Supreme Court Upholds Arizona Law Penalizing Businesses For Hiring Illegal Immigrants

Source: Huffington Post

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court has sustained Arizona's law that penalizes businesses for hiring workers who are in the United States illegally, rejecting arguments that states have no role in immigration matters.

By a 5-3 vote, the court said Wednesday that federal immigration law gives states the authority to impose sanctions on employers who hire unauthorized workers.


Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/26/supreme-court-upholds-ari_n_867432.html

especially if it involves money supporters.

Breyer wrote a dissent, joined by Ginsburg. Sotomayor wrote her own dissent. You know the rest. (Kagan recused herself as she represented the government as Solicitor General in earlier hearings.)

Decision: Chamber of Commerce v. Whiting

And the 9th circuit court upheld the Arizona law...and conservatives consider the 9th circuit (based in San Franpinko, Commiefornia) as liberally biased.

The 9th circuit case: Chicanos por la Causa, Inc. v. Napolitano (heard in 2008 when Homeland Security Secy. Janet Napolitano was the governor of Arizona). It was heard by judges Mary M. Schroeder (Carter), John M. Walker, Jr. (Bush 41), and N. Randy Smith (Bush 43), with Schroeder writing the majority opinion.

This ruling requires disregarding hundreds of years of legal precedent and constitutional scholarship on the exclusively federal nature of regulating immigration - conservatives are much more likely to let their personal ideologies dictate their decisions than the legal reasoning that would preclude such a ruling.

Nothing at all about immigration.

... who may or may not be legally authorized to work in the US based upon their immigration status, which state officials are neither qualified nor authorized to determine. Not that the authors of the Arizona bill care - being white supremacists, whether the brown skinned person is lawfully present or not is fairly immaterial, all that really matters is that they aren't white. The rest of us, however, should care.

This is another regulation on business, not an immigration law. Sorry, but you are barking (madly) up the wrong tree here.

Fine, don't believe me. Look up Kris Kobach, the guy who wrote the bill, and the various and sundry hate groups with which he has been affiliated throughout his career. Next look up Russell Pearce, the guy who introduced the bill, and all of the white supremacist affiliations he has under his belt. Next look up the American Immigration Law Foundation, the Center for Immigration Studies, and the Federation for American Immigration Reform, the hate groups that provided the funding, lobbying, and publicity campaign for the bill. Then come back and tell me about how it has nothing to do with immigration.

now the SC is saying that the State has the right to enforce it's own immigration laws. This would also mean IMO that the State has the responsibility to enforce immigration laws.

Now, CT doesn't have a lot of illegal immigrants but there are a few. I'm pretty sure at least some of them crossed over from AZ. By this ruling wouldn't AZ be responsible for allowing these illegal immigrants in in the first place? Therefore should AZ not be responsible for all costs involved in finding, incarcerating and deporting these illegal immigrants? I mean if they had of done their damned job in the first place as ruled by the SC these immigrants would have been stopped at the border.

I expect Governor Malloy to send monthly invoices to Jan Brewer for the dough.

The federal government sued and the 9th circuit stopped enforcement of it. That action is on appeal to the Supreme Court. You must have a short memory if you have forgotten all the discussion about it. The federal government says only they can enforce immigration laws. So your governor should send those invoices to the federal government if that is your view.

on the current supreme court ruling simply, and pretty clearly sarcastically, following out a string of improbable events.

Do I really need to use the damned sarcasm smilie every damned time?

which routinely are put on the board. One of the points brought up with 1070 was that businesses should be targeted. Now that AZ has passed that law it is being attacked.

Federal Immigration Law, thus the danger. This could set a precedent for Arizona to fully implement SB1070 which mirrors Federal Law. It was the DOJ that was challenging the Employer Sanctions law, they are also challenging 1070.

my reply.

enforcing it's "own" immigration laws, but is authorizing it's own enforcement of Federal Law. It really comes down to a battle of States Rights VS Federal law.

For example, Arizona passed a ballot initiative to legalize medical marijuana last fall. The Governor has put it on hold after a warning from the DOJ that they are in violation of Federal law and that state officials that issue "use and grower" permits would be subject to arrest and penalties.

