Judge Stephen Locher, nominated by President Biden to the federal district court for the Southern District of Iowa, issued a preliminary injunction that stopped Iowa and state officials from enforcing a law passed by the legislature purporting to impose state criminal penalties for specified immigration-related offenses and to require state judges to order non-citizens to return to the country they came from. Judge Locher found that the federal government and an immigrants right group, which brought the suit, were likely to prevail on their contention that such state promulgation and enforcement of immigration law violates the Constitution. The June 2024 decision was in United States v State of Iowa.
What is the background of this case?
“Dissatisfied with how the United States government is handling immigration, the Iowa legislature decided to take matters into its own hands” in 2024. The far right legislature passed a law (SF 2340) that made it a crime under Iowa law for a person denied admission to the United States to enter Iowa. As part of the penalty for this alleged offense, state court judges are to order convicted persons to “return to the foreign nation” from which they entered or attempted to enter. The law was to take effect on July 1, 2024.
The federal government and an Iowa immigrants’ rights group and some of its members promptly filed suit against SF 2340. Both filed motions for a preliminary injunction to stop the law from taking effect. The case was assigned to Judge Locher, who considered extensive briefing and conducted a hearing on the issue.
How did Judge Locher Rule and Why is it Important?
Based on the traditional factors considered by a court when preliminary injunctive relief is requested, after careful review of the record and relevant precedent, Judge Locher first concluded that the US and the immigrants’ rights group are “likely to succeed on the merits” of their claims. Specifically, the Supreme Court and other courts have considered other similar cases in which states tried to enact laws calling for state enforcement of federal immigration principles and found that it is unconstitutional under constitutional doctrines of federal supremacy and preemption. In the Supreme Court case of Arizona v United States, Judge Locher explained, the state had “replicated” federal laws by adding a “state law penalty for conduct,” failure to register as an alien, that was already “proscribed by federal law.” Since Congress has “fully occupied the field” of such registration, he went on, the Court ruled that states like Arizona “may not enter’ an area of legislation that “the Federal Government has reserved for itself.” In this case, Locher wrote, the federal government had clearly reserved for itself the field of legislation concerning unlawful entry into this country, so that federal preemption makes the Iowa law unconstitutional.
In addition, Locher explained, the Iowa law violates the principle that state law may not conflict with federal law. Several individual members of the immigrants’ rights groups, who were immigrants and also plaintiffs, had previously been removed from the US but later received permanent legal status and thus have a conclusive defense to a federal charge that they reentered illegally. Permanent legal status is not a defense under the Iowa law, Locher went on, so that the state can “arrest them and put them in jail for something the United States has given them permission to do.” “This is untenable,” Locher concluded, and clearly violates the Constitution.
Locher also found that the failure to grant a preliminary injunction would create a serious “threat of irreparable harm.” In addition to “permanent legal residents facing a risk of prosecution and criminal punishment under state law,” he wrote, some of these included “state court prosecutions for illegal reentry” even when people are in the process of applying for legal status under federal law;” orders by “untrained state judges” requiring noncitizens to leave the country “following an adjudicatory process with fewer safeguards” than the federal system; and “state court judges requiring noncitizens to return to countries” where “they might face persecution or torture, in violation of federal laws and treaties.”
Overall, Judge Locher concluded, even if the Iowa law is “defensible” as “a matter of politics,” as “a matter of constitutional law it is not.” Judge Locher’s decision may be appealed, but it is extremely important to immigrants in Iowa and to discouraging other states from enacting such measures. In addition, it serves as yet another reminder of the importance of promptly confirming more fair-minded judges to our federal courts.