Alabama immigration law faces legal challenge: Can it survive?

Several civil-rights groups sued the state of Alabama Friday to block what some observers say is the toughest anti-illegal-immigration law to date. Among other things, it mandates that primary and secondary schools check residency status of students.

Federal lawsuits have now been filed against the five states that have passed such laws during the past 15 months. The rulings that have come down, which have all been against the laws, have been appealed by the states' attorneys general in the hope that the Supreme Court will take up the issue.

Here is the legal state of play for all five state laws:

1. Arizona

Ross D. Franklin/AP/File
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer leaves a news conference on May 9 in Phoenix where she announced the state's decision to appeal to the United States Supreme Court a decision by a lower court that put the most controversial parts of the state's immigration enforcement law on hold.

Amid news of desert killings on the border and Mexican kidnapping rings, Arizona became the first state to pass comprehensive anti-illegal immigration laws that challenged not only federal jurisdiction over immigration but also basic constitutional rights of non-citizens living in America.

After Gov. Jan Brewer in April 2010 signed Senate Bill 1070 into law, polls showed widespread support in Arizona and elsewhere for the state crackdown, which included the ability of police to demand suspects they deemed "reasonably suspicious" show legal immigration papers or face arrest.

The Obama administration immediately challenged it in federal court, saying its "papers, please" requirement and its overall intrusion into federal jurisdictions made it unconstitutional and could violate people's civil rights by profiling them by their skin color.

After protests and boycotts, a federal judge granted an injunction against the key part of the law a day before it was to take effect. In February 2011, Arizona countersued, claiming the US government had failed to control the state's border with Mexico. In April 2011, the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the earlier ruling against the state.

"The Arizona statute before us has become a symbol," Ninth Circuit Judge John Noonan wrote. "For those sympathetic to immigrants to the United States, it is a challenge and a chilling foretaste of what other states might attempt."

The case has been appealed to the US Supreme Court, though the high court has not yet indicated whether it will take the case.

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