Professor Rick Su : With the successful recall of S.B. 1070’s sponsor in the state legislature and waning support for the law in Arizona, there is a good chance it will be legislatively repealed or administratively deprioritized even if the injunction is eventually lifted

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Certiorari not yet granted for this case. On December 9, the Supreme Court Justices will consider the Arizona petition during their private Conference. As soon as December 12 it will be announced whether the Court will hear the case.

The Political Events and Elections may influence the Final Outcome.




Scotus Blog
Arizona v. United States: S.B. 1070
Forum of Kali Borkoski
December 2, 2011


Arizona v. United States: S.B. 1070 - Forum of Kali Borkoski


Some excerpts :

On the other hand, while critics of S.B. 1070 have predictably stressed the uniquely federal nature of immigration as a policy issue, they have also sought to undermine the allure of state rights from within. Indeed, opponents of S.B. 1070 have not been shy about highlighting the internal conflicts over the law inside of Arizona itself. In its initial complaint, the Department of Justice took great care to supplement the filing with affidavits from several local officials in Arizona that were critical of S.B. 1070. Since then, lawsuits and amicus briefs filed on behalf of several of Arizona’s largest cities in support of the federal government against Arizona have furthered emphasized that S.B. 1070 does not reflect a monolithic local sentiment, and that striking it down will free them from the law’s unfunded mandates. The appeal of this reframing is not necessarily as a legal challenge against state sovereignty; rather it seeks to undermine the moral standing of Arizona as a victim of federal intervention into local affairs. To be sure, the design of S.B. 1070 seems to have contributed much this unique federal-local alliance against the state; while Arizona takes credit for taking a strong stance on enforcement, S.B. 1070 pushes nearly all of the front-end screening costs down to local governments, and the back-end detention and removal costs up to the federal government.

Giving that the Supreme Court has yet agreed to hear the case against S.B. 1070, it may be too early to predict how the individual Justices will react to these competing efforts to move the conflict beyond the familiar federal power versus state rights framework. Ironically, given that they pull in opposite directions, the net effect may be in fact to steer the analysis towards a straight textual analysis of the INA after all. In any case, regardless of how (or if) the Court rule on S.B. 1070, these framing arguments will likely continue to have powerful influences in the court of public opinion. With the successful recall of S.B. 1070’s sponsor in the state legislature and waning support for the law in Arizona, there is a good chance it will be legislatively repealed or administratively deprioritized even if the injunction is eventually lifted. At the same time, sensational state efforts to regulate immigration in the past nearly all leave their most lasting marks, if any, on the political negotiations over future federal legislation. As such, irrespective of what happens to S.B. 1070 in court, its legacy will ultimately be decided not in the Supreme Court, but rather the next round of immigration reforms.

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