Supreme Court Upholds Key Part of Arizona Law
The Supreme Court upheld a key part of Arizona's tough-immigration law but struck down others as intrusions on federal sovereignty, ...
The court backed a section of the Arizona state law that calls for police to check the immigration status of people they stop...
That section was one of four at issue before the high court. The others make it a crime for immigrants without work permits to seek employment, make it a crime for immigrants to fail to carry registration documents, and authorize the police to arrest any immigrant they believe has committed a deportable offense. Those other three provisions were struck down.
Five justices were in the majority choosing to strike down the three provisions. Two dissenting justices—Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas—argued that the whole law should have been upheld, while a third dissenter, Justice Samuel Alito, would have upheld three provisions and struck down one...
Arizona's illegal-immigration measure, officially titled the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act and known as SB 1070, reflected outrage among tea-party conservatives over what they considered lax enforcement by federal immigration authorities...
The debate comes as Hispanics continue to grow as a share of the electorate, particularly in battleground states such as Nevada, Colorado and Florida.
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Read the full Supreme Court Opinion: Arizona Et Al.. v. United States