Following through on the strategy announced in April, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer filed a petition yesterday asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review the lower court decisions blocking implementation of key provisions of S.B. 1070, Arizona’s tough immigration law.
A federal district judge in Arizona blocked four provisions of the law, formally known as the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act, from taking effect in July 2010. The injunction allowed certain aspects of the law to go into effect but blocked other provisions, including one making it a crime for an illegal immigrant to solicit, apply for, or perform any work in the state.
The state appealed that ruling to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and a three-judge panel in April 2011 refused to overturn the injunction. Shortly after the loss in the Ninth Circuit, Brewer announced that the state would petition for U.S. Supreme Court review rather than asking for a hearing before a greater number of Ninth Circuit judges. Brewer and Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne said in April that the decision to go straight to the Supreme Court was calculated to expedite a final decision on the law.
“I am hopeful that the U.S. Supreme Court will choose to take this case and issue much-needed clarity for states, such as Arizona, that are grappling with the significant human and financial costs of illegal immigration,” Brewer said in a prepared statement.
Horne’s statement was even more dramatic. “One of the most shocking parts of the Ninth Circuit decision was the claim that Arizona was interfering with foreign policy, a federal monopoly,” he said. “Arizona established no embassies or consulates, and signed no treaties. What it did do is adopt policies that other countries disagree with. If the Ninth Circuit holding that that is prohibited to the state is not overturned by the Supreme Court, this country’s sovereignty is in trouble.”
Another provision of S.B. 1070 blocked by the injunction requires law enforcement officers to make a reasonable attempt to determine the immigration status of a person stopped, detained, or arrested if there is reasonable suspicion that the person is in the country illegally. The other barred provisions create a state crime for failure to apply for or carry “alien-registration papers” and permit the warrantless arrest upon probable cause of a person believed to have committed a public offense that makes him removable from the United States.
Provisions of S.B. 1070 that weren’t barred and currently are in effect require local law enforcement to enforce federal immigration laws to the fullest extent and make it a crime to transport or harbor an illegal immigrant or to pick up a day laborer in a roadway if it impedes traffic.
The Supreme Court likely won’t decide whether to take the case until sometime in the fall.
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