Radical law targets immigrant school children in direct contravention of U.S. Supreme Court decision in Plyler v Doe which guaranteed public school education for undocumented children
WASHINGTON, DC - The National Hispanic Leadership Agenda (NHLA), a coalition of the 30 leading Hispanic organizations in the United States, praised the U.S. Department of Justice for taking action against an Alabama law known as H.B. 56 that promotes racial profiling and discrimination against immigrant children.
The Justice Department filed a brief stating that H.B. 56 interferes with law enforcement while subjecting foreign visitors, legal immigrants, U.S. citizens, and even school children to harassment.
“Alabama’s law is a continuation of discriminatory and anti-immigrant legislation that was started by Arizona’s S.B. 1070 and spread to other states. As with S.B. 1070, we are pleased that the Department of Justice has challenged the law and hope it too will be struck down,” said Lillian Rodriguez Lopez, chair of NHLA. “As the Justice Department rightly charges, the racial profiling this bill encourages could result in the harassment of anyone living in or passing through Alabama. Worst of all it places the burden of enforcement on schools—and subjects school children to unjust persecution. The law will deter children from attending school for fear of undue harassment of themselves or their families. There is no doubt that great damage would be done to the state and our national interests if we allow a law such as this to go unchallenged, pushing young children to discontinue their studies and live in the shadows.”
The Alabama law goes against well established precedent, Plyler v Doe, which was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1982. The court unequivocally struck down a Texas law that sought to deny public education to the children of undocumented immigrants. The children of undocumented immigrants are entitled to the same protection under the Fourteenth Amendment that all other Americans enjoy, the court found. Alabama’s law is directly in conflict with this seminal ruling.
