🇺🇸⚖️🏅A LIFE DEVOTED TO JUSTICE: JOSEPH GERALD “GERRY” HEBERT (1949-2023): Voting Rights Icon, Teacher, Community Activist, Inspiration To Upcoming Generations!

Gerry Hebert
Joseph Gerald (Gerry) Hebert (1949-2023)
Civil Rights Lawyer, Community Activist

https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/washingtonpost/name/joseph-hebert-obituary?id=53065154

Joseph Hebert Obituary

Hebert

Joseph Gerald Hebert

Joseph Gerald Hebert (Gerry), Voting Rights Attorney of Alexandria, Virginia passed away at the age of 74 on September 7, 2023.

Gerry was born in Worcester, Massachusetts to Joseph Gerald Laurie Hebert and Adeline Agnes Whitehead Hebert on February 13, 1949. A graduate of St. John’s High School in Shrewsbury, Gerry went on to earn his bachelor’s degree from Stonehill College and Juris Doctor from Suffolk University Law School.

A respected Civil Rights and Voting Rights attorney, Gerry worked in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division from 1973 to 1994. While at the DOJ, he won acclaim for his work in school desegregation cases and served as the lead attorney in voting rights and redistricting lawsuits, including several cases decided by the U. S. Supreme Court. Post-DOJ, Gerry spent time in private practice specializing in election law and the Voting Rights Act. His expertise led him to the Campaign Legal Center in 2004, serving as Executive Director until 2018, before retiring from the organization in 2021. During this time, Gerry was also an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center and developed a thriving intern program for CLC. He also taught at University of Virginia, American University, and New York Law School. He was awarded the Wasserstein Fellowship at Harvard Law School and Mentor in Residence at Yale Law School. In 2015, Gerry spearheaded the CLC effort to establish the Voting Rights Institute (VRI), a partnership with the American Constitution Society and Georgetown Law, which created opportunities for law students and graduates to learn how to litigate voting rights cases.

Gerry’s advocacy extended beyond his professional career. He served as PTA president at George Mason Elementary School, where he was a fixture in the hallways for years, his voice on the loudspeaker delivering the morning announcements. He worked particularly hard to ensure that families of color were involved in their children’s education, and that the needs of George Mason Elementary were made known to the School Board.

As ASA soccer coach to many of Alexandria’s youth, Gerry shared his own athletic skills, always ending a weekly practice – at the request of the team – punting the ball straight up in the air, multiple stories high.

A man of strong faith and an enthusiastic choir member, Gerry served the Fairlington United Methodist Church community in many capacities including lay leader.

Gerry worked tirelessly to help Alexandrians in need, volunteering with ALIVE! Inc. since 1986. He dedicated his time and talents, serving as ALIVE’s president, director of development, chair of the furniture program, and Last Saturday food distribution coordinator. Earlier this year, Gerry was awarded Volunteer Alexandria’s 2023 Joan White Grassroots Volunteer Service Award for his commitment to ALIVE!’s mission, specifically for his work to open both of ALIVE!’s beautiful and welcoming food hubs, ensuring that Alexandrians maintained their integrity while receiving food and critical services.

Gerry approached his personal life with the same passion and purpose. He was omnipresent in his children’s lives as he filled the roles of brown bag lunch maker, short order breakfast cook, and overprotective parent. He could be found lifting his grandchildren to top the Christmas tree, eating Oreos and drinking straight from the milk carton in the middle of the night, or dancing in the street with Victoria during a red light at the intersection of Braddock and Russell. He would “give you a nickel” if you could name the artist from the 60’s singing on the radio. He’d send you recipes for the perfect pork chop, articles about the latest threat to justice and democracy, and a heads up about recent sunscreen recalls. He was deeply devoted to playing the guitar, discovering the best deal on good wine, and playing the lottery. He never said goodbye without also holding up his hand to sign “I love you.” He had the timing of a stand-up comedian, all the wisdom of a perfect storyteller, and an unfulfilled desire to travel the world. He was just beginning to discover what retirement was like and between the Rock ‘n Roll cruises he took with Victoria, his long ponytail, and his Bohemian pants, he confirmed his family’s suspicion that he really did dream of being the next great American folk singer. He was a lively wedding dancer, a proficient recaller of sports stats, and even attended MLB professional umpire school. Gerry was an expert magician, the friend you were thankful to call yours, and as far as his family knew, he was “the strongest man in the world.”

Gerry is preceded in death by his mother and father.

Gerry is survived by his wife of 37 years, Victoria, his children, Christy Przystawik (Tom Przystawik), Greta Gordon (Jim Gordon), Brooke Harris (Ben Harris), Josh Hebert, and Marlea Hebert (Anthony DiBerardinis). His brother, Tom Hebert (Maria Hebert), and his 10 grandchildren, Gunter, Annika, Amelie, Harper, Sadie, Bailey, Brighid, Adrian, Tyler, and Abe.

A funeral service will be held on Saturday, September 16, 2023 at Fairlington United Methodist Church.

In lieu of flowers donations can be made in honor of Gerry to The Campaign Legal Center, ALIVE, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and Fairlington United Methodist Church (music program).

Published by The Washington Post on Sep. 10, 2023.

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Gerry’s son Josh Hebert is one of our son Will’s closest friends, growing up in Alexandria and attending Alexandria City Public Schools together. Our church, Beverley Hills Community Methodist Church, has been part of ALIVE’s “grass roots” programs to make Alexandria a better place to live for families and individuals of all income levels. I also spoke at Fairlington Methodist on immigration and the need for reform at a public forum that Gerry helped organize. 

Gerry was one of the former DOJ attorneys to courageously speak out publicly against the appointment of notorious White Nationalist  and civil rights underminer then-Senator Jeff Sessions to be U.S. Attorney General under Trump. See.e.g., https://immigrationcourtside.com/2017/01/04/sessions-no-civil-rights-hero-say-former-doj-cvil-rights-attorneys/. Sessions proved to be just as horrible and unqualified for the job as Gerry had warned.

Gerry was an inspiration and role model for the “new generation” of civil rights attorneys dedicated to making equal justice in America a reality rather than an unfulfilled promise!

Yesterday’s “Courtside” post highlighted the words of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson that embodied many of Gerry’s life values;

And I am confident that, just like generations of Americans before us, we are up to the challenge. Armed with our history, well-prepared by our past, and secure in the knowledge of what we have been through and where we’re headed, we will triumph in the valiant struggle to promote constitutional values and to obtain freedom and justice for all. 

Due Process Forever and deep appreciation to a great American who represented “due process in action” and leaves a vibrant legacy for future generations. A life well-lived indeed!

PWS

09-18-23

🗽⚖️👍🏼😎😉SAVED BY UDC LAW! — Associate Dean Lindsay Harris & Immigration & Human Rights Clinic (“IHRC”) Score A Win For Justice, Nigerian Asylum Seeker!

Professor Lindsay Muir Harris
Professor Lindsay Muir Harris
Associate Dean
UDC Law

https://www.lexisnexis.com/legalnewsroom/immigration/b/outsidenews/posts/law-students-win-asylum-for-nigerian-voting-rights-activist

Law Students Win Asylum for Nigerian Voting Rights Activist

IHRC, Mar. 25, 2022

“Students in the Immigration and Human Rights Clinic (IHRC) worked to obtain asylum for a voting rights activist from Nigeria. This case prompted the Clinic to develop a resource to assist asylees in understanding their rights.

The clinic took on the case of a Nigerian woman, Chioma*, who had been active in organizing women and youth in the Delta region to vote against corrupt political candidates. She drew crowds of women and youth as an effective organizer, simultaneously drawing the ire of incumbent politicians. Armed thugs targeted Chioma in her home in 2019, resulting in her hospitalization. Refusing to back down, she later attended a political event where she narrowly escaped an assassination attempt. Deciding she would rather stay alive for her children – even if far away – Chioma fled to the U.S. and left her family behind.

