Arizona Law

The U.S. Supreme Court did not have to commit itself, as it did Monday, to deciding the constitutionality of Arizona's anti-illegal immigration statute, Senate Bill 1070. The justices could have allowed the lower federal courts, which have temporarily enjoined enforcement of portions of the law at the request of the Obama administration, to proceed with a trial on the statute's constitutional merits. Or they could have waited until lower courts ruled on challenges to similar statutes in Alabama, South Carolina, Oklahoma, and Georgia.

For decades, the seven green acres of Elmwood Park were a staging ground for labor rallies by workers at Westinghouse, General Electric, and the Hog Island Shipyard. On Saturday, at a celebration and demonstration to mark International Workers' Day, labor officials and community leaders honored that history - and demanded better treatment and greater employment for American workers. About 100 people gathered at the Southwest Philadelphia park, sweating under an Arizona-strength sun and fuming about the new Arizona immigration law. That law requires police to question people about their immigration status if there is reason to suspect they might be in the country illegally - a measure critics say will lead to abuses.

Jaime Gutierrez was an Arizona state senator when a woman who lived in his district asked him for help in the only language she knew. "Tengo una problema. (I have a problem.)," she said. "El estado no me quiere dar una acta de nacimiento. (The government doesn't want to give me a birth certificate.) Lo necesito para el seguro social. (I need it for Social Security.) No naci en una hospital. (I wasn't born in a hospital.)" Gutierrez, 47, who is bilingual, said he responded in Spanish and was able to help his constituent.

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration acknowledged for the first time yesterday that four American citizens have been killed in drone strikes since 2009 in Pakistan and Yemen. The disclosure to Congress comes on the eve of a major national-security speech by President Obama. In conducting U.S. counterterrorism operations against al Qaeda and its associated forces, the government has targeted and killed one American citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, and is aware of the killing by U.S. drones of three others, Attorney General Eric Holder said in a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court yesterday stepped into the fight over a tough Arizona law that requires local police to help enforce federal immigration laws - pushing the court deeper into hot, partisan issues of the 2012 election campaign. The court's election-year docket now contains three politically charged disputes, including President Obama's health-care overhaul and Texas redistricting. The debate over immigration already is shaping presidential politics, and now the court is undertaking a review of an Arizona law that has spawned a host of copycat state laws targeting illegal immigrants.

ATLANTA - After the U.S. Supreme Court this week agreed to rule on Arizona's law targeting illegal immigrants, some states with similar statutes asked Thursday for delayed legal action on their laws pending the high court's decision. The court will review a federal appeals ruling that blocked parts of the Arizona law, which the Obama administration challenged. Similar laws in Alabama, South Carolina, and Utah also face suits by both the U.S. government and activist groups. Civil liberties and immigrant rights groups sued over laws adopted in Georgia and Indiana.

By Steve Hallock Arizona's racist and probably unconstitutional anti-immigration law has admirers in Pennsylvania. With bipartisan backing from State Reps. Daryl Metcalfe (R., Butler), Harry Readshaw (D., Allegheny), and others, House Bill 2479 would ape Arizona's controversial immigration law by empowering local and state police officers to arrest those who can't show that they're in the country legally. The bill would direct officers "to attempt to verify the immigration status of suspected illegal aliens.

MONDAY'S U.S. Supreme Court decision on Arizona's controversial immigration law would affect about half of the anti-illegal-immigrant bills pending before the Pennsylvania Legislature, says one close observer.   "Half could be a big problem if they were to pass," said Nadia Hewka, an attorney at Community Legal Services of Philadelphia and chairwoman of the board of the Pennsylvania Immigration and Citizenship Coalition. The bills would likely be challenged, then struck down, she said.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court's conservative justices signaled during oral arguments Monday that they would vote to strike down another campaign-funding law and make clear that states and cities may not try to "level the playing field" between candidates for public office. The justices objected to part of an Arizona law that provides public funds to candidates for state office if they agree to forgo private fund-raising. The disputed provision gives extra "matching funds" to candidates who face a well-funded and free-spending opponent.

ILLEGAL immigration was one of several complicated issues that the president and Congress weren't dealing with until the noxious Arizona immigration law ignited a passionate national debate. Now we still aren't dealing with the ramifications of illegal immigration - but at high volume, with poisonous rhretoric, demagoguery - and that old stand-by, political opportunism. A federal judge blocked the worst parts of the Arizona law from taking effect last week, at least temporarily.

