Stanford Law Review Online: The Hunt for Noncitizen Voters
posted by Stanford Law Review
The Stanford Law Review Online has just published an Essay by Fatma Marouf entitled The Hunt for Noncitizen Voters. Professor Marouf writes that recent efforts by several states to purge noncitizens from their voter rolls may prevent many more citizens than noncitizens from voting:
Over the past year, states have shown increasing angst about noncitizens registering to vote. Three states—Tennessee, Kansas, and Alabama—have passed new laws requiring documentary proof of U.S. citizenship in order to register. Arizona was the first state to pass such a requirement, but the Ninth Circuit struck it down in April 2012, finding it incompatible with the National Voter Registration Act. Two other states—Florida and Colorado—have waged aggressive campaigns in recent months to purge noncitizens from voter registration lists. These efforts to weed out noncitizen voters follow on the heels of legislation targeting undocumented immigrants in a number of states. Yet citizens may be more harmed by the new laws than noncitizens, especially since the number of noncitizens registering to vote has turned out to be quite small. Wrongfully targeting naturalized or minority citizens in the search for noncitizens could also have negative ramifications for society as a whole, reinforcing unconscious bias about who is a “real” American and creating subclasses of citizens who must overcome additional hurdles to exercise the right to vote.
She concludes:
Some of the laws require voters to show government-issued photo IDs, which 11% of U.S. citizens do not have. Some have placed new burdens on voter registration drives, through which African-American and Hispanic voters are twice as likely to register as Whites. Others restrict early voting, specifically eliminating Sunday voting, which African-Americans and Hispanics also utilize more often than Whites. In two states, new laws rolled back reforms that had restored voting rights to citizens with felony convictions, who are disproportionately African-American. Each of these laws is a stepping-stone on the path to subsidiary citizenship. Rather than creating new obstacles to democratic participation, we should focus our energy on ensuring that all eligible citizens are able to exercise the fundamental right to vote.
Read the full article, The Hunt for Noncitizen Voters at the Stanford Law Review Online.
October 31, 2012 at 9:30 am
Tags: Civil Rights, Constitutional Law, Election law, Immigration, Politics, voter rights
Posted in: Civil Rights, Constitutional Law, Election Law, Immigration, Law Rev (Stanford), Politics
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Stanford Law Review Online: Discrimination, Preemption, and Arizona’s Immigration Law
posted by Stanford Law Review
The Stanford Law Review Online has just published an Essay by Lucas Guttentag entitled Discrimination, Preemption, and Arizona’s Immigration Law: A Broader View. The author discusses the upcoming Supreme Court ruling on the constitutionality of Arizona’s controversial immigration law, S.B. 1070. He argues that discrimination must be a crucial consideration in the Court’s review of the federal preemption challenge brought by the United States:
The Supreme Court is expected to decide within days whether Arizona’s controversial immigration enforcement statute, S.B. 1070, is unconstitutional. Arizona’s law is widely condemned because of the discrimination the law will engender. Yet the Court appears intent on relegating questions of racial and ethnic profiling to the back of the bus, as it were. That is because the Supreme Court is considering only the United States’ facial preemption challenge to S.B. 1070 under the Supremacy Clause. That preemption claim asserts that Arizona’s statute conflicts with the Immigration and Nationality Act’s federal enforcement structure and authority.
But discarding the relevance of discrimination as a component of that ostensibly limited preemption claim expresses the federal interest too narrowly. State laws targeting noncitizens should also be tested against another fundamental federal norm, namely the prohibition against state alienage discrimination that dates back to Reconstruction-era civil rights laws. In other words, the federal principles that states may not transgress under the Supremacy Clause should be defined both by the benefits and penalties in the immigration statute and by the protections embodied in historic anti-discrimination laws.
He concludes:
While the precise force and scope of the Civil Rights Laws with regard to non-legal resident aliens remain undetermined, and Arizona claims to be penalizing only undocumented immigrants, defining the federal interest solely through the lens of immigration regulation and enforcement is still too narrow. Federal law is not only about federal immigration enforcement—it is equally about preventing discrimination. Measuring state laws only against the intricacies of federal immigration statutes and policies misses this essential point.
Some Justices may recognize the broader non-discrimination interests presented in the federal government’s preemption claim. And even if the pending challenge does not enjoin any or all of the S.B. 1070 provisions, civil rights challenges will more directly raise the rights of immigrants, their families and communities. But that eventuality should not obscure the importance of understanding that the federal values transgressed by S.B. 1070 and similar laws encompass both immigration and anti-discrimination imperatives.
Read the full article, Discrimination, Preemption, and Arizona’s Immigration Law: A Broader View by Lucas Guttentag, at the Stanford Law Review Online.
June 18, 2012 at 8:00 am
Tags: Civil Rights, Constitutional Law, discrimination, Immigration, preemption, Supreme Court
Posted in: Civil Rights, Constitutional Law, Immigration, Jurisprudence, Law Rev (Stanford), Supreme Court
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Immigration Federalism: Red and Blue
posted by Robert Schapiro
In a previous post, I discussed some of the federalism implications of Arizona’s recent legislation concerning immigrants. I noted that in immigration, as in other areas, it is difficult to define enclaves of exclusive state or exclusive federal jurisdiction. Rather, contemporary federalism entails a dynamic interaction of state and federal authority.
If Arizona’s law constitutes an example of “red state” federalism, a recent announcement by New York’s Governor David Paterson illustrates the “blue state” version of immigration federalism.
Under federal immigration law, conviction of certain state crimes constitutes grounds for deportation. But, in many circumstances a subsequent state pardon removes the threat of deportation. In what The New York Times termed “a major rebuke of federal immigration policy,” Governor Paterson created a panel to assist him in evaluating pardon requests from immigrants subject to deportation based on state convictions. The Governor characterized some federal immigration laws as “embarrassingly and wrongly inflexible.” “In New York,” Paterson explained, “we believe in renewal.”
So, now New York has joined Arizona in rebuking federal immigration policy, though from a very different perspective.
Even the United States Supreme Court has gotten into the immigration federalism act. In Padilla v. Kentucky, decided in March, the Court held that defense counsel’s failure to advise a state criminal defendant that a guilty plea carries a risk of deportation constitutes ineffective assistance in violation of the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution. In what will be one of Justice Stevens’ last majority opinions, he explained that as a matter of federal law, deportation is an “integral part” of the penalty for the state crime.
Padilla confirms the obvious: In immigration, state and federal law are closely intertwined. What are we to make of this feature of our federal system? If some are troubled by Arizona’s inhospitable voice, they might find solace in New York’s dulcet tones of ”renewal.” That counterpoint provides cold comfort to immigrants in Arizona, but then the United States Constitution provides some protection for all people throughout the country.
Complicated? Yes, but simple would be superior only if we all agreed on the answers. And we do not. In the meantime, New York seeks to vindicate its immigrant heritage.
May 13, 2010 at 9:02 pm
Tags: Constitutional Law, Current Events, federalism, Immigration
Posted in: Civil Rights, Constitutional Law, Current Events, Immigration, Politics, Supreme Court, Uncategorized
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