Legal experts say they expect a court challenge to Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer’s order denying driver’s licenses and public benefits to young undocumented immigrants who qualify to stay in the U.S. under a new Obama administration program.

Brewer on Wednesday signed an executive order reiterating that state agencies are required to deny licenses and other taxpayer-funded public benefits to “unlawfully present aliens.” That includes those undocumented immigrants who are approved to stay and work in the U.S. for another two years under the federal government’s new Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

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“The issuance of  Deferred Action or Deferred Action USCIS employment authorization documents to unlawfully present aliens does not confer upon them any lawful or authorized status and does not entitle them to any additional public benefit,” Brewer’s order said.

Wednesday was the first day that certain immigrants who arrived in the U.S. unlawfully as children could apply for the right to stay in the U.S. for two years, with possibility of renewal, without being deported. To be eligible, immigrants must prove they arrived in the U.S. before they turned 16, are 30 or younger, have been living in the country at least five years and are in school or graduated or served in the military. They cannot have been convicted of certain crimes or otherwise pose a safety threat.

In addition to driver’s licenses, Brewer's order bars undocumented immigrants who qualify for the deportation reprieve from public benefits that include state-subsidized child care; KidsCare, a children's health-insurance program; unemployment benefits; business and professional licenses and government contracts, Brewer spokesman Matthew Benson told The Republic newspaper.

"As the (Department of Homeland Security) has said repeatedly ... these individuals do not have lawful status," Benson told The Republic. "They are able to remain in the country and not be deported and not be prosecuted, but they do not have lawful status."

Evelyn Cruz, an Arizona State University clinical law professor and director of the Immigration Law & Policy Clinic, said she expects a legal challenge because Brewer’s order might conflict with federal statutes. “Whenever you have something murky you’re going to have lawsuit,” she told NBC News on Thursday.

Cruz noted that the REAL ID Act of 2005, a federal law that modified requirements for state driver’s licenses and ID cards, specifically listed immigrants who have been granted “deferred action” as among groups of people eligible for a license.

NBCLatino: Arizona immigration activists vow to block Brewer’s ban on benefits for undocumented immigrants

“For something this significant I would not be surprised if there were multiple groups that end up challenging this order,” said Regina Jefferies, a Phoenix immigration lawyer and chair of the Arizona chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

She said Brewer’s order conflicts with both state and federal law.

Immigrants in Arizona have in the past been granted “deferred action” for other reasons long before the new Childhood Arrivals program was announced, Jefferies said.

“Brewer quoted the correct statute but problem is the state laws interchangeably use ‘legal status’ and ‘lawful presence’ like they mean the same thing. They don’t. They mean very different things under federal immigration law,” she said.

“The state of Arizona has regularly issued licenses to people lawfully present in the U.S. even though they don’t have lawful status.”

In contrast, California's Department of Motor Vehicles says it will issue driver's licenses to young illegal immigrants once the Obama administration grants them work permits. A 1993 California law bans driver's licenses for illegal immigrants, but the DMV will treat as "temporary legal residents" anyone who qualifies for the deportation relief program, meaning the state ban won't apply to them, DMV spokesman Mike Marando said Wednesday, according to an article in the Mercury News. 

Arizona immigrant groups upset with Brewer’s directive marched to the state Capitol on Wednesday night in protest.

"She shattered my dreams today," said one of the protesters, Lorenzo Santillan, 24, of the Arizona Dream Act Coalition, The Republic reported.

Arizona passed one of the nation’s toughest anti-illegal immigration laws in the country, SB 1070, in 2010 and Brewer, a harsh critic of President Barack Obama's immigration policy, has characterized Obama’s new deferral program as amnesty. The U.S. Supreme Court in June struck down key provisions of the Arizona law but let stand one requiring police to check the status of someone they suspect is not in the United States legally.

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A U.S. Supreme Court decision on the fate of Arizona’s strict anti-illegal immigration law will have implications far beyond the Grand Canyon state’s borders. But who ultimately wins and loses will be up for debate even after the justices rule by this summer.

The high court on Wednesday will hear oral arguments on SB 1070, a bill signed by Gov. Jan Brewer in April 2010 to help authorities drive illegal immigrants out of Arizona. Implementation of the most controversial sections  -- including a requirement that local police check the immigration status of a criminal suspect if they have “reasonable suspicion” that person is in the country illegally -- has been put on hold by lower courts pending action by the Supreme Court.

The Obama administration is arguing the law should be struck down because immigration policy is rightfully set by the federal government, not states. Arizona, the border of choice for illegal entries from Mexico, contends immigration isn’t exclusively a federal matter and the state has the right to act because federal authorities haven’t done their job.

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The fate of similar immigration laws in states like Alabama and Georgia will also likely hinge on the high court’s decision. Meanwhile, states like New York and California fear that illegal immigrants will flee from Arizona to their locales if the law is upheld.

“Depending on how the court rules, our nation could be changed in major ways, because the decision may shift power dramatically between the states and the federal government,” says Margaret Stock, an immigration lawyer and University of Alaska Anchorage adjunct professor who has written numerous articles and testified before Congress on immigration law issues.

“The Supremes' decision will have a significant bearing on other states' actions -- whichever parts of SB 1070 are upheld are likely to be replicated in a number of other states,” adds Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies,  a Washington-based research organization that supports tougher immigration policies.

If the major components of the law are struck down, it would be a serious rebuke to Arizona and Brewer, who says California and the 10 other states supporting the Obama administration’s argument are misguided in their criticism.

