For decades, the Supreme Court has understood that our Constitution does not allow the fifty different states to set their own immigration policy, and for good reason. As the Court explained nearly 70 years ago, foreign nations do not take kindly to mistreatment of their citizens within the United States, and such mistreatment can have catastrophic consequences. “Experience has shown that international controversies of the gravest moment, sometimes even leading to war, may arise from real or imagined wrongs to another’s subjects inflicted, or permitted, by a government.”

Which explains why a bipartisan team of former foreign policy and national security officials, including former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former Defense Secretary William Cohen, and former Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court earlier this week warning the Court not to allow Arizona’ anti-immigrant SB 1070 law to stand. As the brief warns, Arizona’s actions “risk of embroiling the national government in disputes not of its making” — forcing the entire nation to live with the consequences of just one rogue state’s actions.

Moreover, the brief explains, these consequences have already begun:

S.B. 1070 rapidly generated significant friction between the U.S. and other countries and made them less willing to cooperate with the United States. Only a month after the law took effect, the President of Mexico expressed his country’s concern in a speech to the U.S. Congress,11 raised the issue in bilateral talks with President Obama, and addressed it in a joint press conference following their meeting. In June 2010, six Mexican governors cancelled their trips to Phoenix for an annual conference of U.S. and Mexican governors on border issues, leading Texas and Arizona to boycott the rescheduled conference venue in New Mexico. And unfavorable public attitudes in Mexico towards the United States jumped from only 27 percent to 48 percent shortly following enactment of the Arizona law—no minor consequence for the millions of Americans who travel to and conduct business with Mexico each year.

Arizona’s law has also produced ripple effects throughout Central and South America. It has damaged U.S. relations with Bolivia, Brazil, Columbia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua, whose presidents and parliaments have issued statements criticizing the law. Both El Salvador and Mexico have also issued travel warnings or alerts to their citizens traveling to the U.S.

State immigration laws like S.B. 1070 also create a risk of retaliation against U.S. citizens residing or conducting business abroad. Indeed, in immigration matters, countries frequently respond to restrictions on their citizens by enacting reciprocal measures. For example, in 2004 Brazil singled out U.S. nationals for fingerprinting and photographing upon entry into Brazil to respond in equal measure to the U.S. fingerprinting of foreign nationals under the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act of 2002.

In light of this week’s Affordable Care Act arguments, it remains an open question whether the Constitution and precedent still apply at all in the Supreme Court of the United States. If they still do — or if the justices care one bit about America’s ability to conduct responsible foreign relations — the justices need to heed these officials’ brief and strike down SB 1070.

Disclosure: Two of the signatories to this brief, former Deputy Secretary of Defense Rudy deLeon and former Assistant Secretary of Defense Larry Korb are employees of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin — To Rick Santorum, the more than 23 million American voters who don’t have a government-issued photo ID aren’t potential victims of disenfranchisement. The presidential hopeful uses a different name: perpetrators of fraud.

ThinkProgress spoke with the Republican presidential hopeful about voter ID laws — which require that citizens present a certain form of photo identification or they are barred from voting — during a campaign stop in Milwaukee last weekend. Santorum said that he supports such laws because, as he states it, “the only reason you don’t have a voter ID is you want to continue to perpetrate fraud.” He went on to dismiss the notion that anyone might not have access to a voter ID, saying that “it’s not a problem.”

KEYES: Voter ID has been a big issue here in Wisconsin. I know Lindsey Graham has proposed a national voter ID law. Is that something you would sign as president?

SANTORUM: I think that’s a state issue. I support voter ID. In my opinion, the only reason you don’t have a voter ID is you want to continue to perpetrate fraud.

KEYES: What about folks who don’t have access to a voter ID though?

SANTORUM: As you know, in every state they allow free access to free voter ID, so it’s not a problem.

Watch it:

Santorum’s claim falls somewhere in the murky world between audacity and lunacy. More than one in ten Americans lack a government-issued photo ID. These people are not committing voter fraud — indeed, voter fraud is rarer than getting struck by lightning — they are potentially having their right to vote stripped away. Santorum appears to have confused the disenfranchisees with the disenfranchisers.

Here are just a few people that Santorum believes “perpetrate fraud.” Dorothy Cooper, a 96 year-old African American woman from Tennessee who was denied a voter ID because she didn’t have a copy of her marriage certificate. She said the ordeal was worse than anything she’d experienced in the Jim Crow era. Ruthelle Frank, an 84 year-old Wisconsin woman, who may be forced to pay as much as $200 to get the proper documents for a voter ID, despite the Constitution’s prohibition on charging citizens a fee to vote. A Texas resident named Jessica Cohen also finds herself unable to obtain the necessary documents for a voter ID after she lost her identification in a robbery. These are just three of the more than 23 million people committing voter fraud in Santorum’s mind.

