A United States District Court in Illinois has recently overturned an Illinois statute that restricted the use of the E-verify program by Illinois employers.
The E-verify program is a federal program that is meant to provide employers with near instantaneous verification that a new hire is eligible to work in the United States. In theory the program is meant to ease the burden on employers. In practice, however, users of the program have developed significant concerns about the program because it has produced many “false positives” – meaning work-eligible employees have been falsely labeled as ineligible. The Illinois Legislature, concerned about the program’s accuracy, passed legislation that forbid companies from using the program until the federal government could verify that the program was 99% accurate.
The District Court’s reasoning for overturning the statute centered on its ruling that the statute contradicted federal law and violated the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution. Many states have statutes addressing immigration law and it is an open question whether any of them are compatible with the Supremacy Clause. But that is a question that the Courts must answer.
Is the e-verify system mandatory?