The Supreme Court declined to hear a case pertaining to a 2011 law passed in Alabama regarding immigration. The law makes it a crime to harbor or transport immigrants not authorized to be in the United States. By refusing to hear the case the Supreme Court leaves in place a ruling by an appeals court blocking the law.
No explanation was given by the Supreme Court as to why they decided to refuse the case. Justice Antonin Scalia admitted his dissent but gave no further explanation according to The New York Times.
The ruling is a victory for the Obama administration who opposed the strict law based on the belief that Federal immigration law superseded the Alabama state law. In 2012 an appeals court agreed and blocked the law from taking effect.
The ruling by the appeals court stated that federal law "comprehensively addresses criminal penalties for these actions undertaken within the borders of the United States, and a state's attempt to intrude into this area is prohibited because Congress has adopted a calibrated framework."
In addition to making it illegal to harbor immigrants the Alabama law, one of the strictest in the country, made it a crime to encourage people to stay in the country illegally.
The Supreme Court has recently been involved in another case related to how states address illegal immigration. That case involves a 2010 law passed in Arizona. The court upheld the controversial law that requires police to determine the immigration status of anyone they arrest or stop. In the same decision the court struck down a provision in the Arizona law that made it a crime for illegal immigrants to seek work.
"The national government has significant power to regulate immigration," Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote in the decision. "The sound exercise of national power over immigration depends on the nation's meeting its responsibility to base its laws on a political will informed by searching, thoughtful, rational civic discourse."
U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli supported the Supreme Court's decision to not hear the case. Verrilli believes that laws such as the one in Alabama are completely unnecessary.
"Because Congress has occupied this entire field, even complimentary state regulation is impermissible," Verrilli wrote. He would go on to say that the Alabama statute "stands as an obstacle to the operation of federal law."
