Three individuals in Kansas v. Garcia were convicted of identity theft under Kansas law for using other peoples’ Social Security numbers to gain employment, providing false Social Security numbers on their I-9 forms and on their state tax-withholding forms. Although the State of Kansas dropped its previous reliance on the information on the I-9 forms, the individuals argued that the state could not rely on the same information found on other forms because those were filled out as part of the process of obtaining employment and, therefore, were preempted by federal law. The U.S. Supreme Court decided that federal law does not preempt a state’s ability to bring criminal prosecutions against individuals for providing false or fraudulent information in connection with their employment.
