The U.S. Supreme Court on immigration and state law
The United States Supreme Court is one of the few places where a state can be found suing the country. One of those occurrences was in 2012 in the case of Arizona v. United States, when the state of Arizona argued that its statute, the “Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhood Act,” permitted it to allow state police to arrest any individual for suspicion of being an illegal immigrant, require legal immigrants to carry registration documents at all times, and made it a crime for an illegal immigrant to search for or hold a job in the state. While there were claims that enforcement of the law would amount to racial profiling against the many Latino residents of Arizona (many from neighboring Mexico), nine other states supported a brief that supported Arizona’s position, as did 81 members of Congress.
Setting aside the allegations of racism and xenophobia, the greatest legal challenges to the Arizona law were the concepts of federal supremacy and preemption. The first theory provides that laws enacted by Congress supersede those passed by states and the second holds that once the federal government legislates in an area, states may not. Arizona had to face the fact that Article 1 of the Constitution gave Congress the power to “establish uniform Rules of Naturalization.” Utilizing that power, the Congress has passed laws that have been implemented by INS regulations dealing with all of the subjects covered by the Arizona statute. The question before the court was whether the Arizona law was in conflict with the federal laws and regulations.
It is a bit difficult to simply tally the votes and present the decision. For one thing, Justice Elena Kagan recused herself since she had represented the federal government in a lower court proceeding on the matter before she was named a member of the court. A majority decision was authored by Justice Anthony Kennedy that was joined by a varying combination of other justices who concurred in and dissented from various sections of the opinion. The bottom line result of the decision is that most of the provisions of the law were rendered invalid and one was upheld.
It concluded that the federal government had preempted the entire field of alien registration by statute and regulation and that no state law could stand. Therefore, it was unconstitutional to make being unlawfully in the United States and failing to register with the federal government a crime. Arizona was similarly prohibited from making the seeking of work or holding a job a state crime and warrantless arrests could not be made simply because there was a belief that a person was illegally in the country. The only part allowed to stand was the section dealing with attempts by law enforcement to determine immigration status, but it was restricted to the situation where an authorized detention had taken place.
In 2013 the Supreme Court was also called on to interpret two laws dealing with voting rights — one from the 90s and one going all the way back to 1965. We’ll look at them next time.
Ronald Goldfarb is a professor in the Business, Accounting and Legal Studies Department at Middlesex County College. The material in this column does not purport to be legal, business, financial or other advice, and no attorney-client relationship is formed. If there is a topic you would like to see covered in “Everyday Law,” please email Goldfarb at rgoldfarb@middlesexcc.edu.