"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt. To see my complete professional bio, just click on the link below.
In more than three decades of coaching, I’ve come to learn one thing: You cannot be afraid to take a player off the field if it will help the team.
Donald Trump said he alone could fix the challenges facing our country. But as we’ve seen during these past four years, he’s in over his head — and we’re all paying the price for that. It’s time to take President Trump off the field.
Months into this pandemic, coronavirus cases are continuing to skyrocket in Wisconsin. More than 1,500 Wisconsinites have lost their lives to the pandemic. Green Bay, a city I love dearly, is seeing some of the highest infection rates in the country. Hospitals are overflowing, people are hurting, and families are needlessly suffering. More than 4,000 fewer people in Green Bay are employed now, compared to when President Trump took office. Far too many small businesses have had to close their doors for good. And the heart and soul of Green Bay — our game days with thousands of fans at Lambeau Field — are no more.
President Trump’s failure to mount a forceful response to the coronavirus pandemic will go down as one of the most consequential failures of government in American history. In Green Bay alone, the indefinite hold on fans at Lambeau Field — yet another consequence of President Trump’s failed leadership — is proving devastating to Green Bay’s small businesses. Each Packers home game provides $15 million in economic impacts to the city of Green Bay — but not this year.
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Read the rest of Mike’s op-ed at the link.
Trump is the biggest loser in US presidential history! Even now, he has no coherent plan for anything — just inane and largely fabricated personal grievances, insults, and childish, moronic chants and slogans! What kind of nation puts someone like this “on the field” with survival in the balance?
By contrast, Biden and Harris care about America and have intelligent plans for solving problems like health care, getting America back to work, addressing the pandemic in a scientifically credible way, protecting our environment, treating all persons equally before the law, ending racism and misogyny, and re-establishing our world leadership.
Vote like your life and the world’s future depend on it! Because they do! Get the maliciously incompetent loser off the field and put proven winners and decent human beings in charge!
Donald J. Trump Famous American Clown (Officially titled “Ass Clown”) Artist: Scott Scheidly Orlando, FL Reproduced by permissionD. Vader Minister of Justice Banana Republic of TrumpTrump Regime
Donald Trump’s re-election campaign poses the greatest threat to American democracy since World War II.
Mr. Trump’s ruinous tenure already has gravely damaged the United States at home and around the world. He has abused the power of his office and denied the legitimacy of his political opponents, shattering the norms that have bound the nation together for generations. He has subsumed the public interest to the profitability of his business and political interests. He has shown a breathtaking disregard for the lives and liberties of Americans. He is a man unworthy of the office he holds.
HERNANDEZ-CARTAGENA v. BARR, 4th Cir., 10-15-20, published
PANEL: THACKER, RICHARDSON, and QUATTLEBUAM, Circuit Judges
OPINION BY: JUDGE STEPHANIE THACKER
KEY QUOTE:
Contrary to the BIA’s conclusion in this case, the record does not support the conclusion that Petitioner’s own conflict with the gang precipitated any of the events in question. Indeed, substantial evidence in the record compels the conclusion that at least one central reason Petitioner was targeted was her membership in the Hernandez-Cartagena family. The unrebutted evidence in the record demonstrates that the threats and violence against Petitioner, her child, and her siblings were designed to get her parents to pay up. Pursuant to Hernandez-Avalos, it is therefore unreasonable to conclude that the fact that Petitioner is her parents’ child — a member of their family, concern for whom might motivate additional payments to the gang — is not at least one central reason for her persecution.
11
IV.
For the reasons set forth herein, the petition for review is granted, the decision of
the BIA is reversed, and we remand to the BIA for proceedings consistent with this opinion.
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Why this is important: It delivers a totally deserved “double whammy” to two of the worst and most biased precedents issued during the Trump White Nationalist “kangaroo court era” at the BIA.
First, in Matter of L-E-A, 27 I&N Dec. 40 (BIA 2017), (“L-E-A- 1”) the BIA recognized the “nuclear family” as a “particular social group.” Yet, to produce the necessary asylum denial sought by their “Trump handlers” at DOJ, the BIA erroneously found that the threatened harm had no “nexus” to the PSG.
To reach this improper and illogical result, the BIA disingenuously trashed the “normal” rules of causation. Those say that nexus is established if the harm would not have occurred “but for” membership in the protected group. Of course, there could be multiple “but fors” in a particular case, recognizing the “at least one central reason” statutory language for nexus.
That respondent was targeted for harm by gangs because his family owned a drug store that the gangs wanted to access to distribute illegal drugs. Had the respondent not been a member of his particular family, there is no reason to believe he would have have been targeted for any harm, or indeed have been of any interest to the gangs at all.
In other words, “but for” his membership in that particular family PSG, the threats would not have occurred. Essentially, a “no brainer” asylum grant that could have been quickly granted by a competent adjudicator. Any DHS appeal should have been a strong candidate for summary dismissal.
Instead of doing the obvious, the BIA invented new rules of causation. Contrary to the record, they found that family membership was essentially irrelevant to the threatened persecution. No, according to the BIA, the threats against the respondent were motivated solely the gang’s desire to sell illegal drugs through the family store, not a protected ground.
By searching for “any other motivation” and then basically substituting it to the exclusion of the clear family PSG motivation, the BIA bizarrely and erroneously concluded that the PSG was not “one central reason” for the persecution. This allowed the BIA to deny asylum to a respondent who fit squarely within the “refugee” definition.
Although the decision might have been cloaked in garbled legalese and irrational, result-oriented analysis, the overall message to Immigration Judges and BIA Appellate Judges was clear: faced with facts that demanded an asylum grant to a Central American refugee, the adjudicator should manufacture “any reason other than a protected ground” to deny protection. The BIA will have your back.
Let’s play out the BIA’s intentionally perverted analysis on a larger scale. The leaders of the Nazi movement stood to profit mightily from the eradication of the German Jewish community. Stolen artwork, confiscated wealth and property, and even the proceeds of the gold and silver obtained from collecting and melting down the dental fillings of gassed Jews found their way into Nazi bank accounts, many abroad. Thus, the BIA could view the Holocaust not as religious, nationality, or racial persecution, but rather part of an overall criminal scheme to enrich Nazi leaders by stealing from prosperous or vulnerable individuals. No persecution there!
