Just a week after the Supreme Court handed a major victory to day laborers, other courts are heeding the high court’s guidance, and blocking anti-day laborer provisions from being enforced.
Today, a federal court enjoined provisions of Arizona’s SB 1070 which barred drivers from blocking traffic and hiring people for work and forbade potential workers from entering a car if it was blocking traffic.
These provisions, which were ostensibly about ensuring public safety and “protecting the aesthetics of communities,” according to the law, were thinly veiled provisions designed to make a crime out of day laborers’ traditional modes of seeking work—waiting in construction store parking lots or on the sides of streets for contractors and other would-be employers to hire them.
The federal court today enjoined those sections, which blocks them from being enforced while the courts hash out the constitutionality of the provisions. Last week the Supreme Court refused to hear a challenge over a lower court’s ruling about a separate anti-day laborer ordinance from Redondo Beach, California. By refusing to hear the case, the Supreme Court basically affirmed that the lower court’s decision, which said that Redondo Beach’s anti-day-laborer provision, which was nearly identical to SB 1070’s, violated those workers’ free speech rights.
“Today the Court vindicated the rights of day laborers to peacefully solicit work and blocked Arizona’s illegal attempt to mute them,” said Victor Viramontes, national senior counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund. “Courts will not tolerate laws banning day labor solicitation, and other jurisdictions considering similar laws should take note of this important ruling.”
The fight around Arizona’s first-in-the-nation “papers please” law is far from over though. The Supreme Court announced in December it will take up the contentious legal debate around SB 1070. Oral arguments are set for this spring.
Read today’s court order in full here.
