Supreme Court Rejects Part of Arizona Immigration Law
Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times
Police officers in front of the Supreme Court before rulings on Monday.
By ADAM LIPTAK and JOHN H. CUSHMAN Jr.
Published: June 25, 2012 120 Comments
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday delivered a split decision on Arizona’s tough 2010 immigration law, upholding its most controversial provision but blocking the implementation of others.
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Times Topic: Arizona Immigration Law (SB 1070)
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The court unanimously sustained the law’s centerpiece, the one critics
have called its “show me your papers” provision. It requires state law
enforcement officials to determine the immigration status of anyone they
stop or arrest if there is reason to suspect that the individual might
be an illegal immigrant.
The justices parted ways on three other provisions. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for five members of the court,
said the federal government’s broad powers in setting immigration
policy meant that other parts of the state law could not be enforced.
“The national government has significant power to regulate immigration,”
Justice Kennedy wrote. “With power comes responsibility, and the sound
exercise of national power over immigration depends on the nation’s
meeting its responsibility to base its laws on a political will informed
by searching, thoughtful, rational civic discourse.”
“Arizona may have understandable frustrations with the problems caused
by illegal immigration while that process continues, but the state may
not pursue policies that undermine federal law,” Justice Kennedy added.
The decision was a partial victory for the Obama administration, which had sued to block several parts of the law.
In a statement released later on Monday, President Obama said that he
was "pleased" with the Court's decision to strike down some aspects of
the law, but he voiced his concern about the remaining provision.
"I agree with the Court that individuals cannot be detained solely to
verify their immigration status. No American should ever live under a
cloud of suspicion just because of what they look like," Mr. Obama said.
"Going forward, we must ensure that Arizona law enforcement officials
do not enforce this law in a manner that undermines the civil rights of
Americans."
Monday's ruling was a partial rebuke for state officials who had argued
that they were entitled to supplement federal efforts to address illegal
immigration.
The administration’s legal arguments were based on asserted conflicts
between the state law and federal immigration laws and policies. The
question for the justices, then, was whether federal immigration law
trumped – pre-empted, in the legal jargon – the state efforts.
Last year, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, blocked four provisions of the law on those grounds.
The administration did not challenge the law based on equal protection principles. At the Supreme Court argument in the case in April,
Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr., representing the federal
government, acknowledged that his case was not based on racial or ethnic
profiling.
Monday’s decision in Arizona v. United States, No. 11-182, did not
foreclose further lawsuits based on that argument. “This opinion,”
Justice Kennedy wrote, “does not foreclose other pre-emption and
constitutional challenges to the law as interpreted and applied after it
goes into effect.”
In sustaining one provision and blocking others, the decision amounted
to a road map for permissible state efforts in this area. Several other
states have enacted tough measures to stem illegal immigration,
including ones patterned after the Arizona law, among them Alabama,
Georgia, Indiana, South Carolina and Utah.
Lower courts have stayed the implementation of parts of those laws, and
they will now revisit those decisions to bring them in line with the
principles announced on Monday.
Three justice dissented. Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas
said they would have sustained all three of the blocked provisions.
Justice Samuel Alito Jr. would have sustained two of them.
The three provisions blocked by the majority were: making it a crime
under state law for immigrants to fail to register under a federal law,
making it a crime for illegal immigrants to work or to try find work,
and allowing the police to arrest people without warrants if they have
probable cause to believe that they have done things that would make
them deportable under federal law.
Justice Alito said the first of those three provisions conflicted with federal law.
Justice Scalia read a lengthy dissent from the bench that addressed recent developments.
“After this case was argued and while it was under consideration,” he
said, “the secretary of Homeland Security announced a program exempting
from immigration enforcement some 1.4 million illegal immigrants.” This
was a reference to the decision by the Obama administration this month to let younger immigrants
— the administration estimates the number as approximately 800,000 —
who came to the United States as children avoid deportation and receive
working papers as long as they meet certain conditions.
“The president has said that the new program is ‘the right thing to do’
in light of Congress’s failure to pass the administration’s proposed
revision of the immigration laws,” Justice Scalia went on. “Perhaps it
is, though Arizona may not think so. But to say, as the court does, that
Arizona contradicts federal law by enforcing applications of federal
immigration law that the president declines to enforce boggles the
mind."
Justice Elena Kagan disqualified herself from the case, Arizona v.
United States, No. 11-182, presumably because she had worked on it as
President Obama's solicitor general.