Happily, in Hernandez-Cartagena, Judge Thacker and her colleagues blew through the type of bogus analysis set forth in L-E-A- 1. Although not specifically citing the BIA’s defective precedent, the court applied “normal rules of causation” rather than the BIA’s “any reason to deny” approach.
The petitioner was a “conduit” In the gang’s scheme to extort money from her parents. The court recognized that “it is therefore unreasonable to conclude that the fact that Petitioner is her parents’ child — a member of their family, concern for whom might motivate additional payments to the gang — is not at least one central reason for her persecution.”
Good bye and good riddance L-E-A- 1. Hello, rational analysis and well-merited protection, although sadly only within Fourth Circuit, for now.
But, that’s not the end of the tale of woe from America’s most blatantly biased, unprofessional, deadly, and totally unconstitutional “21st Century Star Chambers.” Not satisfied with the BIA’s illegal denial of protection in L-E-A- 1, two years later, Attorney General “Billy the Bigot” Barr “certified” that case to himself. That became Matter of L-E-A-, 27 I&N Dec. 581 (A.G. 2019) (“L-E-A- 2”).
“Justice” Star Chamber Style
His purpose? To reverse the only correct part of L-E-A- 1: the BIA’s recognition of the “nuclear family” as a “PSG.” As we all know, the nuclear family is one of the oldest, most well-established, well-defined, and universally recognized social units in human history. Not surprisingly, then, it has been recognized as a “PSG” under the Refugee Act of 1980 in numerous judicial and BIA decisions as well as by a myriad of human rights and international law scholars.
Bill Barr Consigliere Artist: Pat Bagley Salt Lake Tribune Reproduced under license
No matter to Billy! In an exercise in disingenuous legal gobbledygook and counter-rationality, he tried to explain why it was wrong to recognize the obvious: that the nuclear family” is a “cognizable PSG” for asylum adjudication purposes.
Instead, Billy substituted what I call the “Kardashian rule.” Only those families who have some sort of widespread recognition in society as a whole should be considered to possess the “social distinction” (the characteristic formerly known as “social visibility”) to qualify as a “cognizable PSG.”
Billy Barr’s Vision Of A “Cognizable Particular Social Group” By hotrock pictures – Vimeo: Kardashian Kollection at Sears (view archived source), CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=82871460 Creative Commons License
Again, without specifically citing L-E-A- 2, (perhaps the OIL was too embarrassed to argue it) Judge Thacker and her colleagues “blew away” its bigoted and irrational nonsense:
We have repeatedly held “a nuclear family provides a prototypical example of a particular social group” cognizable in our asylum framework. Cedillos-Cedillos v. Barr, 962 F.3d 817, 824 (4th Cir. 2020) (internal quotation marks omitted).
Indeed, the Fourth Circuit has been a leader in recognizing the nuclear family as a PSG, going all the way back to a case where they reinstated some of my rulings as an Immigration Judge that had been wrongfully reversed by the BIA: Crespin-Valadares v. Holder, 632 F.3d 117, 128 (4th Cir. 2011). But, hey, who remembers stuff like that from nearly a decade ago where I was once again proved right and the BIA was wrong?
Yeah, I’ll have to admit that after eight years of regularly getting “stuffed” by my BIA colleagues at en banc, there were few things in my professional life more satisfying than having a Court of Appeals “stuff” the BIA on a case where I had dissented as a BIA Judge or been reversed as an Immigration Judge!
So Billy the Bigot’s attempt to impose the absurdist “Kardashian rule” (sorry Kim, Kourtney, and Khloe) in L-E-A- 2 bites the dust, at least in the Fourth Circuit. I hope it will serve as a “blueprint” to eradicate the “twin travesties” of L-E-A- 1 & 2across the nation!
Exhilarating as this case is, it’s just one step in the right direction. The unconstitutional White Nativist bias and abuse being heaped upon refugees and other migrants by a “Star Chamber” beholden to the likes of “Billy the Bigot” Barr and his predecessor Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions won’t end until EOIR is abolished and replaced with a real court system that complies with 5th Amendment Due Process. If the Article III Courts don’t have the guts to get the job done, then its up to future better Congress to make it happen!
🌟First and foremost, Aaron Caruso, Esquire, of Abod & Caruso, Wheaton, MD. He appeared before me in Arlington. He’s the “total pro,” a “judge’s lawyer:” scholarly, unfailingly courteous, prompt, well-prepared, practical, wrote outstanding “to the issue” briefs that didn’t waste my time, took tough cases, and never gave up on his clients. In a “better world,” he’s definitely someone I could see on the Federal Bench at some level. A member of the NDPA, for sure!
Honorable Stephanie D. Thacker U.S. Circuit Judge Fourth Circuit Photo From Ballotpedia
🌟Judge Stephanie Thacker of the Fourth Circuit. I haven’t studied all of her judicial opinions. But, based on this opinion and her outstanding and totally correct dissent in Portillo-Flores v. Barr where she cogently castigated her fellow panel members for “going along to get along” with the BIA’s “at worst nonsensical and cursory at best” asylum denial, she appears one of a painfully small number of Article III Judges who both understand the mockery of justice going on in our Immigration “Courts” and have the guts to take a strong stand against it. https://immigrationcourtside.com/2020/09/04/%E2%80%8D%EF%B8%8F%EF%B8%8F%EF%B8%8Finjustice-watch-4th-cir-judge-stephanie-thacker-cogently-castigates-colleagues-for-misapplying/
Interestingly, this is the same panelas in Portillo-Flores. And, the BIA’s sloppy and incompetent analysis, including ignoring the evidence of record, presents largely the same issues. Only, this time Judge Thacker’s colleagues paid attention to what she was saying!
That says something about both her persuasiveness and her colleagues’ willingness to listen and take a better approach to judicial review. That’s also what’s known in the business as “making progress every day, one case, one life at a time.”
Unfortunately, Trump and the GOP right wing pols have turned Federal judicial selection into a race to control justice until at least 2060. That has forced the Dems to finally wake up and do likewise the next time they get the chance. The upshot: At 55, although still in the “prime years” of her career from a professional standpoint, Judge Thacker has probably “aged out” of the sweepstakes to be the “heart and soul” of the Supremes for the next four decades.
The good news: She should be around to continue saving lives, speaking truth to power, and serving as a great role model for younger, aspiring jurists and public officials of all races and genders for many years to come.
