What the Supreme Court’s review of the SB 1070 case means

Photo by S.E.B./Flickr (Creative Commons)

The U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C., July 2008

After a federal judge in Arizona blocked portions of the state’s then-new SB 1070 anti-illegal immigration law last year, among other things putting on hold a provision that would empower police to check the immigration status of people suspected of being in the country illegally, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer vowed to fight the decision all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. And it’s there that the case has now wound up.

The high court announced this morning that it would review the federal government’s challenge to the law, which since its partial enactment in July of last year has led to a series of copycat laws in other states – and subsequent legal challenges to each.

The Supreme Court justices won’t be weighing the merits of SB 1070, but rather the merits of the lower federal court judge’s decision to block parts of it from being enforced pending a constitutional challenge from the Obama administration. The federal lawsuit, filed in early July of last year as SB 1070 was set to take effect, asserts that immigration law is the domain of the federal government and that it pre-empts attempts by states to set their own immigration rules.

While the SB 1070 appeal won’t likely be heard until spring, how the high court justices rule could either encourage or put a halt to the flurry of state anti-illegal immigration laws that followed. In the last year, states that include Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, Utah and Indiana have enacted their own versions of SB 1070. Alabama, South Carolina and Utah have also been sued by the federal government on pre-emption grounds; others have been sued by civil rights groups.

In some cases, lower federal court judges have issued preliminary injunctions – just as was done in Arizona – blocking some of the more controversial parts of these laws. For example, a judge in October blocked a provision of the Alabama law that required public schools to check student’s immigration status, initially prompting a rash of school absences. The decision by the Supreme Could could have a bearing on these lower court decisions as well; if the partial block of the Arizona law is lifted, it could also affect the injunctions blocking portions of the other state laws as the federal pre-emption challenges and other lawsuits wind their way through the courts.

The preliminary injunctions issued have varied from state to state. For example, a September ruling by a federal judge in Birmingham temporarily blocked a provision that would bar undocumented immigrants from state universities, but still allowed police to question people they suspect of being in the country illegally. (The controversial public schools provision was blocked the following month, after the federal government appealed.) Last summer in Georgia, where civil rights groups have filed suit against the state, a federal judge temporarily blocked the provision allowing police to check for immigration status.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court ruled earlier this year in favor of a previous Arizona anti-illegal immigration law, one mandating employers to use a federal program called E-Verify to check workers’s immigration status and punishing those who don’t comply. Many of the state laws that have followed SB 1070 have had similar employer provisions, including the new laws in Georgia and Alabama, which have since suffered from agricultural worker shortages.

  • Anonymous

    Instead of the Department of Justice threatening the sovereignty of Arizona,
    Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Indiana and very likely soon North Carolina,,
    why doesn’t the DOJ chase down the instigators of the growing financial impact
    of Sanctuary states as California and Nevada. They have taxpayer’s money to
    outlay on ‘The Fast and Furious’ gun walking fiasco and getting a US border
    Patrol agent murdered. We need the border sealed, to halt the Middle Easterners
    disguised as Mexicans entering through the massive open regions of fencing.
    That is a National Security issue, which will eventually lead to a massacre of
    innocent victims.    Instead
    of taking States to court for its policing laws; the Administration should
    occupy itself, with enforcing the laws already on the books. Subsequently, the
    original architect of anti-illegal immigration laws of Arizona as its policing
    laws is to be heard by the Supreme Court. Whether or not sovereignty states has
    a right to enact its own laws, when the federal government admits dismal
    failure to protect American citizens from invasion. That Obama’s judiciary stating
    that a shortage of dollars makes it impossible to secure the border tight. This
    is an absolute ridiculous, when they are pandering to foreigners with $113
    Billion dollars annually in financial support.

     

     

                           
    With no conclusion in sight of the illegal alien occupation, a growing number
    of politicians namely Republican who symbolize the TEA PARTY membership are
    co-sponsoring the ‘Legal Workforce Act.’ It will rigorously apply an
    enforcement law, circumvented by decades of premeditated abuse by Washington.
    E-Verify has materialized as a champion and has been vigorously certified by
    thousands of trustworthy businesses. E-Verify has been a voluntary policy up to
    now, by companies large and small who have shown a patriotic outlook in a
    exceptionally divided society. Businesses are keen to display their loyalty
    with the USCIS U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
    sign, as a mark of deference that they are not hiring unauthorized labor. But
    of course there is the other side of the blemished coin, of entities defiant to
    applying any law, which cuts across their enormous profits. Illegal workers can
    be exploited by threatening them with deportation and other insidious actions from
    ugly company owners. This is especially widespread amongst Contractors and
    sub-contractors such as in the building trades.

     

     

    E-Verify on the other hand is being revised on a continuous
    basis and a day of reckoning in coming for all corporations and businesses. For
    every business that doesn’t agree with (ICE) Immigration & Custom
    Enforcement the majority of the general population want full compliance. This
    is why we must insist that Congress enacts H.R. 2885, a mandatory E-Verify
    with no loopholes, which criminal businesses can wriggle through. Both parties
    have done this since the 1986, so that illegal workers could be hired, as Democrats
    and ‘establishment’ Republicans could do the favored bidding for the special
    interest groups.

    Even now we see this with the clever manipulation of the people polls, which indicates
    the key population is in agreement with as a path to citizenship; as suggested
    by Former Speaker Gingrich. The polls don’t give
    voters the alternative of ‘Attrition through Enforcement’. Instead, they
    achieve through this engineering of the voters, to basically choose between
    mass deportations or mass legalization. IT’S A STREAMLINED LIE, PUSHED BY THE
    LIBERAL MEDIA AND THE SO-CALLED PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT.THEY HAVE ALREADY ACCOMPLISHED
    THIS, THROUGH THEIR RADICAL ‘POLITICAL CORRECTNESS’ AGENDA. In the case of a
    National Journal poll just released, voters were given a third choice of
    half-mass deportations and half-mass legalization (which is essentially the
    Gingrich Amnesty). Instead, they make voters fundamentally choose between mass
    deportations or mass legalization.

