SPLC legal director Mary Bauer testified before the Congressional Ad Hoc Hearing on HB56 in Birmingham today.
As part of a harsh anti-immigrant law, the Alabama Department of Revenue required people who owned or maintained mobile homes in the state to prove their lawful immigration status before they could pay annual fees for an identification decal required for all mobile homes. The Southern Poverty Law Center and its allies filed a federal class-action lawsuit challenging the immigration check as a violation of the Fair Housing Act that threatened to leave families across the state homeless.
The Southern Poverty Law Center and a coalition of civil rights groups filed a federal lawsuit to challenge a provision of Alabama’s harsh anti-immigrant law that threatens to push people out of their mobile homes.
Charelle Loder, a U.S. citizen, and “Jack Doe,” an undocumented immigrant from Haiti, had been a couple for five years. When they decided to marry, they could not obtain a marriage license from the Montgomery County Probate Office in Alabama because the office denied licenses to couples unable to prove both partners have legal immigration status. The policy was not required by any federal or state law. The SPLC filed a federal lawsuit challenging the policy.
The SPLC filed a second lawsuit today challenging a practice in many Alabama counties that denies undocumented individuals and U.S. citizens whose intended spouses are undocumented their constitutional right to marry. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of two couples, including Charelle Loder, a U.S. citizen, and “Jack Doe,” an undocumented immigrant from Haiti.