Court puts parts of Alabama's anti-illegal immigration law on hold

A federal appeals court in Atlanta has temporarily put on hold two key parts of Alabama’s new illegal immigration law following a court challenge brought by civil and immigrant rights groups.

In an order issued Thursday, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals -- which is considering a similar law in Georgia -- temporarily halted a provision of the Alabama law that would prohibit its courts from enforcing certain contracts with illegal immigrants.

Another provision the court put on hold would require people to demonstrate their U.S. citizenship or legal status before entering into a “business transaction” with the state or a local government in Alabama, including applying for vehicle license plates, driver's licenses and business licenses.

The court heard arguments about Alabama's and Georgia’s immigration enforcement statutes last week. Before that hearing, Judge Charles Wilson said his three-judge panel would wait until after the U.S. Supreme Court rules on a similar measure in Arizona before it acts on Georgia's and Alabama's laws. The three-page order the court issued Thursday doesn’t explain why it chose to act sooner, though it says the plaintiffs in the case “have met their burden.”

In a prepared statement issued Thursday, Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange said he disagreed with the court's decision.

"I will continue to vigorously defend Alabama’s immigration law in the courts," he said. "I am hopeful that the Supreme Court's coming decision in the Arizona case will make clear that our law is constitutional.”

The American Civil Liberties Union cheered the court’s decision.

“These provisions were designed to make it impossible for ordinary families to live in Alabama by stripping them of their ability to engage in contracts -- like rental agreements or car leases -- and to do any business with the state government," Cecillia Wang, director of the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project, said in a prepared statement. "They are unconstitutional, and the court rightly blocked them pending a final ruling on the appeal.”

The Supreme Court is expected to take up Arizona’s law next month and rule by the end of June. A lower court put two key parts of Georgia’s law on hold in June following a legal challenge brought by the ACLU and other civil and immigrant rights groups. Georgia is appealing that lower court’s decision to Wilson’s panel.

At issue in the courts is how far states can legally go in combating illegal immigration. Officials in Georgia, Alabama, Arizona, South Carolina and Utah have enacted similar illegal immigration laws in recent years, saying they must act to protect jobs and taxpayer-funded resources because the federal government has failed to seal the nation’s borders.

Opponents of these measures say they are divisive and interfere with the federal government's authority to regulate immigration and manage foreign relations.

During last week’s court hearing, Judge Beverly Martin focused on the provision in Alabama’s law that invalidates contracts with illegal immigrants and asked what would happen if all 50 states adopted a similar measure.

“That really amounts to a policy of expulsion, doesn’t it?” she asked. She added later: “If all 50 states had this provision, how would an undocumented person be able to survive in the United States? Where would they live? Where would they take shelter? How would they get utilities, water?”

Alabama Solicitor General John Neiman pointed to exemptions in Alabama’s law for contracts for buying food and one night’s lodging, though he added: “The Legislature had an intention in mind of deterring and discouraging illegal immigration.”

Martin pressed him again: “But not only people coming into Alabama but people already there -- the effort is to make them leave Alabama.”

Neiman said: “I think it is fair to infer from those provisions that was one of the many purposes of this act. But that fact by itself does not render the statute an unconstitutional regulation of immigration.”

Martin responded: “But I don’t think you would disagree with me that the right for removal is vested solely in the federal government.”