Compare Judge Thacker’s clear, concise, cogent analysis in this case with the wandering legal gobbledygook and pure nonsense put forth by the BIA and Barr in L-E-A- 1 & 2.
🌟Judge Julius N. Richardson and Judge A. Marvin Quattlebaum, Jr., of the Fourth Circuit also deserve stars. I really lambasted these two Trump appointees for their tone-deaf performance in Portillo-Flores. But, here they surprised me by joining fully in Judge Thacker’s analysis. Shows a capacity for teamwork, listening, adjusting views, and taking judicial review seriously, all really good things!
Additionally, it’s really important and significant when Trump appointees “do the right thing” and uphold due process, fundamental fairness, and recognize asylum seekers as “persons” entitled to equal justice under our Constitution.Given the large number of fairly young Trump appointees on the Federal Bench, it’s critical that as many of them as possible join their colleagues in resisting the White Nationalist assault on the rights and human dignity of people of color, particularly migrants and asylum seekers, being orchestrated by Trump, Miller, Barr, Wolf, and the rest of the regime’s gang of bigots.
Don’t know if this will be repeated in the future, but the votes of Judge Richardson and Judge Quattlebaum in this case are an encouraging sign for the American justice system. Will it be a trend or an aberration? Can’t tell, but stay tuned.
🌟Finally, and perhaps most importantly, hats off for Sandra Marleny Hernandez-Cartagena. In the face of a bogus “court” system controlled and operated by White Nationalist racist bigots for the purpose of wiping out asylum laws, demoralizing applicants through dishonest procedures and rules meant to discourage them from seeking protection, and to “send a message” that they aren’t wanted in our country, she persisted for herself, her family, and others similarly situated. Her victory in this case is a victory for American justice and for every one of us who believe in due process, fundamental fairness, and equal justice for all.
Thanks, Sandra, for inspiring us with your courage and unrelenting persistence in the face of evil and institutionalized, illegal, bias!
Since Amy Coney Barrett was nominated to the Supreme Court, Republicans have suggested that one of the reasons she should be given a lifetime appointment on the highest court of the land is that she has seven kids. Barrett is “a remarkable mother” with “seven beautiful children,” Senator Thom Tillissaid during the first day of her confirmation hearing. She’s a “tireless mother of seven,” Senator Chuck Grassley told the room. “She and her husband have seven children,” Senator Lindsey Graham said in his opening remarks, in case anyone hadn’t heard, before giving her two more. “She and her husband have seven children. Two adopted. Nine seems to be a good number,” he said. Obviously, constantly bringing up this part of Barrett’s biography is part of an attempt on Republicans’ part to (1) draw a distinction between Barrett and what they view as childless heathen Democrats, (2) claim that any opposition to her confirmation is anti-mom, and (3) suggest that since she’s a mother, she must be a good person who couldn’t possibly issue rulings that would hurt millions of people.
But, surprise! Despite being a mother, Barrett is expected to help overturn the Affordable Care Act. (After she was asked about this possibility, which would strip health insurance from millions, Grassley raged at his Democratic colleagues that “As a mother of seven, Judge Barrett clearly understands the importance of health care.”) She will also very likely go after Roe v. Wade, if given the chance, which some mothers would point out prevents their daughters—or even women they didn’t give birth to!— from being forced into back alley abortions. And even though she’s a mom of seven children, she apparently thinks the jury is still out on whether or not it’s bad to separate small children from their parents, if they happen to be from another country: . . . .
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Read the rest of Bess’s article and the latest from The Levin Report at the above link.
Just for the record, the Trump DOJ conceded before U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw (a GOP appointee) that intentional child separation is a violation of Fifth Amendment Due Process.
They also declined to appeal Judge Sabraw’s order to that effect – unusual for a regime that usually pushes the most frivolous, clearly illegal, and unethical positions for as long as possible to the highest levels of the judiciary (knowing that the “Roberts” Five” believes that ethical requirements and disciplinary procedures don’t apply to the Trump legal team assembled on your taxpayer dollars).
Wonder what would happen if we had a more honest and realistic confirmation system that allowed nominees to actually answer truthfully, rather than disingenuously claiming under oath that after a lifetime of intense public involvement in the law, politics, and public policy, they had no real views on anything of any importance whatsoever?
I actually doubt that an honest answer to this question, either way, would have cost Coney Barrett her politically-assured confirmation, nor would it have required recusal in any litigation likely to reach the Supremes’ merits docket. So, Coney Barrett thinks we’re dumb enough to believe that after several days of her GOP sponsors touting the wonderfulness of her bold embrace of their far-right agenda — the first overtly “pro-life woman Justice” — that they are badly mistaken and, in fact, she has no views or opinions on anything.
It kind of reminds me of the “super-disclaimer” I used to give on those occasions when my “EOIR handlers” let me speak in public: “Nothing that I say today represents my view on any case that I decided in the past, is pending before me, or might come before me in the future.”
On the bright side, Coney Barrett was able to (sort of) answer the question of Sen. John “I’m Not JFK” Kennedy (R-LA) about who does the laundry at her home (supposed to be her kids, but apparently they haven’t completely gotten the message. Now, if ACB were before me in Immigration Court, this is the point when I would have turned to the kids and said “Come on kids, Mom’s doing it all for you and others, I want you to give her and your Dad a hand.”)
Seriously, though, Dems, here’s the definition of Justice Amy Coney Barrett: “It’s what you get when lose elections for the White House and the Senate.” If you really want the next woman Justice to be a worthy progressive successor to the legacy of RBG and a “soul mate” for Justice Sonia Sotomayor, then go out and win the elections necessary to make that happen!
Another huge plus: If we Dems could figure out how to translate our national political majority into control of all three political arms, we could shore up health care, address COVID in a rational way, help Americans who have lost livelihoods and confidence because of COVID, and create educational opportunities and jobs that will be durable and serve us well in the Post-COVID world. We could also address the deficit by undoing the revenue shortage resulting from unwarranted tax giveaways to the wealthy, and get “more bang for our tax dollars” by running government wisely, prudently, and efficiently, for the overall public good rather than for the benefit of grifters and their selfish, anti-democracy far-right agenda.
Then, we could see whether Justice Barrett will stick to her word and urge her colleagues to “let the political branches of Government make policy.” That’s something that has been a challenge for past right-wing jurists, including the late Justice Scalia. But, if it actually happened, it would make the issue of “enhancing” the Supremes with progressive Justices largely moot.
