Much of the debate about state immigration laws has revolved around harmful anti-immigrant measures in states like Alabama and Arizona. But in California, state lawmakers are working to pass an “anti-Arizona” bill that would protect undocumented immigrants. The legislation would prevent local law enforcement officials from referring a detainee to immigration officials for deportation unless the person detained has been convicted of a violent or serious felony. “California cannot afford to become another Arizona,” said California Assembly member Tom Ammiano, who sponsored the bill:

The California bill, which has the support of over 100 immigrant rights groups, police chiefs and mayors, was drafted not only as a symbolic counter to legislation in neighboring Arizona, but also to push back against a federal program called Secure Communities that shares the same principles as Arizona’s law, supporters say.

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, or ICE, established the Secure Communities program in partnership with local law enforcement agencies and the FBI to deport unauthorized immigrants. [...]

The federal program has been responsible for deporting over 72,000 Californians, according to Ammiano, with 70 percent of those deported from the state having either no criminal conviction, or conviction for a minor offense.

By a 21-13 vote, state senators approved the bill Thursday, which now heads to the California Assembly for consideration.

Following the Supreme Court’s ruling on Arizona’s SB 1070 — in which the court allowed the “show me your papers” provision to go into effect after limiting it — federal officials ended Secure Communities partnerships with seven Arizona law enforcement offices. A DHS official said the Obama administration determined that the agreements are “not useful” now in states that have Arizona-style laws.

Over at the Grio, an African-American news site run by NBC News, Joy-Ann Reid reveals that the Supreme Court has sprung yet another leak:

A source with knowledge of the deliberations confirms to theGrio that Roberts, possibly as late as mid-June, was prepared to strike down the individual mandate, siding with his fellow conservative justices, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Libertarian-leaning Justice Anthony Kennedy. The source also confirms other elements of Crawford’s story — namely that intense pressure was being placed on Roberts by the conservatives to strike down the entire law.

Once again, the most important news here is not the revelation that Roberts may have been unsure of his vote until just a couple of weeks before he largely upheld the Affordable Care Act, although that fact does speak well about how the Court’s deliberative process often enables justices to think through erroneous views and realize that they are unsound. Rather, the most important news here is that yet another reporter has found a leak in the Supreme Court’s cone of silence.

As ThinkProgress explained on Tuesday, this kind of thing would not happen in a perfect world. Although there is some marginal value to learning right away what sort of alliances and negotiations occur within the Supreme Court’s marble palace, the fact remains that the Court’s deliberations rest on the assumption that justices can openly exchange ideas without fear that those conversations will later be used to embarrass them. If this assumption dies, the very deliberative process that may have enabled Roberts to realize his initial impression of the health care case was mistaken would suffer a serious wound.

In 2010, conservatives tried to block the Affordable Care Act in Congress. They lost, and President Obama signed the landmark legislation into law.

Rather than respect the legitimate act of a democratically elected legislature, health reform’s opponents responded by immediately asking the courts to invalidate what the American people’s representatives brought into being. They lost again — although by a depressingly narrow margin considering how absurd their legal arguments were.

Now that that attempt to subvert democracy has failed, an Oklahoma lawmaker relaunched an even more constitutionally challenged attack on the law:

State Rep. Mike Ritze said Tuesday he plans to reintroduce a bill to “nullify” the individual mandate in the 2010 federal health care legislation in Oklahoma.

“I disagree with the Supreme Court’s ruling and believe that state governments were intended to serve as a check on the federal government,” said Ritze, R-Broken Arrow. “The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which is better known as ObamaCare, is an example of federal overreach and my legislation will authorize the state to resist it and ban the enforcement of it.”

Of course, Ritze’s bill violates the express language of the Constitutional, which states that Acts of Congress “shall be the supreme law of the land . . . anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.” Yet, while his tactic is clearly unconstitutional, it is not unprecedented. In the 1950s, when Jim Crow lawmakers objected to the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education, they too claimed the power to simply decree that the Court was wrong and act like they can do whatever they choose.

