After Saturday’s white supremacist riots and violence against counter-protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, community members in the city and people nationwide are still reeling. Reported Nazi sympathizer James Alex Fields, Jr., plowed his gray Dodge Challenger through a group of counter-protesters, killing 32-year-old legal assistant Heather Heyer and injuring at least 19 others. Fields has been charged with second-degree murder, three counts of malicious wounding, and one count of hit and run.

Fields’ attack was only one piece of the violence on Saturday. White supremacists, neo-Nazis, and neo-Confederates beat counter-protesters and marched through the streets of Charlottesville with Nazi flags, white supremacist images, and anti-Semitic chants. Following the weekend’s attacks, people are passing around the blame for the white supremacists’ acts of terror in Charlottesville.

In an interview with NPR’s David Green, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe explained that the city of Charlottesville had tried to relocate the rally to a more open park about a mile and half away from Emancipation Park, outside of downtown Charlottesville. However, the ACLU of Virginia joined a lawsuit against Charlottesville after the city refused to allow “Unite The Right” organizer Jason Kessler and his supporters to access Emancipation Park on Saturday for the previously approved demonstration.

“That rally should not have been in the middle of downtown – to disperse all those people from the park where they dispersed all over the city streets,” McAuliffe told NPR. “And it became a powder keg. And we got to look at these permits, and we got to look at where we put these rallies and protesters. I got to protect public safety.”

The ACLU of Virginia’s Executive Director Claire G. Gastanaga fired back at McAuliffe on Monday, condemning the violence that took place in Charlottesville but defending her organization’s involvement in the lawsuit against the city.

“We asked the city to adhere to the U.S. Constitution and ensure people’s safety at the protest,” Gastanaga said. “It failed to do so. In our system, the city makes the rules and the courts enforce them. Our role is to ensure that the system works the same for everyone.”

She said the city had failed to present sufficient evidence to the judge that moving the location of the rally would in fact result in no demonstration in downtown Charlottesville, instead of creating a situation in which the city would have to deal with two demonstrations in two separate locations.

“But let’s be clear: our lawsuit challenging the city to act constitutionally did not cause violence nor did it in any way address the question whether demonstrators could carry sticks or other weapons at the events,” Gastanaga said.

Over the years, the ACLU has taken somewhat of an absolutist stance on First Amendment rights, even defending speech that it hates. The organization was recently criticized by one of its own attorneys after the ACLU decided to defend Milo Yiannopoulos, a writer and speaker who is infamous for espousing hate against people of color, Muslims, immigrants, transgender people, and other marginalized individuals.

The events in Charlottesville and the ACLU’s defense of the constitutional rights of white supremacists, Nazis, and other hate-mongers raises an important question: what happens when the First Amendment–or any constitutional right for that matter–is used to protect hate and oppress other people?

In United States v. Schwimmer (1929), a pacifist applicant for naturalization was denied U.S. citizenship because she expressed that she “would not take up arms personally” in defense of the country. In his dissenting opinion, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes asserted that the Constitution protects thoughts that we may not agree with.

“Some of her answers might excite popular prejudice, but if there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought–not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate,” Holmes wrote.

That idea has been applied in other cases over the years and has evolved to include hate speech as part of protected speech. The Supreme Court upheld that principle in June when it reaffirmed that hate speech is protected under the First Amendment. Matal v. Tam dealt with the right of Asian American musician Simon Tam and his band “The Slants” to trademark their band name. The band’s trademark application was originally denied because of the band’s inclusion of a racial slur used to refer to Asians in their name.

Justice Samuel Alito wrote that the government’s restriction of “speech expressing ideas that offend … strikes at the heart of the First Amendment. Speech that demeans on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, age, disability, or any other similar ground is hateful; but the proudest boast of our free speech jurisprudence is that we protect the freedom to express ‘the thought that we hate.'”

Of course, there are exceptions to that rule as well. The “fighting words” doctrine, which arose out of the Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire (1942) decision, has been used to curtail speech used to incite violence. According to Chaplinsky, fighting words are “words plainly likely to cause a breach of the peace by the addressee, words whose speaking constitutes a breach of the peace by the speaker — including ‘classical fighting words,’ words in current use less ‘classical’ but equally likely to cause violence, and other disorderly words, including profanity, obscenity and threats.”

