Bloomberg View: The Supreme Court Gets It Right on Immigration

“Immigration shapes the destiny of the Nation,” wrote Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy in his majority opinion deciding the fate of Arizona’s controversial immigration law. Based on the court’s ruling, that destiny will continue to be shaped in Washington rather than in the 50 state capitals.

Citing “the federal government’s broad, undoubted power over immigration and alien status,” the court affirmed most of a lower court’s ruling that federal immigration law trumps state laws such as Arizona’s. The state’s requirement that immigrants produce identification papers at the request of authorities was struck down. So was the imposition of criminal penalties on illegal immigrants who obtain employment (federal law imposes penalties on employers, not employees). Finally, the law authorized state law enforcement officers to arrest, without a warrant, anyone they had “probable cause” to believe was removable under immigration law. This last provision, Kennedy wrote, “is not the system Congress created.”