Which is probably why Joe & Kamala have wisely refused to “take the GOP bait” on how they might specifically solve a problem that might or might not exist in the future. I do know one thing, however. As reflective, reasonable, and thoughtful public officials who listen to expert advice, they will promote the best possible solution for all Americans under the circumstances. That’s certainly a “quantum leap” over where we are today!
Hillary is an amazing example of how the younger generation of the NDPA is courageously fighting for leadership positions that will change America for the better at all levels!The NDPA has been dominant in courtroom advocacy, scholarship, and clinical teaching. We now need to “take it beyond the courtrooms, classrooms, law journals, and op-ed pages!”
It’s time for the NDPA to make our shared vision of due process, fundamental fairness, and equal justice for all a reality! Take the fight for social justice and America’s heart, soul, and future to the judicial benches, legislatures, and public offices — from the municipalities, to the states, to the highest levels of our Federal System — and beyond to leadership on the world stage!
Supreme Court Nominee by Bob Englehart, PoliticalCartoons.com Published under licenseEric Levitz Associate Editor Intelligencer New York Magazine Photo source: Twitter
Even Republicans don’t have the stomach to outsource judgment on all modern constitutional questions to the slaveholding elite of a preindustrial, post-colonial backwater. As Dean of Berkeley Law Erwin Chemerinsky has observed, a ruthless adherence to text and history would require forfeiting judicial protection of “liberties such as the right to marry, the right to procreate, the right to custody of one’s children, the right to keep the family together, the right of parents to control the upbringing of their children, the right to purchase and use contraceptives, the right to abortion, [and] the right to refuse medical care,” none of which are guaranteed by the Constitution.
Amy Coney Barrett herself has acknowledged the undesirability of applying originalism indiscriminately, noting in 2016, “Adherence to originalism arguably requires, for example, the dismantling of the administrative state, the invalidation of paper money, and the reversal of Brown v. Board of Education,” and other institutions that “no serious person would propose to undo,” even if they lack constitutional grounding. Barrett’s proposed solution to this conundrum is for courts to simply avoid ruling on cases where originalism would dictate socially unthinkable overturnings of precedent; she wrote in 2017 that “discretionary jurisdiction generally permits [the Court] to choose which questions it wants to answer.”
But this expedient degrades originalism’s claim to neutrality. If an originalist Supreme Court can apply its doctrine opportunistically — taking only those cases in which its “neutral” juridical method will yield outcomes acceptable to a “serious” person (as they define that adjective) — then originalism isn’t much of a binding restriction on judicial discretion.
What’s more, Barrett’s concession tacitly betrays awareness of a critical fact that originalists love to elide when speaking for a lay audience: Amending the Constitution has become so phenomenally difficult it’s not at all clear that the American people could promptly replace an overturned Brown v. Board of Education with an amendment forbidding school segregation, despite overwhelming popular support for that Supreme Court decision. Originalists like to portray their judicial approach as highly democratic, since they purport to defer to the letter of a democratically enacted Constitution. But once one stipulates that the demos is manifestly no longer capable of passing constitutional amendments with regularity, it becomes clear that the originalist practice of striking down democratically elected laws in deference to the letter of a centuries-old document is profoundly anti-democratic.
Of course, in real life, “originalist” Supreme Court justices haven’t just applied their method opportunistically by selecting cases in which originalism will produce a favored outcome; they’ve also simply declined to abide by their method when they feel like it. On Monday, Barrett named Antonin Scalia as her guiding light on judicial philosophy. But as Georgia State University Law professor Eric J. Segall notes, Scalia voted “for broad rules limiting congressional power to enact campaign finance reform, to commandeer state legislatures and executives to help implement federal law, and to allow lawsuits against the states for money damages by citizens of other states” without “justifying these broad rules from a textual or historical perspective,” presumably because they have no textual or historical basis.
In sum: Amy Coney Barrett’s originalism does not work as a method of safeguarding democracy against an activist, ideologically motivated judiciary. It does, however, function quite well as a means of obscuring a far-right movement’s efforts to impose its unpopular agenda by judicial fiat.
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Read Eric’s complete article, which is an outstanding debunking of“originalism” — a totally bogus invention of the reactionary right — intended to pervert the law and promote far-right attacks on humanity — at the link.
Just think about it: Supposedly a bunch of guys who risked everything on a never-before-realized long shot of defeating the British King and setting up a republic actuallyintended that 230 years after the fact the governors of that republic would be so backwards, unimaginative, and intellectually limited that they would still be attempting to divine the “true meaning” of various two-centuries out of date words and concepts that nobody agreed upon in the first place! Preposterous! Not to mention totally intellectually dishonest!
Obviously, if the GOP Senators actually believed that Coney Barrett would be an unbiased judge with an open mind to progressive, liberal, humane, common sense interpretations of law and committed to implementing the Constitutional guarantee of equal protection and due process under the law for all persons, they would be apoplectic. They would be outraged at Trump for foisting such an unreliable and unpredictable jurist on them!
I’m not necessarily saying that Coney Barrett couldn’t educate herself and “get smarter” on the bench — abandoning her false dogma and actually showing some empathy, courage, independence, and commitment to equal justice for all. She wouldn’t be the first GOP-appointed Judge or Justice to move left on the bench. After all, spending a lifetime mired on the wrong side of history screwing up the lives of your fellow humans can get old, even for well-trained right-wing ideologues.
Also, she will have the benefit of the only current Justice who actually appears up to the job and consistently understands the proper role of a High Court in a democratic republic — Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Sotomayor actually “gets it right” in an amazing number of cases and usually explains her reasoning in coherent, non-legalistic terms that most folks can understand.
But, sadly, I find relatively little in Coney Barrett’s career to predict that type of self-awareness, intellectual honesty, moral courage, and capacity for human growth. Her family situation shows some capacity for empathy and human understanding.
But, sadly, to date, she evidently has been unable to “connect the dots” between her kids’ lives and futures and the future of humanity. To understand that but for the grace of God, the refugee she is expelling based on BS non-defects could be someone she actually loves or regards as human. That the benefits that neo-Nazi Stephen Miller is unethically and illegally stripping from deserving immigrants could be the lifeline that, but for life’s quirks, would allow her, her family, or other loved ones to survive and achieve their full human potential. The capacity to function as a real jurist certainly is there, but the will and perspective seem to be largely lacking.
