The Supreme Court upheld a key part of Arizona’s crackdown on illegal immigrants on Monday, rejecting the Obama administration’s stance that only the U.S. government should enforce immigration laws in the United States.
The nation’s highest court, in an opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy, upheld the state law’s most controversial aspect, requiring police officers to check the immigration status of people they stop.
But in a split decision, the justices also ruled that the three other challenged provisions went too far in intruding on federal law, including one provision that makes it a crime for illegal immigrants to work and another that requires them to carry their documents.
