First Hispanic Supreme Court justice takes prominent role

Bucking the Obama administration, Supreme Court justices seemed to find little trouble Wednesday with major parts of Arizona's tough immigration law that require police to check the legal status of people they stop for other reasons.


But the fate of other provisions that make Arizona state crimes out of immigration violations was unclear in the court's final argument of the term.


The latest clash between states and the administration turns on the extent of individual states' roles in dealing with the nation's 11 million illegal immigrants. Immigration policy is essentially under the federal government's control, but a half-dozen Republican-dominated states have passed their own restrictions out of frustration with what they call Washington's inaction to combat an illegal flood.


At the heart of the Arizona dispute is a test of state authority to enforce federal immigration law. It arises against an emotionally charged backdrop of concern for racial profiling and border protection.

Hispanic advocacy groups, including the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, have protested the Arizona law since it was signed by Republican Governor Jan Brewer in April 2010. Many of the country's estimated 11.5 million illegal immigrants are from Latin America.


Critics of the Arizona law say even people in the United States legally could be targeted because of their skin color and national origin.


Sotomayor played a prominent role in the 80-minute hearing on Arizona's appeal of a lower court decision favoring the U.S. government stance that it has sole authority to regulate immigration.


She was first in with questions to Washington lawyer Paul Clement, who was defending the Arizona law, which among other provisions requires police to check the immigration status of people stopped for other offenses and detain those who lack proper documents.


She expressed concern that people might end up in jail for long periods while officers try to determine their status.


Lucas Guttentag, the former director of the American Civil Liberties Union's immigration rights project who now teaches law at Stanford and Yale, was in the courtroom and later observed that Sotomayor homed in on "practical consequences, in light of her understanding of the reality of these kinds of laws."


For his part, Clement brushed off concerns about problems in federal databases that might prevent local officials from quickly knowing the immigration status of someone stopped.


"If there is some sloppiness in the way the federal government keeps its records so that there's lots of people that really should be registered but aren't, I can't imagine that sloppiness has a preemptive effect" that would prevent a state from adopting its own laws to stop illegal immigration.


Sotomayor, President Barack Obama's first appointee to the Supreme Court, was not without criticism for parts of his administration's position and at one point observed that Verrilli's arguments were "not selling very well."