A federal judge in Des Moines issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting the enforcement of SF 2340, the Reynolds administration’s attempt to appropriate the federal government’s power to create and enforce immigration laws, establishing a state-level deportation process. U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Locher’s ruling came one week after he heard oral arguments in two lawsuits that argue the new law created by SF 2340 is unconstitutional.
Locher was clear in his ruling that the lawsuits challenging SF 2340 will likely prevail because “[u]nder binding Supreme Court precedent, Senate File 2340 is preempted in its entirety by federal law and thus is invalid.”
More than a century of Supreme Court decisions, the most recent issued in 2012, establish the federal government as the sole authority in matters of immigration. Democrats in the Iowa Legislature who opposed SF 2340 repeatedly pointed this out when the bill was being considered, but that did not matter to the Republican majorities in the Iowa House and Senate. The bill passed the Iowa House and Senate with only Republican votes.
As a matter of politics, the new legislation might be defensible. As a matter of constitutional law, it is not.
Judge Stephen Locher in his ruling on SF 2340
By the time Gov. Kim Reynolds signed SF 2340 into law on April 10, a similar Texas bill that made immigration offenses state crimes had already been blocked by a federal judge who found it an unconstitutional usurpation of federal authority.
Reynolds didn’t mention the Texas injunction when she signed SF 2340, but did issue a statement claiming the new law was necessary by claiming the Biden administration “has failed to enforce our nation’s immigration laws, putting the protection and safety of Iowans at risk.”
The governor frequently resorts to invoking immigration-related fears in political attacks on President Biden.
“Those who come into our country illegally have broken the law, yet Biden refuses to deport them,” Reynolds wrote in her April 10 signing statement. “This bill gives Iowa law enforcement the power to do what he is unwilling to do: enforce immigration laws already on the books.”
“As a matter of politics, the new legislation might be defensible,” Judge Locher wrote in the opening paragraph of his 28-page ruling. “As a matter of constitutional law, it is not.”
SF 2340 makes it a state crime for a person to be in Iowa if they have previously been denied entry into the U.S., or been deported or otherwise removed from the country. State and local law enforcement are charged with enforcing the new law, and SF 2340 authorizes Iowa judges to issue deportation orders and order people removed from the state and transported to the nearest port of entry for expulsion from the country.
One of the two lawsuits challenging the new law was filed by the U.S. Department of Justice. In late April, Principal Deputy Assistant U.S. Attorney General Brian Boynton sent the governor a letter telling her that SF 2340 “is preempted by federal law and violates the United States Constitution,” and the department would sue the state if Reynolds intended to enforce it. The DOJ filed its lawsuit in federal court on May 9.
On that same day, the ACLU of Iowa, along with the American Immigration Council and the Immigrants Rights Project of the national ACLU, filed the other federal lawsuit challenging SF 2340 on behalf of the Iowa Migrant Movement for Justice and its members, as well as two individuals identified in the lawsuit as Jane Doe and Elizabeth Roe.
Both Doe and Roe are legal residents of the United States. But because both were barred from entrance in the U.S. in the past, they would be subject to arrest and having a judge issue a deportation order, despite being in the country legally, if SF 2340 went into effect.
In defending the new law during the hearing last week, Iowa Deputy Solicitor General Patrick Valencia argued that the state was merely enforcing federal law, but Locher found otherwise. The judge explained several times in his decision how SF 2340 differs from federal law, especially since it puts residents whose lawful status is recognized by the United States at risk of deportation by the state of Iowa. Locher took the unusual step of using boldface to emphasize this point.
“[A] person with lawful permanent resident status has a defense under federal law to the charge of illegal reentry. But there is no comparable language in Iowa Code § 718C.2(1) [the section of code created by SF 2340].”
During the hearing, Valence suggested people like Doe and Roe had nothing to worry about because the state would use discretion in how it applied SF 2340.
“Let the law play out,” he argued. “We can’t assume the law will be interpreted unconstitutionally.”
Locher rejected this, quoting from a 2010 Supreme Court decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts: “We would not uphold an unconstitutional statute merely because the Government promised to use it responsibly.”
Gov. Reynolds’ office immediately announced the state would appeal the decision in a statement that appealed to xenophobic fears and inflated the importance of SF 2340, suggesting it was also needed to somehow protect other states.
“With this injunction states are left defenseless to the ongoing crisis at our southern border,” Reynolds’ statement began.
“Today’s order means the law cannot be enforced for now while the case is litigated,” ACLU of Iowa Legal Director Rita Bettis Austen said in a statement following Locher’s decision. “We are relieved and grateful for the court’s decision which for the time being blocks SF 2340, among the worst anti-immigrant legislation in Iowa’s history and which exposed even lawful immigrants, and even children, to serious harms — arrest, detention, deportation, family separation, and incarceration, by the state.”
SF 2340 was scheduled to take effect on July 1.