Clinic students Forrest Lindelof and Chizoba Kagha, both 3Ls, picked up Chioma’s case in the fall semester and worked under the supervision of Associate Dean of Clinical and Experiential Programs Lindsay M. Harris to complete her declaration, a detailed narrative of what she had endured in Nigeria and what she feared. The students crafted a legal brief with supporting evidence they obtained through working with a country conditions expert, a therapist and a medical doctor. The legal arguments were challenging because of the client’s dual citizenship in Cameroon and Nigeria; they needed to argue she would face persecution in both nations. The students had to become experts in the complex political dynamics at play in both countries, along with the citizenship laws.

This case also hit close to home for both students. Kagha shared, “I am the daughter of Nigerian immigrants who relocated to the United States in hopes of a better opportunity for their future children. When we began working with our client, I immediately felt a connection to her.”

As well, Lindelof related the client’s story to that of his immigrant mother. “As the son of an immigrant, it was not difficult to imagine my mother experiencing similar maltreatment and vulnerability. We worked that much harder, knowing that our work would have a meaningful impact on our client and her future.”

Moreover, the students got to know their client and were inspired by Chioma’s strength, resilience and personality. Lindelof described her as “jolly and good-humored” and the case as “a great source of pride.” Kagha added, “Her personality lit up a room, and her passion for helping others was inspiring.”

After working diligently with the client to prepare for the asylum interview, the students accompanied her to the asylum interview in November. After extensive questioning, Kagha delivered the closing statement, drawing together all the key issues in the case.

In January, Lindelof, Kagha and Harris received word that Chioma’s asylum application had been approved. The client was ecstatic, as was the UDC Law team. “To be able to sit in the asylum office as a Nigerian female student attorney delivering the closing statement for a Nigerian female client is a moment I will cherish for the rest of my life,” said Kagha.

Chioma was eager to be reunited with her spouse and children as soon as possible, but she was worried about accessing the asylee benefits to which she is entitled. Dean Harris has written about these benefits in depth in a 2016 article, From Surviving to Thriving: An Examination of Asylee Integration in the United States. Due to Chioma’s questions and concerns about her accessing public benefits rendering her a “public charge,” Dean Harris brought on 1L Clinical Associate Kendra Li to create a helpful one-page resource, Asylum and Public Charge. This resource clearly explains that asylees like Chioma are exempt from the public charge bar to adjustment of status to become a lawful permanent resident and eventually U.S. citizen.

“The best way to master a subject is to teach it to someone else,” Li said of developing the resource. “The public charge rule isn’t a complicated topic, but the process of researching it and distilling that research into a digestible and accessible product really cemented the learning.”

The document answers questions common for Chioma and other asylees. Li explained the need for creating this resource to answer these questions not only for the client in this case but countless other asylees. “Even though the Trump administration’s attempt to expand the public charge rule couldn’t, by law, apply to asylum seekers, it unsurprisingly – and perhaps deliberately – created a chilling effect well beyond the categories of immigrants it actually impacted,” Li said. “Our country is stronger and more just when the public benefits we provide reach all the people they’re meant to lift up, so it’s important to get the right information out there.”

Lindelof, under Harris’s supervision, quickly filed petitions to bring Chioma’s children and spouse to the United States and is now working to expedite those requests. Since Chioma was forced to flee Nigeria in 2019, thugs hired by political actors have targeted her husband at least five times, searching for Chioma and her whereabouts. The Clinic will stand by Chioma and her family throughout the lengthy process of family reunification and consular processing at the U.S. embassy in Nigeria. In the meantime, Chioma hopes to reengage in organizing and contribute to her community in the United States.

All three students reflected on how this case and their time engaging with the Immigration and Human Rights Clinic have enriched their legal education and helped them prepare for their careers.

“It is tough to express how meaningful my clinic experience was at UDC Law,” Lindelof said. “I came to law school with a background in psychology, having done a lot of fulfilling work with children with disabilities and individuals who suffered from addiction. I had not quite felt that same sense of fulfillment until my time at the Immigration and Human Rights Clinic. It renewed my passion for the law.”

Li “came to law school to practice immigration law and chose UDC for its clinical program.” She added, “I’m very appreciative to be involved as a 1L. This was a great first-year project. If this one pager helps just one person, it’ll have been well worth the effort.”

Kagha chose to attend UDC Law because of her “desire to positively impact the lives of others, especially people who look like me. To be able to sit in the asylum office as a Nigerian female student attorney delivering the closing statement for a Nigerian female client is a moment I will cherish for the rest of my life.”

Lindelof added praise for Dean Harris and the ways in which working with her have helped him narrow down his post-law school path. “Working with a supervisor with such tremendous drive and passion was infectious. Dean Harris did a great job tying the clinic’s content to racial justice and deficiencies in the justice system, which impacted my philosophy about the law and my general outlook on the world. It also drove me to seek out a career in immigration. I am humbled at the opportunity that I will be working for the D.C. Affordable Law Firm and practicing hopefully both family law and immigration next year, which happen to be the clinics I was a part of at UDC.”

*Name changed to preserve anonymity.”

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Congrats to my friend Dean Harris and her terrific students on saving another life in a system that often eats up humanity without much regard for justice. 

This case is a prime example of why “expedited” asylum calendars are a bad idea that 1) impedes effective preparation and representation by attorneys; 2) underestimates the complexity of many asylum cases, particularly under today’s skewed, often hyper technical, anti-asylum framework established and promoted by the BIA; 3) violates due process and best practices by encouraging judges to focus on speed and artificial time limits, rather than using careful scholarship along with fair and careful procedures to achieve correct results.

This also shows the extreme harm caused by the Trump-Miller White Nationalist “public charge sham” and the damage to the integrity of our justice system of a intellectually dishonest, imperious GOP Supremes’ majority who enabled Trump’s cruelty and evil nonsense to corrupt justice in America. (The Supremes had improperly lifted a correct nationwide injunction against the Trump Administration’s scofflaw scheme, before the Biden Administration finally was allowed to withdraw the case from the Court.)

It’s also interesting that the task of “setting the record straight” on the chilling effects of the former Trump policy fell to Dean Harris and the IHRC. In a more functional and just system, one might envision such public information efforts being undertaken by the Government!

Additionally, Dean Harris directly ties the meltdown and systemic unfairness of our Immigration Courts to the overall problems of racism and lack of equal justice in our country. That’s a lesson that could profit AG Garland and his lieutenants who so far have mostly pretended that the dysfunctional, biased, and broken Immigration Courts exist in a bubble beyond the other problems facing our democracy. There will be no equal justice in American without equal justice for immigrants!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

03-27-22

🇺🇸RACE IN AMERICA: THE REAL DR. KING WAS NOTHING LIKE TODAY’S WHITEWASHED MYTH! 

Martin & Mitch
Martin & Mitch
By John Cole
Published by license

Michael Harriot in The Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/17/mlk-is-revered-today-but-the-real-king-would-make-white-people-uncomfortable?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Every year, on the third Monday in January, America hosts a Sadie Hawkins-style role-reversal where the entire country pretends to celebrate a man whose achievements and values they spent the previous 364 days ignoring, demonizing and trying to dismantle. Today, your favorite vote suppressors will take a brief respite from disenfranchising Black voters, denying history and increasing inequality to celebrate a real American hero.

That’s right, it’s MLK Day!

You might think it’s a little disrespectful to refer to a great American hero by his initials but, in this specific case, it’s perfectly fine. The actual Martin Luther King Jr who lived and breathed is not the man most people will be honoring today because that Martin Luther King is dead and gone. No, the man upon whom they will heap their performative praise with social media virtue-signaling is MLK, a caricature of a man whose likeness has been made palatable for white consumption. Like BLM, CRT and USA, the people who King fought against have now managed to flatten a three-dimensional symbol to a three-letter, chant-worthy phrase worthy of demonization or deification.

. . . .

Although, in death, he became one of the most revered figures in US history, for the entirety of the 39 years that King lived and breathed, there wasn’t a single day when the majority of white Americans approved of him. In 1966, Gallup measured his approval rating at 32% positive and 63% negative. That same year, a December Harris poll found that 50% of whites felt King was “hurting the negro cause of civil rights” while only 36% felt he was helping. By the time he died in 1968, three out of four white Americans disapproved of him. In the wake of his assassination, 31% of the country felt that he “brought it on himself”.

