The administration challenged the law in federal court soon after Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed it two years ago. Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, South Carolina and Utah passed similar laws, parts of which also are on hold pending the high court’s decision.

The court hearing comes as presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney is trying to find a way to cut President Barack Obama’s strong support among Latino voters. Romney was drawn to the right on issues like immigration as he fought off other Republicans in state GOP primary elections. On Monday, Romney signaled he was considering a wide range of immigration policies, including a proposal from Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., that would allow some of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants a chance at visas to stay in the U.S.

A decision in the high-profile immigration case is expected in late June as both camps will be gearing up for the general election.

Other blocked provisions of the Arizona law require all immigrants to obtain or carry immigration registration papers, make it a state criminal offense for an illegal immigrant to seek work or hold a job and allow police to arrest suspected illegal immigrants without warrants.

Arizona argues that with its 370-mile border with Mexico, it has paid a disproportionate price for illegal immigration. It says its 2010 law is consistent with federal immigration policy.

The administration says the law, and Arizona’s approach of maximum enforcement, conflict with a more nuanced federal immigration policy that seeks to balance national security, law enforcement, foreign policy, human rights and the rights of law-abiding citizens and immigrants.

Civil rights groups that back the administration say Arizona’s and the other states’ measures encourage racial profiling and ethnic stereotyping. California, New York and nine other states with significant immigrant populations support the Obama administration.

Florida, Michigan and 14 other states, many of which also are challenging Obama’s health care overhaul, argue that Arizona’s law does not conflict with federal law.

The case features a rematch of last month’s clash over health care between Obama Solicitor General Donald Verilli Jr. and Paul Clement, who had Verilli’s job in the George W. Bush administration. Clement is defending the Arizona law.

Justice Elena Kagan, who was Obama’s first solicitor general, is not taking part in the case, presumably because she worked on it while in the Justice Department.

The case is Arizona v. U.S., 11-182.

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Online:

Details of immigration case: http://tinyurl.com/7ekg6ha

Arizona was the first of a half-dozen states to enact laws intended to drive illegal immigrants elsewhere, a policy known as “attrition by enforcement.” Even where blocked by courts, these laws have already had an impact on farm fields and school classrooms as fewer immigrants showed up.

“If the federal government had been doing and would continue to do its job in securing the border here in southern Arizona, this would not be an issue. Unfortunately, they failed to do that so Arizona stepped up and said, ‘We want to be partners. Here’s a role we think we can play,’” said Sheriff Larry Dever of Cochise County, which shares an 83.5-mile border with Mexico in the state’s southeastern corner.

The administration says it has both increased border enforcement to keep people from entering illegally in the first place and picked up the pace of deportations. In its first two years, the administration deported nearly 800,000 people, far higher on a yearly basis than President George W. Bush’s administration.

The Obama administration sued to block the Arizona law soon after its enactment two years ago. Federal courts have refused to let four key provisions take effect: requiring police, while enforcing other laws, to question a person’s immigration status if officers suspect he is in the country illegally; requiring all immigrants to obtain or carry immigration registration papers; making it a state criminal offense for an illegal immigrant to seek work or hold a job and allowing police to arrest suspected illegal immigrants without warrants.

Five states — Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, South Carolina and Utah — have adopted variations on Arizona’s law. Parts of those laws also are on hold pending the outcome of the Supreme Court case.

Civil rights groups that mounted legal challenges independent of the administration’s say the laws encourage racial profiling and ethnic stereotyping. “It blurs what used to be a very bright line, that you can’t stop someone and ask for papers based just on how they look,” said Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. “But the impact is on citizens as much as immigrants. It’s a dragnet approach that sweeps up law-abiding American citizens based on the color of their skin or ethnic origins.”

And the state laws already have had a marked effect on people’s behavior, whether or not the laws ever went into force, the groups say.

