Scalia: AZ Decision Deprives Sovereign States From Excluding ‘People Who Have No Right to Be There’

In his dissenting opinion on the constitutionality of Arizona’s anti-illegal immigration law (SB 1070), Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia decried the court’s 5-3 ruling, arguing that it effectively took away a sovereign state’s authority to exclude people who have no right to be in that state. The court struck down three of four provisions of the law.

“Today’s opinion, approving virtually all of the Ninth Circuit’s injunction against enforcement of the four challenged provisions of Arizona’s law, deprives states of what most would consider the defining characteristic of sovereignty: the power to exclude from the sovereign’s territory people who have no right to be there,” Scalia said in his opinion, backed by Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas.

“Neither the Constitution itself nor even any law passed by Congress supports this result,” Scalia said. “I dissent.”

 More