Georgia House Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge, has tapped a Macon attorney to be the newest member of the state’s Immigration Enforcement Review Board.

John Flanders Kennedy is a civil litigation partner at James Bates Brannan Groover and is past-president of the Macon Bar Association. He earned his law degree from Mercer University and was admitted to the State Bar of Georgia in August 1990.

According to Kennedy’s profile on his firm’s website, he handles personal injury and other torts as well as business transactions and disputes. Among his listed clients are Norfolk Southern Railway Company and its subsidiaries.

The state’s Immigration Enforcement Review Board is a seven-member panel under the umbrella of the Department of Audits and Accounting that was created by the implementation of the Illegal Immigration and Enforcement Act, also known as House Bill 87, in 2011. The board, whose members are appointed by the governor, lieutenant governor and speaker, are charged with investigating citizen complaints alleging immigration law violations by public agencies or employees. The panel has subpoena power and rulemaking authority.

This just in from the Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals: a decision on Georgia’s immigration law.

The decision upholds an injunction against Section 7 of the law, which made it illegal to transport or harbor an illegal alien in Georgia. But it reverses an injunction against Section 8 of the law, which authorizes law enforcement officers to investigate the immigration status of criminal suspects who cannot provide particular documents to prove their status.

In conclusion, Judge Charles Wilson wrote: “The illegal-immigration issues that our country faces today are, no doubt, exceptionally important to both the state and federal governments. As a federal court, we do not sit in judgment of the policy decisions of state legislatures, and we are usually reluctant to conclude that states are forbidden from enacting statutes related to activities within their borders. However, when state laws intrude into areas of overwhelming federal interest and erode the discretion implicit in the sovereignty of the country, we must recognize the supremacy of federal law. Here, section 7 of H.B. 87 cannot be reconciled with the federal immigration scheme or the individual provisions of the INA. As a result, we affirm in part the district court’s order preliminarily enjoining enforcement of section 7. We reverse in part the portion of that order enjoining section 8. This case is remanded to the district court for further proceedings.”

Court blocks Ala. from checking student status
GREG BLUESTEIN,Associated Press

ATLANTA (AP) — A federal appeals court on Friday blocked a key part of Alabama’s law that requires schools to check the immigration status of students, temporarily weakening what was considered the toughest immigration law in the nation.

A note from the folks in Macon:

Mercer Law School Celebrates Constitution Day with Speaker Kathryn Abrams, Berkeley Law Professor

Noted constitutional law scholar Kathryn Abrams, a professor at University of California, Berkeley Law School, will present “Fear and Loathing in Maricopa County:  The Emotions of Immigration Regulation” at Mercer Law School’s Constitution Day celebration. The event will take place at noon on Friday, Sept. 16 in the moot courtroom of the Law School. It is free and open to the public.

Abrams will speak during the University’s observance of Constitution Day, a national holiday that commemorates the ratification of the U.S. Constitution on Sept. 17, 1787. Established by federal law in 2004, Constitution Day commemorates the formation and signing of the U.S. Constitution. The day is also designed to recognize those who have become U.S. citizens.

“Kathy Abrams is one of the most prolific, wide-ranging, and respected legal scholars of our time,” said Dean Gary Simson.  “The Law School is honored to have her speak on Constitution Day, the national holiday commemorating the signing of the document that has proven to be such a brilliant charter for our nation.  Professor Abrams is invariably thoughtful and creative in her work, and I am eager to hear her perspective on this constitutional law topic of great current interest.”

Abrams is a distinguished professor of law at Berkeley Law, University of California. Before entering academia, Abrams clerked for Judge Frank M. Johnson of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. She has taught at the law schools at Boston University, Indiana University-Bloomington, Harvard University, Northwestern University and Cornell University. She has been on the Berkeley faculty since 2001. Abrams teaches and writes on feminist jurisprudence, voting rights and constitutional law. Her scholarship has explored questions of employment discrimination, minority vote dilution, campaign finance, constitutional law, and law and the emotions, but it has focused most centrally on feminist jurisprudence. Within this area, Abrams has written on feminist methodology and epistemology, the jurisprudence of sexual harassment, and cultural and theoretical constructions of women’s agency.