In a way, Coney Barrett’s squandered potential to achieve good is her own human tragedy. But, one for which those “other than Coney Barrett” are likely to pay the ultimate price.
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court on Tuesday temporarily allowed the Trump administration to end its 2020 census count earlier than planned, a move that could result in undercounting racial and ethnic minorities and others in hard-to-reach communities.
The Commerce Department had asked the justices to block a lower court ruling that barred the administration from stopping the head count on Oct. 5. The administration had sought to stop counting in order to determine the number of House seats and electoral votes each state gets for the coming decade by Dec. 31, before Trump might have to leave office.
While the decision was unsigned, Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor registered her dissent. She said “meeting the deadline at the expense of the accuracy of the census is not a cost worth paying.”
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So, two months wouldn’t be long enough for the USG to get the results to Trump? Gimme a break! And, since when does the most lawless Administration in history lose sleep about missing a statutory deadline? Incredible! But, hardly unexpected from a Court that “belongs” to a political party and makes little attempt to hide it.
Interestingly, however, Justices Breyer and Kagan also “took the day off” on this one. That left Justice Sotomayor as the sole defender of an honest census count.
Justice Sotomayor’s dissent says it all:
While the decision was unsigned, Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor registered her dissent. She said “meeting the deadline at the expense of the accuracy of the census is not a cost worth paying.”
“The harms caused by rushing this year’s census count are irreparable,” Sotomayor wrote. “And respondents will suffer their lasting impact for at least the next 10 years.”
Of course, the “irreparable harm” will skew things illegally in favor of the GOP for the coming decade. But, that’s the point of a politically weaponized Supremes! And, you can bet that Justice Barrett will do everything possible to advance the GOP program of shafting communities of color and majority-Democrat jurisdictions while seeking to maintain GOP minority control of government!
Vote ‘Em out, vote ‘Em out! At every level of Government, the GOP and their ideological judges are committed to unrelenting corruption, inequality, destroying democracy, and forcing an extreme right-wing agenda on the majority of Americans!
Criticised by challenger Amy McGrath in a debate on Monday night for blocking a new coronavirus relief bill, Mitch McConnell laughed.
“Trying to figure out what he is laughing about,” tweeted Claire McCaskill, a former Democratic senator from Missouri who now works for NBC News.
Nearly 7.8m coronavirus cases and almost 215,000 deaths have been recorded in the US. Amid devastating economic fallout, Congress has not passed a relief package since May, when the Democratic-held House passed a $3tn bill the Republican Senate did not take up. Donald Trump recently dynamited negotiations, which he then tried to restart.
“The House passed a bill in May and this Senate went on vacation,” McGrath said.
As McConnell chuckled, she continued: “I mean, you just don’t do that. You negotiate. Senator, it is a national crisis, you knew that the coronavirus wasn’t gonna end at the end of July. We knew that.”
As McConnell tried to interrupt, still chuckling, McGrath said: “If you want to call yourself a leader … you got to get things done and those of us who served in the marines, we don’t just point fingers at the other side. We get the job done.”
McConnell blamed the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, saying: “Look, I know how to make deals. I made three major deals with Joe Biden during the Obama era. What the problem is here is the unwillingness of the speaker to make a deal.”
On Tuesday, after Trump tweeted “STIMULUS! Go big or go home!!!”, McConnell said the Senate would soon vote on a “skinny” bill, meant to tap into unused funds from previous legislation, a course Pelosi has already rejected.
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Nothing funnier in times of extreme national distress than a Republican showing you where the party’s real priorities lie. HINT: It’s NOT with “We the People.”
Dahlia: I wonder what you thought of Barrett’s statement, about how she reads each of her opinions through the eyes of the losing party. As you have written, the losing party tends to be the prisoners, the Black worker, the teen seeking abortion, the asylum seeker. It reminded me of Justice Samuel Alito testifying at his hearings about his great solicitude for immigrants.
Mark: Barrett’s opening statement made me think about one of her worst decisions (so far), in which she approved the deportation of an asylum seeker because there were small, trivial variations in his account of persecution. Over a dissent, Barrett said, yep, this asylum seeker must be sent home to be tortured and murdered because tiny details in his story changed over time. Would a judge who views the case through the eyes of the asylum seeker really dismiss his claims so cavalierly? I doubt it.
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Read the complete dialogue at the link.
So much for intellectual honesty! It also shows Barrett’s fundamental lack of experience and legal understanding of what Immigration “Courts” really are and how they have been politicized and weaponized against asylum seekers by “judges” who report to overtly biased and xenophobic politicos in the Executive Branch. Just how would this “naked farce” satisfy any rudimentary concept of Due Process? Clearly it doesn’t. And just as clearly, intentionally tone-deaf judges like Barrett don’t care!They lack the guts, relevant experience representing migrants, and the intellectual presence to stand up for the Constitutional and human rights of “the other.”
How would YOU like to be sentenced to torture and/or death based on trivial inconsistencies found by an Immigration “Judge” working directly for the Attorney General and his regime in a badly flawed assembly line process designed to achieve political policy objectives, not justice?
Also, did anyone else pick up the facial absurdity of Barrett’s disingenuous claim to be “apolitical” while pledging allegiance to GOP “superhero” the late Justice Antonin Scalia, probably the most overtly “political Justice” of modern times?
Bottom Line:Once you’re out of the womb, this is one mother you don’t want on your case!🏴☠️☠️⚰️
Better Judges For A Better America! Judge/Justice Barrett is part of the problem, not the solution! The best way to insure that she is among the last, far-right, anti-democracy, inhumane judges given life tenure on the Supremes or anywhere else, vote ‘em out, vote ‘em out! Then, we’ll discover the “true meaning” of Barrett’s “I’m not there to make policy nonsense!” (Indeed, I would submit that the sole reason for her appointment was the GOP’s belief and expectation that she will reliably elevate disingenuous right-wing policies, biases, and prejudices over the Constitutional, individual, and human rights of individuals and that she will be a steadfast opponent of Constitutionally-required equal justice under law.)
Justice for the George Floyds, Breonna Taylors, dehumanized dead asylum seekers, and wrongfully imprisoned migrant kids of the world (e.g., the end of unconstitutional “Baby Jails”) will require a different type of “Justice” than Amy Coney Barrett in the future! Far from being truly “independent” and “apolitical,” Barrett is likely to be the perfect representative of the warped man who appointed her and his anti-democracy party. And, that’s likely to cause problems for all Americans of good will far into the future!
