ARIZONA: Federal Appeals Court Blocks Gov. Jan Brewer's Anti-Immigrant Law

Today the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court's ruling that Arizona does not have the right to create its own laws on immigration.

The original law was enacted in April 2010 after Arizona officials argued that they needed their own immigration law to deal with the growing problem of unauthorized immigration from across the Mexican border. In general, the law establishes a variety of immigration-related actions as state offenses and defines what local and state officials can do to enforce the new law. The law immediately sparked boycotts and protests across the nation as immigration activists argued that Arizona was trying to usurp a federal prerogative to define immigration rules and had proposed unconstitutional actions, including profiling. The law also required police to check immigration status when enforcing other laws. The Obama administration's Justice Department sued to block the law from going into effect. It argued that the federal government had the responsibility for immigration law.

Among the now-banned policies put forth by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer was an instruction to the police that they were to stop and demand the papers of anybody they "reasonably suspected" of being in the country illegally.