Andrea Nill reports that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has agreed with the district court that Arizona's infamous anti-immigration bill is illegal. The key issue is "preemption": Because of the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, conflicts between federal and state law are resolved in favor of the former, and the 9th Circuit ruled that the Arizona law impermissibly conflicts with federal powers to regulate immigration.
The question now is whether this opinion -- from a circuit often at odds with the Supreme Court -- will be upheld by the Supreme Court if it decides to take the case. Preemption is tricky -- the Supreme Court's decisions have been erratic (although many of those cases involve conflicts between conservative business interests and conservative positions on federalism, whereas on this case, Arizona's position is consistent with conservative ideology). Of the two judges who held the law entirely unconstitutional, one is a Clinton appointee and the other is a conservative Republican who is a dissenter from Republican orthodoxy on federal powers. It's hard to know what to expect, but it's certainly very possible that this won't be the last word on the legality of the Arizona law.
