Proponents of Arizona’s tough immigration law, dubbed SB1070 from the number it was assigned in the state senate, believe that the expected June ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court on the constitutionality of the law will be the last word on its legality.

It won’t be.

Chief Justice John Roberts signaled as much at the very start of oral arguments last week when he sought an assurance from U.S. Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli, Jr that he wasn’t going to argue about racial profiling.

Verrilli responded that he wasn’t. He has since been vilified in the liberal press for not arguing so because that aspect of the law – show me your papers, please – is the part of the law that is so upsetting to most people not irrationally hysterical about illegal immigration.

The Legislature passed the law in 2010 but the Obama Administration sued, claiming the law violates the pre-emption clause of the U.S. Constitution prohibiting the states from assuming powers reserved to the federal government. Federal district and appellate courts subsequently enjoined enforcement of SB 1070’s key parts – requiring state and local law enforcement officers to enquire about the citizenship status of people they suspect in the country illegally during routine enforcement stops; making being in the country illegally a state crime; making it a crime for illegal immigrants to work in Arizona; allowing for warrantless arrests of people suspected of being in the country illegally; and making impeding traffic for the purpose of picking up an illegal immigrant a crime.

The SCOTUS punditry has been trying to read the court’s tea leaves via the types and tone of questions justices asked Verrilli and Paul Clement, the state’s lawyer, during oral argument. The consensus seems to be that some sort of tortured ruling that splits the baby is in the works, striking down parts of the law but upholding others.

And the part most of those legal experts agree will be upheld is the “papers, please” portion.

The court seemed to indicate that the federal government’s power to regulate immigration is unharmed by law enforcement officers asking about citizenship status during normal interactions with the public, especially when the federal government has been empowering numerous local law enforcement agencies to do just that for more than 20 years.

The assumption that law officers will racially profile and only ask people who look like they’re from Mexico or Central America is a weak argument for the court. Justices don’t like ruling on assumptions, they prefer facts.

In other words, a state requiring law officers to ask about citizenship if they have a reasonable suspicion to do so is constitutionally sound, but the uneven application of such a law isn’t.

Since there is no effective way to enforce the law without racially profiling, it’s likely the law will be back before the court in the future.

Which is what Roberts’ first question Wednesday indicated – this isn’t the end of debate about SB 1070, just the end of the beginning.

Prepositions matter.

While those little two, three and four-letter words might seem like English’s lesser children, they play a very important role in communication and understanding.

Take for instance the following phrases – freedom of religion and freedom from religion.

Three words each with only the middle words, both prepositions, different. Yet each phrase means distinctly different things.

For some, the first phrase, freedom of religion, is a protected right encoded in the First Amendment. It means the government cannot restrict one’s right to worship one’s god anywhere, any time and any way.

For others, the second phrase, freedom from religion, is a right encoded in the First Amendment that restricts the government from imposing, banning or requiring a particular type of religion or allowing any person or religious order to do so.

This week, the Arizona Legislature is poised to pass a bill that allows religious institutions that provide health care insurance plans for their employees to eliminate from those plans coverage for contraceptives, abortions, abortion medications (so-called morning after pills) or sterilization.

For proponents of the bill, it’s an assertion of the freedom of religion phrase – these types of medical procedures and treatments violate the tenets of some religions and it would be a violation of the First Amendment for religious organizations who have employees, such as Catholic hospitals, to be forced to fund heath care procedures that violate their religious beliefs.

For opponents of the bill, it’s violation of the freedom from religion phrase in that it gives government sanction to religious discrimination and allows a type of employer to impose its religious beliefs on its employees, which is a violation of the First Amendment.

The opponents have the better argument and Gov. Jan Brewer would be wise to veto the bill if it gets to her desk.

If proponents are right, that means our society must abandon the 236 years of religious toleration and pluralism that has allowed us to get along and prosper despite our differences. If religious discrimination is what the First Amendment allows, than any employer may choose to hire only employees who believe what they believe.

The great strength of the First Amendment is that it is both of and from – it allows any person to believe whatever they want while preventing the government from interfering with that belief and preventing those believers from imposing their beliefs on others.

House Bill 2625 allows religious groups who have decided to leave the church and enter the public marketplace as employers to impose their religious beliefs on their employees.

