On Friday U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton upheld a crucial section of Arizona's controversial 2010 immigration law, which allows Arizona police to check the immigration status of anyone they happen to stop.

Challengers of SB1070 failed to persuade the court that police would treat Latinos differently than members of other ethnic groups. Bolton wrote that opponents of the law had “not produced any evidence that state law enforcement officials will enforce SB1070 differently for Latinos than a similarly situated person of another race or ethnicity.”

Bolton did however void any laws that specifically targeted day laborers.

Karen Tumlin, the legal director of the National Immigration Law Center, says her group, which was one of the parties involved in this latest suit, is now evaluating what to do next. In a statement quoted in Reuters, Tumlin said, "We will continue working on behalf of our courageous plaintiffs to show that Arizona can do better than this disgraceful law."

Former state Sen. Russell Pearce, a sponsor of the initial legislation, voiced his approval of Bolton’s decision. As reported in Fox, Pearce said Bolton had “made it very clear the law was written very carefully not to be a race issue. It's not a racial law.”

Once it was passed in 2010, the law inspired similar legislation across the country. After SB1070 was passed, there were two dozen copycat bills introduced. Five of them were passed in Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, South Carolina and Utah.

The ACLU, along with other civil rights organizations, has filed lawsuits in every state where such laws have passed. Criticizing the influence that the Arizona law has had, the nonpartisan rights group says, “Laws inspired by Arizona's SB 1070 invite rampant racial profiling against Latinos, Asian-Americans and others presumed to be ‘foreign’ based on how they look or sound.”