The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case Maricopa County v. Lopez-Valenzuela which overturns an Arizona referendum law denying bail for illegal aliens who are jailed for serious felonies.
The law, approved by a whopping 78% of Arizona voters, denied bail for illegal immigrants “if the proof is evident or the presumption great that the person is guilty of the offense charged.”
Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, the court’s three most conservative members, would have agreed to hear the case.
“Our indifference to cases such as this one will only embolden the lower courts to reject state laws on questionable constitutional grounds,” Thomas wrote.
The law was upheld at three earlier state and federal courts under a 2003 Supreme court precedent which allowed illegal aliens to be classified as extreme flight risks.
However, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reached back to a 1984 law which only allowed pre-trial detention on a case-by-case basis and overturned the Arizona law. Missouri and Alabama also have a similar law which is now destroyed.
