Civil rights organizations with a lawsuit pending against Arizona challenging SB 1070 warned Gov. Jan Brewer Thursday not to begin enforcing the one part of the law that the Supreme Court upheld.
The coalition, which includes the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, sent a letter to Brewer and other defendants in the case.
"SB 1070 's racial profiling provision, Section 2 (B), cannot be implemented unless a federal court dissolves the injunction," the coalition's statement said. "The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Arizona v. United States did not lift the injunction, and the case will be sent to the lower courts for further proceedings.
"As a result, no law enforcement agency in Arizona should currently be implementing Section 2(B)."
That is the provision in the law that requires state and local law-enforcement authorities in Arizona to question anyone suspected of being in the country illegally.
Popularly called "stop and check," it is the only one of four provisions in the law considered by the Supreme Court to have been upheld in Monday's ruling.
Civil rights organizations are prepared to reactivate their lawsuit challenging that provision now that the Supreme Court has ruled.
Enacting it will lead to racial profiling, they claim. Proponents of the law claim otherwise, saying there are provisions in the law that ban racial profiling except as allowed under the U.S. and Arizona constitutions.
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