By Tom Curry, msnbc.com National Affairs Writer
 

The Supreme Court upheld one part of the Arizona immigration law but struck down other sections. The Supreme Court has handed down a ruling on Arizona's strict immigration law. NBC's Pete Williams reports. The part of the law the justices upheld requires police officers stopping someone to make efforts to verify the person's immigration status with the Federal Government.
Text of the decision (PDF)
 

The justices struck down three other parts of the law:

• One making it a crime for an illegal immigrant to work or to seek work in Arizona;
• One which authorized state and local officers to arrest people without a warrant if the officers have probable cause to believe a person is an illegal immigrant;
• And one that made it a state requirement for immigrants to register with the federal government.

The decision was a partial victory for President Obama who had criticized the Arizona law, saying it "threatened to undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans."