The Battle Against SB1070 is Just Beginning

Challenges continue to be heard against Arizona’s controversial SB1070, and they continue to be shot down. But that’s not entirely a bad thing.

The latest battle concerned a suit filed against the  state of Arizona by the League of United Latin American Citizens. According to the Washington Post LULAC sued “over training materials distributed to Arizona law enforcement meant to guide the law’s implementation, claiming the materials promoted racial and ethnic profiling.”

US District Judge Susan Bolton dismissed the suit saying that LULAC lacked standing in her court and “failed to establish any real and immediate threat of harm. ”

“That’s not surprising,” LULAC General Counsel Luis Roberto Vera told me in a phone conversation the day after the dismissal. “In fact,” he said, “several other suits have been dismissed on the same grounds.” Six, to be exact, have seen a similar end as the latest one to be struck down; another two have been partially dismissed.

But Vera was quick to explain that these apparent set-backs don’t augur a victory for the anti-immigrant factions. “What’s happened,” he said, “is that these suits are being cleared so that the Federal Government, the Justice Department, will be the sole litigant in the suit against the Arizona law.”

To hear Vera tell it, the fight against SB1070 has yet to begin.