5. News from the Courts:

Supreme Court to Look at Arizona Immigration Law

The Arizona Republic reports that the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in the lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Arizona’s immigration law, Senate Bill 1070.  Arizona Governor has repeatedly asked the Supreme Court to step in and reverse the lower court decision that blocked the key provisions from going into effect.  The Obama administration, for its part, has expressed a wish for the Supreme Court to avoid the case at this juncture.  Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli argued that, so far, only one appellate court has dealt with the law and the Supreme Court should wait until more cases from other states have had a chance to make their way through the lower courts.  No court date has been set, but justices will likely hear arguments this spring and release a decision in the summer.

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2011/12/12/20111212Supreme-Court-Arizona-immigration-law.html

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Utah Immigration Laws Should Be Blocked, U.S. Government Argues

Bloomberg reports that in a request for a court order blocking the Utah immigration measures, the federal government argued that Utah violated the U.S. Constitution by passing a set of immigration laws the state’s governor has called the “Utah solution.”  The various states’ efforts to create their own immigration policies conflict with the federal government’s exclusive power to regulate immigration, according to the filing. 

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-12-16/utah-immigration-laws-should-be-blocked-u-s-government-argues.html

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Top Court Considers Rights of U.S. Permanent Residents

Agence France Presse reports that the Supreme Court has begun hearing oral arguments in three cases on the rights of foreign-born permanent residents of the United States, two of whom face deportation and a third who was denied re-entry after traveling abroad.  The cases center around the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act, which Congress amended in 1996 to make it easier to deport people determined to be “criminal aliens.”  The court first heard two consolidated cases – Holder v. Gutierrez and Holder v. Sawyers – both of which challenged the Department of Justice’s decision to deport them on the grounds that time spent as minors living with permanent resident parents should count toward the requisite five years needed by a lawbreaking permanent resident to avoid deportation. In the third case, Panagis Vartelas, a Greek-born legal permanent resident since 1989, is challenging a 2003 denial of re-entry on the basis of a 1994 conviction of a “crime of moral turpitude.”  Vartelas’ lawyers argued that the law should not apply retroactively.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5guABrjNfVB01hsaNQiS5WUkR6KdQ?docId=CNG.f02a09f392cafaaab8362a7efd066fb0.3d1

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