Supreme Court Agrees To Review Arizona Employer Sanctions Law In ACLU Case
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Monday, June 28, 2010
Contact:
Jon O’Neill, ACLU of Arizona, at 602-650-1854 ext. 107 joneill@acluaz.org
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Supreme Court today accepted for review Chamber of Commerce v. Candelaria, a case challenging an Arizona statute imposing severe state sanctions on employers who allegedly hire immigrants not authorized to work in the United States. The American Civil Liberties Union represents certain petitioners in the case, including the community organizations Chicanos Por La Causa and Somos America.
“Since its passage, this law has encouraged employers to avoid hiring workers who they perceive to be foreign-born because of an accent or the color of their skin and lead to unfair firing of eligible workers because of numerous flaws in the database system,” said Alessandra Soler Meetze, executive director of the ACLU of Arizona.
The ACLU argued in the case that the law conflicts with federal law and the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution. The U.S. Department of Justice filed a brief supporting the view that the court of appeals erred in upholding this statute and that the Arizona statute conflicted with federal law.
The following can be attributed to Lucas Guttentag, Director of the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project:
"We are pleased that the Supreme Court has decided to consider the constitutionality of Arizona's discriminatory state employer sanctions law. It is a clear signal that other cities and states should not rely on the appeals court decision now under review as the basis for pursuing similar laws that conflict with federal statutes and subject workers to race and national origin discrimination."