In some states, crops rotted in fields for want of workers to pick them. In Alabama, where a provision required schools to check student’s citizenship status, more than 2,000 students stayed home the first week the law was in effect, said Karen Tumlin, managing attorney for the National Immigration Law Center. Foreign employees, including a German Mercedes-Benz executive, have been detained or ticketed for not carrying immigration documents.

In Arizona, around the time Gov. Jan Brewer signed the immigration law, lifelong Arizona resident Jim Shee twice confronted police officers who came to his car window asking to see his “papers.”

Shee, 72, is of Chinese and Spanish descent. “I’m not blond-haired and blue-eyed. My grandkids aren’t blond-haired and blue-eyed. I don’t want to see this happening to them,” Shee said.

He has joined a lawsuit filed by a coalition of civil rights groups. The suit is on hold until the high court renders a decision.

Shee said he carries his passport in case he gets stopped again.

The number of illegal immigrants in Arizona has declined by about a third in recent years, from 530,000 in 2007 to 360,000 in 2011, according to federal government estimates.

Experts have attributed the decrease to several factors, including the economic downturn, tighter border security and state immigration laws. A 2007 Arizona law, allowed to take effect last year by the Supreme Court, prohibits employers from knowingly hiring illegal immigrants.

But in Arizona and elsewhere, the appetite for new immigration measures appears to have waned, in part because business leaders have objected. Arizona voters ousted Republican state Sen. Russell Pearce, the architect of the 2010 law and the driving force behind other Arizona immigration laws, in a November recall election.

“There has been a great deal of buyer’s remorse in those states that have enacted Arizona-type legislation,” the ACLU’s Romero said.

The high court decision will land in the middle of a presidential campaign in which Obama has been heavily courting Latino voters and presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney has been struggling to win Latino support after a drawn-out primary campaign in which he and the other GOP candidates mostly embraced a hard line to avoid accusations that they support any kind of “amnesty” for illegal immigrants living in the U.S.

Justice Elena Kagan sat out last year’s case and also will not take part in the new immigration case, presumably because of her work in the Obama administration. The court’s conservative majority held sway in last year’s 5-3 decision.

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Associated Press writer Jacques Billeaud in Phoenix contributed to this story.

Arizona was the first of a half-dozen states to enact laws intended to drive illegal immigrants elsewhere, a policy known as “attrition by enforcement.” Even where blocked by courts, these laws have already had an impact on farm fields and school classrooms as fewer immigrants showed up.

“If the federal government had been doing and would continue to do its job in securing the border here in southern Arizona, this would not be an issue. Unfortunately, they failed to do that so Arizona stepped up and said, ‘We want to be partners. Here’s a role we think we can play,’” said Sheriff Larry Dever of Cochise County, which shares an 83.5-mile border with Mexico in the state’s southeastern corner.

The administration says it has both increased border enforcement to keep people from entering illegally in the first place and picked up the pace of deportations. In its first two years, the administration deported nearly 800,000 people, far higher on a yearly basis than President George W. Bush’s administration.

The Obama administration sued to block the Arizona law soon after its enactment two years ago. Federal courts have refused to let four key provisions take effect: requiring police, while enforcing other laws, to question a person’s immigration status if officers suspect he is in the country illegally; requiring all immigrants to obtain or carry immigration registration papers; making it a state criminal offense for an illegal immigrant to seek work or hold a job and allowing police to arrest suspected illegal immigrants without warrants.

Five states — Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, South Carolina and Utah — have adopted variations on Arizona’s law. Parts of those laws also are on hold pending the outcome of the Supreme Court case.

Civil rights groups that mounted legal challenges independent of the administration’s say the laws encourage racial profiling and ethnic stereotyping. “It blurs what used to be a very bright line, that you can’t stop someone and ask for papers based just on how they look,” said Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. “But the impact is on citizens as much as immigrants. It’s a dragnet approach that sweeps up law-abiding American citizens based on the color of their skin or ethnic origins.”

