Federal appeals court upholds injunction against Oklahoma immigration law

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Federal appeals court upholds injunction against Oklahoma immigration law

February 3, 2010 02:02:00 pm

[JURIST] A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld [opinion, PDF] the majority of an injunction against an Oklahoma anti-illegal immigration law, but did permit the state to enact a provision whereby businesses would have to check their employment roster against a state list of eligible workers through a pilot program. The three-judge panel, sitting at the US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit [official website], considered whether to uphold an injunction against the Oklahoma Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act of 2007 [text, PDF], which required, among other provisions, three sections that were at the heart of the appeal: that businesses use a pilot program to verify the work authorization status of their employees (7B); that firing a US citizen or legal immigrant, while simultaneously employing an immigrant who is in the US unlawfully, be recognized as an unfair trade practice, giving the fired employee a private cause of action (7C); and that contractors verify the immigration status of their independent contractors, or withhold taxes from them (9). The panel found that federal law [8 USC § 1324 materials] preempted sections 7C and 9, but split on whether section 7B was similarly preempted, disagreeing as to whether state mandatory electronic verification of employee status conflicted with voluntary use of a federal database. In a concurrence that found no preemption of section 7B, Judge Kelly wrote:

Though E-verify is voluntary (as of yet) at the national level, it is not reasonable to assume that a mandatory program choice for state public contractors conflicts with Congressional purpose. … To hold that the State is preempted from requiring such use in these circumstances reads too much into the federal government's provision of choice.

In upholding the injunction against the other provisions, the panel found that the plaintiffs had standing to challenge the suit and were likely to succeed on the merits, meaning the trial would continue in district court, though it is unknown when it will continue [Tulsa World report].

The national E-Verify system [official website] is a no-charge, Internet-based system that checks employee identification through either their Social Security Administration (SSA) number or a photographic match database. The voluntary E-Verify system differs from the mandatory "no match" system that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) rescinded [JURIST report] in October. That system would have mandated that employers fire any employee whose information did not match SSA records. In a step towards reducing the voluntary nature of the E-Verify system, in July, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano announced that the current administration supported regulations that would only supply contracts to employers who used the system [press release]. The E-Verify system was given its first boost when then-president George W. Bush signed an executive order [JURIST report] mandating that all federal agencies require those they contract with to use the system. That order was signed just one week after the US District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma enjoined the three disputed sections [JURIST report] of the Oklahoma Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act.

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail

On April 16, 1963, an incarcerated Martin Luther King, Jr. (arrested for demonstrating in defiance of a court order) wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail in response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama.

Part of the letter read: We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. Read the full text of the Letter.