WHILE SIGNIFICANT parts of Arizona’s anti-illegal-immigrant statute were put on hold this week pending further review by the courts, the federal judge who issued the injunction against portions of SB 1070 somehow missed one of the worst parts of the law, and one which could do the most damage to law-abiding citizens. Perhaps Judge Susan Bolton missed it because suing people on the slightest pretense has become such an accepted part of American life, and so encouraged by state legislatures and Congress for so long, that it never occurred to her honor to stand in the way. But it’s time that tradition was called to a halt.

We’re referring, of course, to the clause of SB 1070 that permits any legal resident to sue “any official or agency of this state” (including a police officer) for failing to enforce federal immigration law.

Time was you could only sue somebody for inflicting some specific and clearly definable damage on you. Did someone break your leg by hitting you with his car, let a campfire go wild and burn down your house, or make you ill by serving you contaminated food? Then you could ask a judge or jury to order the offending entity to pay you money in an amount commensurate with the damage you suffered.

But as the decades went by, interest groups and the lawyers who serve them discovered how much fun it could be, and how much money could be made, if the courts were thrown wide open to lawsuits without the bother of a plaintiff who had actually suffered damage.

Accordingly, all sorts of federal and state laws — from the Endangered Species Act, to the Americans With Disabilities Act, to the California Environmental Quality Act — suddenly authorized citizen suits to enforce laws.

The most ridiculous of these is the ADA, which not only authorizes citizens to sue businesses or individuals who allegedly violate it without first having to go to the bother of actually being damaged, the law contains no other mechanism for it to be enforced. Would you like to find out if the remodeling you did to your 19th century Victorian is fully compliant with the ADA? You can’t ... at least, not without being sued and winning.

Until Arnold Schwarzenegger became governor, California had several even more ridiculous laws designed to encourage lawsuits against businesses. One, called the “Sue Your Boss” law, authorized suits, and big money damages, against businesses for trivial violations of things such as having the wrong font size on the sign near the employee water cooler about the Whistleblower Hotline. Another authorized anybody to sue a business that engaged in false advertising, even if the person bringing the suit was never deceived or damaged by the false claim.

If members of the public fully understood these bizarre provisions, the majority would never support them. And, while we don’t think the United States should have open borders, and that there has to be some way to staunch the flood of illegal immigrants into this country, we don’t think an avalanche of suits against police officers should be part of it.