Dean Johnson Comments for International Media on Alabama Immigration Ruling
Dean Kevin R. Johnson commented for media including The International Business Times, Colorlines, the Huntsville Times, and KPFK radio on the September 28 federal court decision that blocked some portions of HB 56, Alabama's new immigration law, but upheld others. The Alabama measure, often considered the strictest of a set of laws recently passed by states seeking to restrict immigration, was challenged by a Justice Department lawsuit claiming that it preempted federal immigration laws.
"I think that one of the open issues now, and it's raised by the Alabama law and also Secure Communities, is what power does the federal government have over immigration, what power do the state governments have over immigration, and what power does the federal government have to tell the states who to do when it comes to immigration?" said Dean Johnson to The International Business Times. "It seems to me at this point that when we have many states passing many immigration laws and you have the government enlisting the states and sometimes ordering them to enforce immigration law, something's got to give and you're going to need some kind of clarification from the court," he added.
"Legislatures have been ready and willing to pass laws regulating immigration while federal courts have been just as eager to strike them down on the grounds that they intrude on the federal power to regulate immigration," Dean Johnson commented for the Huntsville Times. "The political process seems to be moving in one direction, while the federal courts try to rein them in."
Because the ruling differs in some respects from previous federal court decisions with regard to similar laws in Arizona and Georgia, it increases the likelihood that the legal battle over state immigration laws will go the U.S. Supreme Court, Dean Johnson said in an interview with Colorlines. "Part of what this tells me is there is some conflict between this case and the DOJ's case versus Arizona," Johnson said. "It makes it all the more likely this is going to end up in the Supreme Court's hands."
Kevin R. Johnson is Dean and Mabie-Apallas Professor of Public Interest Law and Chicana/o studies at UC Davis School of Law. He is an internationally recognized scholar in the fields of immigration law and policy, refugee law, and civil rights.