One does not have to reach back into the historical archives to explain why King was so despised. The sentiments that made him a villain are still prevalent in America today. When he was alive, King was a walking, talking example of everything this country despises about the quest for Black liberation. He railed against police brutality. He reminded the country of its racist past. He scolded the powers that be for income inequality and systemic racism. Not only did he condemn the openly racist opponents of equality, he reminded the legions of whites who were willing to sit idly by while their fellow countrymen were oppressed that they were also oppressors. “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it,” King said. “He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.”

. . . .

“The first thing I would like to mention is that there must be a recognition on the part of everybody in this nation that America is still a racist country,” said King days before a white supremacist put a bullet in his face. “Now however unpleasant that sounds, it is the truth. And we will never solve the problem of racism until there is a recognition of the fact that racism still stands at the center of so much of our nation and we must see racism for what it is.”

See how many times someone mentions that quote today.

Oh, wait … King made that speech at Grosse Pointe High School, where Michigan’s Republican-controlled House of Representatives recently passed an anti-CRT bill making it illegal to teach that the “United States is a fundamentally racist country”.

Never mind.

. . . .

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Read the full article at the link.

Like the figure of Christ in Dostoyevsky’s The Grand Inquisitor, if Dr. King returned to earth today he would be imprisoned, interrogated, condemned and permanently banished by the corrupt and cowardly right-wing pols, religious bigots, disingenuous judges, pundits, and others who falsely claim to be honoring his memory and vision of racial equality!

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

01-17-22

🧑🏽‍⚖️👨🏻‍⚖️⚖️BIDEN & WARREN BELIEVE IN A DIVERSE, PROGRESSIVE FEDERAL JUDICIARY — JUDGE GARLAND CONTROLS PERHAPS THE MOST IMPORTANT FEDERAL JUDICIARY NEXT TO THE SUPREMES — So, What’s He Waiting For? — Will He Reverse The Dems’ Maddening Failure To Grasp & Act On The Cosmic Importance & Game Changing Potential Of A Progressive Immigration Court, That Gets Beyond The Often White, Male, Enforcement, “Go Along To Get Along” Stereotypes & Showcases Diverse, Progressive “Practical Scholars,” Many Of Them Women & People Of Color?

Jennifer Bendery
Jennifer Bendery
Journalist
HuffPost
PHOTO: Twitter

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/elizabeth-warren-professional-diversity-federal-judges_n_605cbde5c5b67ad3871d9095o

Jennifer Bendery in HuffPost:

The Democratic senator has spent years calling for more public defenders and fewer corporate attorneys getting federal judgeships. Now Joe Biden agrees.

For years, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has been a lonely voice in the Senate on the need to put people with all kinds of different legal backgrounds into lifetime federal judgeships.

“We face a federal bench that has a striking lack of diversity,” she said at a 2014 event on this topic, hosted by Alliance for Justice, a progressive judicial advocacy group. “President Obama has supported some notable exceptions but … the president’s nominees have thus far been largely in line with the prior statistics.”

Warren wasn’t talking about diversity in terms of demographics like race or gender; Obama made history on those fronts with his judicial nominees. She was talking about the problem with presidents and senators ― in both parties ― routinely picking corporate attorneys and prosecutors who went to Ivy League schools to be federal judges.

If you want the nation’s courts to reflect the people they serve, Warren has argued, we need judges who have been public defenders and civil rights attorneys, people familiar with the legal needs of everyday Americans who may be living on low incomes or otherwise marginalized. A diversity of legal professionals on the federal bench means more informed decisions on issues related to economic justice and civil rights.

At last, the times are catching up with Warren.

President Joe Biden is signaling he’s ready to make professional diversity central to his judicial selection process. He hasn’t nominated anyone yet, but White House counsel Dana Remus wrote to Democratic senators in December urging them to recommend court picks to the White House as soon as possible, and said that Biden is “particularly focused on nominating individuals whose legal experiences have been historically underrepresented on the federal bench, including those who are public defenders, civil rights and legal aid attorneys, and those who represent Americans in every walk of life.”

Top Democrats in the House are putting a spotlight on the issue too, even though they don’t have a say in confirming federal judges.

“Unfortunately, we have a lot of work to do when it comes to judicial diversity,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) said in a Thursday subcommittee hearing on this subject. “There are ways in which the federal judiciary of 2021 looks uncomfortably similar to the federal judiciary of 1921 … Somehow, despite all our progress, today’s federal judges remain, for instance, overwhelmingly male, white, former prosecutors or corporate lawyers who went to a handful of law schools.”

. . . .

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Read the complete article at the link.

Biden is “particularly focused on nominating individuals whose legal experiences have been historically underrepresented on the federal bench, including those who are public defenders, civil rights and legal aid attorneys, and those who represent Americans in every walk of life.”

That’s basically a description of scores of immigration/human rights experts out here in the New Due Process Army (“NDPA”). Yes, they should be a primary source of appointees to the Article III Judiciary! Absolutely! But, they should also be appointed to the BIA and the Immigration Courts — now! 

At present, the Immigration Courts are “administrative courts,” not part of the Article III Judiciary; therefore, Senate confirmation isn’t necessary. They are “administered” by a now “evil-clown-like” 🤡🦹🏿‍♂️ DOJ bureaucracy called “EOIR.” We need to get the right progressive scholars and “disciples of due process” on the Immigration Bench — immediately, without further delay! 

EYORE
“Eyore In Distress”
Once A Symbol of Fairness, Due Process, & Best Practices, Now Gone “Belly Up”

Immigration Courts are one of most powerful tools in American law. Also, Constitution be damned, until we get a long overdue Article I independent Immigration Court, they are completely controlled by the AG — Judge Merrick B. Garland. This is a big, big deal — nearly 600 judgeships, almost the size of the entire U.S. District Court system, are at stake!

Sessions and Barr quickly figured: Why not aggressively weaponize EOIR to undermine American democracy, institutionalize racism and misogyny, and promote White Nationalist authoritarianism? And, that’s exactly what they did — to the max. Using EOIR judgeships to reward some of their unqualified, white, nativist buddies in the process was an “added bennie.” 

Grim Reaper
G. Reaper Approaches ICE Gulag With “Imbedded Captive Star Chamber” Run By EOIR, For Their “Partner” Reaper
Image: Hernan Fednan, Creative Commons License

Even the totally incomprehensible incompetence with which they administered EOIR fulfilled their “negative dream.” Dysfunctional Immigration Courts became an important tool for debilitating the entire U.S. justice system and “Dred Scottifying” (dehumanizing) persons of color before the law. 

Those with compelling cases for relief, many pending for years, were shuffled off to the end of the docket. Or, if they did get a hearing, incompetent or compromised “judges” at the trial and appellate levels often arbitrarily denied their claims for bogus reasons. This disgraceful mess of a “court” actually penalized those with strong cases for relief — many who should have been done and joined our society years ago instead linger in the largely self-created EOIR “backlog” of 1.3 million cases. Or, they  are condemned to endless litigation to vindicate their rights in a system intentionally rigged against them. 

Star Chamber Justice
“Justice”
Star Chamber
Style

Looking for the underpinning for the idea that people of color have reduced rights to vote, political participation, and that their lives don’t really matter? Look no further than the ongoing “Dred Scottification” of asylum applicants and other people of color in Immigration Court, now enshrined in a number of bogus “precedents” issued by White Nationalist AGs and their wholly-owned BIA!  

Four Horsemen
BIA Asylum Panel In Action
Albrecht Dürer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

And, their job was “easy as pie” following the indolent stewardship of their Dem predecessors. When the latter finally got around to filling judicial vacancies at EOIR, every couple of years, they handed them out almost exclusively to government “insiders” — like they were “length of service” pins! Better-qualified progressive, due-process-oriented, experts, scholars, advocates, and others in the private/NGO/academic sector — folks who actually could have brought badly needed professionalism, excellence, and order to a system careening out of control — were basically “shut out” by the Dems. Interesting way to reward your potential allies!  

