

That, too, involved a deal: Arizona gave up its efforts enforce another provision that would have made it a state crime to knowingly transport or harbor someone in this county illegally, and made it illegal to "encourage or induce'' someone to come to or reside in Arizona if they have no legal right to be in the country.

With today's announcement, the six-year battle over the divisive law that gained national attention is finally over.

The act's approval by the Republican-controlled Legislature and signature by then-Gov. Jan Brewer drew national attention. It also resulted in demonstrations and boycotts, with officials in the state's tourism industry reporting a loss in the number of conventions and conferences scheduled here.

But it also made Brewer, who had inherited the office the year before after Janet Napolitano quit as governor, a national figure. And it likely helped her win a term of her own in the 2010 election.

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