Supreme Court Decides Arizona Immigration Law S.B. 1070, Struck Down Parts But Upholds Key Immigration Status Check Provision

Today, the US Supreme Court ruled on Arizona Immigration Law S.B. 1070 and struck the provisions dealing with state criminal penalties and other provisions which imposed procedural requirements on illegals in the state.  Among the provisions the Court struck is the one requiring that a person be detained if the police officer believes the person is removable. However, the SCOTUS upheld the key Immigration status check provision. Although one has to wonder what good it is if there is no penalty.

By a vote of 6-2, the court voided a provision making it a state crime for an immigrant to fail to carry federal registration papers. By 5-3 votes, it invalidated sections that authorized jail time for illegal immigrants who seek work in Arizona and that gave state and local police more power to arrest immigrants suspected of offenses.

Arizona’s one victory came in the court’s decision to uphold the status-check provision. Federal law already requires immigration authorities to respond to checks from state and local officers, indicating that Congress saw nothing wrong with such “consultation” between arms of government, the court said.

Much, much more and some great analysis at Legal Insurrection.

It would appear Justice Scalia gets it, too bad the majority of the Justices did not.

Justice Samuel Alito agreed with the majority that Arizona’s alien-registration requirement was void, but voted to uphold SB 1070 provisions making it a crime for illegal immigrants to seek work and authorizing warrantless arrests of certain aliens. Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas each filed separate dissents arguing that SB 1070 should be upheld in its entirety.

The majority “deprives States of what most would consider the defining characteristic of sovereignty: the power to exclude from the sovereign’s territory people who have no right to be there,” Justice Scalia wrote.