A US federal judge permanently blocked an Arizona law that banned ethnic studies from being taught across the southwestern state.

Judge A. Wallace Tashima found the 2010 law to be racially motivated.  The law "was enacted and enforced, not for a legitimate educational purpose, but for an invidious discriminatory racial purpose, and a politically partisan purpose," wrote Tashima.

Predominantly white and conservative state lawmakers passed the law in 1998, after the Tucson Unified School District began offering classes focused on Mexican-American history, literature and art.  They claimed that the banned courses appeared to promote resentment toward a race or class of people or advocated ethnic solidarity instead of treating people as individuals.  The district was forced to drop the courses in 2012 under threat of losing ten percent of its state funding.

The ruling "should make it clear to everyone in the state: This law is not only invalid and cannot be enforced, it makes it clear that the Tucson Unified School District is absolutely free to readopt the Mexican-American studies program," said Steven Reiss, the attorney for Tucson students who sued over the ban.

The Tucson Unified School District hasn't indicated if it will bring the classes back; the state Attorney General might still appeal the ruling.

In the same year, Arizona lawmakers also passed the law derisively known as the "papers, please" act which empowered police to "determine the immigration status of a person 'where reasonable suspicion exists' that the person is in the country illegally" - in other words, to check the citizenship status of anyone who appears to be of Mexican heritage.  That vile and fascistic law is still be challenged in the courts.