A legal battle ensued over the feds’ attempts to require some employers to use E-Verify. The feds won.
For more than a year, some members of the government have been trying to make E-Verify mandatory for federal contractors (President Bush signed the first order in June 2008). But the effective date of the rule has been consistently pushed back, as business groups challenged the requirement.
For now, it looks like the most recently announced effective date of September 8 will stand.
A coalition led by the Chamber of Commerce sued to have the rule stopped permanently, but a federal court recently threw out the case.
The suit argued that Congresses authorized E-Verify as a voluntary program. But the court ruled that the requirement only affects businesses that enter into contracts with the government, which is a “voluntary choice.”