The Dems’ “diverse recruiting program” for the Immigration Judiciary was to advertise the positions for about 10 minutes on the “insider online bulletin board” known as “USA Jobs.” Then, after an average two-year long, excruciatingly wasteful and mindless “Rube Goldberg-designed evaluation” by layer after layer of bureaucrats — few, if any of them actual sitting Immigration Judges — participating, in most cases they basically just selected “the next ICE prosecutor, EOIR staffer, or OIL litigator up.” But, the “beauty” of this system is that with so many layers of bureaucracy involved, nobody could be held accountable for the actual selections! Talk about a “finger-pointers’ dream.”

Oh yeah, and of course there was no room for public input and/or participation in this process. Some of the newly anointed judges actually had rather less-than-stellar reputations in the immigration community at large. Many would have drawn blank stares if mentioned to a panel of acknowledged immigration and human rights experts. Few were “household names,” except perhaps in a negative sense. No matter to the Obama folks!

During the Obama Administration, I attended a so-called “training-session” at an Immigration Judge Conference — this was “in person,” although for a number of years we got “home-video grade” training CDs. There, curiously, one of these “newbies” was selected to “educate” a group of us, many of us with decades of experience in the field and some with actual teaching credentials under their belts. Our “instructor” referred to the Government as “us,” to the respondent and counsel as “them,” and bragged that “our big wins from OIL” would make it easier to deny asylum. 

Other “instructors” parroted cringingly mind boggling mis-statements of asylum law — apparently designed to fit into OIL’s preferred litigation positions. And, incredibly, this was with the “founding mother” of U.S. Asylum Law, Judge Dana Leigh Marks, who had argued and won the landmark “well-founded-fear” case INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca before the Supremes, effectively muzzled and holding her head in the audience. 

In 21 years on the bench, during “EOIR training,” I was lectured to by a variety of BIA Attorney Advisors, OIL Attorneys, politicos, DHS Officials, State Department Officials, Ethics Officers, stress managers, and an occasional NGO advocate. Never, did I get to hear my colleague Judge Marks’s views on the development of asylum law since Cardoza. Sure, that didn’t stop us from carrying on a dialogue elsewhere, as we did. But, we were pretty much “on the same page.” The folks who needed to hear what Judge Marks had to say didn’t.

Hon. Diana Leigh Marks
Hon. Dana Leigh Marks
U.S. Immigration Judge
San Francisco Immigration Court
Past President, National Association of Immigration Judges

And, we wonder why Dems inevitably screw up immigration law, and end up defending highly regressive actions and “designed to fail” policies — try “baby jails,” indefinite detention, and non-English-speaking toddlers “representing themselves” in Immigration Court. I kid you not! Each of the foregoing were things that the Obama DOJ vigorously advanced and defended before Federal Courts!🤮

Will Judge Garland figure it out before it’s too late? Or, as his Obama predecessors did, will he fritter away his time with “more sexy,” but actually far less important initiatives and lofty ideals that will be effectively undermined by failing to create a progressive, expert, well functioning, professional Immigration Judiciary. 

Judge Merrick Garland
Judge Merrick B. Garland, U.S. Attorney General
Official White House Photo
Public Realm

Racial justice, equal justice, and due process for all persons in America start in the Immigration Court. And, right now they are dying there! If Judge Garland doesn’t pay attention, grasp the moment, aggressively clean house, and take the long overdue, radical, courageous actions to build a better Immigration Judiciary, the whole U.S. justice system might well come crashing down upon him! And, he will have only himself to blame!

🇺🇸⚖️🗽🧑🏽‍⚖️Due Process Forever! A Better EOIR for A Better Federal Judiciary! A Better Federal Judiciary For A Better America! Not rocket science! But, it does require vision, recognition of the problem, and the courage to solve it! 

PWS

3-28-21

EUGENE ROBINSON @ WASHPOST: The GOP Is The Party Of Jim Crow ☠️ — The Rest Of Us Who Believe In Democracy Had Better Join The Fight To Preserve The Voting Rights Of Citizens Of Color!

Eugene Robinson
Eugene Robinson
Opinion Columnist
Washington Post
Source: WashPost Website

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-republican-party-is-making-jim-crow-segregationists-proud/2021/03/01/80036fce-7ac7-11eb-b3d1-9e5aa3d5220c_story.html

Opinion by Eugene Robinson

March 1 at 5:18 PM ET

The Republican Party’s biggest problem is that too many people of color are exercising their right to vote. The party’s solution is a massive push for voter suppression that would make old-time Jim Crow segregationists proud.

The Conservative Political Action Conference circus last week in Orlando showed how bankrupt the GOP is — at least when it comes to ideas, principles and integrity. Some might argue that the party, in buying into the lie that last year’s election was somehow stolen, is simply delusional. I disagree. I think Republican leaders know exactly what they’re doing.

The GOP may have lost the White House and the Senate, but it remains strong in most state capitols. So far this year, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, Republicans in 33 states “have introduced, prefiled, or carried over 165 bills to restrict voting access.” The thrust of virtually all these measures is to make it more difficult for African Americans and other minorities to vote.

These efforts at disenfranchisement are more numerous, and more discriminatory, in several of the swing states President Biden carried narrowly: Arizona, Pennsylvania and Georgia. That should come as no surprise. GOP officials who had the temerity to follow the law and count the November vote honestly, such as Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, have been all but excommunicated by their state Republican Party organizations.

In Georgia — where not only did Donald Trump lose to Biden by 11,779 votes, but also two incumbent GOP senators were defeated by Democratic challengers — Republicans are using their control of the statehouse to try to eliminate all early voting on Sundays. That would put an end to “Souls to the Polls,” a popular Sunday get-out-the-vote initiative in which Black churches help parishioners get to polling places and cast their ballots.

. . . .

**********************

Read Eugene’s full op-ed at the link.

After a Presidential election that they lost by a substantial majority of votes, the GOP has decided that the solution isn’t to improve on their party’s unpopular messages of shame, blame, intolerance, ignorance, and White privilege. Nor have they chosen to abandon their corrupt and divisive leader. No, the answer, according to the GOP, is to reduce the size of the electorate to keep the will of the majority from prevailing. 

There is not a whit of evidence about widespread voter fraud or any credible reason to believe that the results don’t represent the will of the majority of American voters. Nevertheless, the GOP has introduced slews of bills at the state level to make it more difficult for African Americans, Latinos, and other minorities to vote. Just like the White southern aristocracy after the Civil War, the modern GOP fears that true democratic majority rule will deprive them of their minority power and privilege.

James “Jim” Crow
James “Jim” Crow
Symbol of American Racism

Well, you’ve heard it all before on Courtside. The Voting Rights Act is the cornerstone of modern American democracy. The forces of anti-democracy, including the GOP and their Supremes’ majority, intend to undo it in the name of White Supremacy.

The overt suppression of African-American voting rights that ended Reconstruction ushered in more than four decades of gross violations of the 13th 14th, and 15th Amendments. We should remember that the White-dominated Federal Government and the Federal Courts basically took a cowardly pass on the rights of our African American fellow citizens for generations. 

Eric Lutz summed it up in his recent article on Vanity Fair:

Biden is reluctant to end that filibuster. But at a certain point, failing to do so means failing to reckon with the the severity of the threat to democracy—and the particular peril the GOP’s attacks pose to the rights of Black Americans and other minorities. “The argument that preserving the filibuster is necessary because it’s an important tool in our Democracy falls apart when it’s clearer with every passing day that we won’t have a Democracy without Congress passing voting rights legislation,” the former Obama aide David Plouffe remarked Monday. Republicans are mounting a concerted, relentless attack on democracy. To defend against it, Democrats’ response must be proportional. And that means confronting the reality that Trump leaving office didn’t extinguish his Big Lie, but made it more powerful.

https://apple.news/Aawbmzi5JRkGSdLedjZN23Q

It’s essential that the majority of us unite against the attempt of the corrupt GOP to restore the horrors of White Supremacy and Jim Crow. And, make no mistake — the attack on asylum seekers and migrants of color is an integral part of the White Nationalist program to kneecap American democracy. Under Trump, that effort culminated in the Capitol insurrection. 

As the death of civil rights icon Vernon Jordon this week reminds us, those of us who believe in democracy must unite to fight the right and protect the right of all Americans to vote and the rights of immigrants to be treated as “persons” under the law.

