Washington — The Supreme Court on Wednesday left in place a block on a new Florida immigration law that imposes criminal penalties on migrants who are in the U.S. illegally and enter into the state, with the justices declining to pause a lower court decision that stopped it from taking effect while legal proceedings move forward.
The measure, known as SB 4-C, was approved by Florida’s GOP-led legislature and signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis earlier this year as part of what state Republican lawmakers said was an effort to protect the state from illegal immigration. But a pair of migrants and two nonprofit organizations filed a lawsuit challenging the law, and its enforcement has been blocked since April.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier sought the Supreme Court’s intervention last month and asked the high court to allow enforcement of the law. But in denying his bid for emergency relief, the preliminary injunction issued by U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams will remain in place while the legal battle moves forward. There were no noted dissents by the justices.
Florida’s immigration law makes it a misdemeanor for people who are in the country illegally to enter the state. The measure was passed alongside federal efforts by President Trump to implement his sweeping immigration agenda, a centerpiece of which is the president’s promise of mass deportations.
Williams ruled earlier this year that the law is likely unconstitutional, and a federal appeals court in Atlanta declined to pause that decision.
Separate from the legality of Florida’s immigration law, the court battle led Williams to find Uthmeier in civil contempt after he sent letters to law enforcement agencies in the state about her decision.
The judge’s first move was to grant a temporary restraining order that barred enforcement of the state’s law. As part of her decision, Williams ordered Uthmeier to notify all law enforcement agencies in the state of the injunction. The attorney general circulated a letter to those agencies in April telling them that officers and agents should comply with Williams’ directive.
But Uthmeier sent a follow-up letter five days later telling them that “there remains no judicial order that properly restrains you from” enforcing the law, and that “no lawful, legitimate order currently impedes your agencies from continuing to enforce” the state’s measure.
In a decision finding Uthmeier in civil contempt of her April order to provide notice to all law enforcement officers tasked with enforcing the state’s immigration law, Williams said that “when instructed to inform law enforcement that they are proscribed from enforcing an enjoined law, he may not tell them otherwise.”
“Litigants cannot change the plain meaning of words as it suits them, especially when conveying a court’s clear and unambiguous order,” she wrote. “Fidelity to the rule of law can have no other meaning.”
Williams ordered Uthmeier to file biweekly reports on whether any arrests, detentions or other law enforcement actions occurred under Florida’s law.
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