A battle about sanctuary cities is set to take center stage at Fort Worth City Council next week.
The group United Fort Worth is planning a rally for August 1 where members will call for Fort Worth to join a lawsuit opposing SB4 commonly called the Sanctuary City Bill.
“It discriminates against Latinos. It violates individuals’ constitutional rights,” United Fort Worth member Mindia Whittier said. “Currently Fort Worth is the only one of the five largest cities in the state of Texas that has not joined existing litigation challenging the constitutionality of SB4.”
The group will also address city council asking for support in joining Dallas, Houston, Austin and San Antonio in the lawsuit.
“[The] current situation is that we are not going to join. We will reevaluate that in a couple of weeks and make that final decision,” City Council member Cary Moon said.
“A lot of times at the state and federal level there are laws that we don’t like at the city level,” Moon added “It would be exhaustive of our resources to challenge laws passed in Austin or Washington DC any time we had a law we didn’t like.”
But local activists said they want to be clear about why they think the lawsuit is important.
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“We are not here to ask the city of Fort Worth to declare itself a sanctuary city. We are not here asking Fort Worth to fail to comply with the laws,” Whittier said. “What we are asking Fort Worth to do is recognize that everyone of its citizens, every single one, is valued and worthy and deserves to have their constitutional rights protected.”
