Business and Finance news

A federal judge has denied Farmers Branch’s request to have its latest ordinance banning home and apartment rentals to illegal immigrants declared constitutional, according to The Associated Press.

That ruling came as U.S. District Judge Sam A. Lindsay issued a permanent injunction on the Dallas suburb’s first attempt to ban rentals to illegal immigrants, according to The Dallas Morning News.

The city’s first ordinance would have required apartment managers and landlords to obtain and keep proof of citizenship or legal residency from tenants.

The decision issued Wednesday also focused on a second Farmers Branch ordinance that would require prospective tenants to get a rental license from the city. Farmers Branch would seek the applicant’s legal status from the federal government before approving the rental license.

The second ordinance was set to take effect 15 days after the first ordinance reached a final resolution in court..

Judge Lindsay wrote that federal courts do not give advisory decisions on whether city ordinances past constitutional muster cash advance now.

Typically, challenges to the constitutionality of a local law involve a lawsuit, but no one has sued over the ordinance that has not yet taken effect, Lindsay pointed out.

"Regardless of when a plaintiff’s claims would become ripe to challenge the new ordinance, the court is troubled by what appears to be the city’s desire to find an end-run around the injunction and seek and advance ruling on the constitutionality of the new ordinance," Lindsay wrote.

Farmers Branch began efforts to pass the illegal immigrant rental ordinance about two years ago.

Lindsay first temporarily blocked Farmers Branch from enforcing that ordinance after finding that city didn’t defer to the federal government in immigration matters, according to the AP.

After Lindsay issued the first temporary stay on the ordinance, the city then reworked the ordinance, which council members approved in January 2007.

Source