Foes aim to stall employer sanctions law

Opponents of Arizona’s new employer sanctions law want a federal judge to block the state from enforcing the statute while its legality is reviewed.

Legal papers filed Friday in federal court contend companies will suffer “irreparable harm” if the law takes effect as scheduled Jan. 1, even briefly. They are asking U.S. District Court Judge Neil Wake to put the law on hold at least until they can present all their arguments at a trial, something that may not occur for a year or more.

Attorney David Selden said without the injunction “there will be economic chaos in Arizona.”

“Employers will be subjected to investigations and prosecutions without due process,” he said.

A spokeswoman for the Arizona Attorney General’s Office said her agency had not yet seen the request and could not comment. Selden is asking for a hearing during the second week of October.

Friday’s filing comes nearly two months after various business groups first filed suit contending the statute is illegal. Among their claims is that only the federal government can regulate anything related to immigration.

But Selden also said the way the law is supposed to work violates the constitutional rights of employers.

That goes to the heart of the new argument filed Friday, saying companies would suffer irreparable harm if the state begins enforcing the law while its legality is debated.

The law says a state judge may suspend any state licenses of a company that knowingly hires an undocumented worker for up to 10 days. A second violation within three years puts the violator out of business.

Selden said the big flaw is how a judge is supposed to determine if a company has broken the law.

He said the statute says a court determines if an employee is legally entitled to work in the U.S. based on a check of a federal database. More to the point, Selden said, that is the only thing judges can consider.

He said that database information may be “inaccurate or incomplete,” but employers will be unable to fight back.

“They are prevented from introducing evidence about a person’s true immigration status,” he said. “So an Arizona company can be put out of business because a mistaken piece of paper from the federal government says one thing that turns out not to be correct. That’s irreparable harm.”

To get the injunction, though, Selden must prove more than irreparable harm to his clients.

He also has to convince Wake that the business organizations are likely to win the case after a full-blown trial.

The lawsuit has met with derision from state Rep. Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, who said businesses, which have become dependent on cheap — and illegal — foreign labor, want “amnesty” to be able to continue to break the law.

He said any company that does not hire undocumented workers won’t get into legal trouble. That’s because the legislation requires companies to check the legal status of new employees through the same federal database that will be used to determine if a firm is violating the law.

While there is no penalty for companies that don’t check new workers, the law does provide an incentive to comply: Any firm that uses the system essentially gets a presumption of innocence, if it’s ever charged with breaking the new law.