Group asks for injunction against part of Indiana immigration law
By Teresa Auch Schultz tauch@post-trib.com August 2, 2012 4:22PM
Updated: September 4, 2012 6:08AM
Just a day after Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller announced he would continue to fight a federal lawsuit filed against the state’s immigration law, the plaintiff, an East Chicago not-for-profit group, filed a motion asking for a preliminary injunction against the law.
Union Benefica Mexicana, represented by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund in Chicago, sued state and local officials earlier this year in the U.S. District Court in Hammond over a controversial immigration law passed by the Indiana General Assembly.
The law deals with how law enforcement and businesses can handle people they suspect to be illegal immigrants.
An initial lawsuit against the law was filed in southern Indiana, and was followed by UBM’s suit, which focused on the business aspects of the law, such as allowing civil actions against businesses that employ illegal immigrants and requiring day laborers to fill out employment authorization forms.
A federal judge had granted a stay in the UBM case pending the result of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a similar case dealing with Arizona’s immigration law.
That ruling came out in the end of June, though, and Zoeller announced earlier this week that the state would no longer defend certain parts of the law, those dealing with law enforcement, because of the Supreme Court’s ruling.
However, Zoeller’s announcement said he would still defend the issues raised in the UBM lawsuit because they satisfied the requirements laid out in the Supreme Court’s ruling.
UBM’s injunction filing says that the law violates the constitutional rights of people and asks that the entire law be blocked from enforcement pending the resolution of the case.
