From the Arizona discussion in today’s Jolt:

Heaven forbid we actually try a new approach to dealing with illegal immigration, and see if it works. No, we need to litigate this change in policy all the way up to the Supremes before we can take it for a test drive. . . .
This is the sort of decision that Andy McCarthy was born to dismantle. He concludes, “However this ruling came out, it was only going to be the first round. Appeal is certain. But the gleeful Left may want to put away the party hats. This decision is going to anger most of the country. The upshot of it is to tell Americans that if they want the immigration laws enforced, they are going to need a president willing to do it, a Congress willing to make clear that the federal government has no interest in preempting state enforcement, and the selection of judges who will not invent novel legal theories to frustrate enforcement. They are not going to get that from the Obama/Reid/Pelosi Democrats.”
That was my take: legally, this is frustrating for those who want a tougher line drawn on illegal immigration. But politically, this probably hurts the amnesty crowd, watching the federal government sue and win restrictions against the state government to prevent them from doing something that the public overwhelmingly wants the federal government to do — well, if he were alive today, Kafka would be telling us he couldn’t get his head around it.
William Jacobson, writing at Legal Insurrection, has a particularly grim assessment: “The decision has to be viewed as a near complete victory for opponents of the law, as it restricts the state from routine and compulsory checks of immigration status as a matter of legislative mandate. The decision would not, as I read it, prevent police from checking immigration status in a particular case, but would prevent a statewide system to do so. The result of the decision will be to have a chilling effect on law enforcement officers who, in the absence of the law, would have checked immigration status based on reasonable suspicion anyway. Enforcement of immigration laws in Arizona, as a result of the decision, will be even more difficult than prior to S.B. 1070.” Later he elaborates, “At a legal level, it is true that nothing has changed. S.B. 1070 never took effect, so no law was lost. At a more realistic level, everything has changed. States have been left helpless to deal with the anarchy created by the failure of the federal government to enforce border security. Whereas yesterday it was unclear how far states (such as Rhode Island) could go, today states are powerless . . . With a federal government which refuses to take action at the border until there is a deal on ‘comprehensive’ immigration reform, meaning rewarding lawbreakers with a path to citizenship, this decision will insure a sense of anarchy. The law breakers have been emboldened today, for sure.”

I’m still left wondering how the state government can preempt a federal action that is largely not being taken.