PHOENIX - The judge in the Jodi Arias murder trial declared a mistrial in the penalty phase Thursday after the jury reported for a second time that it was deadlocked on whether to sentence her to life in prison or death for killing her boyfriend in 2008. The judge scheduled a retrial for July 18. A new panel likely will be seated to try again to reach a decision on a sentence - unless the prosecutor agrees to a life sentence. The jurors began deliberating Tuesday and first reported they had failed agree the next day. The judge instructed them to keep trying.

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration acknowledged for the first time yesterday that four American citizens have been killed in drone strikes since 2009 in Pakistan and Yemen. The disclosure to Congress comes on the eve of a major national-security speech by President Obama. In conducting U.S. counterterrorism operations against al Qaeda and its associated forces, the government has targeted and killed one American citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, and is aware of the killing by U.S. drones of three others, Attorney General Eric Holder said in a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court will struggle this week with the validity of an Arizona law that tries to keep illegal immigrants from voting by demanding all state residents show documents proving their U.S. citizenship before registering to vote in national elections. The high court will hear arguments Monday over the legality of Arizona's voter-approved requirement that prospective voters document their U.S. citizenship in order to use a registration form produced under the federal "Motor Voter" voter registration law that doesn't require such documentation.

PHOENIX - Arizona's ban on abortions starting at 20 weeks of pregnancy will take effect this week as scheduled after a federal judge ruled Monday that the new law is constitutional. U.S. District Judge James Teilborg said the statute may prompt a few pregnant women who are considering abortion to make the decision earlier. But he said the law is constitutional because it does not prohibit women from making the decision to end their pregnancies. He also wrote that the state had provided "substantial and well-documented" evidence that a fetus has the capacity to feel pain during an abortion by at least 20 weeks.

PHOENIX - Opponents of Arizona's hard-line immigration enforcement law launched a new effort Tuesday aimed at thwarting a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that will allow police to enforce the so-called "show me your papers" provision. A coalition of civil rights groups, religious leaders, and business organizations filed a new request seeking a court order that would prevent authorities from enforcing a rule that requires police to check the immigration status of people they stop for other reasons.

Though overshadowed by the shocking decision on health care, the Supreme Court's immigration decision issued three days earlier remains far more significant than appreciated. It was generally viewed as mixed because the Justice Department succeeded in striking down three of the law's provisions. However, on the law's central and most controversial element — requiring officers to inquire into the immigration status of anyone picked up for some other violation — the ruling was definitive and unanimous.

Posting themselves between Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell, a couple dozen demonstrators from civil rights and immigrant-aid groups took aim Wednesday at the only part of Arizona's immigration law that the U.S. Supreme Court did not overturn Monday. Their target was the provision known as "show me your papers," requiring police to verify the immigration status of anyone they detain for any offense. The practical result will be racial profiling, warned speakers from the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, the NAACP, the New Sanctuary Movement, and the Latino community support group Juntos.

Welcome turkeys to New Jersey I really don't see a problem with the wild turkeys in parts of New Jersey ("Hainesport fights a wild-turkey invasion," Monday). I see it as a win-win situation: You can provide good recreational sport bow hunting for qualified residents, while at the same time providing a nutritious way of filling area food banks. Where's the downside?   Alan Bronstein, Elkins Park     Misleading charter-school report There are some worthy recommendations in the report by Auditor General Jack Wagner on charter schools, but the headline finding — that Pennsylvania charter schools spend more than the national average — is grossly misleading ("Studying the funding of charters," June 15)

WASHINGTON - Pressing his immigration agenda, President Obama said he is pleased the Supreme Court struck down key parts of Arizona's immigration law Monday but voiced concern about what the high court left intact. His likely Republican rival for the presidency, Mitt Romney, said states have a duty and a right to secure their borders even as he initially declined to address the merits of the decision. The court allowed a provision requiring police to check the immigration status of someone they stop for another reason and who they suspect is in the country illegally.

The immigration-reform debate has hardly been as fiery in this region as elsewhere in the nation, but even here, the U.S. Supreme Court's complex decision Monday in Arizona v. United States brought a rush of divergent opinion on the ruling's impact. The justices rejected most of Arizona's tough 2010 border-control law but affirmed the "papers, please" provision, which empowers police to investigate the residency status of anyone they stop or arrest and suspect of being undocumented.