KANSAS v. GARCIA

[Bigun]

Sara A. Carter
@SaraCarterDC
#SCOTUS:

Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that illegal immigrants who use someone else's information when filling out tax forms for employment can face criminal charges, despite federal laws that liberal justices claim should prohibit such cases.

https://twitter.com/SaraCarterDC

This is a BIG win IMHO!

The ruling is here: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/17-834_k53l.pdf

[PeteS in CA]

Since it means that illegals who steal someone's identity have really have committed identity theft, good. It's pathetic that this case had to go this far. It's a matter of common sense. And the persons whose identity was thus stolen will have to unscramble a mess when it comes to Social Security, Medicare, and the IRS.

[Bigun]

Since it means that illegals who steal someone's identity have really have committed identity theft, good. It's pathetic that this case had to go this far. It's a matter of common sense. And the persons whose identity was thus stolen will have to unscramble a mess when it comes to Social Security, Medicare, and the IRS.

You are the second person to say this today @PeteS in CA and you are both right as rain!  The fact that this silly case had to be decided by the SC is just one more illustration of how totally messed up we are currently and what we are up against in straitening it out.

[Elderberry]

Our  federal  system  would  be  turned  upside down if we were to hold that federal criminal law preempts state law whenever they overlap, and there is no basis for inferring that federal criminal statutes preempt state laws whenever  they  overlap.    Indeed,  in  the  vast  majority  of cases  where  federal  and  state  laws  overlap,  allowing  the States  to  prosecute  is  entirely  consistent  with  federal  interests. In the present cases, there is certainly no suggestion that the  Kansas  prosecutions  frustrated  any  federal  interests. 

Federal authorities played a role in all three cases, and the Federal  Government  fully  supports  Kansas’s  position  in this Court.  In the end, however, the possibility that federal enforcement priorities might be upset is not enough to provide a basis for preemption.  The Supremacy Clause gives priority to “the Laws of the United States,” not the criminal law enforcement priorities or preferences of federal officers. Art. VI, cl. 2.

[Elderberry]

Opinion analysis: Divided court permits state identity-theft prosecution of noncitizens in the employment process

SCOTUSblog by Pratheepan Gulasekaram 3/4/2020

https://www.scotusblog.com/2020/03/opinion-analysis-divided-court-permits-state-identity-theft-prosecution-of-noncitizens-in-the-employment-process/#more-292254

Yesterday, in Kansas v. Garcia, a five-justice majority of the Supreme Court upheld Kansas’ prosecution of noncitizens who used stolen social security numbers to gain employment. Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion held that Kansas’ application of its state identity-theft and fraud statutes to the noncitizen respondents was neither expressly nor impliedly preempted by federal immigration laws related to verifying eligibility to work (for a discussion of express versus implied preemption – and the latter’s subsets of conflict, obstacle and field preemption – see the argument preview). Beyond validating the convictions of the three respondents, this outcome presages the potential for increased use of state criminal laws to regulate unauthorized employment, changes to the current state of immigration federalism jurisprudence and a shift in the future of preemption doctrine more generally.

As detailed in the preview and argument analysis, the case centers around the relationship between state identity-theft laws and the federal employment-verification process. The federal Immigration Reform and Control Act sets out the familiar I-9 process applicable to everyone, citizen or noncitizen, who attempts to secure employment in the United States. IRCA requires employees to present evidence of their eligibility to work, which is recorded on the I-9 form. Other provisions of IRCA and federal immigration law limit the use of information contained in the I-9 form to enumerated federal law enforcement purposes, including the prosecution of specified federal crimes like fraud.

Important to the majority opinion, Kansas’ prosecution of the three noncitizens was not based on the I-9 form itself, but rather on identity information entered on federal and state tax-withholding forms. The identity information on the tax forms, however, was the same as that entered on the I-9, and both the tax forms and the I-9 were submitted at the same time as part of the employees’ attempts to establish employment eligibility. Ultimately, the distinction between the state’s reliance on tax forms, as opposed to the I-9 form, proved critical. The majority viewed the entering of identity information on the tax forms as “fundamentally different” from entering that same information on the I-9, and thus not covered by IRCA’s provisions. In contrast, the four-justice dissent understood the noncitizens’ use of the I-9 and the tax forms as part of the connected and unified process of demonstrating federal work authorization, thereby bringing the state’s application of its criminal laws into tension with the federal regulatory scheme.

More at link.