I guess you can't have it both ways.

It's stipulating state law on business licenses.

It does an end run around the "illegal immigration enforcement" issue by not taking any action specifically against illegal immigrants. It merely says that if you want to hire somebody they must be cleared and found to be authorized for work in the US by E-Verify; if they're not, and you hire them, then you can be fined or have your business license suspended.

So, who's not authorized to work? More than just illegal immigrants (although no a whole lot more). If a 15-year-old boy who's matured a bit early applies for a job he'll be bounced. If you're actually a felon and are applying to work under a false name and it comes back "that person doesn't exist" then you're not eligible to work under that name. And, of course, if you're Volodya Robertovich Il'inskii and are in the US illegally, you aren't eligible.

Now, it does tacitly target illegal immigrants. But it does so in a neutral enough way, without actually touching them per se, that the legal issue can easily become not one of immigration enforcement but of business-license enforcement. It makes having an irregular status awkward and therefore makes being an illegal immigrant more costly--but in denying public assistance, in-state tuition, or other services the state also makes that status more costly or onerous. If dear Volodya can't get public assistance, be a student, or get a job, his choices are limited--go away, engage in illegal activity such as forged documents or some property crime, or have some benefactor who ignores the law.

This makes businesses in the state check this database E-verify. Enforcing a reasonable standard for businesses to verify compliance with existing federal laws about not hiring persons not legally entitled to be hired under federal law is a far cry from enforcing immigration law.

I haven't read the SC decision yet but it sounds like they drawing a difference. Only the federal government can enforce immigration by issuing deportation orders, etc. The federal government created this tool and promulgated it for this purpose. So the state isn't doing anything different than current policy - it is just telling employers "be sure you do this, or we will impose penalties".

arguing that the supremacy clause in the constitution precluded state from enforcing any immigration law.

time a bank was robbed, the local police went to the Donut shop on the basis that bank Robbery is FBI's jurisdiction? How about a kidnapper who crossed state lines - clearly a federal issue - should the local keep hands off?

When the President visits, should the locals take the day off and leave everything to the Secret Service? I believe not.

The DOJ position was pure politics, devoid of a true legal basis.

It goes further than that. I'm trying to find an article that details the Feds objections but I think I may have tossed it.

Here is something though.
http://www.factcheck.org/2010/06/arizonas-papers-please-law/

The state does nothing whatsoever to the illegal immigrant and isn't enforcing immigration laws. The illegal immigrant isn't touched. It's rather like not letting illegal immigrants receive in-state tuition or a driver's license. They don't meet the requirements for receiving some benefit, and it's the public university, the MVD, or the business(es) that are governed.

Quoting from the opinion:

"The District Court found that the plain language of IRCA’s preemption clause did not invalidate the Arizona law because the law did no more than impose licensing conditions on businesses operating within the State. Nor was the state law preempted with respect to E-Verify, the court concluded, because although Congress had made the program voluntary at the national level, it had expressed no intent to prevent States from mandatingparticipation."

There are two points.

1. No fine, no enforcement, no penalty is levied on the illegal immigrant. Instead, a business must make sure that each applicant, regardless of background, has had his/her employment eligibility verified. Those not authorized to be employed can still be employed--but the business has violated the terms of its license and that license can be revoked.

I'm unaware of any requirement for employers without business licenses, so they wouldn't be covered. For example, if my mother were to decide to hire somebody from the Home Depot parking lot to spray for weeds and trim her trees.

2. The argument was made that E-Verify was a voluntary program. The state erred in making it a required program. The plaintiffs seemed to argue that what the Congress made voluntary couldn't be made mandatory by the state, even if the Congress didn't stipulate that the program *must* be voluntary. SCOTUS replied that if Congress intended that E-Verify only be voluntary they should have said so. (The Chamber of Commerce's brief would seem to argue from silence, and arguments from silence always make me nervous on principle and easily veer into "whatever's not permitted is automatically forbidden" territory.)

This creates the potential for a wide assortment of problems and conflicts between the states and the fed and between states by authorizing states to carry out an exclusively federal function.

