The Arizona Senate has defeated five bills aimed at illegal immigration, including two measures designed to force the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on automatic citizenship for U.S.-born children of people in the country illegally.

The other measures sought to require hospitals and schools to check patients' legal status, and to strip such privileges as owning or driving a vehicle, getting a marriage license, or attending a university or community college, the Arizona Daily Star says.

Senate President Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, wrote or backed each of the five bills. Last year he sponsored the legislation that gives police more power to detain illegal immigrants.

Majority Republicans split on the citizenship bills, with GOP members joining Democrats to defeat the measures. The Daily Star explains:

SB 1308 and SB 1309 spelled out that Arizona citizenship - and by extension, national citizenship - is limited to the children of those who owe no allegiance to any other country. And the state would have issued a different birth certificate if at least one parent could not prove citizenship or permanent legal residency.

Pearce excoriated those who opposed his measures.

"The only impediment to enforcing our laws is the lack of political courage on the part of our elected and appointed officials," Pearce said. "You bear the burden and responsibility for the costs and the maimings and the deaths."