Listening to the oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court on Arizona’s breathing-while-brown law, Senate Bill 1070, prompted a daydream. Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Antonin Scalia are in a battered pickup truck with garden tools visible in the back. Set in the midst of Sheriff Joe Arpaio country — as if in an old Twilight Zone episode — the pair are wearing ragged work clothes stained with sweat and dirt. Naturally, the truck has a broken taillight. Sirens flash, the truck is pulled over by one of the MCSO’s not-so-finest, and Scalia, who is driving, is asked for his license. He feels his back pocket. Whoops, his wallet isn’t there. Must’ve slipped out at the fillin’ station. In the dream, Section 2(b) of SB 1070 is in effect, the injunction placed on it in 2010 by federal Judge Susan R. Bolton (one upheld by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals), having been lifted by Scalia, Sotomayor, and other justices.
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