Florida asks Supreme Court to revive state's immigration crackdown law

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier has asked the Supreme Court to resuscitate the state’s new immigration law after it was rejected by lower courts as an unconstitutional intrusion on federal powers.

The law creates state-level crimes for illegal immigrants entering Florida.

A district court ruled that it went too far, and a federal appeals court has largely agreed, leaving the law on hold. Mr. Uthmeier asked the justices to stay those rulings or at least narrow them so the law can take effect, to some extent, while the legal battle continues.

He said Florida is acting within tradition in trying to control illegal immigration.

“If a state’s police powers are powers at all, they allow a state to criminalize harms destructive to the community. That is why states routinely regulated the movement of illegal aliens before, during, and after the founding,” he said in a petition to the justices dated last week but published Monday.

The law is one of a host of attempts by GOP-led states to adopt their own immigration restrictions.

Their motivation is to back up the federal government when it is trying to enforce the law, and to stand in the gap when, as with the Biden administration, its approach is more relaxed.

The state laws are running up against a 2012 Supreme Court decision in Arizona v. U.S., where that state’s attempt to criminalize illegal immigration was struck down as conflicting with the federal government’s power to control immigration.

The justices have allowed other state controls, such as checking the legal status of those encountered during police stops or requiring businesses to verify their new hires’ legal status, to take effect.

Florida’s new case has already produced some fireworks.

When U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams, an Obama appointee, struck down the law, she issued a broad ruling applying her blockade to local law enforcement officers who weren’t defendants in the case.

Mr. Uthmeier said her decision went too far and suggested local officers didn’t need to comply.

Judge Williams last week held Mr. Uthmeier in contempt of court.