LuckyDan
Sublime
Nope, actually, it's a bunch of BS. Any lawyer worth their degree that just wasn't a political hack would tell you that.
The Supremacy Clause says a state can't do something that contradicts federal law (provided the feds have the jurisdiction to act in that area). In this case, the AZ crafted a law that is not quite as stringent as the Federal law. So, it does not contradict the federal law at all.
As a Supremacy clause case, you can compare this to CA standards on emissions. The Feds have acted in the area of emissions controls for cars, yet CA maintains a law that is much stricter than the feds. Why hasn't it been preempted by the feds? Because it doesn't contradict federal law, it says the samething, only stronger.
AZ stands in the same position with regard to illegals. They don't contradict federal law, their just going to enforce it. That's why the feds really have nothing.
Now that's interesting. So it actually would make more sense for the Justice Department to sue sanctuary cities for pre-empting federal immigration law, than to sue AZ over a law that is in-line with federal policy.
Sanctuary cities do not interfere with the enforcement of federal law. Arizona's law does.
They don't pre-empt (I misused that word - sorry) but they do interfere in the sense that they do not comply with federal policy regarding immigration.
They appear, in fact, to defy very boldly 1996 IIRIRA provisions that state public employees cannot be barred from reporting immigraton related information to the INS. (IIRIRA, as I understand it, does not address the matter of local police inquiring about immigration status, which is part of what makes 1070 necessary.)