The Supreme Court upheld one part of the Arizona immigration law but struck down other sections.
The part of the law the justices upheld requires police officers stopping someone to make efforts to verify the person’s immigration status with the Federal Government.
The justices struck down three other parts of the law:
*One making it a crime for an illegal immigrant to work or to seek work in Arizona;
*One which authorized state and local officers to arrest people without a warrant if the officers have probable cause to believe a person is an illegal immigrant;
*And one that made it a state requirement for immigrants to register with the federal government.
The decision was a partial victory for President Obama who had criticized the Arizona law, saying it “threatened to undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans.”
The Justice Department had moved quickly in 2010 to block enforcement of the law. The administration had argued that the Constitution vests exclusive authority over immigration matters with the federal government, not the states, and that where the federal government has pre-empted state action, no state can intrude on that federal turf.
Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor.
Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito concurred in part and dissented in part.
Justice Elena Kagan, who served as President Barack Obama’s solicitor general, had recused herself from the Arizona case.
The high court’s decision comes just days after Obama announced a new administration policy of not deporting illegal immigrants under age 30 who came to the United States, or were brought to the United States before reaching age 16, who are in school, or have graduated from high school, gotten a general education certificate, or are military veterans.
The illegal immigrants covered by the new administration policy will be permitted to apply for authorization to work legally in the United States.
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