🇺🇸🗽⚖️Due Process Forever!

PWS

03-03-21

🗽⚖️STACEY ABRAMS @ WASHPOST: The GOP Is Out To Gut Democracy! — Here’s What It Will Take To Save It! — “No thinking person can deny that the communities of color disproportionately suffering and dying from this pandemic are also the people whose votes — and ability to hold failed leaders accountable — have been continuously suppressed.”

Stacey Abrams
Stacey Abrams
Democratic Political Strategist & Voting Rights Maven
Photo: TV Sister via YouTube
Creative Commons License

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/02/07/stacey-abrams-democracy-test-future/

. . . .

Make no mistake: Democracy may have survived this year, but President Biden and Vice President Harris were elected despite, not thanks to, weakened electoral systems. Together with the Democratic Congress, they now have the opportunity to implement reforms that reaffirm our nation’s promises that our country represents and works for everyone. We as Democrats must act before it is too late.

Our democratic system faces extraordinary threats today because of sustained attacks from Republican leaders who throw up roadblocks to voting and, among the worst actors, stoke the flames of white supremacy and hyper-nationalism to cling to power. There can be no clearer example than the covid-19 pandemic. The deaths of more than 450,000 people in the richest country in the world are symptomatic of a democracy in crisis and a political system that rewards cronyism over competence. Despite strong public support for the Centers for Disease Control’s work, the Affordable Care Act, and other economic justice and safety-net policies that could save lives, millions nevertheless continue to contract the disease without adequate access to health care.

No thinking person can deny that the communities of color disproportionately suffering and dying from this pandemic are also the people whose votes — and ability to hold failed leaders accountable — have been continuously suppressed.

The pandemic has been a collision of tragedy and corroded institutions, and the challenge is in how we respond. We can either engage in collective amnesia about what we have just lived through, and leave an unaccountable government in place, or we can rise to meet this moment by fixing the broken social compact. Defeating Trump was not enough. Meaningful progress on health care, racial justice and the economy requires aggressive action on voting rights, partisan gerrymandering and campaign finance.

One of the first steps must be an overhaul of the Senate filibuster, which has long been wielded as a cudgel against the needs of millions who struggle. Today, the parliamentary trick creates a more sinister threat to our nation: the ability of a minority of senators, who represent 41.5 million fewer people than the Senate majority, to block progress favored by most Americans.

Democrats in Congress must fully embrace their mandate to fast-track democracy reforms that give voters a fair fight, rather than allowing undemocratic systems to be used as tools and excuses to perpetuate that same system. This is a moment of both historic imperative and, with unified Democratic control of the White House and Congress, historic opportunity.

The agenda to restore democracy also includes passing the For the People Act to protect and expand voting rights, fight gerrymandering and reduce the influence of money in politics; the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to restore the full protections of the 1965 Voting Rights Act; and the Protecting Our Democracy Act to constrain the corruption of future presidents who deem themselves above the law. These landmark bills have broad-based support, and would have passed long ago were it not for obstructionist leaders who fear losing their own influence if the American people have more power of their own.

. . . .

********************

The Trump GOP lies, insurrections, and blatantly false claims attempting to undermine the very clear Biden-Harris victory have been a smokescreen for the real voting problems — the unrelenting efforts of the GOP — “The Party of the New Jim Crow” — to suppress the votes of Americans of color. Read the rest of Abrams’s op-ed at the link.

And, as Abrams cogently points out, one reason for the denial, downplaying, and maliciously incompetent mishandling of the pandemic by the Trump regime was that so many of the victims were among communities of color — those they never cared about and whose humanity they continuously tried to deny and disparage. Death is a great way of disenfranchising minority voters. Not to mention a little fear and intimidation thrown in for a good measure.

There is a very clear connection between the dehumanization of asylum seekers and other migrants and the disenfranchisement of voters of color. It’s all part of “Dred Scottification” — a disgraceful practice sanctioned by none other than the GOP’s Supremes’ majority!

Our future as a nation depends on Judge Garland, Vanita Gupta, and their incoming team at DOJ “connecting the dots” — beginning with dismantling and replacing the White Nationalist nativist kakistocracy at EOIR. Immigrants’ rights are civil rights are human rights! The GOP actually “gets” that (in a purely negative way)! Will the Dems finally show that they do too!

🇺🇸🗽⚖️Due Process Forever!

PWS

02-09-21

🇺🇸ELECTION 2020: PROTECT THE VOTE!

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

For more information:  Megan Matson

415-497-2320 matson@tablerockpartners.com

 

SeeSay2020.com

 

REPORT FOR PUBLICATION TO A LIVE, CROWDSOURCED MAP ALL VOTER STORIES OF SUPPRESSION, INTIMIDATION, & BALLOT COUNTING IRREGULARITIES

 

The Center for Common Ground http://centerforcommonground.org/ together with other supporting organizations launched a program called SeeSay2020.com to promote an honest and fair election in 2020.

 

Reported incidents are reviewed, approved and mapped. Press, legal teams and the public have open access to the voter stories and data as it is published, and incidents requiring action are escalated out to partner legal and press efforts.

 

In addition to publishing their stories to the SeeSay2020.com Map, voters are provided with the help hotline where they can call to get free support from the nation’s largest nonpartisan voter protection coalition at 866-OUR-VOTE or texting OUR VOTE to 97779.

 

With unprecedented levels of voter suppression, court battles over count deadlines, electioneering at the polls and ballot delay, Center for Common Ground’s live documentation processes making voters’ experience public are vital to fighting for and maintaining democracy.

 

We urge you to advertise how voters can report voting irregularities as well as sharing those incidents in your reporting. In fact, MSNBC will be hosting seesay2020.com in their war room on election day. We would be happy for you to do the same.

 

###

Laurie Grossman

(510) 482-1588

lauriegrossman88@gmail.com

************************

Thanks to my good friend and fellow Round Table member Judge Carol King and her husband Allan for passing along this critical information!

Get out the vote! Make your vote for democracy count!

Due Process Forever!

PWS

11-01-20

🏴‍☠️☠️🤮⚰️⚰️⚰️⚰️⚰️WELCOME TO COLFAX, LA: DEADLY WHITE SUPREMACY DEEPLY ROOTED IN U.S. LEGAL HISTORY: “The Colfax Massacre” Lives On In Roberts’ Court’s Willingness To Sacrifice Constitutional, Statutory, & Human Rights Of People Of Color To The Trump/Miller Nakedly White Supremacist & Clearly Illegal Agenda!

Colfax Massacre
Gathering the dead after the Colfax massacre, published in Harper’s Weekly, May 10, 1873

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/28/opinion/black-lives-civil-rights.html?referringSource=articleShare

From The NY Times:

By William Briggs and Jon Krakauer

The authors are writers.

  • Aug. 28, 2020

. . . .

In March 1876, Bradley and his fellow Supreme Court justices decreed that he was correct in rescinding the convictions of William Cruikshank and the other white defendants, ruling that although the 14th Amendment gave the federal government authority to act against violations of civil rights by state governments, it did not apply to acts of racist violence by private citizens against other citizens. Furthermore, the court ludicrously declared, the prosecution failed to show that crimes against the murdered Black men were committed “on account of their race or color.” All 98 defendants escaped accountability, emboldening white supremacists across the land.

The Cruikshank decision reinforced a grotesque judicial precedent that severely limited the power of the federal government to prosecute violent crimes against the formerly enslaved. Given free rein by the Supreme Court, white supremacists continued their coordinated campaign of terror against Black people, hastening the demise of Reconstruction. By 1877, every Southern state had been “redeemed,” and they would remain under the control of their white redeemers for decades.

By eviscerating crucial protections of the 14th Amendment, the Cruikshank ruling ensured that the most basic constitutional rights of Black citizens would be denied well into the 20th century. The crabbed, inhumane logic of Cruikshank provided legal cover that allowed systemic racism to flourish and denied civil rights to millions of Americans, perpetuating what John Lewis called a “soul-wrenching, existential struggle.”

