The battle over Arizona's new immigration law escalated Monday as some of the nation's leading civil rights groups filed the latest federal lawsuit over the legislation, arguing that it is unconstitutional and would lead to widespread racial profiling.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Phoenix by a coalition of civil rights organizations, said the Arizona law violates the Constitution's supremacy clause, which says federal law trumps state statutes. Immigration enforcement, the lawsuit argues, is an area of “exclusive federal authority.”
“This is the most extreme and dangerous of all the recent state and local laws purporting to deal with immigration issues,” said Lucas Guttentag, director of the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project, which filed the lawsuit along with the NAACP, the Nationa
l Immigration Law Center and other groups. “This law turns 'show me your papers' into the Arizona state motto and racial profiling into the Arizona state plan.”
Paul Senseman, a spokesman for Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R), who signed the law last month, said the state “has not had an opportunity to review the details of the filing. The governor was certainly prepared that there was a likelihood of lawsuits being filed.”
He added that the law — which makes the “willful failure” to carry immigration documents a crime and empowers police to question anyone they have a “reasonable suspicion” is an illegal immigrant — “merely enforces what has been a federal requirement for many, many years,” Senseman said. He added that the legislation “is very specific in saying that racial profiling is illegal in Arizona.”
The lawsuit, which names as defendants county attorneys and local sheriffs in Arizona, is at least the fifth federal lawsuit filed over the Arizona law. The groups that filed today's action said theirs is the most comprehensive court action filed thus far. The Justice Department is also considering filing its own lawsuit against the state or might seek to join other lawsuits.