This man is Raúl Héctor Castro. He is 96 years old, a former Arizona governor, and a former United States Ambassador to El Salvador, Bolivia and Argentina. He was born in Mexico, and is a United States citizen.

Last month he was stopped by U.S. border patrol agents after residual radiation from a medical procedure he’d recently undergone triggered an alarm at a checkpoint in Tubac, AZ. The 96 year-old heart patient was then forced to exit his vehicle in the 100 degree Arizona heat and wait in a tent in a business suit, even as his companion begged the agents not to subject an elderly man to such treatment.

This is the third time the former governor and ambassador has been detained by border control. The first occurred years ago while he was repairing his own fence and agents stopped him and asked to see his work card — although they eventually desisted after Castro pointed out a sign by his farm entrance that read “Judge Castro.” The second occurred years later in San Diego, although that encounter ended shortly after someone recognized Castro and said “Governor, how are you?”

Mississippi’s voter identification law might prove literally impossible for some of its residents to adhere to. In the state, a measure written by State Senator Joey Fillingane (R) and approved by a ballot initiative requires voters to have photograph identification, which they can only obtain if they’ve got a birth certificate to present. But they can only get a birth certificate using photo ID. (It is worth noting here that Fillingane is a member of the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which is notorious for its voter suppression efforts).

State officials acknowledge the problem Fillingane’s law might cause:

State officials are running into problems with the new voter-identification law even before the federal government has approved or rejected it. Voters without a photo ID are facing a circular problem: They need a certified birth certificate to get the voter ID, and they need a photo ID to get the birth certificate.

Pamela Weaver, spokeswoman of the Mississippi Secretary of State’s office, today confirmed the catch-22 problem, which the Jackson Free Press learned about from a complaint posted on Facebook. One of the requirements to get the free voter ID cards is a birth certificate, but in order to receive a certified copy of your birth certificate in Mississippi, you must have a photo ID. Not having the photo ID is why most people need the voter ID in the first place.

The law is not yet in place, since the federal government needs to approve it under the Voting Rights Act. That Act forbids state voting laws that have a discriminatory impact on minority voters, and, because of Mississippi’s sordid history of voter suppression, requires that the state’s voting laws be precleared by the Justice Department or a federal judge before they can take effect.

There’s no good reason why the Mississippi law should survive such scrutiny. Voter ID laws are especially likely to prevent certain historically disenfranchised communities from voting — 18 percent of elderly voters lack a valid photo ID, as do 25 percent of black and 20 percent of Asian adults.

Reagan-appointed Judge Richard Posner is one of the most highly regarded judges in the country. He is one of the few federal court of appeals judges whose decisions are routinely taught in law schools, and possibly the only sitting federal judge to enjoy that status. A pioneer of the conservative law and economics movement, Posner is widely viewed as one of the brightest conservative legal thinkers in the country.

Except that the modern GOP may change that.

Posner expressed admiration for President Ronald Reagan and the economist Milton Friedman, two pillars of conservatism. But over the past 10 years, Posner said, “there’s been a real deterioration in conservative thinking. And that has to lead people to re-examine and modify their thinking.”

“I’ve become less conservative since the Republican Party started becoming goofy,” he said.

Posner also warned conservatives that “blasting [Chief Justice] Roberts” for his decision upholding the Affordable Care Act will backfire:

“Because if you put [yourself] in his position … what’s he supposed to think? That he finds his allies to be a bunch of crackpots? Does that help the conservative movement? I mean, what would you do if you were Roberts? All the sudden you find out that the people you thought were your friends have turned against you, they despise you, they mistreat you, they leak to the press. What do you do? Do you become more conservative? Or do you say, ‘What am I doing with this crowd of lunatics?‘ Right? Maybe you have to re-examine your position.”

Posner may be right, although it would be a big change for the Chief Justice if he did become more moderate in the face of right-wing attacks. Roberts has shown no problem with hanging around with Posner’s “crowd of lunatics” in the past.