Supreme Court hearing Arizona immigration law case
The controversial Arizona law which installed strict immigration laws has been criticized by supporters on the left and the White House as being too prejudiced towards Hispanics and will lead to profiling.
Yesterday the Supreme Court began hearing the case.
From the Washington Post:
The Supreme Court on Wednesday sharply questioned the Obama administration’s view of the limited roles states may play in enforcing immigration laws and seemed receptive to a central part of Arizona’s controversial crackdown on illegal immigrants.
Justices on both sides of the court’s ideological divide expressed skepticism that Arizona’s requirement that police check the immigration status of people they arrest or detain is an impermissible intrusion on Congress’s power to set immigration policy or the executive branch’s ability to implement it.
Conservatives are arguing that this is a State’s Rights’ case and cautions the Supreme Court against changing years and years of precedent.
“You can see it’s not selling very well,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a member of the court’s liberal wing and its first Hispanic justice, told Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr., referring to a central part of his argument against the measure.
Verrilli, representing the federal government, had urged the court to strike down a provision requiring state law enforcement officials to determine the immigration status of people they stop and suspect are not lawfully present in the United States.
