High court sustains Arizona

employer sanctions law

High court sustains Arizona employer sanctions law

• Mark Sherman, The Associated Press Arizona Daily Star | Posted:

Thursday, May 26, 2011 7:46 am

The Supreme Court has sustained Arizona's law that penalizes businesses for
hiring workers who are in the United States illegally, rejecting arguments that
states have no role in immigration matters.

By a 5-3 vote, the court said Thursday that federal immigration law gives states
the authority to impose sanctions on employers who hire unauthorized workers.

The decision upholding the validity of the 2007 law comes as the state is
appealing a ruling that blocked key components of a second, more controversial
Arizona immigration enforcement law. Thursday's decision applies only to
business licenses and does not signal how the high court might rule if the other
law comes before it.

Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for a majority made up of Republican-

appointed justices, said the Arizona's employer sanctions law "falls well within
the confines of the authority Congress chose to leave to the states."

Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor, all
Democratic appointees, dissented. The fourth Democratic appointee, Justice
Elena Kagan, did not participate in the case because she worked on it while
serving as President Barack Obama's solicitor general

Breyer said the Arizona law upsets a balance in federal law between dissuading
employers from hiring illegal workers and ensuring that people are not
discriminated against because they may speak with an accent or look like they
might be immigrants.

Employers "will hesitate to hire those they fear will turn out to lack the right to
work in the United States," he said.

.Business interests and civil liberties groups challenged the law, backed by the
Obama administration.

The measure was signed into law in 2007 by Democrat Janet Napolitano, then
the governor of Arizona and now the administration's Homeland Security
secretary.
The employer sanctions law has been only infrequently used. It was intended to
diminish Arizona's role as the nation's hub for immigrant smuggling by requiring
employers to verify the eligibility of new workers through a federal database.
Employers found to have violated the law can have their business licenses
suspended or revoked.

Lower courts, including the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals, previously upheld the law.

The case is Chamber of Commerce v. Whiting, 09-115.

WARDEN THE NOTORIOUS MEXICAN FLAG BURNER

Just Now
This must be extremely distressing to the editors of the Arizona Daily Star and
the rest of the left wing, "Pro-Raza" crowd, as well as the right-wing, rich, fat-cat
republicans, who, for the past 20 years, aided and abetted, enticed and invited,
and otherwise facilitated the entry of millions of Mexican Illegals to create an
ever expanding cheap labor force to exploit.

I've been arrested 13 times for speaking out on this issue, ever since the Riot in
Armory Park on April 10, 2006 when 15 of us marched into Armory Park to
confront Isabel Garcia and 15,000 other screaming Pro Raza Radicals, and
students enrolled in the TUSD Raza Studies Program, who demanded Open
Borders and Amnesty.

Now, let's see if the Arizona Daily Star has the intellectual honesty to publish this
comment.

Roy Warden
roywarden@hotmail.com