Florida AG asks Supreme Court to pave way for new immigration law
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier (R) asked the Supreme Court on Monday to allow the state to enforce its new immigration law as an appeal plays out in a lower court.
The new law, S.B. 4-C, makes it a state crime for people to enter Florida after arriving in the U.S. illegally and evading immigration authorities.
"Illegal immigration continues to wreak havoc in the State while that law cannot be enforced," Uthmeier's office wrote in the application.
"And without this Court’s intervention, Florida and its citizens will remain disabled from combatting the serious harms of illegal immigration for years as this litigation proceeds through the lower courts," it continued.
Two anonymous people living in Florida illegally, the Florida Immigrant Coalition, and the Farmworker Association of Florida, sued over the law.
U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams, an appointee of former President Obama, blocked police from enforcing it indefinitely, agreeing the statute is likely preempted by federal immigration law and unconstitutional.
Florida’s efforts at the Supreme Court come after a three-judge panel on the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined to lift the block as the state’s appeal moves forward.
The state argues its law is tailored to avoid any conflict with federal immigration authorities.
“Nothing in SB 4-C poses a conflict with federal law. Just the opposite, Florida’s law scrupulously tracks federal law. SB 4-C similarly does not violate the Dormant Commerce Clause, since it is un-related to economic protectionism,” Uthmeier’s office wrote in court filings.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which represents the plaintiffs, declined to comment.
Last year, the Supreme Court allowed a Texas law to take effect that makes it a state crime to illegally cross the Mexican border into the state, refusing the Biden administration's request for an emergency order blocking it on preemption grounds.
Florida’s request adds to what is already a jam-packed emergency docket at the Supreme Court.
The justices are mulling six pending emergency applications from the Trump administration. Three ask to partially enforce the president’s birthright citizenship executive order, while the others deal with his deportation policies and efforts to reshape various federal departments.
Two death row inmates set to be executed in Florida and Mississippi this week have also asked the court for emergency interventions.