State attorneys entered into talks with immigrant advocates and an advocacy group this week after an unusual twist in a challenge to a Florida law aimed at cracking down on illegal immigration.
The lawsuit, filed in July by The Farmworker Association of Florida, Inc. and individual plaintiffs, centers on part of a 2023 law that threatens charges against people who transport an immigrant to Florida who “has entered the United States in violation of the law and has not been subject to federal law since his or her unlawful entry.” government has been inspected.”
Sides with plaintiffs on May 22, U.S. District Judge Roy Altman issued an order prohibiting enforcement of that portion of the law statewide. But the next day, the judge issued an order that appeared to question his decision and asked for “further information regarding the appropriate scope of the order.”
Altman’s May 23 order pointed to “national conversations taking place in both the legal academy and the judiciary regarding the propriety of courts using universal injunctions as a matter of interim relief.”
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The judge gave attorneys for the plaintiffs and the state until Thursday to file briefs on whether the order should apply statewide; throughout the Southern Federal District of Florida, where the case was filed; to claimants who have acquired legal status; or to all plaintiffs who remain in the case.
In a brief filed Thursday, attorneys for the plaintiffs urged Altman to uphold his original decision to block the law across Florida.
“Statewide relief is needed to provide full relief to the plaintiffs here because there is no feasible way to structure and enforce a more limited order that would fully protect the nearly 12,000 members of the plaintiff Farmworker Association of Florida would protect,” the plaintiffs’ lawyers argued. “While there has been recent debate about the appropriateness of systemwide injunctions, every court hearing this issue agrees that they are appropriate when necessary to redress plaintiffs’ damages.”
The “practical necessity” for a statewide order, they added, is “strengthened by the legal context” of the lawsuit. The context includes an argument by prosecutors that Florida law is “undermined” by federal immigration laws.
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“In cases such as these, government orders further the fundamental purpose of the preemption doctrine, which is to protect the prerogatives of Congress and ensure the smooth operation of the federal immigration system. A stricter ban would not do that,” Paul Chavez, an attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center, wrote in the 19-page letter. Plaintiffs are also represented by the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Florida, Americans for Immigrant Justice, the American Immigration Council and the ACLU Immigration Rights’ Project.
Attorneys for the state, however, argued that “no universal injunction is warranted here.”
“At best, only individual plaintiffs have standing and a cause of action. Therefore, the ban should not extend beyond them, nationally, statewide, or even districts,” attorneys from Attorney General Ashley Moody’s office wrote in a 16-page letter.
The state’s attorneys also argued that the farmworker association had no “valid claim” under the federal Immigration and Naturalization Act and is not entitled to damages.
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Courts “have been skeptical” of state and federal bans, the state brief said, pointing to recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions blocking statewide bans.
But plaintiffs’ attorneys argued that courts have limited injunctions in cases involving “a small number of individuals, rather than an organization with thousands of members who face arrest and prosecution by hundreds of law enforcement agencies across the state.”
The state also filed a “motion for reconsideration” on Thursday, in which Altman partially overlooked the state’s argument that the plaintiffs “have no cause of action” to bring the preemption claim.
The 2023 law is one of several steps DeSantis and the Republican-controlled Legislature have taken in recent years to crack down on undocumented immigrants.
In issuing the May 22 preliminary injunction, Altman cited previous court rulings saying consistently settled immigration is a matter governed by federal — not state — law.
“By making it a crime to transport to Florida someone who ‘has not been inspected by the federal government since his or her unlawful entry,’ Section 10 (the controversial part of the law) goes beyond the state’s authority to make arrests to be carried out for violations of the law. federal immigration law and thereby invades the territory being obstructed,” wrote Altman, who was appointed a federal judge by former President Donald Trump in 2018.
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