A panel of federal appeals court judges struck down a Farmers Branch Ordinance banning renters who are not in the country legally.
The ruling comes after the city of Farmers Branch spent more than seven years, and over six million dollars in taxpayer money, fighting for the draconian measure which never even took effect, having been having been previously blocked by the federal district court and a three-judge panel of the appeals court before reaching the full court.
The ruling is a victory against those who wish to turn municipal and state authorities into instruments of federal immigration authority. In striking down the law the Fifth Circuit held, “that Farmers Branch’s establishment of new criminal offenses based on the housing of non-citizens “disrupt[s] the federal [immigration] framework…both by interfering with federal anti-harboring law and by allowing state officers to “hold[] aliens in custody for possible unlawful presence without federal direction and supervision.”
NBC DFW Story Here