Over in Arizona, U.S. District Judge G. Murray Snow rejected Maricopa County’s attempt to end federal supervision of its sheriff’s office in the long-running racial-profiling case born from Joe Arpaio-era immigration patrols. The county had argued the old policies were gone and the department had cleaned up its act. Snow found it had not shown the court’s objectives had been met or that a durable remedy existed to keep the violations from returning. Apparently “we’re different now” needs more paperwork than a bartender opening a tab.
The ruling cited a major problem in the sheriff’s own traffic-stop analysis: the agency excluded its longest stops, which accounted for at least half of all stops in 2024 and 2025. A plaintiffs’ expert reviewing the full data found Hispanic drivers were stopped an average of 4.7 minutes longer than white drivers. That is not exactly the kind of confidence-inspiring math you want when asking a federal judge to pack up the monitor and head home.
The underlying Melendres litigation found that the sheriff’s office had used Latino ancestry as a factor in traffic-stop and immigration-enforcement decisions, triggering constitutional remedies, independent monitoring, anti-discrimination training, and reporting requirements. Maricopa officials say they may appeal. Sure, because when the roast-beef sandwich arrives cold, the obvious move is to argue with the health inspector.
Sources
- https://apnews.com/article/racial-profiling-hispanics-joe-arpaio-immigration-1291f866c95895726181b2c02e16aaa1
- https://clearinghouse.net/case/12282/
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Featured image: Maricopa County Sheriff's Office – Phoenix, Arizona.jpg by Tony Webster, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