So where does the legality of the language used in Charlottesville fall on the protected/unprotected speech spectrum? Well, it can be a bit tricky. During the Charlottesville riots, white supremacists and neo-Nazis chanted anti-Semitic phrases like “Blood and soil,” which is derived from language that was used in Nazi Germany. However, if those chants were not spoken directly to a specific person, precedent may deem them to be hate speech but not fighting words. In other instances, rioters targeted specific individuals with racial and homophobic language. In those cases where particular individuals were singled out, a court might find that the aggressor was using fighting words.

Under current legal precedents, restrictions on free speech are not the clearest. What is clear is that hate groups are able to use discriminatory language that instills fear in marginalized communities without necessarily experiencing repercussions for that speech.

But it is also important, and perhaps more effective, to call out hate speech within our own communities. Eliminating hate speech is an important step in combating racism and other forms of hate, but people must also be willing to confront the beliefs and behavior that language is rooted in. Organizations like the subscription-based service Safety Pin Box provide substantive ways that allies can actively show their support for marginalized people, beyond mere social media posts “in solidarity.” People can also donate to anti-racism organizations and call their local, state, and national representatives in regard to specific issues. The events in Charlottesville are an overt demonstration of white supremacy, but they are only symptomatic of more systematic white supremacist structures. In order to combat white supremacy and other forms of hate, people must first address oppressive language and behavior in their own lives among family, friends, co-workers, and other community members.

Marcus Dieterle

Marcus is an editorial intern at Law Street. He is a rising senior at Towson University where he is double majoring in mass communication (with a concentration in journalism and new media) and political science. When he isn’t in the newsroom, you can probably find him reading on the train, practicing his Portuguese, or eating too much pasta. Contact Marcus at Staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post What Happens When the First Amendment Is Used to Protect Hate? appeared first on Law Street.

On Wednesday, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit on behalf of controversial alt-right writer Milo Yiannopoulos, a decision that surprised and upset many. The organization claims that the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) violated Yiannopoulos’ right to free speech by removing ads for his new book from the transit system. The ads were not removed until after people had complained about them.

Yiannopoulos, the outspoken Breitbart editor, has made controversial comments about many groups, including feminists, women, trans people, and gay people. Ironically, he’s slammed the ACLU in the past.

The ACLU routinely defends the First Amendment rights of people not sharing its political views, which lean to the left. The organization has so far tended to be critical of the Trump Administration. But it also makes a point of defending the constitutional rights of everyone, regardless of ideology. “When we give government the power to regulate speakers based on their identity or their perceived level of offense, it reduces speech for all of us,” Lee Rowland, a staff attorney at the ACLU, pointed out.

But the decision to defend Milo–a man who has said that transgender people are mentally ill and that feminism is a cancer–was too much even for some people working at the ACLU. On Wednesday, attorney Chase Strangio posted a statement criticizing the decision on Twitter.

“Milo preys on the deep-seated hatred for Black people, other people of color, trans people, immigrants, Muslim people and women that is sadly a central tenet of our social fabric and political system,” Strangio wrote. “He is vile. And I am sorry for any platform and validation that he receives.”

Here is my personal statement on today’s ACLU lawsuit defending that horrible person. I speak only for myself. pic.twitter.com/4KzsoqnmUn

— Chase Strangio (@chasestrangio) August 9, 2017

A lot of people seemed to agree with Strangio and many longtime supporters declared that they do not see the point in working with someone who is so hateful against so many.

You have literally no reason to include him in this case except to grab headlines and milk his fans for donation dollars.

— Lulu Diavolo (@SatansJacuzzi) August 9, 2017

As a long-time ACLU supporter, I could not possibly disagree more. What a wrong-headed position. https://t.co/j96WlB8gtN

— Charles Johnson (@Green_Footballs) August 10, 2017

But others saw the value in always standing up for First Amendment rights.

I cannot STAND this guy. But he has the right to speak, just like we all do.

