The nation's high court will decide three -- and likely four -- Arizona disputes in its new session.
Two hearings already are scheduled for next month, one involving a spat between the Tohono O'odham Nation and the U.S. government, the other to decide the legality of state tax credits to help children attend private and parochial schools.
In December the justices will review a 3-year-old law which allows state judges to decide if Arizona firms have knowingly hired undocumented workers and, if so, to suspend their licenses or put them out of business.
And the court has all but decided to review the matching funds provision of the state's public financing of elections law. They already have indicated they have a problem with a federal appeals court ruling declaring the funding legal: The justices banned distributing matching funds for the current election, changing the rules in the middle of the campaign.
Potentially the most controversial -- and the most significant -- is the challenge of what has become known as the employer sanctions law.
The measure is Arizona's attempt to dry up the supply of jobs as a way of deterring illegal immigration.
But the Immigration Reform and Control Act, approved by Congress in 1986, precludes states and cities from imposing any civil or criminal penalties on companies for hiring illegal immigrants. But the same law allows states to have their own "licensing or similar laws.''
The state law, formally known as the Legal Arizona Worker Act seeks to fit that exception by going after all state licenses. Both a trial judge and the 9th Circuit Court of appeals agreed.
Business groups, joined by some civil rights organizations, said that's misreading the law.
Attorney Julie Pace said states can take away licenses. But she said a firm first must be found guilty of knowingly hiring illegal immigrants by a federal court or through a similar process. Pace contends state judges lack legal authority to make that decision.
The newest justice, Elena Kagan, will not participate in this hearing before the Department of Justice filed its own objection to the Arizona law while she was still solicitor general.
If the justices say the employer sanctions law is preempted by federal statutes, that likely means the demise of SB 1070, approved earlier this year, which gives police more power to detain and arrest illegal immigrants. A federal judge already placed key provisions on hold, saying they likely run afoul of federal law.
The tax credit case involves a 1997 law allowing Arizonans to get a dollar-for-dollar offset from what they owe the state in income taxes for money they donate to organizations that provide scholarships for private and parochial schools.
Individuals have been able to divert up to $500 a year, and couples double that. Legislation signed earlier this year by Gov. Jan Brewer will allow that to be adjusted annually for inflation.
In the 2008 tax year, the most recent numbers available, Arizonans diverted more than $55.2 million to scholarship organizations. A separate law that gives similar dollar-for-dollar credits to corporations cost another $10.8 million in revenues.
In a 2002 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld an Ohio law that provided vouchers of taxpayer funds to parents to send their children to any school they want, even parochial schools.
What's different in this case, and what the 9th Circuit found objectionable, is that the organizations that accept the donations and give out the aid can decide where those scholarships can be used. And the largest organizations give scholarship vouchers to parents only if they agree to send a child to a religious school.
Another case Kagan has recused herself from is a dispute between the Tohono O'odham Nation and the federal government.
By law, the government manages the nation's lands and holds income derived from that land in trust. That includes income from the sale of natural resources as well as leases.
The lawsuit contends the United States handled $2.1 billion in transactions for the nation between 1972 and 1992 and "has never fulfilled its duty to provide a true and adequate accounting'' of the trust funds. It also alleges "gross mismanagement'' by the federal government.
But the issue before the high court isn't the merits of the case. It is the question of whether the tribe, which brought a similar action in a different case and in a different court, can pursue this one.
A federal appeals court said the two are sufficiently different, as one seeks an accounting and the other seeks specific monetary damages.
The last Arizona case is one the high court has, at this point, agreed only to consider legal briefs.
A 1998 law allows candidates for statewide and legislative office to obtain public funds if they agree not to solicit private donations. It also provides a dollar-for-dollar match if their privately funded foes spend more.
Challengers, all running with private dollars, said that limits their free-speech rights because it deters them from spending more of their own cash knowing it means more for their publicly financed opponents. They also said donors won't give them money if they know it also helps their foes.
In an order earlier this year the high court upheld a restraining order issued by a federal judge in Phoenix barring the matching funds. But the justices have not formally decided if they will review a federal appeals court decision finding the matching funds constitutional.
