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Federal district judge dismisses illegal reentry prosecution holding “Section 1326 violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fifth Amendment”

By Douglas Berman

Though not exactly a sentencing ruling, late yesterday US Chief District Judge Miranda Du of Nevada issued a big decision in US v. Carrillo-Lopez, No. 3:20-cr-00026-MMD-WGC (D. Nev. Aug 18, 2021) (available here), concerning a statute that is the basis for tens of thousands of federal sentences every year.  Here is the start of the 43-page opinion in Carrillo-Lopez and its substantive conclusions:

On June 25, 2020, Defendant Gustavo Carrillo-Lopez was indicted on one count of deported alien found in the United States in violation of 8 U.S.C. § 1326(a) & (b) (“Section 1326”).  Before the Court is Carrillo-Lopez’s motion to dismiss the indictment (the “Motion”) on the grounds that Section 1326 violates the equal protection guarantee of the Fifth Amendment under the standard articulated in Village of Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Development Corp., 429 U.S. 252 (1977).  On January 22, 2021, the Court heard oral argument on the Motion, and on February 2, 2021, the Court held an evidentiary hearing.  Because Carrillo-Lopez has established that Section 1326 was enacted with a discriminatory purpose and that the law has a disparate impact on Latinx persons, and the government fails to show that Section 1326 would have been enacted absent racial animus — and as further discussed below — the Court will grant the Motion….

Carrillo-Lopez has established, and the government concedes, that the Act of 1929 was motivated by racial animus. The government does not assert the 1952 Congress addressed that history when it reenacted Section 1326.  Moreover, the government fails to demonstrate how any subsequent amending Congress addressed either the racism that initially motivated the Act of 1929 or the discriminatory intent that was contemporaneous with the 1952 reenactment.  The record before the Court reflects that at no point has Congress confronted the racist, nativist roots of Section 1326. Instead, the amendments to Section 1326 over the past ninety years have not changed its function but have simply made the provision more punitive and broadened its reach.  Accordingly, the Court cannot find that subsequent amendments somehow cleansed the statute of its history while retaining the language and functional operation of the original statute.

In conclusion, the government has failed to establish that a nondiscriminatory motivation existed in 1952 for reenacting Section 1326 that exists independently from the discriminatory motivations, in either 1929 or 1952.  Moreover, the government’s alternative arguments — that a nondiscriminatory motive was “plain” or that subsequent amendments somehow imply the racial taint was cleansed — are not supported by caselaw nor borne out by the evidentiary record. In sum, on the record before the Court, the Court can only conclude that the government has not met its burden.  Because Section 1326 violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fifth Amendment, the Court will grant Carrillo-Lopez’s Motion.

Scott Greenfield has an effective summary of the ruling in this new post at Simple Justice.  He notes that it “seems almost inconceivable that the Ninth Circuit won’t reverse this decision,” but also highlights that “Judge Du’s decision makes some very serious points about how laws were enacted a century ago, when racism was fairly open and routine.”  And here is some effective local media coverage:

This recent Quick Facts report from the US Sentencing Commission indicated that there were over 22,000 illegal reentry sentences imposed in Fiscal Year 2019, and nearly 20,000 such sentences in FY 2020. That means that, on average, in federal courts about 400 of these sentences are being imposed each and every week. Because Judge Du’s opinion is not binding on other courts, this new decision will not likely disrupt this case flow dramatically. But I suspect it will be (and maybe already is) getting raised in new filings in district courts around the country.