The state of Alabama agreed to permanently block a number of provisions in its controversial immigration law in a settlement reached on Tuesday with civil rights groups. The blocked provisions of the state’s law HB 56, considered the most stringent in the country, were initially challenged upon its implementation in 2011 as condoning racial profiling, where police were granted sweeping authority to demand immigration documentation from anyone they suspected may be in the country illegally.
The Southern Poverty Law Center declared the settlement a “significant victory,” outlining the parts of the law that had been permanently blocked by the deal: “requiring schools to verify the immigration status of newly enrolled K-12 students; criminalizing the solicitation of work by unauthorized immigrants; a provision that made it a crime to provide a ride to undocumented immigrants or to rent to them; a provision that infringed on the ability of individuals to contract with someone who was undocumented; a provision that criminalized failing to register one’s immigration status.”
The settlement makes permanent the gutting of the law, that was first curtailed when many of the provisions were temporarily suspended by a federal appeals court. The Supreme Court ruled 8-1 earlier this year not to hear the state’s appeal.
