Texas City Ends Court Battle Over Law Against Undocumented Immigrants Renting Property

CHICAGO, IL - MAY 31: A "For Rent" sign stands in front of a house on May 31, 2011 in Chicago, Illinois. According to the Standard & Poor's Case-Shiller Home Price Index home prices fell in March in 18 of the 20 metropolitan areas monitored by the index, reaching their lowest levels since the housing bubble burst in 2006. In Chicago, were nearly 30 percent of homes offered for sale are bank owned, prices have fallen 7.6 percent from a year ago. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images) (2011 Getty Images)

FARMERS BRANCH, Texas (AP) – The Dallas-area municipality of Farmers Branch will pay $1.4 million in plaintiff's legal fees to end its defense of a failed ordinance that banned immigrants living in the U.S. illegally from renting apartments.

The Dallas Morning News reported that the Farmers Branch City Council on Tuesday approved paying the mediated legal fees of plaintiffs.

Lawyers for critics of the 2008 measure, which was never enforced, had sought more than $3 million in the years-long dispute that eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court. Justices in March declined to hear an appeal from the city.

Farmers Branch leaders spent more than $6 million on immigration-related lawsuits and other efforts while trying to ban those living in the U.S. illegally from renting property.

The ordinance passed in 2008 required all renters in the city of nearly 30,000 residents to obtain city licenses. It also required a city official to deny licenses to anyone who was found to be in the U.S. without documentation.

Landlords who allowed immigrants without permits would have faced fines or revocations of their renters' licenses.

Farmers Branch, one of several U.S. cities that have attempted to target undocumented migrants by enacting renting restrictions, has a Latino population of nearly 50 percent.