A straight line can be drawn from Colfax and Cruikshank to the race riots in East St. Louis in 1917 and in Omaha, Chicago and other cities two years later; to the abhorrent crimes committed in the 1921 Tulsa race massacre; to the criminal brutality unleashed on African-Americans in Selma and Birmingham, Ala., in the 1960s; to the present-day instances of police and white nationalist violence in Ferguson, Mo., Charlottesville, Va., and now Kenosha, Wis.; to the shameful, plain-sight attempts to suppress the Black vote in the 2020 elections. Lest we forget that white supremacy and racial injustice are still endemic in America, we need to remember Colfax and the lasting harm it wrought.

William Briggs is an emeritus professor of mathematics at the University of Colorado, Denver, and author of “How America Got Its Guns: A History of Gun Violence in America.” Jon Krakauer is the author of numerous books, including “Into Thin Air” and “Missoula.”

**************

Read the full article at the link. 

I’ve previously highlighted the Colfax Easter Massacre and the  Supremes’ disgusting historical ties to racism, White Supremacy, and the suppression and murder of people of color on Courtside! 

https://immigrationcourtside.com/2017/04/16/history-lest-we-forget-the-u-s-justice-system-the-supreme-court-have-sometimes-been-on-the-wrong-side-of-history-justice-remembering-the-easter-sunday-massacre-in-colfax-la-the-racist-su/

It’s an ugly and disturbing story. But, the worst part is that the ugliness is being repeated in the bogus, White Supremacist friendly jurisprudence of the Roberts’ Court’s GOP majority!

Great deference is given to the illegal and overtly racist schemes of Trump, Miller and their cronies. By contrast, short shrift is given to the voting rights of African Americans and Hispanic Americans. The rights and lives of asylum seekers and other migrants are treated as beyond the realm of humanity. Who cares what abuses the scofflaw regime heaps on them. After all, they aren’t really “persons” entitled to exist. 

Pulling out a few toenails? Hey, A-OK with the JR Five just as long as it’s not their toenails and their exalted positions protect them from having to hear the screams of the tormented or get blood and gore all over their pristine black robes!🤮⚰️☠️👎🏻

It’s called “Dred Scottification” or “dehumanization of the other.” It has no place in 21st Century America. And, neither do the public officials and complicit Justices and judges who enable rampant racism and inhumanity. The “JR Five” would have felt right at home on the “Cruikshank Court.” They are masters at finding disingenuous legal gobbledygook to avoid protecting the rights and lives of people of color from invidiously Executive tyranny and abuse!

Had enough? If we want equal justice under law in America, we must start by taking back control of our nation at the ballot box. Get enough voters and even the Trump regime and the GOP Supremes won’t be able to suppress the results and keep the majority from exercising political power.

This November, vote like your life, our nation, and the world’s future depend on it! Because they do! And, this may be our last chance to save our sinking Ship of State!

PWS

08-30-20

🏴‍☠️☠️👎🏻🤮CONSTITUTION IN RUINS: Egged On By Feckless Supremes, Trump Rolls Out Another Racist Attack On Our Constitution & Our Nation By Declaring Undocumented Residents “Non-Persons!” — The “Dred Scottification” Of People Of Color By Trump & His Supremes Continues To Bear Ugly Fruit! 

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-executive-order-immigrants-redistricting_n_5f1709e0c5b615860bb7f415

The Constitution says the congressional apportionment should be based on the “whole number of persons” in each state. But the president wants to change that.

Reuters, By Alexandra Alper & Nick Brown

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed a memorandum that would prevent migrants who are in the United States illegally from being counted when U.S. congressional voting districts are redrawn in the next round of redistricting.

U.S. Census experts and lawyers say the action is legally dubious. In theory, it would benefit Trump’s Republican Party by eliminating the largely non-white population of migrants in the U.S. illegally, creating voting districts that skew more Caucasian.

. . . .

***************************

Read the full article at the link.

The Supremes allowed Trump to rewrite the immigration and refugee laws without benefit of legislation.

They allowed him to abrogate the due process clause of our Constitution for persons of color who had the bad fortune to be asylum seekers or immigrants.

They allowed the GOP to revise the Constitution and abrogate the Voting Rights Act to make it more difficult for minorities to vote and to insure that their votes counted for less than their White counterparts.

Now, empowered by Supreme complicity, Trump is going for yet another “do it yourself” Constitutional rewrite.

We have only ourselves to blame for allowing unqualified Justices like the “JR Five” to gain control of our highest Court — what was supposed to be our “final bastion” against Executive tyranny, but has instead become an enabler of “Dred Scottification” — that is “de-humanization” of large segments of our population — disproportionately people of color. Another term used for the Supremes’ majority’s defective performance in the face of Trump’s lawlessness is “Constitutional Castration” (assuming, arguendo, that the Constitution is “male”). Either way, it’s an ugly process.

It’s worth noting that enslaved Africans Americans, those originally subjected to “Dred Scottification,” and still feeling the adverse effects of the Supremes “renewal” of the concept, were counted for “3/5 of a person” under the original Constitution. Undocumented individuals, according to Trump, count for zero, even though they have consistently been counted in the past.

Of course the difference is that the original “3/5 rule” was designed to benefit the racists of the post-colonial South. The “new zero rule” is intended to benefit GOP racists of today.

The “Census case” actually went to the Supremes once. It’s the one where Wilbur Ross perjured himself. Rather than earning disbarment for the DOJ Attorneys who brought that mess before the Court and sanctions against the Administration, Trump got only a mild rebuke from Roberts. Heck, some Justices actually voted in favor of the regime’s racist inspired fraud!

In the process of soft-peddling the Administration’s gross misconduct and intellectual dishonesty, the Supremes’ majority also engaged in a largely fictional “historical analysis” deemed by commentators from the Brennan Center to be “preposterous.” 

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/citizenship-questions-are-not-historically-normal/593014/

That’s strong language. But, actually, it comes to mind frequently with respect to the Roberts’ Court’s various attempts to defeat equal justice and diminish the humanity of non-white -populations under our laws.

This latest Trump memo makes it crystal clear that the original subterfuge for the “citizenship question” — that it was necessary to enforce civil rights laws — utterly laughable — was a complete fraud on the Court. But, don’t expect that exercise of bad faith (“death” to any private party before the Supremes) to make any difference to Trumpian Justices who long ago sold out nation and our Constitution along with their own humanity and integrity.  

This latest systemic failure by all three branches could well leave future Congressional apportionments and elections in chaos. 

A better America for all requires better, more intellectually honest and morally courageous Justices who stand for the Constitution and against racism in all forms, be it promoted by the Executive, Congress, or their fellow judges. Unhappily, we’re a long way from there right now!

Due Process Forever! 

PWS

07-21-20

SUPREMELY PARTISAN: “J.R. Five” Aids GOP Voter Suppression In Wisconsin As RBG & “Gang of Four” Lash Out In Dissent!

 

Mark Joseph Stern
Mark Joseph Stern
Reporter, Slate

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/04/supreme-court-wisconsin-absentee-ballots.html

Mark Joseph Stern reports for Slate:

On Monday, by a 5–4 vote, the U.S. Supreme Court approved one of the most brazen acts of voter suppression in modern history. The court will nullify the votes of citizens who mailed in their ballots late—not because they forgot, but because they did not receive ballots until after Election Day due to the coronavirus pandemic. As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in dissent, the court’s order “will result in massive disenfranchisement.” The conservative majority claimed that its decision would help protect “the integrity of the election process.” In reality, it calls into question the legitimacy of the election itself.

Wisconsin has long been scheduled to hold an election on April 7. There are more than 3,800 seats on the ballot, and a crucial state Supreme Court race. But the state’s ability to conduct in-person voting is imperiled by COVID-19. Thousands of poll workers have dropped out for fear of contracting the virus, forcing cities to shutter dozens of polling places. Milwaukee, for example, consolidated its polling locations from 182 to five, while Green Bay consolidated its polling locations from 31 to two. Gov. Tony Evers asked the Republican-controlled legislature to postpone the election, but it refused. So he tried to delay it himself in an executive order on Monday. But the Republican-dominated state Supreme Court reinstated the election, thereby forcing voters to choose between protecting their health and exercising their right to vote.

