On April 21, 2014 the Supreme Court declined to hear a case involving the provision of SB1070, that prohibits harboring illegal immigrants. The decision upholds a lower court ruling against the prohibition.
That ruling was made by U.S. District Court Judge Susan Bolton who found the provision was vague and trumped by federal law.
The Supreme Court had previously ruled on parts of the law. In 2012, the Supreme Court upheld the portion of the Arizona law that allowed law enforcement to check the immigration status of detained individuals.
In that decision, the Court did not address the harboring prohibition. The harboring prohibition makes it illegal to knowingly transport or harbor an undocumented immigrant within the state.
According to thehill.com, ACLU attorneys argued that the law would have made it a crime to give relatives a ride if they were in the country illegally or for landlords to rent out a home to them. According to an article by Capitol Media Services, the attorney for Governor Jan Brewer argued “that there is nothing improper about the state having its own laws aimed at controlling immigration.”
However, in their 2012 ruling the Supreme Court justices found that federal law preempted the state law in those provisions.
Governor Brewer signed the immigration law in 2010, after polls showed that the law was very popular with Arizona voters and voters across the country. Her move secured her win in the Republican Primary.