May 26, 2011 in News, Nation/World

Supreme Court sustains Ariz. employer sanctions law

Associated Press
 
Tags:ArizonaImmigrationsupreme court
Other decisions today
Speedy Trials: The high court says the time used to deal with pretrial motions cannot be used to automatically extend the required deadline for a suspect’s speedy trial. The court refused to grant the government’s request to reinstate Jason Louis Tinklenberg’s conviction of gun possession by a felon and possession of material used to manufacture methamphetamine. The Speedy Trial Act says a defendant’s trial should begin within 70 days of his indictment or his initial appearance before a judicial officer. The high court ruled that the time used to dispense with pretrial motions cannot be counted toward the Speedy Trial deadline, upholding the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision to throw out Tinklenberg’s conviction.

Cop killer conviction: The court overturned the conviction of a man who fatally shot a police officer in Florida in 1998. The high court said the lower court should reconsider the conviction of Charles Fowler, who was given life in prison for the shooting death of officer Todd Horner. Fowler was convicted under a federal law that bans people from trying to keep U.S. officials from being informed about a potential federal crime. Horner was killed when he approached a group of men who were planning a bank robbery. Fowler’s lawyers said prosecutors never proved Horner would have alerted federal authorities to a potential federal crime.

Child abuse: The court threw out a lower court ruling that says authorities need warrants to talk to potential victims of sex abuse at school. But the court didn’t say whether it thinks the lower court was wrong. The high court tossed the decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for other reasons. Justices declined to comment on the constitutionality of a child social worker and police officer interviewing a child in school without a warrant. Justice Elena Kagan said the girl whose mother sued over her interview at school is no longer a child and wouldn’t have any more involvement with child social workers, so the case is moot. The justices say that makes the appeals court decision disapproving of the authorities’ action also moot.

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 today that federal immigration law gives states the authority to impose sanctions on employers who hire unauthorized workers.

The decision upholding the validity of the 2007 law comes as the state is appealing a ruling that blocked key components of a second, more controversial Arizona immigration enforcement law. Thursday’s decision applies only to business licenses and does not signal how the high court might rule if the other law comes before it.

Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for a majority made up of Republican-appointed justices, said the Arizona’s employer sanctions law “falls well within the confines of the authority Congress chose to leave to the states.”

Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor, all Democratic 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

Breyer said the Arizona law upsets a balance in federal law between dissuading employers from hiring illegal workers and ensuring that people are not discriminated against because they may speak with an accent or look like they might be immigrants.

Employers “will hesitate to hire those they fear will turn out to lack the right to work in the United States,” he said.

Business interests and civil liberties groups challenged the law, backed by the Obama administration.

The measure was signed into law in 2007 by Democrat Janet Napolitano, then the governor of Arizona and now the administration’s Homeland Security secretary.

The employer sanctions law has been only infrequently used. It was intended to diminish Arizona’s role as the nation’s hub for immigrant smuggling by requiring employers to verify the eligibility of new workers through a federal database. Employers found to have violated the law can have their business licenses suspended or revoked.

Lower courts, including the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, previously upheld the law.

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17 comments on this story so far. Add yours!

  • hawken on May 26 at 9:06 a.m.

    Chalk one up for “states rights.”

    Our founders never intended the federal government to have the “heavy hand” it has today.

  • eagleproducer on May 26 at 9:33 a.m.

    I’ve lived in Arizona, hawken, and states rights are a great thing, but not when they pass laws they don’t enforce.

    It’s interesting to note that states rights are all the rage for you when it comes to policies against “the other” but you don’t seem to have a problem with the feds intervening in states with medical marijuana laws. I guess one can have it both ways…

    If owners of companies and corporations were hauled off to jail for hiring illegal immigrants the problem would disappear almost overnight.

  • DickAdams on May 26 at 9:44 a.m.

    I agree with the decision, but don`t you just love these so called bipartisan judges? Will not belong before these persons on the bench will show which party they are associated with.

  • Believer on May 26 at 9:49 a.m.

    Wait a minute….I thought all authority was supposed to be with the states, except that which was granted the government via the Constitution. When did THAT change?

  • reservedparking on May 26 at 10:26 a.m.

    Employers “will hesitate to hire those they fear will turn out to lack the right to work in the United States,”…

    As well they should.

  • hawken on May 26 at 10:27 a.m.

    Eagle; I’m an Arizona native born (desert rat). My family (with the exception of my two adult sons) and my wife’s family all live in Tucson, Phoenix ,Fort Huachuca (home of the US Army Intelligence Center) and Show Low. We will never move back to live in Arizona. Primarily because of the illegal immigrant problems.

    There is some gorgeous land between Tucson and Nogales, AZ if you don’t mind being over run my Mexican illegals and then being sued by the same for defending your property and home.

    Arizona is desperate to take state action since Bush did not and Obama will not.

    As usual, getting the votes of Hispanics is more important than national security. And by the way, a majority of legal Arizonian and other American Hispanics want the border secured now. They want the immigration laws already on the books enforced now. They want and just won their case against big government and Arizona employers who knowingly employ illegal immigrants.

    Not only is this especially good for Arizona, who gets the brunt of illegal immigration, it good for other states whom will now follow the lead of Arizona.

    Moreover, it is very good that the USSC has re-asserted “States Rights,” which will in the future be used by the States to get the unconstitutional, heavy hand of the federal government off their back in the appropriate areas.

    Well done Arizona.

  • eagleproducer on May 26 at 10:32 a.m.

    hawken: It is completely disingenuous to claim Obama’s adminstration hasn’t done anything about illegal immigration. For each year (and this year as well) they will deport a record number of illegal aliens, most who committed crimes while in the U.S. As well, funding for border security has been increased in his budgets.

