Attorneys general from Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, West Virginia and Texas joined Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt in telling a federal district court in the Eastern District of California that states do not have authority to impede enforcement of federal immigration law.
In a case arising from California, Schmidt and state attorneys general and two governors filed a friend-of-the-court brief yesterday in support of the U.S. Department of Justice’s motion for a preliminary injunction. The DOJ argues that three California laws designed to interfere with or block federal immigration enforcement are preempted by federal immigration law.
The California case centers on whether three laws passed by the California Legislature that codify its sanctuary policies are permitted under the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The laws in question prohibit private employers from voluntarily giving information to federal immigration officers, establish state oversight of the immigration enforcement activities of federal agents, and limit the scenarios in which state or local law-enforcement agencies may transfer a detained individual to the custody of federal immigration authorities.
The states noted that although they generally oppose federal preemption of state laws, in this case the U.S. Supreme Court, in Arizona v. United States, already has determined that federal immigration law preempts state authority to enforce restrictions on illegal immigration.
“California may disagree with federal immigration policy – just as Arizona disagreed with federal immigration policy in Arizona v. United States,” the states wrote. “But if various Arizona laws designed to enforce federal immigration law were preempted in Arizona (as the Supreme Court held), then California’s laws designed to interfere with or block federal immigration enforcement are equally preempted.”