Yet another loss in court for the city of Farmers Branch and its efforts to make apartment owners check potential renters’ immigration status.
The City of Farmers Branch enacted ordinance 2952 in 2008 but today’s decision in the U.S. District Court’s Northern District of Texas blocks the city from enforcing the ordinance.
“The Court resoundingly rejected the City’s claim that it had the authority to regulate the residence of noncitizens within its borders,” said the Texas American Civil Liberties Union in a press release. The ACLU, along with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), filed suit on behalf of a group of Farmers Branch landlords and tenants. “Noting that the City Building Inspector would be charged with interpreting and applying immigration information to prospective tenants, the court concluded that Ordinance 2952 ‘is an invalid regulation of immigration,’” added the ACLU’s statement.
In her opinion, U.S. District Judge Jane J. Boyle ruled: “Ordinance 2952 is a regulation of immigration and is preempted by the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution because the authority to regulate immigration is exclusively a federal power.”
Judge Boyle had originally issued an injunction against Farmers Branch back in 2008, shortly after the suit was filed.
Nina Perales, MALDEF’s Regional Counsel in San Antonio, said she wouldn’t be surprised if the city appealed the ruling, but indicated Farmers Branch taxpayers might speak out against such an expensive effort.
“Losing defendants often talk about appeals on the day the decision comes down,” she said. “The people of Farmers Branch have to decide whether they are going to continue to throw money away on this. The city needs its resources for better purposes.”
Farmers Branch has already spent millions trying to enact these “illegal ordinances” she added, and expected at some point the “folks have to say, ‘Stop.’”
They’ve spent three point two million, according to the DMN. Which didn’t stop their mayor from vowing to appeal. Honestly, by now it probably would have been cheaper to offer to pay the moving expenses of everyone they wanted to evict from town. Too late for that, I guess.
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