Cross-posted at Left in Alabama
A lower court’s ruling striking down most of Alabama’s HB 56 law will stand, we learned when the Supreme Court announced it would not not hear the state’s appeal to revive its worst-in-the-nation anti-immigrant law.
It was two years ago that Alabama passed HB 56, a horribly strict “self-deportation” law that chased immigrants out of the state, required K-12 schools to report on the immigration status of schoolchildren, deprived immigrants of legal protection and rights, decimated some of Alabama’s key industries, and left crops rotting in the fields.
Last year, the Supreme Court dismantled most of SB 1070, the anti-immigrant law in Arizona that HB 56 took much of its inspiration from. A federal appeals court then struck down most of HB 56. Now the Supreme Court has decided not to hear further arguments on the case, effectively closing the history books on the failed experiment of HB 56 and similar anti-immigrant laws.
As Pulitzer Prize-winning Alabama columnist Joey Kennedy wrote this morning:
Alabama’s overreaching, harsh immigration law can’t get a break. And that’s good, because HB 56 doesn’t deserve a break. It deserves to stay broken.
Conceived to be cruel to decent people, this hateful law deserves everything it gets.
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), the leader of our Gang of Hate, has always been a strong supporter of HB 56 (he’s a big fan of self-deportation in general). The closing of this law’s chapter should serve as another warning to Sessions and other opponents of immigration reform that momentum is not with them. History is moving away from them, and an America that wants immigration reform will be quick to leave their ugly anti-immigrant politics behind.
