Class-Action Lawsuit Says Utah Immigration Law Violates Civil Rights

The law, signed by Gov. Gary R. Herbert in March, was an effort by legislators to crack down on illegal immigration while avoiding the costly legal challenges and polarizing political furor that followed a stricter law enacted last year in Arizona.

But the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Immigration Law Center, based in Los Angeles, brought the class-action lawsuit claiming that the Utah statute violates federal civil rights and immigration law in “myriad ways,” mainly by interfering with immigration enforcement that is generally reserved for federal authorities. The groups are asking a federal judge to suspend the law before it goes into effect on May 10.

The Utah legal fight is one of many battles across the country, as several of states consider immigration crackdown bills late in the legislative season, and Latino and immigrant groups mobilize to try to stop a repeat of the Arizona law, known as S.B. 1070.

A tough immigration bill in Florida was changing by the hour in the State Senate over the past two days, as business and Latino leaders argued against it and lawmakers weighed its possible impact on the state’s tourism and agriculture.

A bill similar to Arizona’s is moving forward in Alabama. Georgia passed a tough enforcement bill last month that is awaiting the signature of Gov. Nathan Deal.

The legislature in Utah, looking for a political formula that would satisfy immigration hardliners without antagonizing the state’s growing population of Latino workers, passed three bills in March, including one that created a guest-worker program providing legal work permits to illegal immigrants living in the state. A third bill set up a partnership with the state of Nuevo León in northern Mexico to bring in temporary farm workers under an existing federal program.

The lawsuit challenged only Utah’s enforcement bill. “Federal immigration law leaves no room for this kind of intrusive state legislation,” said Linton Joaquin, general counsel of the National Immigration Law Center.

Utah’s attorney general, Mark Shurtleff, said he would vigorously defend the law. He said he had closely studied the Arizona law as well as a ruling by a federal judge that suspended central provisions of it. Mr. Shurtleff said Utah’s law was written to avoid racial profiling and to codify police practices that were already routine.

Last week, Mr. Shurtleff met with Justice Department officials in Washington to try to persuade them not to bring a lawsuit against the state. Representative Lamar Smith, Republican of Texas and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has criticized the Obama administration for failing to sue Utah, as it did Arizona.

As Florida lawmakers debated, Latino and African-American civil rights leaders warned on Tuesday that they would consider a boycott or other measures against the state if a harsh immigration law passed.

“Make no mistake about that: it will bring a loss of revenues, and it will do nothing to solve the immigration problem,” said Janet Murguía, president of the National Council of La Raza. She estimated that a boycott led by the groups in Arizona cost that state $490 million in lost tourism and convention business.

States have wrestled with the issue given the unlikely prospects for an overhaul of immigration laws to move forward in a divided Congress. But President Obama, in a meeting late Tuesday with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, said he remained committed to trying to pass some form of immigration legislation this year, perhaps a bill limited to giving legal status to illegal immigrant students. The meeting was the president’s third in as many weeks to try to revive some form of immigration legislation.

“The president is just absolutely dedicated to the proposition that some legislation has to move,” said Representative Charlie Gonzalez, Democrat of Texas and chairman of the Hispanic caucus.

In the meantime, Mr. Gonzalez said, the Hispanic lawmakers pressed Mr. Obama to set guidelines so that young students with no criminal records who are picked up by immigration agents would not be deported.