The U.S. Supreme Court will take up a case involving three Kansas restaurant workers convicted by the state of identity theft for using stolen Social Security numbers to get jobs.
The three illegal immigrants at the center of the case, Ramiro Garcia, Donaldo Morales, and Guadalupe Ochoa-Lara, were found to have provided the stolen Social Security numbers on employment forms.
The defendants appealed their convictions to the Kansas Court of Appeals, arguing that the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act blocks the state from pursuing prosecutions using information on a federal I-9 form.
The state, however, said the information from the I-9 was not used as the basis of the prosecutions.
The Court of Appeals ruled that immigration law did not preempt state prosecutions and upheld the convictions. But the Kansas Supreme Court in 2017 reversed the convictions and found federal immigration law barred the state prosecutions.
