Wow, that was fast! Yesterday I wrote about the lawsuit filed by the AFL-CIO to stop the implementation of the no match rule. Today, a court issued an order siding with America's largest labor union. The National Immigration Law Center's press release is included below.
Judge Issues Order After Lawsuit Is
Filed by AFL-CIO, ACLU, and
National Immigration Law
Center
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 31, 2007
CONTACT: Ana Avendaño, AFL-CIO, (202) 431-9743; aavendan@aflcio.org
Maria Archuleta, ACLU, (917) 892-9180; media@aclu.org
Stella Richardson, ACLU-NC, (415) 845-3042; srichardson@aclunc.org
Marielena Hincapié, NILC, (415) 845-3403; hincapie@nilc.org
SAN FRANCISCO - A federal judge today issued an order
temporarily blocking the government from implementing a new Department of
Homeland Security (DHS) rule that would cause U.S. citizens and other authorized
workers to lose their jobs, and which would illegally use error-prone social
security records as a tool for immigration enforcement. The judge's order also
stops the Social Security Administration (SSA) from beginning to send notices on
Tuesday to approximately 140,000 employers across the country notifying them of
the new rule, which would impact approximately eight million workers.
The order comes as a result of a lawsuit filed on Wednesday by the
American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO),
the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Immigration Law Center (NILC)
and the Central Labor Council of Alameda County along with other local labor
movements. A hearing on the groups' request to permanently bar the
implementation of the DHS rule is scheduled for October 1 before U.S. District
Court Judge Charles Breyer.
"We are very pleased that the judge recognized the need to halt the
implementation of this ill-advised DHS rule," said John Sweeney, President of
the AFL-CIO. "Employers have historically used SSA 'no-match' letters to exploit
workers and this rule would only give them a stronger pretext for doing more of
the same."
In the lawsuit, the groups charge that the misguided rule violates
the law and workers' rights and imposes burdensome obligations on employers who
receive SSA "no-match" letters that inform them of alleged discrepancies between
employee records and the SSA database.
U.S. District Judge Maxine M. Chesney found that the groups "raised
serious questions as to whether the new Department of Homeland Security rule is
inconsistent with statute and beyond the statutory authority of the Department
of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration."
"The court found the balance of hardships tips sharply in favor of
staying the rule while it is being challenged," said Scott A. Kronland of Altshuler Berzon LLP, who argued at today's hearing.
"We are confident we will prevail when the court hears the case on the
merits."
Currently, employers who receive "no-match" letters stating that
their employees' identification documents don't match SSA records are not
required to take any action. The new DHS rule would impose liability on
employers based on failure to respond to an SSA "no-match" letter, even though
SSA errors are caused by many innocent factors such as typographical errors and
name changes due to marriage or divorce, and the use of multiple surnames, which
is common in many parts of the world. According to the Office of the Inspector
General in SSA, 12.7 million of the 17.8 million discrepancies in SSA's database
- more than 70% - belong to native-born U.S. citizens. Under the DHS rule,
employers might be required to fire employees whose erroneous SSA records are
not fixed within 90 days after the "no-match" letter is sent. The DHS rule would
threaten jobs of U.S. citizens and other legally authorized workers simply
because of errors in the government's inaccurate social security earnings
database.
"This is a crucial and significant first step in challenging this
rule, which would be a bureaucratic and costly nightmare for employers and many
U.S. citizens and other legally authorized workers," said Lucas Guttantag,
Director of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project.
"Today's ruling takes us one step closer to an eventual finding
that the DHS rule is unlawful. This is a great Labor Day victory for the
millions of workers who would have been affected by no-match notice letters
being sent out next week," said Marielena Hincapié, Staff Attorney and Director
of Programs at NILC.
Today's order was handed down in the United States District Court
for the Northern District of California.
In addition to the AFL-CIO, which is represented by the law firm of
Altshuler Berzon, LLP, other parties bringing the lawsuit include the Central
Labor Council of Alameda County, represented by the ACLU, the ACLU of Northern
California, and NILC, as well as the San Francisco Labor Council and the San
Francisco Building and Construction Trades Council, represented by Weinberg,
Roger and Rosenfeld.
In addition to Guttentag and Hincapié, lawyers on the case include
Stephen Berzon, Scott Kronland, Jonathan Weissglass, Linda Lye and Danielle
Leonard of Altshuler, Berzon; Jonathan Hiatt, James Copess and Ana Avendaño of
the AFL-CIO; Jennifer Chang, Mόnica M. Ramírez, and Omar Jadwat of the ACLU
Immigrants' Rights Project; Alan Schlosser and Julia Mass of the ACLU of
Northern California; Linton Joaquin and Monica Guizar of NILC; and David
Rosenfeld and Manjari Chawla of Weinberg, Roger and Rosenfeld.
The complaint can be found at: http://www.nilc.org/immsemplymnt/SSA_Related_Info/suit_complaint.pdf
The order issued today can be found at:
http://www.nilc.org/immsemplymnt/SSA_Related_Info/Chesney_Order_TRO.pdf
