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The Obama administration challenged the Arizona 's new law on immigration, but he' s not only from 1070, that 's on the map

Well, it's finally happened: the Obama justice department on 6 July filed suit against Arizona to block implementation of its controversial new immigration enforcement law, SB 1070. But there's an important story buried in this story that you may not read about.

Barack Obama delayed filing the suit to see if the US supreme court was willing to review a second Arizona law passed in 2007 â€" the Legal Arizona Workers Act. That law imposes the toughest employer sanctions in the nation, and 11 other states have modelled their employer sanctions laws after it.

Why is this important? Because the legal principle at the centre of both cases is the same. Thus, whatever the supreme court rules in the 2007 case could well determine the final outcome on SB 1070.

The legal principle at issue is known as "pre-emption". States such as Arizona â€" as well as Utah, Oklahoma, North Carolina and others â€" are insisting that they have a constitutional right to pass immigration laws that are broadly consistent with federal immigration policy, especially if these laws are not expressly "pre-empted" by federal law.

"Pre-emption" assigns to the federal government the primary â€" and some would say, the exclusive â€" right to make immigration policy. At a minimum, states are not supposed to pass immigration-related laws in areas in which the federal government has not already established a guiding body of law.

Furthermore, while conforming with federal intent, states aren't supposed to take their laws in directions beyond the scope or field of application of federal law.

For example, in 1986, when Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control (IRCA) , it instituted provisions for a system of "employer sanctions" to penalise businesses that knowingly hire illegal aliens. The penalties spelled out in the law were monetary fines, which would be progressively larger if companies continued to hire aliens, and got caught.

IRCA also expressly "pre-empted" states from passing their own laws to fine employers for hiring illegal aliens. The idea was to prevent businesses that wanted to hire illegal aliens from "shopping around" for a state or states where the monetary penalties for doing so might be less severe.

That's the whole point of having the federal government in charge of immigration policy. It establishes national uniformity and prevents the development of what critics call a "patchwork" of "uneven" laws.

But it turns out that the issue isn't so simple. If you read the IRCA legislation carefully, it only applies to employer sanctions in the form of monetary penalties, or fines. It even says explicitly that the law â€" and the principle of "pre-emption" â€" does not apply to issues relating to business licensing.

The reason? Business licensing is a traditional state prerogative, and IRCA's framers evidently didn't want to interfere with that prerogative.

And there's the rub. Arizona's own employer sanctions law doesn't call for monetary penalties. It calls for the suspension, and possible revocation, of a company's business license if it is found to have hired illegal aliens. So, strictly speaking, Arizona may not be infringing on the current federal policy.

Twice, plaintiffs have sued Arizona, arguing that its law should be "pre-empted" by federal law. And twice, the federal courts, most recently the ninth federal circuit court of appeals in 2009, have disagreed.

That's why the Obama administration, largely behind the scenes, has been pushing for the US supreme court to review the ninth circuit court ruling. If it proceeded against Arizona without challenging that earlier ruling, it would give the lower court ample opportunity to rule in Arizona's favour.

, The highest decision court "in the legal act of Arizona workers is not expected until next spring. But the mere existence of higher court review now gives ammunition Obama administration to seek an immediate injunction to stop implementation of SB 1070 on July 29.

Its argument will be: let's wait until the supreme court can rule in that earlier case. What do we lose by waiting, if the law may be overturned in six to nine months?

That argument may not work. But it still means that the supreme court's review will hang over the heads of the lower court as it hears arguments on SB 1070. And it's unlikely to rule until the supreme court has ruled first.

It's rare for the federal government to challenge a state law directly, as the Obama administration is doing with SB 1070, and indirectly, by instigating the supreme court review.  

And it's not just the fate of SB 1070 that hangs in the balance. In recent years, states have passed hundreds of their own immigration laws, some like Arizona's, hostile to immigrants, but others, like the spate of "sanctuary" laws in California and elsewhere, designed to protect immigrants from federal policy.

If the supreme court rules in Obama's favour, all 11 state employer sanctions laws would likely be struck down, and many of these other, more supportive laws could also become subject to legal challenge. And that will only add enormous pressure on the White House and Congress to resolve the current federal deadlock on immigration once and for all.

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