[JURIST] A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld [opinion, PDF] the majority of an injunction against an Oklahoma anti-illegal immigration law, but did permit the state to enact a provision whereby businesses would have to check their employment roster against a state list of eligible workers through a pilot program. The three-judge panel, sitting at the US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit [official website], considered whether to uphold an injunction against the Oklahoma Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act of 2007 [text, PDF], which required, among other provisions, three sections that were at the heart of the appeal: that businesses use a pilot program to verify the work authorization status of their employees (7B); that firing a US citizen or legal immigrant, while simultaneously employing an immigrant who is in the US unlawfully, be recognized as an unfair trade practice, giving the fired employee a private cause of action (7C); and that contractors verify the immigration status of their independent contractors, or withhold taxes from them (9). The panel found that federal law [8 USC § 1324 materials] preempted sections 7C and 9, but split on whether section 7B was similarly preempted, disagreeing as to whether state mandatory electronic verification of employee status conflicted with voluntary use of a federal database. In a concurrence that found no preemption of section 7B, Judge Kelly wrote:

Though E-verify is voluntary (as of yet) at the national level, it is not reasonable to assume that a mandatory program choice for state public contractors conflicts with Congressional purpose. ... To hold that the State is preempted from requiring such use in these circumstances reads too much into the federal government's provision of choice.