Arizona Anti-Illegal Immigration Law SB 1070: Judge Allows Author Emails To Be Reviewed For Racial Epithets

The Los Angeles Times reports that a federal judge has ruled in favor of opponents of SB 1070, a 2010 Arizona anti-illegal-immigration law, who in their quest to have the law declared unconstitutional have sought access to emails, letters and memos penned by the law’s authors. In her Dec. 11 ruling, US District Judge Susan Bolton in Phoenix rejected arguments from the Federation for American Immigration Reform and the Immigration Reform Law Institute -- two groups which supported the law -- that claimed that the privacy of that correspondence was protected under the 1st Amendment.

The judge wrote that there was no "law that protects from public view communications with public officials in their official capacity about a matter of public concern. Indeed, Arizona law makes all such communications available to the public under its freedom of information law." Opponents say they suspect the correspondence will prove that racial animus was behind the crafting of SB 1070. Victor Viramontes, senior legal counsel with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, told the LA Times that he and other opponents of the law would be looking for “anything with racial overtones with regards to Latinos or Mexicans and any kind of communication that suggests the true reason this law was passed, to target and discriminate against Latinos."

The East Valley Tribune noted that parts of SB 1070 have already been struck down by the US Supreme Court, including sections which made it a crime for those not authorized to work in the US to seek work in a public place and permitted police to arrest unauthorized immigrants if they weren’t carrying proof of their immigration status. But the Supreme Court never ruled on what Judge Bolton eventually will -- whether a provision requiring police to determine the immigration status of someone they’ve stopped if there is “reasonable suspicion” that they’re in the country illegally violates the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment.