Friend,

Ten years ago this month, countless Latinx community members wanted to know what happened to their home, a state whose highway signs welcome visitors to “Alabama the Beautiful.”

They ultimately marched in the streets, wearing shirts with slogans saying, “We love Alabama. We are Alabama.” Their faces were marked with worry, panic and tears amid an atmosphere of uncertainty.

The state had just enacted what lawmakers proudly proclaimed the nation’s toughest anti-immigrant law, one that “attacks every aspect” of an undocumented immigrant’s life. The Beason-Hammon Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act – better known as House Bill 56 (HB 56) – was modeled after an Arizona law that granted police the authority to demand “papers” demonstrating citizenship or legal status during routine traffic stops. HB 56 was signed into law by Gov. Robert Bentley on June 9, 2011.

HB 56 did much more than encourage racial profiling during traffic stops. It required school officials to determine whether students were undocumented; prohibited people from giving rides to undocumented immigrants; forbade employers from hiring people suspected to be undocumented; prohibited undocumented immigrants from applying for work; and more.

The law sparked a federal class action lawsuit led by the Southern Poverty Law Center and a coalition of civil rights groups. It challenged HB 56 as unconstitutional by arguing that the law subjected people in Alabama – including countless U.S. citizens and undocumented immigrants – to racial profiling, as well as unlawful interrogations, searches, seizures and arrests, in violation of the Fourth Amendment.

By October 2013, a settlement agreement essentially gutted HB 56 by blocking its most egregious provisions. Portions of the law that had been temporarily enjoined by federal courts were permanently blocked under the agreement.

A decade later, the most notable provision that remains is a requirement that employers must ensure their workers are documented. But this provision often goes ignored, said Freddy Rubio, who served as cooperating attorney on the case with the American Civil Liberties Union of Alabama Foundation.

“This is still the law, but not one employer has been prosecuted,” he said. “So, Alabama goes through all these hoops, but not one constituent has enforced it. We look away from the employer and instead go for the ‘little people.’ The law didn’t work then, and it’s still not working today.”

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In solidarity,

Your friends at the Southern Poverty Law Center