Although the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld a federal appeals court ruling blocking the part of Alabama's immigration law making it illegal to conceal, harbor or transport undocumented aliens into the state, the law's proponents say the fight isn't over.
Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange filed the appeal in January, asking the justices to reconsider an 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling last year that said the Alabama law measure was "erroneous and broad" and that it was pre-empted by existing federal law.
But House Majority Leader Micky Hammon, who sponsored the law in the House, said the Supreme Court's decision didn't mean the battle was over.
"This issue is not going away any time soon and I agree with Attorney General Strange that the Supreme Court's actions today are only delaying the inevitable," said Hammon, R-Decatur.
Strange's office said in a statement Monday that they were "disappointed" in the court's decision, adding that they hoped the high court would consider similar cases pending in other states.
"The parties and the court will have to sort through which issues have now been resolved by the Supreme Court in Arizona and the Eleventh Circuit in our cases," Strange spokeswoman Joy Patterson said in the statement. "Some issues will require further litigation, while other issues will not."
As is customary, the justices did not give a reason for rejecting the appeal. Justice Antonin Scalia dissented from the court's decision.
But Sam Brooke, an attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center, which represented plaintiffs seeking to overturn the law, said the reason was clear.
"The thing we take away from this is we were given clear instruction from the court in the Arizona decision that immigration law is a federal decision," Brooke said. "I think the real lesson to be learned here, and what we learned from HB 56 is we need meaningful, comprehensive immigration reform in DC."
The immigration law, known as HB 56 and signed by Gov. Robert Bentley on June 9, 2011, was modeled on a similar one passed by Arizona in 2010 and attempted to criminalize most aspects of the life of an undocumented immigrant in Alabama.
However, a series of court challenges has removed almost all of the most controversial provisions of the law. Last June, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a number of provisions of Arizona's law. The 11th Circuit, using the Arizona law as a model, did the same with Alabama's law later that summer.
The harboring provision had drawn criticism from immigration rights advocates, who said it could make it a crime to rent to immigrants or to transport them to religious services.
Strange's brief did not address the merits of the provision, but argued that the 11th Circuit had "misapplied" the high court's ruling in the Arizona case to the Alabama law, claiming the high court did not directly address the harboring issues in the earlier decisions.
"Absent a definitive pronouncement from this Court, officials in five more states may soon have to choose between declining to enforce their statutes or defending lawsuits brought by the Justice Department or coalitions of private interest groups," the Attorney General's office wrote in its brief.
In a reply, Solicitor General Don Verrilli argued the federal government had "broad power" to regulate immigration due to the national interests involved.
"The federal government's exclusive authority to regulate the terms and conditions of an alien's entry, movement and residence in the United States includes the authority to establish criminal sanctions against third parties who facilitate an alien's violation of those terms and conditions and the authority to decide whether and how such criminal sanctions may be imposed," the reply said.
The courts have let a provision stand that allows law enforcement to detain those they have "reasonable suspicion" of being in the country unlawfully, although the U.S. Supreme Court said in its Arizona decision it would accept challenges to that portion of the law. Brooke said Monday that attorneys are "engaging in discovery" for possible legal action against that provision in the law.
Copyright 2013 - Montgomery Advertiser, Ala.
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
