In a filing Friday afternoon, Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal asked the court to hear a challenge brought by employers and immigrant-rights groups to the employer-sanctions statute Napolitano signed in 2007.

"Those provisions disrupt a careful balance that Congress struck nearly 25 years ago between two interests of the highest importance: ensuring that employers do not undermine enforcement of immigration laws by hiring unauthorized workers, while also ensuring that employers not discriminate against racial and ethnic minorities legally in the country," Katyal and other government attorneys wrote. "There is no reason to believe Congress intended a result that would subvert the purpose and operation of its general prohibition on state sanctions."

The Arizona law seeks to exploit a purported gap in a federal statute which generally bars states from regulating issues related to employment of foreigners, including illegal aliens.

The law allows states to control business "licensing and similar laws." The Arizona law targets employers found to hire illegals, and could revoke business licenses of repeat violators.

By effectively joining the challenges to the law, the Obama Administration is asserting broad federal control of immigration ― a position that will make it easier to pursue a lawsuit against the more controversial immigration law passed in Arizona this year allowing local police to make arrests of non-citizens lacking legal status.

The administration is also siding with immigrant-rights groups who have accused the White House of not making immigration reform a priority.

A spokesman for Napolitano had no immediate response to a request for comment.

As governor, Napolitano said she thought the state law was valid. Indeed, she was initially a defendant in many of the lawsuits challenging it.

The Ninth Circuit rejected those challenges, but the Justice Department is now arguing that ruling was wrong.

As secretary, Napolitano is the administration's point person on immigration and has defended a portion of the Arizona law that requires employers to use the federal "e-verify" database to confirm workers' legal status. The Justice Department brief doesn't object to that aspect of the law.

The Supreme Court has not indicated whether it will hear the challenges to the Arizona employer-sanctions law, but asked the U.S. Government for its views back in November.

 

Today was the last day for the government to submit its position in order to be considered at the court's final conference next month.

 

Officials said Napolitano took an active part in internal discussions about the case and was not recused from the debate.