Florida is joining eight other states in supporting Arizona’s new immigration law against a lawsuit filed by the Obama administration designed to strike down the law in a showdown over states’ rights.
Attorney General Bill McCollum said Wednesday that Florida has filed a brief with Alabama, Michigan, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota Texas, Virginia and the Mariana Islands that defends Arizona’s right to make its own laws. The Obama administration sued Arizona last week saying immigration should be dealt with by the federal government, not the states.
“And there is no way the federal government has the right to say, ‘No, you can’t do that,'” McCollum said in an interview Wednesday.
The Arizona immigration law has been contentious from the beginning with civil rights activists arguing it could create racial profiling. It’s also become a hot issue in several Florida political races, particularly for governor and attorney general.
Some Florida lawmakers have also expressed interest in taking up the subject during a special session in Tallahassee next week.
McCollum acknowledged that the overall issue of immigration policy must be decided at the federal level, but said that shouldn’t preclude states from protecting their borders.
The Michigan attorney general’s office argued in the amicus brief filed on behalf of all of the states that they “have the power to concurrently enforce Federal immigration law.”
“By lawsuit, rather than by legislation, the Federal government seeks to negate this preexisting power of the States to verify a person’s immigration status and similarly seeks to reject the assistance that the States can lawfully provide to the Federal government,” the brief said.
The suit, seeking an injunction to prevent the law from going into effect as scheduled on July 29, is filed in U.S. District Court in Phoenix.
By Kathleen Haughney
The News Service of Florida
