Some Arizona legislators want right to reject federal laws

By Karoun Demirjian

Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2011 | 8:01 p.m.

Man up, Arizona.

Our neighbor to the east is considering a measure to secede from the United States. But only sort of.

Members of the Arizona state Legislature, led by their Senate president, Russell Pearce, have proposed a bill that would allow it to create a 12-member committee that could decide where and when the federal government’s laws apply to them — as in, if Arizona doesn’t feel like cooperating with a particular piece of the law, they can vote to say to Washington: make me.

The law, SB1433, would by its own content require the committee to work within the confines of what is determined to be constitutional, but if the issue at hand is not specifically mentioned in the Constitution, it’s fair game.

“The committee may review all existing federal statutes, mandates, and executive orders for the purpose of determining their constitutionality,” the bill reads, stating that the committee “shall recommend, propose, and call for a vote by simple majority to nullify in its entirety” anything that they find objectionable. That kills it for sixty days, in which time the full Legislature has to decide whether it wants to do away with the unwanted law for keeps.

So why would Arizona be doing this now?

It would seem no coincidence that Arizona is the subject of a federal lawsuit seeking to overturn Arizona’s controversial state immigration law, SB1070.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has brought the suit, arguing that Arizona’s move to step up its police officers’ ability to question and arrest suspected undocumented immigrants goes against federal law.

Pearce is, like many in the Arizona Legislature, a supporter of SB1070. But he takes hard-line immigration policy a step further than that law even — he also wants to scrap birthright citizenship, that part of the 14th Amendment that says anyone born on American soil is an American citizen.

At this point, the bill only has six co-sponsors and doesn’t appear to be terribly high up on the must-do list of the Arizona Legislature’s present session.

And if the bill’s drafters are really serious about their promise to stick to the Constitution, it would seem that the Supremacy Clause (Article VI, clause 2 — the part that says federal law trumps state law) might put a damper on their efforts to liberate the state from that pesky cooperative mandate that says if you want to be part of the union, you gotta comply with the laws all the states’ representative to Congress pass together.

But maybe it’s not all that radical a change. After all, last month, Al Sharpton told a roundtable on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” show that Arizona’s already seceded from the union by not recognizing Martin Luther King Jr. Day.