Because voters are rightfully afraid of COVID-19, Wisconsin has been caught off guard by a surge in requests for absentee ballots. Election officials simply do not have time, resources, or staff to process all those requests. As a result, a large number of voters—at least tens of thousands—won’t get their ballot until after Election Day. And Wisconsin law disqualifies ballots received after that date. In response, last Thursday, a federal district court ordered the state to extend the absentee ballot deadline. It directed officials to count votes mailed after Election Day so long as they were returned by April 13. A conservative appeals court upheld his decision.

The U.S. Supreme Court has overturned the only protection in place to ensure that voters could still safely cast ballots.

Now the Supreme Court has reversed that order. It allowed Wisconsin to throw out ballots postmarked and received after Election Day, even if voters were entirely blameless for the delay. (Thankfully, ballots postmarked by Election Day but received by April 13 still count, because the legislature didn’t challenge that extension.) In an unsigned opinion, the majority cited the Purcell principle, which cautions courts against altering voting laws shortly before an election. It criticized the district court for “fundamentally alter[ing] the nature of the election by permitting voting for six additional days after the election.” And it insisted that the plaintiffs did not actually request that relief—which, as Ginsburg notes in her dissent, is simply false.

. . . .

**************************

Read the rest of Mark’s article at the link.

Just last week Trump admitted that if more Americans voted, “you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.” 

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=2ahUKEwjBz7eao9XoAhUrlHIEHV-oARIQFjAAegQIARAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fus-news%2F2020%2Fmar%2F30%2Ftrump-republican-party-voting-reform-coronavirus&usg=AOvVaw2AKTPjFL8DI8bt9ii1CYF2

John Roberts and his fellow GOP partisans on the Supremes got the message loud and clear. Although, they didn’t really need much direction from their Great Leader, since the GOP Supremes have scarcely ever seen a civil rights or voting rights law that they didn’t want to gut and pervert.

With markets wobbling, unemployment rising, and Trump’s “malicious incompetence” threatening American lives every day, the GOP hopes for November could depend on large-scale disenfranchisement and massive voter suppression. And, the J.R. Five have made it clear that they are primed and ready to twist and manipulate the law as necessary to guarantee their party’s minority stranglehold on government.

So much for “just calling balls and strikes.” Nope! The J.R. Five “resizes the strike zone” as necessary to guarantee victory for “their team” and defeat for American democracy.

PWS

04-06-20

TAL @ CNN: Administration’s Plan To Request Citizenship Information In Census Provokes New Litigation!

http://www.cnn.com/2018/03/27/politics/census-commerce-department-immigration-california/index.html

 

California sues over Census citizenship question

By Tal Kopan, CNN

Progressives, states and civil rights advocates are preparing a flurry of legal challenges to the Trump administration’s decision to add a question about citizenship to the next census, saying the move will penalize immigrants and threaten civil rights.

The late Monday move from the Commerce Department, which it said came in response a request by the Justice Department, would restore a question about citizenship that has not appeared on the census since the 1950s. The administration said the data was necessary to enforce the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

The state of California immediately challenged the plan in federal court.

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra and Secretary of State Alex Padilla trashed the move as anti-immigrant.

“The citizenship question is the latest attempt by President Trump to stoke the fires of anti-immigrant hostility,” Padilla said in a statement. “Now, in one fell swoop, the US Commerce Department has ignored its own protocols and years of preparation in a concerted effort to suppress a fair and accurate census count from our diverse communities. The administration’s claim that it is simply seeking to protect voting rights is not only laughable, but contemptible.”

Former Obama administration Attorney General Eric Holder also blasted the move and said his organization, which focuses on voting enfranchisement and redistricting, would also pursue litigation against what he called an “irresponsible decision.”

Holder said contrary to the rationale presented by the Justice Department, Holder said he and other modern-era attorneys general were “perfectly” able to handle those legal matters without such a question on the Census.

“The addition of a citizenship question to the census questionnaire is a direct attack on our representative democracy,” Holder said in a statement. “Make no mistake — this decision is motivated purely by politics. In deciding to add this question without even testing its effects, the administration is departing from decades of census policy and ignoring the warnings of census experts.”

Critics of the move say that including such a question on a government survey will scare non-citizens and vulnerable immigrant communities into under-reporting. By undercounting these populations, they argue, there will be a major impact that follows on voting and federal funds.

Because the once-a-decade census is used to determine congressional and political districts and to dole out federal resources, an undercount in heavily immigrant areas could substantially impact certain states and major cities and potentially their representation at the federal level.

The question has not been on the full census since the 1950s, but does appear on the yearly American Community Survey administered by the Census Bureau to give a fuller picture of life in America and the population.

The Commerce Department said the decision came after a “thorough review” of the request from the Justice Department. The priority, Commerce said, was “obtaining complete and accurate data.”

“Having citizenship data at the census block level will permit more effective enforcement of the VRA, and Secretary Ross determined that obtaining complete and accurate information to meet this legitimate government purpose outweighed the limited potential adverse impacts,” the statement said.

Becerra and his state have been central to virtually every legal challenge of the Trump administration on issues ranging from immigration, to the environment, to health care. The Justice Department has also sued California over its so-called sanctuary policies to protect immigrants.

More challenges could soon follow.

Wendy Weiser, director of the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program, a nonprofit that works on issues of justice and civil rights, said the question had no place in the Census.

“Our Constitution requires a complete and accurate count of everyone living in the country, no matter her or his citizenship status. The administration’s decision to add a citizenship question is at best a dramatic misstep, and at worst a politically-motivated move that will undermine a fair and accurate census,” Weiser said. “This question is a dangerous move that could lead to a serious skewing of the final census results, which would have a deleterious effect on our system of representative democracy. We urge the administration to reconsider.”

**********************************

The idea that the Justice Department under Jeff Sessions wants this information to enforce the Voting Rights Act (“VRA”) is preposterous on its face! So far, the only interest that Sessions and his crew at the DOJ have shown in the VRA is to insure that White GOP voters are enfranchised and that African-Americans and other minorities are disenfranchised.

Because all individuals in a congressional district are entitled to representation, regardless of citizenship status or other legal status, promoting an undercount (which is what the Administration obviously intends) will work to the disadvantage of those districts with large populations of immigrants, whether legal or illegal.

Stay tuned. There probably are many more similar suits to come, and “Tal is on the ball” to keep us completely informed.

PWS

03-27-18

WASHINGTON POST: VOTING RIGHTS ARE THE CIVIL RIGHTS ISSUE OF OUR AGE — AS USUAL, JEFF SESSIONS IS SQUARELY ON THE WRONG SIDE OF HISTORY!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/voter-suppression-is-the-civil-rights-issue-of-this-era/2017/08/19/926c8b58-81f3-11e7-902a-2a9f2d808496_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-b%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.1bfaa722c738

“Yet even if all 1,500 Confederate symbols across the country were removed overnight by some sudden supernatural force, the pernicious crusade to roll back voting rights would continue apace, with voters of color suffering its effects disproportionately. Pushing back hard against those who would purge voter rolls, demand forms of voter ID that many Americans don’t possess, and limit times and venues for voting — this should be a paramount cause for the Trump era.

In statehouse after statehouse where Republicans hold majorities, the playbook is well established, and the tactics are becoming increasingly aggressive.

Mr. Trump’s voter fraud commission is at the vanguard of this crusade, and the fix is in. Its vice chairman, Kris Kobach, is the nation’s most determined, litigious and resourceful champion of voter suppression. Under his tutelage, the commission is likely to recommend measures whose effect will be that new obstacles to voting would be taken up in state legislatures. Millions of voters are at risk of disenfranchisement from this effort, and the knock-on effects of such a mass act of disempowerment are dizzying.

 

The events in Charlottesville and the president’s apologia for the right-wing extremists there should mobilize anyone passionate about civil rights. There would be no better target for their energies than the clear and present danger to the most fundamental right in any democracy: the vote.”

***************************************

Read the complete article at the link.

Sessions and his Civil Rights Division are supposed to be out there defending the right of citizens, particularly minorities, to vote. Instead, he has thrown the weight of the Justice Department to those GOP hacks seeking to suppress the vote. Meanwhile the Civil Rights Division is thinking of perverse ways to abuse Civil Rights laws by using them to promote white privilege and white supremacy.