And the state laws already have had a marked effect on people’s behavior, whether or not the laws ever went into force, the groups say.

In some states, crops rotted in fields for want of workers to pick them. In Alabama, where a provision required schools to check student’s citizenship status, more than 2,000 students stayed home the first week the law was in effect, said Karen Tumlin, managing attorney for the National Immigration Law Center. Foreign employees, including a German Mercedes-Benz executive, have been detained or ticketed for not carrying immigration documents.

In Arizona, around the time Gov. Jan Brewer signed the immigration law, lifelong Arizona resident Jim Shee twice confronted police officers who came to his car window asking to see his “papers.”

Shee, 72, is of Chinese and Spanish descent. “I’m not blond-haired and blue-eyed. My grandkids aren’t blond-haired and blue-eyed. I don’t want to see this happening to them,” Shee said.

He has joined a lawsuit filed by a coalition of civil rights groups. The suit is on hold until the high court renders a decision.

Shee said he carries his passport in case he gets stopped again.

The number of illegal immigrants in Arizona has declined by about a third in recent years, from 530,000 in 2007 to 360,000 in 2011, according to federal government estimates.

Experts have attributed the decrease to several factors, including the economic downturn, tighter border security and state immigration laws. A 2007 Arizona law, allowed to take effect last year by the Supreme Court, prohibits employers from knowingly hiring illegal immigrants.

But in Arizona and elsewhere, the appetite for new immigration measures appears to have waned, in part because business leaders have objected. Arizona voters ousted Republican state Sen. Russell Pearce, the architect of the 2010 law and the driving force behind other Arizona immigration laws, in a November recall election.

“There has been a great deal of buyer’s remorse in those states that have enacted Arizona-type legislation,” the ACLU’s Romero said.

The high court decision will land in the middle of a presidential campaign in which Obama has been heavily courting Latino voters and presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney has been struggling to win Latino support after a drawn-out primary campaign in which he and the other GOP candidates mostly embraced a hard line to avoid accusations that they support any kind of “amnesty” for illegal immigrants living in the U.S.

Justice Elena Kagan sat out last year’s case and also will not take part in the new immigration case, presumably because of her work in the Obama administration. The court’s conservative majority held sway in last year’s 5-3 decision.

___

Associated Press writer Jacques Billeaud in Phoenix contributed to this story.

The issue at the Supreme Court is whether U.S. copyright protection applies to items that are made abroad, purchased abroad and then resold in the U.S. without the permission of the manufacturer. The high court split 4-4 when it tried to answer that question in a case in 2010 involving Costco and Swiss watch maker Omega.

Justice Elena Kagan sat out the Costco case, but will join the other justices in hearing the new dispute.

Discount sellers like Costco and Target and Internet giants eBay and Amazon help form an estimated $63 billion annual market for goods that are purchased abroad, then imported and resold without the permission of the manufacturer. The U.S.-based sellers, and consumers, benefit from the common practice of manufacturers to price items more cheaply abroad than in the United States. This phenomenon is sometimes called a parallel market or gray market.

The high court already has ruled that copyright protections do not apply when the goods are made in the U.S., sold abroad and reimported. This case concerns only foreign-made items.

Federal judges have come to different conclusions about whether copyright law applies in Kirtsaeng’s and other cases.

Kirtsaeng returned to Thailand in 2010 after doing graduate work at the University of Southern California, said his lawyer, Joshua Rosenkranz. Earlier, he received his undergraduate degree from Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.

While at USC, Kirtsaeng arranged for family and friends living abroad to purchase textbooks and ship them to him. He resold the copies on eBay. Eight textbooks sold by Kirtsaeng were published by Wiley’s Asian subsidiary. The company sued the student in federal court in New York.

eBay was among the outside parties urging the court to hear the case and decide it in Kirtsaeng’s favor.

The case will be argued in the fall.

The case is Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, 11-697.