I'm Elizabeth Lattery and welcome to Scotus 101, where we break down what's happening at the Supreme Court, what the justices are up to, and other things related to our favorite branch of government.

This week, I'm joined by Mark Walsh, who writes for Scotus Blog, the ABA Journal, and Education Week.

It's been a while since your last appearance on the podcast, so Mark, welcome back.

Always happy to be here.

So it's been a busy week at the Supreme Court with the justices issuing one pretty big opinion, orders, hearing oral arguments, and then there's the dust up between the Chief Justice and Senator Chuck Schumer.

So first up, we'll hit the highlights of the court's opinion in Kansas v. Garcia.

It was a 5-4 ruling with the majority decision written by Justice Alito split along sort of traditional ideological lines.

The court held that federal immigration law does not preempt a state law criminalizing identity fraud

based on information provided on the I-9 employment verification forms. So here, three illegal aliens

were convicted of identity theft in Kansas for fraudulently using other people's social

security numbers on state and federal tax forms and on the I-9 forms. This went all the way to the Kansas Supreme Court,

which overturned their convictions on the ground that the Federal Immigration Reform and Control Act

expressly preempts state identity fraud laws. It held that a state could not use information contained

in the I-9 form as a basis for state law prosecution. So the state of

Kansas asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review that decision and the U.S. Supreme Court issued its

ruling this week. Reversing the state Supreme Court, the court said that the state court had read

the federal law way too broadly, said its reading is flatly contrary to standard English usage. The court explained

that although a tangible object can be contained in only one place at a time, an item of

information may be contained in many different places. So accordingly, the federal immigration law

did not expressly preempt state identity theft laws. The court also held that the federal law did not impliedly preempt state identity theft laws. The court also held that

the federal law did not impliedly preempt the state law because the state law did not conflict

with the federal law and the field covered by the federal law is unrelated to the submission of tax

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