Judge Enjoins Day Laborer Sections of SB 1070

NDLON members Tonatierra and the Southside Workers’ Center, along with other organizations and individuals directly impacted by Arizona’s anti-immigrant hate law, SB 1070, brought this lawsuit in federal court to challenge 1070’s constitutionality. On February 28, 2012, the judge granted Plaintiffs’ motion to enjoin the anti-day labor provisions of SB 1070. NDLON is co-counsel in the suit, along with the ACLU, MALDEF, NILC, and others.

Comite de Jornaleros v City of Redondo Beach

This groundbreaking civil rights lawsuit begin in 2004, when the City of Redondo Beach initiated the “Day Labor Enforcement Project.” Under a local ordinance that made soliciting day labor a crime, police arrested over 50 day laborers. The Comite de Jornaleros de Redondo Beach and NDLON, represented by MALDEF, immediately brought suit, arguing that the City’s ordinance violated the First Amendment.

On September 16, 2001, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, sitting en banc, struck down the ordinance, declaring: “We agree with the day laborers that the Ordinance is a facially unconstitutional restriction on speech.” The case is the first at the federal appellate level to decide the constitutionality of an anti-solicitation ordinance aimed at day laborers. On February 21, 2012, the Supreme Court declined to hear Redondo Beach’s appeal. The Supreme Court’s decision removed the City’s last chance to preserve its unconstitutional restriction on speech and confirmed the Ninth Circuit’s decision as controlling law throughout the western United States.