No 4th Amendment for Non-Whites in Arizona but Arizona Bills Require Public School Students To Recite Loyalty Oaths
/This measure (see below) requires all Arizonians to swear under oath "to support and defend the Constitution." All Non-whites in Arizona are targeted by law enforcement as enemies by skin color due to the S.B. 1070 statute which is now in effect. From [HERE] Section 2(B) of the the law gives police too much discretion when stopping or detaining persons while “checking” their citizenship status. The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) and AACJ argued in their brief that Sec. 2(B) cannot be implemented without racially profiling Latinos in violation of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures and the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. (That is, police stops and detentions of persons based on physical characteristics or persons who look Latino to the police are reasonable in Arizona - any stop and detention of a non-white person). Even lawful detentions and arrests become unconstitutional when the detention becomes prolonged or unreasonable. If officers rely on profiling characteristics such as a person’s ethnicity in determining whether a person should be detained for an immigration check, Sec. 2(B) becomes an unconstitutional “stop-and-identify” law repugnant to all citizens.
Public high school students in Arizona will have to “recite an oath supporting the U.S. Constitution” to receive a graduation diploma, if a new bill introduced in the new session of the state legislature is passed and signed into law. The measure, House Bill 2467, was offered by Rep. Bob Thorpe (R), a freshman tea party members who also backs a bill preventing state enforcement of federally enacted gun safety laws. Here is the text of HB 2467:
As written, the bill does not exempt atheist students or those of different faiths from the requirement, though Thorpe has pledged to amend the measure. “In that we had a tight deadline for dropping our bills, I was not able to update the language,” he wrote in an e-mail to the Arizona Republic. “Even though I want to encourage all of our students to understand and respect our Constitution and constitutional form of government, I do not want to create a requirement that students or parents may feel uncomfortable with.”
A separate measure introduced by Thorpe’s colleague would also “require all students in first through 12th grades” “to say the pledge of allegiance each day.” Currently, “schools must set aside time for the pledge each day, but students may choose whether to participate.”
Constitutional experts warn that both proposals are unconstitutional. As American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona Public Policy Director Anjali Abraham explained, “You can’t require students to attend school … and then require them to either pledge allegiance to the flag or swear this loyalty oath in order to graduate. It’s a violation of the First Amendment.”