     

     

     But
    nowhere do voters hear that there is “ATTRITION THROUGH ENFORCEMENT” such as
    the E-Verify option that doesn’t involve mass deportations or mass
    legalization. It costs nothing to enforce as access to E-Verify is free and
    simple verification on the computer.   What Attrition does do is: 
    Quickly (over a couple of years) moves illegal aliens out of their payroll
    jobs. Quickly takes away taxpayer-provided benefits and thereby causes a volume
    EXODUS.  Gradually over perhaps 10 year
    period, will cause illegal aliens to leave, reliving the major disruption in
    the job marketplace, specifically for low income labor. The Tens of Millions in
    the TEA PARTY members are not liable to fall for this clever fiasco.

     

     

     NEWT GINGRICH IS NOT A TEA PARTY
    LEADER, AS HIS PLATFORM CONTAINS A ISSUE OF GIVING ILLEGAL ALIENS A ‘PATH TO
    CITIZENSHIP.”

     

    Most readers do not want to spend their precious time in the coverage of the
    illegal alien invaders, when their occupied with family affairs or looking for
    a job. But the audience interested in the complicated matter of Immigration,
    can read the all the facts, costs at such pro-sovereignty websites as
    NumbersUSA, The Heritage Foundation, American Patrol and the Federation of
    American Immigration Reform. This is only a drop in the bucket of thousands of
    sites that demand immigration enforcement compliance. There are hundreds of
    billions of dollars that the U.S. Government and states are forced by liberal
    courts in pandering to majority ethnic groups. That they demonstrate in city
    streets demanding the same rights as citizens and legal residents. They come
    from every corner of the world, or passing through our borders every day and
    this must–STOP? The chief motivation is we cannot afford foreign nationals
    slipping into America, bringing their poverty and adding to this countries own
    homeless, sick and impoverished.

     

     

    They are skewering the safety net for our elderly, single
    mothers and veterans. They must go home and straighten out their own corrupt nation’s
    political indignation. America is not the place of opportunity anymore as it’s
    been fleeced by our own policy makers, China, Mexico, India and other cheap
    labor countries. Our wealth is being washed away by unparalleled greed,
    corruption and the major influence of bankers and Wall Street. We cannot even
    get the Obama administration to approve the ‘Keystone’ oil pipeline, which will
    make us less reliant on Middle Eastern dictatorships that hate us. We have
    oil deposits in abundance that could power America for another hundred years,
    but the environmentalists have put a halt to that. My thoughts on Immigration
    law, that if there was any aspiration by our Maverick administrations to halt
    illegal immigration, they would have complied with the 2006 Secure Fence Act
    and enacted illegal entry as a FELONY? Instead we have years of disrespect for
    what the majority of Americans wanted and that is strict immigration laws, with
    no exceptions.

     

    Millions of us can still make a difference, by contacting the do-nothings in
    Washington, before the Presidential election of 2012. Join the TEA PARTY and
    read their referendum for America’s future. Start calling your members of
    Congress and insist you want them to co-sponsor the Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX)
    MANDATE of the Legal Workforce Act’, H.R. 2885. A need for a 100 co-sponsors
    has now been whittled from 100 down to 32, and then the bill can be read on the
    House floor, to get E-Verify now or in the next session of Congress. So far
    just one Democrat with a spine and thinking of working Americans have put his
    House seat on the line, by sponsoring this enforcement law.  Call
    202-224-3121 and giving your name, address to the political aid, which will
    bring it to the attention of your legislator. Also ask your politician to
    sponsor to press for H.R.140, titled the Birthright Citizenship Act of 2011,
    which was introduced on Jan 5. 2011, by Rep. Steve King a Republican from Iowa;
    as of last month, the bill had 80 co-sponsors.

     

     

    There will never be any kind of blanket amnesty, that’s the
    revelation of the TEA PARTY.

  • Anonymous

    Make laws like SB1070 and HR 2885 unnecessary by stop demanding and consuming the goods and services produced by illegal aliens and/or increase the number of immigration visas for the workers that come/stay here illegally to produce the goods and services that we demand and consume. Doing either or both would be much cheaper and would avoid the massive intrusive collection of personal data now included in the most recent version of HR 2885, The bill needlessly expands government control over businesses and individuals at all levels of the economy. Conservatives and liberals alike who believe in maintaining at least some degree of privacy in the face of government-mandated databases and efforts to force employers to obtain Uncle Sam’s permission before hiring someone should strongly oppose this legislation.

  • Anonymous

    The question that the court will address will not be whether states can be preempted in this arena but rather where the Congress, which holds this authority under the Constitution, has actually done so. The Obama administration doesn’t get to decide such things and one of its attempts to do so was already rejected in Chamber of Commerce v. Whiting concerning Arizona’s use of E-verify.

    During the 9th Circuit Appeals hearing over the law that will now be in addressed by the Supreme Court, one of the judges immediately had to correct the administration’s lawyer about where the authority for immigration lay as that lawyer tried to present the administration’s case for preemption.

    You can watch that 9th Circuit Appeals Court hearing on United States v. State of Arizona concerning SB 1070 here:

    http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/296345-1

    Beginnning at 29:30 the Administration’s lawyer …

    Edwin Needler: The Constitution of vests the subject matter immigration with the national government.

    Judge John Noonan: No, national government no, in Congress. There’s a big difference between the national government and Congress.