Many citizens don’t have immediate access to their birth certificate or similar documents required for a voter ID. Similarly, in rural areas of states like Texas, some citizens live 100 miles or more from the nearest ID agency. Already lacking a driver’s license, it’s not difficult to see how traversing 100+ miles of the Texas desert might be difficult for someone looking to get a voter ID. Santorum, however, dismissed the notion that any of these people might be disenfranchised by a voter ID requirement: “it’s not a problem.”

Under the federal Privacy Act, it is illegal for federal agencies to reveal a person’s confidential medical information. Nevertheless, the Social Security Administration did exactly that when it revealed to another agency that a California man is HIV positive. In a 5-3 decision yesterday (Kagan was recused) the Supreme Court effectively held that this man is completely without remedy for this violation of his privacy:

In a 5-3 ruling, the high court decided Stanmore Cooper’s claims of mental and emotional distress are not covered under the Privacy Act.

“The Privacy Act does not unequivocally authorize damages for mental or emotional distress and therefore does not waive the government’s sovereign immunity for such harms,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the conservative majority. . . .

“The person who is subject to this, to this embarrassment, this humiliation, doesn’t have out-of-pocket costs, but is terribly distressed, nervous, anxious, and all the rest,” Ginsburg said [during the oral argument on the case]. “The act that the Congress is reaching, the impact is of that nature. I mean, pecuniary (monetary) damages ordinarily attend conduct that embarrasses, humiliates you, causes mental distress.“

To be fair, the decision did not cut off the rights of someone who is fired or suffers other tangible losses due to a similar violation of their privacy, but it establishes that there is no remedy if the government simply shames someone by revealing their most embarrassing medical records. Moreover, it is worth noting that the plaintiff in this case is not the most sympathetic possible victim — his HIV status was revealed after he illegally failed to disclose it on an application for a pilot’s license.

Nonetheless, the rule announced yesterday could have sweeping implications. Programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security Disability and the veterans health system necessarily will gather a great deal of medical information about many, many Americans — and there should be very real consequences if the agencies that run these programs fail to treat that very sensitive information with confidentiality and respect.

Let’s be very clear about how Medicaid works. Medicaid offers each state a pool of money to provide health care to low income Americans. States can take or leave the money if they wish, but if they take the money, they agree to comply with certain conditions. If a state violates one of these conditions, the Secretary of Health and Human Services can dock their funds or potentially cut off funds entirely if the violation is sufficiently egregious.

This was the system in place when President Johnson signed Medicaid into law in 1965. It was the system in place after President Reagan expanded it to cover many new pregnant women and children in 1984. It was the system in place when Reagan expanded Medicaid again in 1985 and in 1988. And it was the system in place when new expansions were added in the 1990s. It each expansion, the bargain remained the same, states could accept the new conditions added by these expansions, or they could walk away from Medicaid. If they took the money and failed to comply with the conditions, they risked having their funding cut off.

In 2010, President Obama followed in his predecessors’ footsteps by expanding Medicaid through the Affordable Care Act. Yesterday afternoon, the Supreme Court flipped out. Although the five conservative justices’ objections to this most recent expansion often rested on other grounds, they almost always circled back to the same objection. The Affordable Care Act expands Medicaid, and the Secretary retains the exact same power she has had since 1965 to potentially cut off all of a state’s Medicaid funds if a state refuses to comply with any of the new conditions — so Obamacare could cause these states to lose all their Medicaid funds if they don’t comply with the new conditions.

Now, let’s be clear. If these justices are right that this Medicaid expansion is unconstitutional, than it also means that every single expansion since 1965 is also unconstitutional. That means stripping millions of the poorest and most vulnerable Americans of their only access to health care. Immediately.

Nor will the fallout be limited to Medicaid. As Justice Ginsburg pointed out, many universities received federal funding in 1972, when Congress enacted Title IX’s requirement that they must cease discrimination against women if they want to keep their funding. This too would be unconstitutional under the conservative justices’ theory. As would every other similar expansion to these education funds after they were first enacted.

It is rare that a single moment in a Supreme Court argument perfectly distills the difference in world view between the Court’s liberals and its conservatives, but such a moment occurred today. When Solicitor General Verrilli explained, correctly, that no Secretary has ever used their power to cut off a state’s Medicaid funding completely, Justice Alito expressed bafflement that any person could possess such an awesome power and refrain from using it. How, Alito wondered, could it be a “realistic possibility” that “we are not going to cut off your old funds, and just let that condition sit there?”

Justice Kagan soon weighed in with this answer:

[W]hen the Secretary withdraws funds, what the Secretary is doing is withdrawing funds from poor people’s health care, and that the Secretary is reluctant and loathed to take money away from poor people’s health care. And that that’s why these things are always worked out. It’s that the Secretary really doesn’t want to use this power, and so the Secretary sits down with the State and figures out a way for the Secretary not to use the power.

To Justice Alito, power is something that is to be wielded — just as he and his fellow conservatives appear dangerously close to casting the Constitution aside and striking down the Affordable Care Act simply because they can. To Justice Kagan, power is a sacred trust granted to our national leaders on the promise that they will use it lawfully and compassionately.

There are five of him, and only four of her.