Last month, a nurse at a federal immigration detention center in Irwin, Georgia, filed a whistleblower complaint detailing the abhorrent treatment of people detained there. She charged that women in detention were subjected to hysterectomies and invasive gynecological exams without their knowledge or consent, and often without assistance from interpreters.
The complaint is heartbreaking, but far from surprising. These atrocities are consistent with practices employed at U.S. detention centers for decades, and they are sadly consistent with our tragic history of forced sterilization of minority women. The implications of the complaint are perfectly clear: we must end the civil detention of immigrants, so fraught with systemic racism that undervalues the lives of Black, Indigenous and other people of color. There is no other option.
With over 200 detention centers, the United States has the largest immigration detention system in the world. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has over the past two years detained an average of 40,000 daily, an astonishing number that surpasses the population of Wisconsin cities like Brookfield and Wausau. Yet the detention of immigrants is just a microcosm of the inhumanity that characterizes our immigration system today. Many immigrants come to the U.S. to seek refuge and a better life for themselves and for their families. But when they arrive in this country, they are forced into conditions that violate human rights principles under both international and domestic standards, and that, frankly, violate our moral obligations to each other as human beings.
ICE has the authority to release most people from detention through monetary bonds or parole, and ICE policy requires that people seeking asylum are released from detention when they can establish their identity and demonstrate they are neither a danger nor a or flight risk. Instead of using these tools, though, ICE almost always chooses detention, ostensibly to deter others from coming into the country. But far from showing detention to be an effective deterrent, statistics reveal the opposite: harsher penalties have not reduced the numbers of undocumented migrants crossing U.S. borders. What the data does show is how immigrant detention has become a big business, with taxpayer dollars helping to subsidize a billion-dollar private prison industry that profits from human trauma.
Often located in remote places, immigrant detention facilities are ripe for the abuse of detained migrants. There is no community oversight and little — often no — access to legal representation. People in detention will only have an attorney if they can afford one or are lucky enough to find pro bono representation.
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Read the rest of Erin’s article at the link! Erin reinforces points that I make often here on Courtside: the real objectives of unnecessary and highly cost-ineffective “civil detention” are to deprive migrants of access to counsel, coerce them into abandoning potentially successful claims, punish them for exercising legal rights, and deter others from asserting legal rights.
All of these are clear violations of Constitutional due process and equal protection! The conditions under which these non-criminals are held to “punish” them for their audacity to assert their legal rights also violate the Eighth Amendment, as some lower Federal Court Judges have found.
Unfortunately, too many Article III Judges have abdicated their oaths to uphold the Constitutional rights of the most vulnerable persons among us in the face of improper political pressure and a regime overtly out to undo American democracy and institute a far-right reactionary, white nationalist kakistocracy.
And, here’s info on a great “virtual event” that Erin helped organize to raise awareness of the existence and devastating effects of “Baby Jails” in the U.S. Allowing such cruel and inhuman abominations to flourish in our nation is beyond disgraceful! (See also the recent book Baby Jails: The Fight to End the Incarceration of Refugee Children in America, by my good friend and Georgetown Law colleague Professor Phil Schrag).
The Flores Exhibit: Stories of Children Held in Immigrant Detention Facilities
WHEN
Wednesday, October 14, 2020
7:30 pm to 8:30 pm
WHERE
Virtual
EVENT DESCRIPTION
Artists, lawyers, advocates and immigrants read the sworn testimonies of young people under the age of 18, who were held in two detention facilities near the U.S./Mexico border in June 2019. Followed by a discussion with panelists.
Organized by the Immigrant Justice Clinic, Latinx Law Student Association, and American Constitution Society at UW Law School.
Zoom link will be sent to via email to those who register.
I proudly note that my good friend Judge (Ret.) Jeffrey S. Chase and other distinguished members of our Round Table of Former Immigration Judges are “readers” in “The Flores Exhibit.”
I am also inspired by all that Erin has accomplished and the lives she and her students have saved through the Immigrant Justice Clinic at my alma mater, UW Law!
Erin and others like her are exactly the type of progressive, practical, scholar-problem solvers that we need as Federal Judges and in key Government policy-making positions. We need to replace the reactionary kakistocracy with a progressive, equal justice oriented, practical, problem-solving humanitarian meritocracy.
“Equal Justice For All” isn’t just a “throwaway slogan.” It’s a vision of a better, more efficient, more effective, more tolerant, more inclusive, more diverse, more representative Government that will work with people of good faith everywhere to maximize opportunities for all and promote a brighter future for everyone in America! It’s in our power to make it happen,and the necessary change starts this Fall.
Tal Kopan Washington Reporter, SF ChronicleHonorable Mimi Tsankov U.S. Immigration Judge Eastern Region Vice President National Association of Immigration Judges (“NAIJ”)
Justice Department cancels diversity training, including for immigration judges
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Justice Department has suspended all diversity and inclusion training and events for its employees, according to a memo obtained by The Chronicle, which would include judges in San Francisco and elsewhere hearing cases of immigrants seeking to avoid deportation.
The memo, dated Oct. 8, is in response to an executive order issued by President Trump last month that labeled racial bias training as “offensive and anti-American race and sex stereotyping and scapegoating.” It was issued by Lee Lofthus, the assistant attorney general for administration.
“To ensure compliance with requirements specific to Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) training for employees, DOJ Components are instructed to suspend all D&I related training, programs, activities, and events that employees are required or permitted to attend while on Government-paid time,” Lofthus wrote.
Any new diversity training must be approved by the federal Office of Personnel Management, Lofthus said. He offered no timeline for resuming training.
The suspension applies to all divisions of the Justice Department, but could be of particular importance to the immigration courts.
Unlike the independent federal judiciary, immigration judges who hear the cases of asylum seekers and others trying to stay in the U.S. are employees of the Justice Department, hired by the attorney general.
Those cases often include some of the most sensitive stories of trauma from around the world, including many from women who say they have been raped, trafficked or abused in countries that frequently do not punish men who commit such acts. Asylum seekers also include people who say they have been persecuted because of their religious beliefs and LGBTQ individuals from countries where such identities are criminalized.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, who chairs the House Judiciary subcommittee on immigration, said the Justice Department, like other workplaces, “should always aim for more diversity, not less.”
