Temple University law professor (and CIS Fellow) Jan Ting analyzes the Supreme Court's decision to hear Arizona v. United States and predicts that S.B. 1070 will be upheld as constitutional in
Arizona law will be upheld
The U.S. Supreme Court did not have to commit itself, as it did Monday, to deciding the constitutionality of Arizona's anti-illegal immigration statute, Senate Bill 1070. The justices could have allowed the lower federal courts, which have temporarily enjoined enforcement of portions of the law at the request of the Obama administration, to proceed with a trial on the statute's constitutional merits. Or they could have waited until lower courts ruled on challenges to similar statutes in Alabama, South Carolina, Oklahoma, and Georgia.The Obama administration had urged the Supreme Court to hold off weighing Arizona's defense of its law even as the administration proceeds with challenges against similar laws of other states. But the Supreme Court refused. It agreed to resolve the ongoing dispute over state and local enforcement of federal immigration laws, and to do so promptly, in the midst of a presidential election campaign.
