Alabama’s Recipe for Racial Profiling: Digging Deeper Into the Big Bowl of Legal Details

ASU Law Online
This article was written by guest author Derrick Diaz. Mr. Diaz is a 2012 graduate of Rutgers Law and is looking forward to a fruitful clerkship with the Superior Court of New Jersey. Mr. Diaz has also authored Minors and Cosmetic Surgery: An Argument for State Intervention, 14 DePaul J. Health Care L. 235 (2012). Much has been topically written on the Beason-Hammon Alabama Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act (“HB 56”),[1] which was purportedly passed to “help protect [the] constitutional rights [of] Alabama citizens.”[2]  However, HB 56 actually subjects both U.S. citizens and lawful aliens to racial profiling, in addition to robbing them of their Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable seizures.  First, HB 56's brand of reasonable suspicion lays upon Alabama law enforcement the impossible burden of differentiating between ethnic…
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