“The suspension of this training will also apply to our nation‘s immigration courts and could lead to less inclusive and fair-minded judges,” Lofgren said in a statement to The Chronicle. “This is yet another reason why the immigration court system should be an independent body, separate from DOJ and free from the political whims of the Executive branch.”
The union that represents immigration judges noted that they interact with a diverse group of people in court, which it said makes such training important.
“The National Association of Immigration Judges values diversity and inclusion in the workplace as it ensures that the Immigration Judges can meet the needs of the diverse group of stakeholders with whom we interface.” Mimi Tsankov, the chair of the group’s committee on gender equity and a judge in New York, said in a statement. “Immigration Court workplace training on diversity and inclusion reflects a commitment to its importance and ensures a judicial bench ready to respond to the needs that our cases demand.”
President Trump’s attorneys general have paid particular attention to the immigration courts as part of their efforts to restrict immigration to the United States, by implementing policies that have reduced judges’ discretion and made it harder for immigrants to claim asylum.
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Those with access should go to the above link for the full article. It also gives Tal a boost from the “hits.”
Glaring, intentional lack of diversity on the bench along with racial, gender, religious, and ethnic insensitivity have become an endemic problem at EOIR. But, given a regime and a DOJ that pride themselves on racism, misogyny, xenophobia, along with disdain for professionalism, expertise, ethics, humanity, and the Constitution, that’s not surprising.
Representative Lofgren and the NAIJ’s Judge Tsankov are absolutely correct. It’s time to put an end to the disgraceful abomination at EOIR and create a real, independent court system dedicated to due process, fundamental fairness, and promoting human dignity!
Due Process Forever! Today’s Dysfunctional & Unfair EOIR, Never!
Elizabeth Jordan Esquire Director, Immigration Detention Accountability Project (IDAP)
Hi everyone,
I am pleased to report that we, along with co-counsel SPLC, DRA, Orrick, and Willkie, just got the attached order on our motion to enforce our Fraihat COVID preliminary injunction. We are working on developing guidance for detained folks, their families, advocates and allies. We encourage you to read it through if you’re interested because there are a lot of gems in there, but did want to flag these four big takeaways ASAP:
Defendants shall mandate more widespread and regular testing of medically vulnerable people, consistent with CDC guidelines and above the level provided by the BOP and state prisons.
Defendants shall mandate that medical isolation and quarantine are distinct from solitary, segregated, or punitive housing, that extended lockdowns as a means of COVID-19 prevention are not allowed, and that access to diversion and to telephones must be maintained to the fullest extent possible.
Defendant shall provide more protective, and more concrete, transfer protocols to protect medically vulnerable people, including a suspension of transfers with a narrow and well defined list of exceptions consistent with CDC guidance.
On custody redeterminations, blanket or cursory release denials are prohibited. Only in rare cases should a medically vulnerable detained individual who is not subject to mandatory detention remain detained, and any exceptions must be supported by specific justifications. With respect to people who are subject to mandatory detention, defendants must perform an individualized assessment, and should only continue to be detained after consideration of the risk of severe illness or death, with due regard to the public health emergency.
Many thanks to the many of you on these various lists for your reporting of on-the-ground conditions and results of release requests for class members, for evidence you provided in support of this motion, and for your thought partnership and tireless advocacy on these issues. Free them all!
Congrats, Liz, and thanks for all you do for American justice!
This sentence from Judge Bernal’s order says it all about the Trump ICE kakistocracy:`
Defendants have established a pattern of noncompliance or exceedingly slow compliance that calls for more active Court monitoring than has heretofore been the case.
What if we had an independent U.S. Immigration Court with judges who had demonstrated due process and human rights expertise? Such a court could require ICE to comply with the law, take appropriate corrective action against contemptuous non-compliance, and relieve US District Judges from the responsibility to supervise ICE.
Kakistocracy is neither ethical nor efficient! Vote the kakistocracy out this Fall!
A plague was the check and balance, not the rule of law, not civility. Trump and Republicans showed hubris in the face of a force of nature that cannot be gaslit, bullied, or emotionally manipulated. A virus demands you engage with it truthfully. You can’t bluster your way out of infection. Trump’s lies and arrogance regarding Covid-19 have cost 210,000 Americans their lives. Those lies and arrogance have finally caught up with him, and he may pay a heavy price. Some people think that’s poetic justice. They are being rebuked by those who think you should never be that callous, not even to a fascist.
Fascists know how to weaponize the norms governing civility to gain and maintain control over others. They know how to exploit sympathy. They know if they pretend to play nice sometimes, people believe they’ll begin to adhere to these norms and stop their harm. It’s a con. It works, though. That’s why four years into the Trump regime, reporters and pundits are still, embarrassingly, talking about his change of tone and his becoming more “presidential” any time he displays the barest modicum of decorum. This dynamic lowers the bar all the way down to Hell. Playing along is always the wrong move.
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Read the rest of the article at the link.
Excellent summary of how fascism works and how the “mainstream” keeps giving it a “pass” and normalizing severely abnormal, anti-social, illegal behavior by Trump and his toadies.
Just look at yesterday’s Courtside posting — kids and legal refugees continue to suffer while Sessions collects his pension, Hamilton continues to plan criminal enterprises on our dollar, and Rosenstein racks up the big bucks pretending like his venture into child abuse and crimes against humanity were just “normal activities of a senior Government official at the DOJ.” Not normal! Not acceptable!
History tells us what happens to those who “play along to get along.” The U.S. Olympic Committee turning an intentionally blind eye to Hitler’s virulent anti-Semitism so that the U.S. could participate in “Hitler’s Big Show” — the 1936 Olympics. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain selling out the Czechs, babbling about “peace in our time” on the eve of the bloodiest war in world history, and pretending that Hitler was “just another German politician” with “traditional” nationalist aspirations.
This Fall, vote Trump and the GOP out at all levels of Government. It might be the last chance to save our democracy from fascism and to save more lives from the malfeasance, ignorance, hate, and evil of Trump and his GOP enablers.
WASHINGTON — The five U.S. attorneys along the border with Mexico, including three appointed by President Trump, recoiled in May 2018 against an order to prosecute all undocumented immigrants even if it meant separating children from their parents. They told top Justice Department officials they were “deeply concerned” about the children’s welfare.
