Judge blocks worker crackdown

Who knows for how long, but at least a federal district judge in SF had the good sense to issue a preliminary injunction that blocks the Department of Homeland Security from launching a program that punishes companies based on discrepancies between their workers' names and their Social Security numbers. The rule “would result in irreparable harm to innocent workers and employers,” wrote U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer. He also wondered about the burden it would place on small business. Breyer must hold further hearings and decide whether to strike down the proposed rule permanently, and even if that happens you could expect government appeals that will bring this to the Supremes if need be (and those folks aren't likely to turn it back). The Homeland Security folks did manage to accomplish one thing in this circus: they brought together as bedfellows labor, immigrant rights groups and business. That’s quite a feat. "It's a signal to the government that they can't do anything they want simply by calling it enforcement," said Randel Johnson, vice president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. From the SF Chronicle:

The administration had planned to send letters this fall to 140,000 employers with a total work force of more than 8 million. According to the government, those employers typically had at least 10 workers whose Social Security numbers on W-2 tax forms did not match the government's database. The letters would give the employer 90 days to resolve the discrepancy and an additional three days for an employee to submit a new, valid number. After that, an employer who failed to fire the worker would be subject to civil fines or criminal prosecution under a 1986 law that prohibits businesses from knowingly employing illegal immigrants.

In their lawsuit, unions said the no-match rule would lead to widespread firings of legal employees, including hundreds of thousands of union members. They said the government and employers commonly make clerical errors that lead to no-match letters, and that name changes for reasons including marriage and divorce often prompt similar confusion.