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Title: Supreme Court sustains Ariz. employer sanctions law
Source:
USA TODAY
URL Source: http://www.usatoday.com/news/washin ... ourt-arizona-immigration_n.htm
Published: May 26, 2011
Author: staff
Post Date: 2011-05-26 13:19:05 by buckeroo
Keywords: None
Views: 2733
Comments: 5
By a 5-3 vote, the court rejected arguments from a coalition of business and civil rights groups, including the Chamber of Commerce and ACLU, that the Arizona law conflicts with overriding federal immigration policy and could lead to race discrimination. Arizona has taken the lead among the states to crackdown on illegal immigration. A separate law in that border state requires police to investigate the status of anyone an arresting officer suspects may be here illegally. That measure has been challenged in lawsuits, including from the Obama administration, that are still pending in lower courts. A key question in challenges to state efforts is whether they are trampling on the domain of the federal government. Congress generally has authority over immigration and for decades has established comprehensive schemes for the admission and treatment of foreigners. In Thursday's case, Chief Justice John Roberts said the 2007 Arizona law penalizing companies that hire illegal immigrants meets a "licensing" exception to the general federal rule dictating that states not set their own civil or criminal penalties in the immigration area. Roberts stressed that the Arizona law covers only "knowing or intentional violations" of the federal prohibition on hiring illegal workers and that the licensing sanction is triggered only after the second violation. "These limits ensure that licensing sanctions are imposed only when an employer's conduct fully justifies them," he said. "An employer acting in good faith need have no fear of the sanctions." The court in Chamber of Commerce v. Whiting also upheld an Arizona provision requiring all employers in the state to use a federal electronic verification system to confirm that workers are authorized to take jobs. The federal government makes that E-verify system voluntary, and challengers said the records are incomplete and prone to error. Roberts was joined by Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Samuel Alito and, for most of his opinion, Clarence Thomas. Dissenting were Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor. The court's ninth justice, Elena Kagan, who previously was U.S. solicitor general, did not participate. The U.S. government had sided with the challengers, saying the state's law was not truly a "licensing" provision because it did not involve the granting of licenses, only the revocation. Federal immigration provisions specifically "preempt any state of local law imposing civil or criminal sanctions (other than through licensing and similar laws) upon those who employ" illegal immigrants. During oral arguments in the case last December, Acting U.S. Solicitor General Neal Katyal had told the justices, "Nearly a quarter of a century ago, Congress declared federal employer sanctions central, not peripheral, to the policy of immigration law. Congress broadly swept away state and local laws, preempting any sanction upon those who employ unauthorized aliens." In his opinion for the court, Chief Justice Roberts noted that several other states have followed Arizona with laws attempting to impose sanctions for the hiring of illegal workers, including Colorado, Mississippi and Pennsylvania. Dissenting justices said the federal system was intended to prevent such a patchwork of state laws. Justice Breyer, in a dissenting opinion signed also by Justice Ginsburg, noted that licensing sanctions could lead employers to decline to hire foreign-looking or foreign-sounding people to avoid state scrutiny. Overall, he wrote, state penalties "might prove more effective in stopping the hiring of unauthorized aliens. But they are unlikely to do so consistent with Congress' other critically important goals, in particular, Congress' efforts to protect from discrimination legal workers who look or sound foreign."WASHINGTON —The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld an Arizona law that revokes the business licenses of companies hiring illegal immigrants, in a closely watched case testing state efforts to stop people from crossing the border.
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#1. To: A K A Stone (#0)
(Edited)
The AZ law violates the right to hire whomever you want to hire, right Stone?
America...My Kind Of Place... "I truly am not that concerned about [bin Laden]..." If someone is in the country illegally you shouldn't hire them.
Will McCain hire the pinchy gringos to pick his lettuce, or is he too racist?
Obama's watch stopped on 24 May 2008, but he's been too busy smoking crack to notice.
I either have the right to hire whomever I want to hire or I don't. Which is it?
America...My Kind Of Place... "I truly am not that concerned about [bin Laden]..." I don't know. But I do know, Sarah Palin is buying a home in Arizona. You might be able to ask her, why she is moving closer to the border.
The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld an Arizona law that revokes the business licenses of companies hiring illegal immigrants, in a closely watched case testing state efforts to stop people from crossing the border.
--GW Bush
#2. To: war (#1)
The AZ law violates the right to hire whomever you want to hire, right Stone?
#3. To: buckeroo (#0)
"We (government) need to do a lot less, a lot sooner" ~Ron Paul
#4. To: A K A Stone (#2)
If someone is in the country illegally you shouldn't hire them.
--GW Bush
#5. To: hondo68 (#3)
Will McCain hire the pinchy gringos to pick his lettuce, or is he too racist?
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