Brittanicus posted at 4:51 pm on Sun, Oct 3, 2010.
One of the most costly issues that American taxpayers must decide on in the voting booth is--ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION. The quantity of money spent to educate illegal alien children; the colleges that pander to illegal students, emergency health care treatment (much cannot be classified as an emergency) prison incarceration and then wide scope of state, county and city public entitlements. The dollar amount cannot be even estimated, as the US government as even local authorities keep these figures shadowed and out of the public view. Occasionally figures are released by public minded officials; otherwise there remains no accounting to this fiscal problem? Both parties over two decades are to blame for ignoring this obligation to the taxpayer. In Washington money can be borrowed from China and Japan to keep the wheels of our economy still on the rails; only now running erratically or just keep printing the green stuff.
The majority leadership and their peons are currently overlooking the 15 million unemployed Americans, as they try to change public opinion on giving 12 to 20 million illegal aliens legitimacy. Right now the LiberalCrats have failed to mention of Pew Research Center intelligence, that somewhere around 8.5 illegal workers are advantageously employed. That instituting another Amnesty will give millions of illegal aliens free reign to your Social Security and will only make mass exodus from other countries worse; bringing millions more to our shores and borders. Central in enacting any form of Amnesty is Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) whose own state in is serious economic trouble, from illegal alien welfare benefits and instant citizen of babies birthed by an illegal Mother.
Reid has a unacceptable immigration record as he has said--YES--to Federal funds for Sanctuary Cities, Comprehensive Immigration Reform; Dream Act (a De Facto Amnesty); another Guest Worker program; (previous Guest Worker programs resulted in Amnesty); allowing illegal aliens to participate in our struggling Social Security. All these very negative actions have cost US Taxpayers billions of dollars, which is taken from their paychecks. Reid voted--NO--to making E-Verify mandatory as a business requirement; or limiting welfare to illegal aliens that is another massive cost, estimated to be just the federal level of $113 billion dollars yearly. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) voted faithfully the same to Senator Reid. Then the majority speaker Democrat Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) says that arresting and detaining--ALL--illegal immigrants was Un-American, an administering to the same party line issues as all Liberal-Democrat members.
Both Nevada and California--must enact laws, to stop the free distribution of welfare benefits to nationals that injured the economies of these states; Proposition 187 was the people's vote in California to do exactly that, but was secretly derailed so it couldn't reach the Supreme Court. Sen. Robert Menendez's (D-N.J.) introduction of amnesty legislation, with the Dream Act and Ag bill attached to it suddenly appeared last week. These are all travesties of our immigration laws with some surreptitious agenda. We must remember to vote for any incumbent democrat, means billions of dollars out of your wage packet, to keep illegal aliens in America. Nobody who entered the US illegally, from whatever corner of the world they come from--should be rewarded. The 1986 Immigration law has never been strictly enforced, not by Democrats or Republicans, who have failed to protect the economy and safeguard this country. This illegal immigration is just a paramount problem in border states anymore, but has spread like a pestilence to every community in America; just not large cities today.
Politicians have never built the double fence or even completed it; never made illegal entrance a felony. America should only seek highly skilled workers, not the desperate and poor who always need monetary assistance. It is time to begin the purge of all politicians, Governors, Mayors and elected officials in both parties who are determined to go against the public grain of illegal immigrant removal--which means--ALL--not just criminals. November you are for or against that will save this country from further financial deterioration, but also watch for illegal aliens voting. GOOGLE--keywords such as illegal alien costs, or investigate your senator or congressman's record on the illegal alien enforcement. Remember this Washington switchboard number of 202-224-3121 and confront both party members of their stance, then vote them out of office?
Get more informed at NumbersUSA & Judicial Watch. In conclusion--this smear on Meg Whitman in my book, has been instigated by Union goons, as a favor to Jerry Brown; with policy payback to come? Interesting thought? If E-verify had been in operation permanently in every business in the USA nine years ago, this maid called Nicci would have been detected and she would have been fired. Sen. Harry Reid must accept full blame for that, as he is responsible for weakening E-verify to a voluntary program.