In fact, the bill’s own language contradicts itself because it says in several places the religious employers must follow all state and federal rules prohibiting discrimination, which includes religious discrimination.

Yet any employee or prospective employee is forced to either agree with the religious employer’s view of reproductive health care or find employment elsewhere. That’s discriminatory and a clear violation of the First and Fourteenth amendments.

This law wanders into dangerous and divisive waters and if it isn’t vetoed, the courts should immediately overturn it.

Well, there’s no going back now.

Tucson’s exalted leaders and other assorted muckety mucks on Thursday officially celebrated the start of construction of the modern streetcar, now called Sun Link. The four-mile streetcar line stretches west from University Medical Center, through the university and Main Gate Square, turning south on Fourth Avenue to Congress, then west through downtown, meandering past the convention center to Cushing Street where it goes under the freeway and over the river to the Great Dirt Lot.

The $200 million project will either be one of the greatest boons to Tucson’s economic development or its biggest boondoggle. Which will depend on how Tucson markets it and pays for its operation.

In the six years since voters approved it as part of the Regional Transportation Authority roads and transit package, most of the energy has been spent on securing the money to build it, plus design and engineering. That really is what they were celebrating Thursday.

But now comes the hard part – getting people to ride it. Most of the assumption down at city hall and the RTA has been akin to Bob Walkup strolling through a cornfield and hearing a disembodied voice whisper, “If you build it, they will ride.”

At open houses held in the weeks preceding yesterday’s hugfest, business owners affected by the construction asked planners what their estimates were for ridership. The confident answers of packed streetcars were based on a few assumptions – about 100,000 people live within a mile of the route and many work at the UA or downtown; there are nearly 10,000 students living on the UA campus, many without cars; and that nearly all of the region’s big festivals and entertainment events are held along the route.

Last week, those assumptions were given a bit of a boost when it was announced that developers and entrepreneurs have invested nearly $300 million in properties along the line. Which means those business leaders are betting on the side of boon rather than boondoggle.

And that may just be the beginning, if NIMBYs don’t sink the West University project along Euclid Avenue, if the Great Dirt Lot finally gets developed, if Rio Nuevo finally finishes its cultural and historic projects and renovates the TCC with a connected hotel, then over the next 10 to 15 years the streetcar could be the linchpin in another half billion to a billion dollars of economic development along its route.

But for that to happen, people have to ride it and the city has to pay for its annual maintenance and operation. To prevent it being a giant vacuum attached to the city budget sucking up millions of dollars, the city needs people packing streetcars and paying fares. Yet the latter will be a considerable drag on the former.

As of now, the city is planning on charging a fare the same as a Sun Tran bus. That’s treating the streetcar like it’s just a bus, albeit an electric one with steel wheels.

The city has about a year before Sun Link boards its first passenger. In that time, it must work with the business community betting on and benefiting from the streetcar to find a dedicated funding source to underwrite its operation.

There are any number of ideas the city can use to fund Sun Link including a property tax or sales tax overlay district (both of which would probably require a vote or possibly some kind of legislation), parking garage and meter fees, a voluntary program like the existing Business Improvement District, UA sports, TCC and Music Hall ticket surcharges, increasing the bed tax, sponsorships, advertising or a combination of any or all of the preceding. There also are other ideas that many other cities have used to subsidize free public transportation in key entertainment districts that Sun Link can steal.

The key is free fares on the weekends so that the UA and downtown events are linked to UA and downtown shopping and dining. Between UA sports, Centennial Hall, the TCC, the Music Hall, The Fox Theatre, the Rialto, weekend and seasonal events and festivals and the renaissance of downtown, UA and Fourth Avenue dining there are thousands of potential weekend riders for Sun Link. Make them pay a fare and many if not most may be disinclined to ride.

Parking once and using a free Sun Link to easily move around the UA, Fourth Avenue and downtown entertainment and dining district is the key to Sun Link’s success and downtown’s ultimate goal of revitalization.

Sun Link can’t be just a funny looking bus. It has to be special. It has to be fast, convenient and cool. And it has to be free for riders, at least on the weekends.

Treat it like a bus and you’ll put it firmly on the road to boondoogle.