A conservative group in Tennessee is pushing the state legislature to pass a xenophobic bill that would place limits on the number of foreigners that the state’s charter schools can hire, in a thinly veiled attack on the Muslim community.

The Putting Tennessee First Act says that the state’s chartering authority may not approve schools where more than 3.5 percent of their staff is made up of immigrants, even if they are legal residents of the United States.

The Tennessean has more:

The Tennessee Eagle Forum, which drafted the bill, is affiliated with the Eagle Forum, a national organization that wants to reduce the number of visas available to foreign-born workers and opposes the use of textbooks that it sees as favorable to Islam.

The Eagle Forum is a national group run by anti-Equal Rights Amendment activist Phyllis Schlafly, who has called feminism the most “destructive force in our society today.” The state group has tried — and failed — to pass discriminatory laws in the past. Last year, they authored the Material Support to Designated Entities Act, which would have labeled some Muslims terrorists if they were found to be practicing Sharia Law in the state. The bill failed after civil rights groups loudly objected.

Senate Republican Caucus Chairman Bill Kentron is a sponsor of the bill, and he has thus far denied that religion played any part in his decision to support the bill. But another Republican, Sen. Jim Summerville, told the Tennessean that he believes the bill’s supporters are concerned with Islamist groups infiltrating charter schools.

Some of the most vocal opposition to the bill is coming from other Republicans in Tennessee. Sen. Stacey Campfield said that he has no problem with foreigners teaching in schools if they’re here legally. And others have said that the limitations on whom schools can hire will hurt students.

The Constitution’s words enabling Congress to “regulate commerce…among the several states” gives the United States broad authority over economic matters — although non-economic regulation is far more suspect. Early in today’s argument, however, several of the justices appeared poised to impose an entirely novel limit on Congress’ authority — suggesting that laws which require, in Justice Kennedy’s words, an “affirmative duty to act to go into commerce” is somehow constitutionally suspect. So there were no shortages of pointed questions about the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that everyone either carry health insurance or pay slightly more income taxes.

There are two reasons why this requirement is necessary. The first is that, because the law prohibits insurers from denying coverage to patients with preexisting conditions, it must also ensure that healthy people enter the insurance market before they become sick. If patients can wait until they get sick to buy insurance, they will drain all the money out of an insurance plan that they have not previously paid into, leaving nothing left for the rest of the plan’s consumers. The second reason relates to a problem with our health system that long predates the Affordable Care Act. Because emergency rooms must provide at least some degree of care free of charge to people who cannot afford it, these costs wind up being transferred to persons with insurance — driving up annual premiums as much as $1,100 on the average patient.

Initially, the Court’s conservatives appeared highly credulous of the plaintiffs’ false claim that upholding the health reform would necessarily enable the federal government to do absolutely anything. Solicitor General Don Verrilli addressed this question by explaining that the health care market is unique in that it is the only market that everyone inevitably participates in — we all get sick at some point — and that, because of health care’s sudden and unexpected costs, people typically pay their health bills through insurance. Thus, he explained, because everyone is already caught up in the health care market, the Affordable Care Act does not impose any kind of “duty…to go into commerce” — it merely tells people who are already in the health care market to make sure they pay for their health costs through insurance.

While Verrilli was still at the podium, the Court’s conservatives did not seem to buy this claim. A ray of hope emerged at the end of the oral argument, however, when Justice Kennedy expressed a somewhat nuanced view:

[T]he government tells us that’s because the insurance market is unique. And in the next case, it’ll say the next market is unique. But I think it is true that if most questions in life are matters of degree, in the insurance and health care world, both markets — stipulate two markets — the young person who is uninsured is uniquely proximately very close to affecting the rates of insurance and the costs of providing medical care in a way that is not true in other industries. That’s my concern in the case.

There’s a lot going on in this statement. On the one hand, Kennedy is clearly skeptical that, if the Court says this market is unique, the government won’t simply argue that the next market is also unique in the next case. On the other hand, Kennedy also appears sympathetic to the second reason why the mandate is essential — that the problem of uninsurance leads to billions in health care costs being transferred to other health care consumers. A young person who forgoes health insurance is “uniquely proximately very close” to affecting the health care costs of others, and that may be enough to get Kennedy’s vote to uphold the law.

The big loser in all of this debate, however, is the Constitution itself. The Constitution says nothing about unique markets. Or about the need to impose artificial Congress authority to regulate the nation’s economy. It simply says that Congress can “regulate commerce.” The idea that a law which regulates 1/6 of the nation’s economy is not regulating commerce is, frankly, absurd. Nor was there ever any risk that a decision upholding health reform would lead to all things being permissible. There are many things that are not commercial — federal murder laws, assault laws, child neglect laws or sexual morality laws, for example. A law regulating our entire national health care market, however, is clearly and obviously constitutional.

Justice Kennedy may inevitably vote to uphold the law — he may even bring Chief Justice Roberts along with him — but, whatever the Court does this term, it appears increasingly likely that we live under the constitution of Anthony Kennedy, and that we no longer live under the Constitution of the United States.

Newly released FBI documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union, suggest that the bureau illegally spied on the religious practices of Muslim Americans, under the guise of community outreach. An FBI spokesman defended the information gathering as “within the scope of an authorized law enforcement activity, whether investigation or liaison, including activities designed to strengthen relationships in various communities.”

The ACLU explains:

The FBI’s targeting of American Muslim religious organizations for secret intelligence gathering raises grave constitutional concerns because it is an affront to religious liberty and equal protection of the law. The bureau’s use of outreach meetings to gather intelligence also undermines the trust and mutual understanding necessary to effective law enforcement. Additionally, the FBI’s retention of information gathered through “mosque outreach” in its intelligence files violates federal Privacy Act prohibitions against the maintenance of records about individuals’ First Amendment-protected activity.

But this would hardly be the first time the FBI spied on peaceful Americans.

Here are just a few recent examples:

Iraq War Opponents — A 2002 FBI memo showed the bureau investigated gatherings of the Thomas Merton Center for Peace & Justice, as the pacifist group leafleted against the Iraq War.

Environmentalists — The FBI improperly investigated two planned Greenpeace corporate protests, a three-year inquiry extending long after the protests were over.

Animal Rights Supporters — The bureau also improperly investigated People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

This intelligence, while not useful for public safety, was at least better than the virtual restaurant reviews gathered by the New York Police Department’s spying operation.

A 2010 Inspector General’s report lambasted the FBI for equating nonviolent protests with terrorism and for “false and misleading statements to the public and to Congress.”

Of course, these groups are in good company. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. himself was spied on regularly by J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI. The COINTELPRO investigations into whether the civil rights leader might be a Communist including tapped phone conversations, bugs at his house, and even a 1964 infamous poison-pen letter warning him he would be exposed as a fraud.

But nearly 50 years later, it seems perhaps the FBI should have learned from its mistakes.

After the Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling in the Citizens United v. FEC that corporations could spend unlimited funds from their corporate treasuries on independent political expenditures, some in Congress sought to give shareholders a say in deciding what what expenditures to make. While the Shareholder Protection Act of 2010, a bill by Rep. Mike Capuano (D-MA) to give corporate shareholders the right to vote on political expenditures, was endorsed by the House Financial Services Committee, it never came up for a vote on the House floor. Now, with Republicans in the majority in the House and able to filibuster any reform efforts in the Senate, some reformers have turned their focus to state legislatures.

A Connecticut legislative committee is currently considering a bill that could put the Nutmeg State at the forefront on the issue. A provision of House Bill 5528 would require a shareholder majority approve political spending. The bill would require:

Notwithstanding any provision of the general statutes, for corporations incorporated in this state, shareholders shall annually authorize a political activities budget for the corporation by a majority of votes representing all outstanding shares. For corporations not incorporated in this state, but registered to do business in the state or with shareholders residing in the state, shareholders in the state shall authorize spending related to the state’s elections. Fiduciaries voting on behalf of investors shall disclose such vote to investors.

Another provision in the draft bill would require that the corporations’ boards of directors approve each expenditure over $10,000.

The Connecticut Business & Industry Association, predictably, has opposed these rules, calling them “an intrusion into a corporation’s constitutionally protected right to free speech” and warning that the “regulatory hurdles” of allowing the people who actually own a corporation to have a say in the political speech of that business would “will not make Connecticut appealing as a place to do business.”

But as Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, a professor at Stetson University College of Law and an expert on election law, noted in her committee testimony, “though the Supreme Court majority in Citizens United conceptualized corporations as collections of individuals with joint First Amendment rights, it is unclear how shareholders can voice their opinions collectively without a consent process.” By passing this bill, she says, “Connecticut can be the mouse that roars, exhibiting national leadership in this post-Citizens United America.”

If corporate political expenditures are really about protecting free speech, as the 5-4 Supreme Court majority said, measures like this could make sure that the people who actually make up the corporation are the ones deciding whether to speak, how much to speak, and what to say.

A proposed bill under consideration in the Georgia legislature to prevent all undocumented immigrants from attending state institutions of higher learning also contains provisions which could prevent them from even obtaining marriage licenses and water and sewage service.

The legislation, sponsored by Georgia Sen. Barry Loudermilk (R), would remove foreign passports from the list of valid identification documents for state agencies — unless they were accompanied by federal immigration documentation.

An attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union attacked the bill, noting that the U.S. Transportation and Security Administration consider passports “a very secure form of ID.”

Who is Loudermilk? His campaign website brands him as “a strong conservative leader” and highlights his view that the “ever increasing number of illegal aliens entering Georgia” should “be treated as any other criminal.”

But most telling is an extremely anti-immigrant newspaper op/ed he wrote more than a decade ago, titled “This is America. Like it or leave it.” It said:

First of all, it is not our responsibility to continually try not to offend you in any way. This idea of America being a multi-cultural community has served only to dilute our sovereignty and our national identity. As Americans, we have our own culture, our own society, our own language, and our own lifestyle. This culture, called the “American Way” has been developed over centuries of struggles, trials, and victories by millions of men and women who have sought freedom. Our forefathers fought, bled, and died at places such as Bunker Hill, Antietam, San Juan Hill, Iwo Jima, Normandy, Korea, Vietnam, and the Persian Gulf, for our way of life.

We speak English, not Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, or any other language. Therefore, if you wish to become part of our society, learn our language.

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Welcome to Justiceline, ThinkProgress Justice’s morning round-up of the latest legal news and developments. Remember to follow us on Twitter at @TPJustice.

• During day one of the U.S. Supreme Court hearings on the Affordable Care Act’s constitutionality, observers say justices seemed unswayed by arguments that that case was not yet ripe for consideration.
• Today, the hearings will move to the question of the constitutionality of the individual mandate provisions of the ObamaCare law.
• The Supreme Court also refused to hear an appeal by tobacco giant R.J. Reynolds of a $28.3 million verdict for a Florida widow whose husband died of lung cancer.
• Pennsylvania State Sen. Jane Orie (R) was been convicted on 14 counts of corruption and the former majority whip will now have to resign her seat.
• The conviction of former U.S. Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA) was upheld by a three-judge panel from the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. The judges unanimously affirmed 11 of the 12 guilty counts against him.
• The Senate Rules and Administration Committee will hold its first hearing on the new DISCLOSE Act of 2012 on Thursday.