Arizona settles final issues of SB 1070 legal fight

The controversial Arizona immigration omnibus law known as Senate Bill 1070 was signed into law in April 2010.

The controversy apparently ended Thursday when the state of Arizona entered into agreement with a coalition of civil-rights organizations led by the American Civil Liberties Union over the last disputed parts of the legislation.

Before the law even went into effect, major parts of SB 1070 were halted by a U.S. District Court judge in a lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice. And most of the rest — along with other state immigration laws regarding human smuggling and denying bond to undocumented immigrants — was whittled away in subsequent federal court rulings that said immigration control was the business of federal government, not individual states.

In effect, all that remained of the law was two clauses in Section 2, known as the "show me your papers" clause. Those clauses served as a largely symbolic victory for the Arizona politicians who championed the anti-illegal-immigration law.

Section 2(b) requires law-enforcement officers to make a "reasonable attempt" to determine the immigration status of people stopped for other reasons if "reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien and is unlawfully present in the United States."

Section 2(d) allowed law enforcement to transport illegal immigrants to federal custody.

The U.S. Supreme Court upheld those provisions, although the coalition, which includes the National Immigration Law Center and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), continued litigation.

The agreement announced Thursday includes a $1.4 million payment of legal fees by the state and an informal opinion from the Arizona Attorney General's Office that sets guidelines for law-enforcement officers when they encounter people who may be in the country illegally. In return, the coalition will drop its legal claims and appeals.

"It's the first time that a chief Arizona law enforcement officer has recognized that there are limits to Sections 2(b) and 2(d)," said Cecillia Wang, one of the lead attorneys for the ACLU.

"After a six-year saga of litigating SB 1070, it's coming to an end," Wang said.

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich called the settlement "common sense."

"You can't profile. You can't make illegal stops," he said. "These are things we all agree on. It's bad policing"

Arizona was in the forefront of states crafting legislation to curb illegal immigration.

Wang was one of the lead attorneys in a separate racial-profiling case that led to civil contempt-of-court charges and a referral for criminal contempt against Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. She believes SB 1070 arose when the state tried to model laws on Arpaio's practices of rounding up illegal immigrants.

Fact Check: Did SB 1070 reduce crime in Arizona?

Most of the statutes were blocked in federal court, including laws making it illegal to harbor or transport undocumented immigrants or to solicit day labor, and requiring non-citizen registration.

The racial-profiling case against the Sheriff's Office further codified what state and local law enforcement could do while stopping individuals who might not be citizens.

"The reality is that our informal opinion sets out what the state of the law is," Brnovich said.

Principal among the opinion's guidelines is that law-enforcement officers cannot arrest people merely because they are in the country illegally, which is a civil offense and not a criminal offense. And they cannot detain people pulled over for probable cause merely to ascertain their immigration status.

The opinion is not law, however, and  Wang urged caution.

"Arizona communities have got to be vigilant going forward to make sure they are in compliance with the attorney general's guidelines," she said.

Alessandra Soler of the ACLU of Arizona said of the agreement, "It does not preclude us from filing litigation going forward," if a law-enforcement agency were to ignore the guidelines.