    I didn’t care for Arizona at all, but that is perhaps because I lived in Yuma and not Tucson, which is perhaps the only place in the state with progressive and liberal citizens.

  • hawken on May 26 at 10:57 a.m.

    Let’s all debate how many angels can dance on the head of a needle. Since Obama has secured our border with Mexico.

  • eagleproducer on May 26 at 11:30 a.m.

    I never said “secured.” I just debunked your claim that Obama has done “nothing.”

  • DonJulio on May 26 at 11:47 a.m.

    Hawken,

    I have relatives that live in Green Valley. They’ve been there for over 5 years now. Never once have they been “ran over by illegals”. In fact, the only crime they have been victim of was vandalism. Someone keyed, “#%#$ Obama” into their Prius while they were in the grocery store. I somehow doubt that was the work of Mexican illegals.

    Essentially, what you’ve said would be the equivalent of me saying…Spokane is a great place unless you want to be blown up by a bomb in the middle of downtown, be robbed and mugged by a meth-head, and live in a city with 3rd world road infrastructure.

  • leekinny on May 26 at 12:00 p.m.

    Immigrants should be treated justly.

    The most extreme conservative opinion, regarding undocumented workers and their families, is to arrest them all and ship them back to their country of origin. While there are people here illegally from many parts of the world this is first and foremost a reaction to the Spanish speaking Latinos from South of our border.

    Massive roundups of those that are unjustly judged ‘unacceptable’ have never worked well for those being arrested or for the offending country involved. We have recent horror stories from Cambodia and Nazi Germany and in the United States with the Japanese internment and the Trail of Tears both of which were a disgrace. Tearing apart Latino families on our ‘liberty loving’ soil would be comparatively disastrous for obvious reasons for them but also for our national spirit which has suffered enough wounds already, most recently through the Bush years.

    These people our not from the far-flung reaches of the world, they are, especially from Mexico, our neighbors who share history with us. They are a part of the New World family, an ingredient of who we are. Their poverty and status has been used against them, as it was in the past for other immigrant groups deemed unacceptable, for the benefit of unprincipled business interests for many generations now.

    It is immoral to use people then throw them away when they become inconvenient. Christian (isn’t that the kind of country the religious right repeatedly says we have) kindness would dictate care and forgiveness for these people. Those who wear the bible on their sleeve should know very well how the Lord expects us to treat immigrants and all others who fall into need whether financial or medical. The arguments rationalizing this away do not come from God it comes from a much darker, hotter unholy place.

    We need to protect the border as Democrats have been screaming about since 9-11, and has vastly improved, in this administration. More funding needs to be allocated, but, the Tea Party whipped and corporate owned Republican party just can’t seem to do that.

    Bring them into citizen ship in a manner that’s just.

    We need to have strict consistent punishment for all those who hire these people with the intent of misusing them for their own benefit.

    Strong penalties need to be given for all those who pay substandard wages.

    Any corporation that moves south of the border must pay livable wages and conform to rational environmental controls or risk a high tariff or lose the ability to trade with the United States.

    We must realize US involvement in many of the economic and political hardships suffered by others who share the Americas. We have a moral duty to work to make things right and that doesn’t begin with exploitation.

    Any other solution that comes from Congress based on economic maltreatment or cloaked in hate and paranoia is unacceptable.

  • hawken on May 26 at 12:15 p.m.

    DonJulio

    The people of Arizona would probably have never passed the state law, just affirmed by the Supreme Court, had they known that your family in Green Valley has never had problems with illegal immigrants.

    Your “benchmark” example only goes to show how misguided the majority is in Arizona and at Supreme Court.

  • hawken on May 26 at 12:18 p.m.

    “Just treatment” for illegal immigrants has been well define by federal statute. Substantially unenforced, but well defined. Justice is defined and codified by state and federal law. Let’s try that for a change.

  • eagleproducer on May 26 at 2:10 p.m.

    Hawken: Who was the last president to grant amnesty to illegal aliens and to what party did he drool for, errrrrrrrrrr, represent?

  • greyhound2 on May 26 at 2:15 p.m.

    The Feds did not failed because they didn’t have the laws, they failed because they did not fund enforcement of their own laws already on the books. That left the States to protect themselves from illegals sneeking across the border to drain the county welfare systems dry, who then claim they are “victims” when caught of a “broken system” and that their apprehendors are “racist” because 60% (according to a Pew report) are from Mexico.

  • Dazzeetrader11 on May 26 at 2:32 p.m.

    Ahem. When government sues the states, it’s overreach. Afterall, these “invaders” are not american citizens. it’s illegal. Arizona has had huge progerty loss with murders that go along with borders and sovereignty loss.

    I never understood how incompetent Obama is until he sued AZ. Mighty good move. I’m glad AZ won one. States rights are important no matter the brainwashing attempts by the government to give the fed all powers. Congrats to Jan Brewer and the citizens of AZ!!

    Lee…they are treated justly. They belong in Mex…not in the US without going through the channels of normal immigrants. Till then, they’re invaders and criminals.

  • SpokaneLiberal on May 26 at 4:06 p.m.

    This law probably was constitutional it was carefully crafted to be such (unlike the other newer immigration law known as if your brown show me your papers) - but now employers are in a bind. If they hire someone who turns out to be illegal the will lose their business license but they will go bankrupt if they discriminate.

    If you want to undermine illegal immigration - go after the employers not the immigrants. Without the opportunity illegal employers provide the incentive to stay is greatly reduced. Put another way - this cuts demand. As long as there is demand there will be supply. Without demand then supplies will dwindle.

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