Sen. Liz Warren was silenced by McConnell when she told the truth about Sessions’s continuing racism. She was right.

PWS

08-20-17

Once Upon A Time, The DOJ Intervened On Behalf Of Disadvantaged Minorities For Whom Civil Rights Protections Were Enacted — Now, Not So Much, As Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions Finds Ways To Use Civil Rights Protections Against Minorities & To Help White Establishment Cling To Power! — Switches Sides To Favor Voter Suppression Before Supremes!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/justice-department-reverses-position-to-allow-ohio-to-purge-inactive-voters-from-rolls/2017/08/08/e93c5116-7c35-11e7-9d08-b79f191668ed_story.html?utm_term=.7ea94a97bc00&wpisrc=nl_daily202&wpmm=1

Sari Horwitz reports in the Washington Post:

“The Justice Department has reversed its position in a high-profile voting case in Ohio, siding with the state in its effort to purge thousands of people from its rolls for not voting in recent elections.

The move is part of a broader campaign by the Trump administration to support restrictions on who is eligible to vote, a radical change in philosophy from the previous Justice Department, which sued a number of states over voting laws that it deemed discriminatory against minorities.

In a court filing late Monday, Justice Department attorneys took the opposite position from the Obama administration in a case that involves Ohio’s removal last year of tens of thousands of inactive voters from its voting rolls.

In their brief, government lawyers say they reconsidered the Ohio vote-purging issue after the “change in Administrations,” and they argue that the state’s actions are legal under federal law. The case is headed next to the Supreme Court.

Ohio’s procedure allows the state to purge voters who meet certain criteria for being inactive. If a voter has not cast a ballot in two years, the person is sent a notice asking them to confirm their registration. If the voter does not respond and does not cast a ballot over the next four years, the person is removed from the rolls.

The Trump administration has signaled in other ways that it intends to back added requirements for voters as part of a crackdown on alleged fraud.

President Trump in May created an advisory commission on election integrity that has been tasked with determining the extent of illegal voting. The president earlier made the baseless allegation that illegal voting cost him the popular vote against Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.

The commission’s only notable act so far has been to request massive amounts of voter data from the states, a move that has provoked lawsuits accusing the panel of breaching Americans’ privacy.

The case in Ohio is not the first time the Justice Department has reversed course in a major legal battle over voting rights. In February, shortly after Jeff Sessions became attorney general, the department dropped its position in a long-running case that argued Texas intended to discriminate against minorities when it passed a strict voter-ID law.

The Texas law, passed in 2011, required that voters present certain forms of identification, such as a driver’s license or a weapons permit, but the state did not allow other forms, including IDs issued by colleges. Critics said these restrictions targeted voters, such as young people and minorities, who are more likely to vote Democratic. A number of courts found the Texas law to be unconstitutional, and a federal court in April found that the Texas legislature intentionally discriminated against black and Hispanic voters.

Voting rights advocates said the Justice Department’s action on Ohio represented a major change in direction for the U.S. government’s stance on access to the polls.

The move “signals the broader agenda of the administration to roll back voter rights in this country,” said Vanita Gupta, former head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division under President Barack Obama and now president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.”

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Read the complete article at the above link.

During Sessions’s Senate Confirmation, Senator Liz Warren, Senator Corey Booker, Members of the Congressional Black Caucus, and my friend and former DOJ Civil Rights Attorney Jerry Hebert, among others, tried to tell the Committee and the Senators that Sessions was the same White Nationalist/racially challenged individual he had been back when he was properly rejected for a U.S. District Judge position. They were “tuned out.”

Sessions took umbrage, and then lied under oath to the Committee when he claimed to be a staunch defender of civil rights and someone who would separate his political positions as a Republican Senator from Alabama (a state with a disgraceful history of racial bias) from his new responsibilities as Attorney General for all Americans. That would include people of color, LGBT Individuals, immigrants, both legal and undocumented, women, and even Democrats. But, he’s the “same ol’ Jeff” just like his critics said he would be. And the carnage to the American justice system that he is creating probably won’t be repaired any time soon.

Gonzo’s reported next target and scheme to waste of taxpayer money: legalized marijuana. Return to “Reefer Madness!”

PWS

08-09-17

 

JUSTICE WATCH: Experts See Sessions’s DOJ Joining Efforts At Voter Suppression!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/department-of-justice-voter-purge_us_595d22b1e4b0da2c7326c38b?1g9&ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009

Sam Levine writes in HuffPost:

Former Department of Justice officials and voting advocates are seriously alarmed over a DOJ letter sent to states last week that they say could signal a forthcoming effort to kick people off voter rolls. This comes as national attention focuses on several states blocking a request for voter information from President Donald Trump’s commission to investigate voting fraud, which does occur, but is not a widespread problem.

The DOJ sent the letter to 44 states last Wednesday, the same day the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity sent a letter controversially requesting personal voter information. The DOJ letter requests that election officials respond by detailing their compliance with a section of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA), which covers 44 states and was enacted to help people register to vote, but also specifies when voters may be kicked off the rolls. 

Several experts said it’s difficult not to see the DOJ letter in connection with the commission’s letter as part of a multipronged effort to restrict voting rights.

Former Justice Department officials say that while there’s nothing notable about seeking information about compliance with the NVRA, it is unusual for the department to send out such a broad inquiry to so many states seeking information. Such a wide probe could signal the department is broadly fishing for cases of non-compliance to bring suits aimed at purging the voter rolls.

“These two letters, sent on the same day, are highly suspect, and seem to confirm that the Trump administration is laying the groundwork to suppress the right to vote,” said Vanita Gupta, the CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and former head of DOJ’s civil rights division under President Barack Obama. “It is not normal for the Department of Justice to ask for voting data from all states covered by the National Voter Registration Act. It’s likely that this is instead the beginning of an effort to force unwarranted voter purges.”

These two letters, sent on the same day, are highly suspect, and seem to confirm that the Trump administration is laying the groundwork to suppress the right to vote.Vanita Gupta, head of DOJ’s civil rights division under President Barack Obama.

“If this went to any individual states, I don’t think anybody would’ve blinked twice,” said Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School who served as deputy assistant attorney general in the civil rights division in the Obama administration. The letter asked for public information that was uncontroversial, he added, but what made the letter “really weird” was that it was sent out to so many states.

“The Department of Justice does investigations all the time, but those are usually based on individualized predicates to believe that there’s a problem in a given area, in a given jurisdiction. And I’m not aware of a similar letter being sent to blanket jurisdictions across the country,” he said.”

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Read the complete article at the link. The concept that “Gonzo Apocalypto” would protect anybody’s voting rights except those of white GOP leaning voters is borderline absurd. Deconstructing (and perverting) the American justice system one gonzo decision at a time.

PWS

07-056-17

FEDERAL JUDGE SANCTIONS KOBACH FOR MISCONDUCT IN KS VOTING RIGHTS CASE!

 

https://www.lexisnexis.com/legalnewsroom/immigration/b/immigration-law-blog/archive/2017/06/24/kobach-sanctioned-for-39-deceptive-conduct-39-in-proof-of-citizenship-lawsuit-fish-v-kobach.aspx

Dan Kowalski reports from LexisNexis Immigration:

“Fish v. Kobach, June 23, 2017 – “[D]efendant’s deceptive conduct and lack of candor warrant the imposition of sanctions. … [D]efendant made patently misleading representations to the court … The court cannot say that defendant flat-out lied in representing the content of the disputed documents. … “Most attorneys, of course, try to convey evidence in the best possible light for their clients. But there is a difference between putting evidence in the best possible light and blatantly misstating the evidence.” … When counsel’s false references in a brief indicate “that he has been either cavalier in regard to his approach to this case or bent upon misleading the court,” sanctions are appropriate. … [P]laintiffs are permitted to take the deposition of Secretary Kobach with respect to non-privileged information and evidence pertaining to the draft amendment and the photographed document. … The undersigned will preside over the deposition and contemporaneously resolve any disputes that arise.”

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Go to the link for the full decision.

Gee, Kris, the rules in Federal Court apply even to guys like you!

PWS

06-24-17