But the attorney general at the time, Jeff Sessions, made it clear what Mr. Trump wanted on a conference call later that afternoon, according to a two-year inquiry by the Justice Department’s inspector general into Mr. Trump’s “zero tolerance” family separation policy.
“We need to take away children,” Mr. Sessions told the prosecutors, according to participants’ notes. One added in shorthand: “If care about kids, don’t bring them in. Won’t give amnesty to people with kids.”
Rod J. Rosenstein, then the deputy attorney general, went even further in a second call about a week later, telling the five prosecutors that it did not matter how young the children were. He said that government lawyers should not have refused to prosecute two cases simply because the children were barely more than infants.
“Those two cases should not have been declined,” John Bash, the departing U.S. attorney in western Texas, wrote to his staff immediately after the call. Mr. Bash had declined the cases, but Mr. Rosenstein “instructed that, per the A.G.’s policy, we should NOT be categorically declining immigration prosecutions of adults in family units because of the age of a child.”
The Justice Department’s top officials were “a driving force” behind the policy that spurred the separation of thousands of families, many of them fleeing violence in Central America and seeking asylum in the United States, before Mr. Trump abandoned it amid global outrage, according to a draft report of the results of the investigation by Michael E. Horowitz, the department’s inspector general.
The separation of migrant children from their parents, sometimes for months, was at the heart of the Trump administration’s assault on immigration. But the fierce backlash when the administration struggled to reunite the children turned it into one of the biggest policy debacles of the president’s term.
Though Mr. Sessions sought to distance himself from the policy, allowing Mr. Trump and Homeland Security Department officials to largely be blamed, he and other top law enforcement officials understood that “zero tolerance” meant that migrant families would be separated and wanted that to happen because they believed it would deter future illegal immigration, Mr. Horowitz wrote.
The draft report, citing more than 45 interviews with key officials, emails and other documents, provides the most complete look at the discussions inside the Justice Department as the family separation policy was developed, pushed and ultimately carried out with little concern for children.
This article is based on a review of the 86-page draft report and interviews with three government officials who read it in recent months and described its conclusions and many of the details in it. The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they had not been authorized to discuss it publicly, cautioned that the final report could change.
Before publishing the findings of its investigations, the inspector general’s office typically provides draft copies to Justice Department leaders and others mentioned in the reports to ensure that they are accurate.
Mr. Horowitz had been preparing to release his report since late summer, according to a person familiar with the investigation, though the process allowing for responses from current and former department officials whose conduct is under scrutiny is likely to delay its release until after the presidential election.
Mr. Sessions refused to be interviewed, the report noted. Mr. Rosenstein, who is now a lawyer in private practice, defended himself in his interview with investigators in response to questioning about his role, according to two of the officials. Mr. Rosenstein’s former office submitted a 64-page response to the report.
“If any United States attorney ever charged a defendant they did not personally believe warranted prosecution, they violated their oath of office,” Mr. Rosenstein said in a statement. “I never ordered anyone to prosecute a case.”
The Government did not seriously question the correctness of this finding!
Intentionally violating Constitutional rights (not to mention lying and attempting to cover it up) is clearly a violation of 18 USC 242.
Here’s the text of that section from the DOJ’s own website:
TITLE 18, U.S.C., SECTION 242
Whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States, … shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; and if bodily injury results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include the use, attempted use, or threatened use of a dangerous weapon, explosives, or fire, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.
Sure looks like an”open and shut” case for prosecution.
The irony: Families and their kids have been traumatized for life, perhaps even killed or disabled by the actions of these criminal conspirators; however, the “perps” remain at large.
Hamilton is on the public dole continuing to wreak-havoc on the Constitution, the rule of law, the Immigration Courts, and human decency at the corrupt Barr DOJ; Rosenstein works for a “fat cat” law firm hauling down a six figure salary while he avoids justice and accountability for his misdeeds; “Gonzo” had the absolute audacity to try to reinsert himself onto the public dole by running for the Senate from Alabama (thankfully, unsuccessfully, even though he previously held the seat for years and misused it as a public forum to spread his racist ideas, xenophobic venom, lies, false narratives, and unrelenting cruelty).
Where’s the “justice” in a system that punishes victims while letting “perps” prosper and go free?
A federal judge has ordered that the 2020 Census count continue until Oct. 31, blocking for now the government’s efforts to complete the survey in time to deliver apportionment data to the president by the end of the year.
The ruling late Thursday night by U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh of the Northern District of California follows a tense week in which the government appeared to try to circumvent a preliminary injunction against ending the count early.
After a surprise announcement Monday that the bureau was moving the end date by just five days, from Sept. 30 to Oct. 5, plaintiffs in the case asked Koh to provide clarification of her earlier order and other sanctions.
Rejecting the government’s argument that the request was “an attempt to radically modify the preliminary injunction,” Koh’s new ruling clarified that the end date for collection must revert to Oct. 31, as the bureau had originally planned.
It also ordered that on Friday, the government must send text messages to all Census Bureau employees notifying them of the Oct. 31 end date, and that Director Steven Dillingham must file a declaration by Monday that “unequivocally confirms Defendants’ ongoing compliance with the Injunction Order and details the steps Defendants have taken to prevent future violations of the Injunction Order.”
The suit, brought by the National Urban League and a group of counties, cities and others, said a truncated schedule would irreparably harm communities that might be undercounted.
On Friday, Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which is arguing the case, said, “Once again, the court has stopped the administration in its tracks.”Noting that some states with significant minority populations still face an undercount, she added, “Much work remains to be done to achieve an accurate census count that satisfies constitutional standards.”
The Justice and Commerce departments did not respond to requests for comment.
The government had appealed Koh’s Sep. 24 injunction to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which denied the appeal Tuesday.
Nevertheless, Koh found that after her injunction, the government continued to tell employees to wind down operations by Sept. 30, and the Census Bureau’s website, “which is updated daily,” continued for four days after her injunction to say that data collection would end that day.
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Read the rest of the article at the link.
So, when is Judge Koh going to jail Wilber Ross, his census toadies, Billy the Bigot, and the DOJ lawyers who continue to defend clearly lawless, dishonest, and contemptuous actions in court? Why have corrupt Federal officials and their lawyers become exempt from ethical requirements and, in the case of lawyers, their role as “officers of the court?”
