But the city's interpretation of the law is so broad that it may very well be unconstitutional under the First Amendment
It's important to note that this guidance does not affect all kinds of speech: The law covers workplace harassment, tenants' rights, and public accommodation.
Merely calling someone an illegal alien on the street, or threatening to call Immigration and Customs Enforcement on them, would not be The courts have, of course, held that anti-discrimination ordinances can survive scrutiny, even if they appear to limit the free speech rights of employers and landlords. But NYC is going further here.
The 30-page guidance notes, for instance, that "the severity or pervasiveness of the harassment is only relevant to damages. Even an employer's single comment made in circumstances where that comment would signal discriminatory views about one's immigration status or national origin may be enough to constitute
That's a problem, and one that might push the guidance into unconstitutional territory. Government decrees to prohibit free speech in the name of anti-harassment or anti-discrimination must come with certain limiting conditions to survive a First Amendment test.
"The Supreme Court requires that conduct be not just unwelcome, but also severe or pervasive enough to make the work environment both subjectively and objectively hostile, before it is legally considered harassment under federal law," wrote Hans Bader, an attorney and former official in the Department of Education's Office for Civil Florida's ban on sanctuary cities takes effect today
A law requiring police in Florida to cooperate with Immigration agents takes effect today.
The new law requires local law enforcement to hold prisoners up to 48-hours beyond their release date so they can be picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Under the law, local police departments will be required to hold undocumented immigrants who have been detained for an additional 48 hours, until ICE arrives and transports them to a federal detention center.
People who have fully served their local sentence or posted bond will also be detained for the extra two days...
The law allows the governor or attorney general to take action on elected officials who don’t comply with the law, including removing them from office...
To stay in compliance with the new Florida law, law enforcement offices in all 67 Florida counties will be required to enter into formal agreements with ICE. In the agreements, ICE promises to pay local governments $50 for holding an immigrant up to an extra two days. A group of Florida sheriffs were the first in the nation to reach these kinds of agreements with ICE in 2017.
Under the new law, they are mandatory.
It’s now against the law in New York City to threaten someone with a call to immigration authorities or refer to them as an “illegal alien” when motivated by hate.
The restrictions — violations of which are punishable by fines of up to $250,000 per offense — are outlined in a 29-page directive released by City Hall’s Commission on Human Rights.
“‘Alien’ — used in many laws to refer to a ‘noncitizen’ person — is a term that may carry negative connotations and dehumanize immigrants, marking them as ‘other,'” reads one passage of the memo. “The use of certain language, including ‘illegal alien’ and ‘illegals,’ with the intent to demean, humiliate, or offend a person or persons constitutes
The rules encompass 29 pages according to the NY Post. As if the average New Yorker is going to commit those 29 pages to memory. But the NYC Commission on Human Rights has and will serve as an arbiter in the process.
The directive goes on to list several examples of acts and comments that would run afoul of the restrictions, including harassing people over their accents or grasp of English, or wielding the threat of a call to Immigration and Customs Enforcement as a tool of hate.
“A hotel prohibits its housekeepers from speaking Spanish while cleaning because it would ‘offend’
It clarified that calling ICE with a "discriminatory motive" was a violation. It was not immediately clear what New York City would consider a call to ICE lacking in "discriminatory motive."