But Justice Breyer said the state law disrupted a carefully calculated balance between competing Congressional goals, one that “seriously threatens the federal act’s antidiscrimination objectives.” The state law increased penalties for hiring illegal workers, he said, but it left “the other side of the punishment balance — the antidiscrimination side — unchanged.”

The decision, Chamber of Commerce v. Whiting, No. 09-115, also upheld a second aspect of the Arizona law, this one making mandatory an otherwise voluntary federal program, E-Verify, that allows employers to verify whether potential employees are authorized to work.

In his dissent, Justice Breyer said it was a mistake to require use of a “pilot program” that was “prone to error.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a separate dissent. Justice Elena Kagan was recused from the case because she had worked on it as United States solicitor general.

“I cannot believe,” Justice Sotomayor wrote, “that Congress intended for the 50 states and countless localities to implement their own distinct enforcement and adjudication procedures for deciding whether employers have employed unauthorized aliens.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/27/us/27scotus.html?hp

appointees, dissented. The fourth Democratic appointee, Justice Elena Kagan, did not participate in the case because she worked on it while serving as President Barack Obama's solicitor general."

upholding the AZ law. That'd be Mary M. Schroeder, nominated in 1979 by Jimmy Carter. So liberal judges don't all hold the same position regarding this law. But I as a liberal support severe penalties against employers who willfully hire illegal immigrants and preventative measures to curb such immigration (rather than harsh penalties against such immigrants who've lived in the US for several years and have a clean criminal record).

Is the Grower liable or his labor contractor. If it is the Grower, The Republican party can expect a decrease in contributions.

was behind this shows that illegal immigration is favored by economic conservatives, and unfortunately supported by many liberals for poor reasons. Hence the ACLU and the Chamber of Commerce being on the same side here. Strange bedfellows indeed.

The ACLU, civil rights groups, the Chamber of Commerce, the Obama administration and three Democratic-appointed justices (Breyer, Sotomayor and Bader Ginsburg on one side; Gov. Brewer, Arizona Senate President Russell Pearce, Kris Kobach, many republican-controlled state legislatures and governors in the South and MidWest,and the court's five Republican-appointed justices (John Robers, Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr.).

I have not read of any liberals (certainly not in the HuffPo OP) that support the SC decision. It sounds like the conservatives are quite happy with it, though.

I certainly agree that illegal immigration is favored by economic conservatives (but not social conservatives like the teabaggers and repubs quoted in the OP). They want to maintain a pool of easily-exploitable workers here which is why they oppose any move to provide a path to citizenship for them. They know that citizenship removes the "exploitability" that the economic conservatives treasure. (Which is exactly why organized labor supports such a comprehensive solution.)

Instead they preach "enforcement" as the answer knowing that no study shows that that will actually solve the problem and will leave millions of exploitable workers here far, far into the future - an economic conservative's wet dream.

I own a large farm/livestock operation which requires a pretty substantial labor force. I did due diligence and checked e-Verify and the #'s checked out.

Turns out the SS # was stolen but it took 10 years for the US govt to catch it up.

As a business owner, I can only take the US government's word that a worker's legal status is as presented. I am not allowed to discriminate if I "think" they may be "hispanic" or in any other wise illegal. In fact, from my perspective, it's far WORSE for me to make ASSumptions about a person's legal status and NOT hire them, thereby exposing myself to a lawsuit for discrimination, when their legal status theoretically checks out.

Right now the system is broken. You can point the fingers at employers all you want but the industry that churns out fake documents knows how to game that system. We need fundamental immigration reform and not just patchwork targets like amorphous "employers" as the fall guys.

You're not expected to be a document examiner and, unless you require a background check (which would have to be required of everyone regardless of ethnicity, citizenship status, etc.) on the face of the evidence provided you completed an I-9 and verified the documents.

The crime is committed when you knowingly hire someone who is not authorized to be employed lawfully. For instance, faking the I-9 or hiring someone with an obviously fake document or without doing any due diligence.

But as an employer you're not expected to magically know that someone's documents were stolen.

Tyson Corp. regularly bused in people straight from Mexico to their chicken processing plants. Their entire boardroom should go to prison for 10 years, have their entire net worth fined, and have all business/law licenses revoked

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while turning a blind eye to the big corporate violators?