A federal district judge on Thursday struck down a small Pennsylvania town’s law punishing those who employ or house illegal aliens, a ruling that could embolden opponents of Northern Virginia’s tough new measures on illegal immigration.
Pro-immigrant groups instantly heralded the decision. Under the ordinance, landlords would have incurred fines for renting to illegals, and employers could have lost their business licenses for offering them jobs.
The ruling comes during a broad push for a crackdown in Northern Virginia’s two outlying counties — Loudoun and Prince William — both of which have resolved to study how to deny government services to illegal immigrants. Proponents of the resolutions in both counties don’t expect the ruling to affect them.
“What we did in Prince William is completely different from what they did in Hazelton,” Prince William County Board of Supervisors Chairman Corey Stewart said. “In fact, when we drafted up the legislation, we did so under the prospect of the Hazelton ordinance getting shot down.”
But Jon Liss, executive director of Alexandria-based Tenants and Workers United, said the Pennsylvania decision “just bolsters our arguments as we proceed” to challenge the local crackdowns.
“There is going to be a wide variety of pressure to overturn these things,” he said. “We’re going to take up the maximum legal option, up to and including suing.”
He said his group will work with the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, one of the plaintiffs in the Hezelton case, in possibly challenging Loudoun and Prince William counties ordinances.
“There are over 100 localities that have passed these anti-immigration ordinances, so many local leaders are taking this as a way to try to pretend to solve their problems,” PRLDEF lawyer Foster Maer said in a news conference on Thursday afternoon. “We hope they listen to this decision and realize this is not a productive way to lead their communities.”
