HAZLETON, Pa. (By Julia
Preston, NYTimes) July 27, 2007 — A federal judge in Pennsylvania
yesterday struck down ordinances adopted by the City of
Hazleton to bar illegal immigrants from working or
renting homes there. The federal judge struck down as
"unconstitutional," the most resounding legal blow to
crack down on illegal immigration dealing a blow to
similar laws passed by dozens of towns and cities across
the United States.
U.S. District Judge James Munley
said Hazleton, in northeastern Pennsylvania, was not
entitled to implement a law that would impose fines on
businesses that hire illegal immigrants and penalize
landlords who rent rooms to them.
Dozens of towns and cities have
modeled their own immigration laws on Hazleton in a bid
to deal with the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants
living in the United States.
The decision, by Judge
James M. Munley of Federal District Court, presents a
new roadblock to local officials who want to take action
against illegal immigration after broad federal
legislation to address the issue failed in the Senate
last month.
In a 206-page opinion,
Munley said the act was pre-empted by federal law and would violate due process
rights.
"Whatever frustrations ...
the city of Hazleton may feel about the current state of federal immigration
enforcement, the nature of the political system in the United States prohibits
the city from enacting ordinances that disrupt a carefully drawn federal
statutory scheme," Munley wrote.
"Even if federal law did
not conflict with Hazleton's measures, the city could not enact an ordinance
that violates rights the Constitution guarantees to every person in the United
States, whether legal resident or not," he added.
Judge Munley ruled that
ordinances first passed last July by the Hazleton City
Council interfered with federal law, which regulates
immigration, and violated the due process rights of
employers, landlords and illegal immigrants.
The ruling resonated
beyond Hazleton because the town was the first in the
country to pass such measures, after its mayor, Louis J.
Barletta, vowed last year to make the city “one of the
toughest places in the United States” for illegal
immigrants. Many other local initiatives were modeled on
Hazleton’s ordinances, which were never put into effect
because of the legal challenge.
Mr. Barletta said the
city would appeal and would fight to the United States
Supreme Court if necessary.
“I will not sit back
because the federal government has refused to do its
job,” Mr. Barletta said at a news conference on the
steps of City Hall.
Judge Munley reached
his conclusion after a full hearing of the issues in a
bench trial, the first such trial in the various legal
challenges to local ordinances restricting illegal
immigration. The challenge was brought by the American
Civil Liberties Union, the Puerto Rican Legal Defense
and Education Fund and Cozen O’Connor, a private law
firm.
The judge emphasized
that illegal immigrants had the same civil rights as
legal immigrants and citizens.
“Hazleton, in its zeal
to control the presence of a group deemed undesirable,
violated the rights of such people, as well as others
within the community,” he wrote.
Kris W. Kobach, a
University of Missouri law professor who assisted
Hazleton, called the ruling “an extraordinarily bold
activist decision.” Mr. Kobach said Judge Munley had
misconstrued the limitations on cities like Hazleton in
making laws on immigration, which is generally subject
to federal law.
According to the Puerto
Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, more than 100
municipalities have considered ordinances to crack down
on illegal immigrants.
On June 20 a federal
judge issued a preliminary injunction against a housing
ordinance similar to Hazleton’s in Farmers Branch, Tex.,
a Dallas suburb. The ordinance, which voters approved in
May, would have imposed fines on landlords who rented to
illegal immigrants.
Last Friday, the city
of Valley Park, Mo., rescinded a similar housing
ordinance, after one version of it was struck down in
March by a state judge and a revised ordinance brought
new state and federal challenges. Similar ordinances
were dropped in Escondido, Calif.
Mr. Barletta, the
Hazleton mayor, has championed the city’s ordinances
because he said illegal immigrants had unleashed a crime
wave in Hazleton and had overburdened health and other
public services.
At the nine-day trial
in March, A.C.L.U. lawyers worked as hard to debunk
those claims as they did to undercut the city’s legal
arguments. They showed that 4 of 428 violent crimes in
Hazleton in the last six years could be attributed to
illegal immigrants.
“This opinion should be
a glaring red stop light for any local officials
thinking about passing similar laws,” said Witold
Walczak, the lead A.C.L.U. lawyer in the case.
Among the plaintiffs
were four illegal immigrants. Judge Munley allowed them
to remain anonymous and to testify through depositions.
This month Pennsylvania
prosecutors dropped murder charges against two
immigrants in the May 2006 shooting of Derek Kichline, a
Hazleton resident whom Mr. Barletta often cited as a
victim of an illegal immigrant crime wave. The
prosecutors said that important witnesses were not
available to testify, including one illegal immigrant
who had been deported by federal authorities.
Mr. Barletta and his
campaign against illegal immigrants have remained
popular in Hazleton, a faded coal-mining center 80 miles
northwest of Philadelphia that has recently seen a
manufacturing revival. In a mayoral primary in May, Mr.
Barletta handily won both the Republican and the
Democratic nominations.