“States joining California in opposing Arizona in this fight may think they have little at stake. They are buffered from the troubles along our nation’s southern border by geography or, in the case of Hawaii, an entire ocean,” Brewer said in a statement on March 29. “But this debate is not just about illegal immigration. It is about every state’s authority and obligation to act in the best interest and welfare of its citizens.”

Video: Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer endorses Mitt Romney

Brewer’s reputation – and perhaps even her political future -- are at stake if the law is struck down.

“I think that a governor’s job is to make the lives of people who live in the state better. Certainly either Jan Brewer is going to look like a fool … or she’s going to fail in her job of governing Arizona well,” says Ian Millhiser, senior constitutional policy analyst with the left-leaning Center for American Progress.

Stock says even if the justices uphold Arizona's law, Arizona could still turn out to be the loser. 

“The law that Arizona passed is very expensive to implement, and is likely to cause businesses and younger families to leave Arizona for other states like California. Arizona could lose a lot of business and thousands of people might leave the state, or decide not to settle there in the first place.  So even if Arizona ‘wins,’ the victory may be a Pyrrhic one,” she told msnbc.com by email.

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Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, a conservative government watchdog group, doesn’t buy that argument. He says crime in Arizona has dropped significantly since passage of SB 1070 and predicts there will be “a rush of other states” to follow Arizona’s example if the law is upheld.

"Arizona won’t complain if illegal aliens leave, that’s for sure," he said. “If upheld, Arizona won’t be an outlier."

State Sen. Russell Pearce, author of the bill, says Phoenix has experienced a 30-year low crime rate since SB 1070's passage. "To ignore the positive impact of SB 1070 in the city of Phoenix is to ignore the huge elephant in the middle of the room," he wrote in a court brief.

Some Arizona hotel managers say the tourism industry took a hit due to the recession and the controversy over the immigration law, as some groups announced boycotts of the state. The lodging industry now appears to be rebounding slowly, with mixed numbers for January and February but an overall strong March, hotel managers said at a recent convention.

Robert Hayward of Warnick & Co., who led the convention, said Arizona's image has improved in the minds of travelers, and he hopes the upcoming Supreme Court hearing won't reverse that.

"The concern is how the Supreme Court opens that issue back up and how that will impact the impression [of Arizona] on a national level going forward," Hayward told the crowd, KTVK reported.

Immigration from Mexico at standstill, report says

Gabriel “Jack” Chin, an immigration law expert who spoke out vigorously against SB 1070 while he was a professor at the University of Arizona, says it’ll hard to predict who will emerge a winner or loser even after the high court rules.

“One might assume that Mexican families would come out ahead if the law is struck down, because the states would not be able to pass laws designed to drive them out.  But in the past, when state immigration laws have been struck down by the Supreme Court, there sometimes has been a legal backlash. For example, when California's laws designed to keep out Chinese immigrants were held unconstitutional in 1876, Congress responded by passing the Chinese Exclusion Act," says Chin, who is now with UC Davis.

“If the United States wins the case, it may be a disaster for Mexican families because it could lead Congress to embrace even more rigorous enforcement methods. The same underlying political dynamic means that if Arizona loses, it could hurt the Republicans because it shows they went too far, or it could help them because it shows that the only way this issue can be resolved is by electing a Republican Congress,” Chin adds.

Fitton, of Judicial Watch, says the ruling could be a double-edged sword not for Arizona, but for Obama.

“If he loses here it feeds the narrative that his agencies are out of control with these lawsuits attacking states and politicizing immigration,” Fitton says. And if justices rule against the federal government, he says, “I think it will motivate his opponents.”

Evelyn Haydee Cruz, a law professor who directs the Immigration Law & Policy Clinic at Arizona State University, predicts a mixed Supreme Court ruling in which there are no clear-cut winners and losers.

“The constitutional question is so complex that most likely both sides will be unhappy with some parts and happy with others. Each of the players will try to grab onto whatever language in the decision makes them look better,” Cruz says. “The Arizona governor will look for language validating state enforcement of immigration laws and state independence.  The Obama administration will look for language that preserves federal supremacy over immigration policy.”

A decision in Arizona v. United States is expected in June or July. You can read a preview of the arguments in the case here.

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PHOENIX -- Arizona Republican Governor Jan Brewer signed into law on Thursday a controversial bill that bans most abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, giving Republicans a win in ongoing national efforts to impose greater restrictions on abortion.

The measure, which state lawmakers gave a final nod to on Tuesday, would bar healthcare professionals from performing abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, except in the case of a medical emergency. Only a small number of these abortions are performed in the state.

With Brewer's signature, Arizona joins six other states that have put similar late-term abortion bans in place in the past two years based on hotly debated medical research suggesting that a fetus feels pain starting at 20 weeks of gestation.

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Georgia lawmakers approved a similar bill in March that now awaits the signature of Republican Governor Nathan Deal.

Late-term abortions will still be allowed in Arizona in situations where continuing a pregnancy risks death or would "create serious risk of substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function." This is to be determined by a physician's "good faith clinical judgment."

The law also requires a woman to have an ultrasound at least 24 hours prior to having an abortion, instead of the one hour previously mandated under state law.

State officials are required to create a website that details such items as the risks of the procedure and shows pictures of the fetus in various stages.

The U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortions nationwide in 1973 but allowed states to ban the procedure after the time when the fetus could potentially survive outside the womb, except where a woman's health was at risk.

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