By Greg Stohr - Wed Apr 25 04:01:00 GMT 2012

Activists opposed to Arizona's S.B. 1070 law, paint a banner at the Puenta Movement office in Phoenix, on April 24, 2012.

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear echoes of its health-care arguments as it reviews Arizonas illegal-immigrant crackdown, a law that inspired similar moves across the country and sparked a confrontation with President Barack Obama.

Like last months debate over health care, the immigration case set for argument today pits the federal government against the states over their respective spheres of power. Politics envelops the case, with Republican-controlled states backing Arizona against the Obama administration.

The case has all the ingredients of important law, important federalism principles and hot politics, said Steven Schwinn, a constitutional law professor at John Marshall Law School in Chicago.

The case will define states role on an issue some of them say has become a crisis: the presence of more than 10 million unauthorized aliens in this country. Arizonas law, the first of its kind, would require police to check the status of people they suspect are in the U.S. illegally, and to arrest those they believe are eligible to be deported. The case may affect laws in Alabama, South Carolina, Georgia, Utah and Indiana.

Unlike health care, the administration is on offense in the immigration case, challenging four provisions in the Arizona law. Government lawyers say S.B. 1070, as the law is known, encroaches on the exclusive federal right to set immigration policy.

The federal government has the ultimate authority to regulate the treatment of aliens while on American soil because it is the nation as a whole -- not any single state -- that must respond to the international consequences of such treatment, U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli argued in court papers.

Verrilli will be making his first appearance before the justices since he argued the health-care case in March. He again will square off against Paul Clement, a Washington lawyer who represented 26 states challenging the health-care law and will be defending the Arizona immigration measure today.

Arizonas law would require police officers to check immigration status when they arrest or stop someone and have reasonable suspicion that the person is in the U.S. illegally. It would authorize officers to arrest anyone they have probable cause to believe is eligible to be deported.

Original post:

Immigration Fight Echoes Health-Care Case at High Court