— Deletrix (@DeletrixV) August 10, 2017

Arthur Spitzer, who is acting as lead counsel on the case, said that it is important to keep defending the constitutional rights of even those who are seen as the most despicable. “We always get some when we defend unpopular people. When we recently supported the Redskins’ right to keep their registered trademarks, we got similar reactions, internally and externally,” he said.

After Strangio’s statement went public, some questioned how it’s okay for him to express views that run counter to his employer’s. Spitzer said the ACLU has 1,000 employees and that it would be impossible for everyone to agree on every case they take. He said all employees and board members can always use their right to free speech to state their opinions, as long as they are clear that it’s their personal opinion and not that of the ACLU, which Strangio did.

Emma Von Zeipel

Emma Von Zeipel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. She is originally from one of the islands of Stockholm, Sweden. After working for Democratic Voice of Burma in Thailand, she ended up in New York City. She has a BA in journalism from Stockholm University and is passionate about human rights, good books, horses, and European chocolate. Contact Emma at EVonZeipel@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Three victims of the CIA’s torture program have filed a lawsuit against the program’s two creators. On Monday, a Washington judge ruled that the case can go to trial.

The plaintiffs in this suit are Suleiman Abdullah Salim of Tanzania; Mohamed Ahmed Ben Soud of Libya; and the estate of Gul Rhaman of Afghanistan. All three were detainees in a CIA prison in 2003. The first two are now free and living in their home countries. The third died in prison.

The defendants are James Mitchell and John “Bruce” Jessen, former U.S. military psychologists who designed the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation techniques” in November 2001. Reportedly, the government paid them between $75 and $81 million for their plans.

This is the first CIA torture lawsuit to survive past the pretrial discovery phase. Prior to this, the Bush and Obama Administrations intervened, arguing that the suits put state secrets at risk.

However, a Senate intelligence committee report published in 2014 provided many details that the administrations had tried to keep secret. It confirmed that the CIA tortured 39 people, including the plaintiffs, at a secret prison codenamed “Cobalt.”

According to the report, Salim and Ben Soud’s torture included beatings, sleep deprivation, shackling in stress positions, and waterboarding. In addition, Rhaman died of hypothermia after his interrogators doused him with water and left him in a freezing room overnight.

In a pretrial hearing on July 28, the defense attorneys argued that providing a memo to the CIA does not count as aiding and abetting torture. It was the U.S. government, not Mitchell and Jessen, who conducted the program.

At one point, the defense team compared their clients to the manufacturers who developed the gas used in Nazi execution chambers. The British military tribunal, the lawyers pointed out, did not try those manufacturers for what the Nazis did.

Judge Justin Quackenbush rejected those arguments, ruling that the evidence indicated that Mitchell and Jessen themselves supported using torture on the CIA prisoners. Not only that, he found it “undisputed” that the psychologists used the techniques themselves on the CIA’s first detainee, Abu Zubaydah. Jessen was “physically involved” in Rhaman’s torture as well.

“Defendants have not established they merely acted at the direction of the government, within the scope of their authority, and that such authority was legally and validly conferred,” he decided.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) first filed the suit on behalf of the three plaintiffs in 2015.

“The court’s ruling means that for the first time, individuals responsible for the brutal and unlawful CIA torture program will face meaningful legal accountability for what they did,” ACLU attorney Dror Ladin told the Guardian. “Our clients have waited a long time for justice.”

The trial will begin on September 5.

Delaney Cruickshank

Delaney Cruickshank is a Staff Writer at Law Street Media and a Maryland native. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in History with minors in Creative Writing and British Studies from the College of Charleston. Contact Delaney at DCruickshank@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Prisoners in White County, Tennessee can now receive a credit for 30 days off their sentences if they voluntarily undergo a birth control procedure.

General Sessions Judge Sam Benningfield signed the standing order instituting the program on May 15. Since then, at least 32 women and 38 men have volunteered for the procedure. Female prisoners receive a Nexplanon arm implant, which works for up to three years. Male prisoners receive a vasectomy. The Tennessee Department of Health conducts both procedures free of charge for the inmates.

Judge Benningfield decided to sign the order after speaking with the Department of Health. He says his hope is that the program will end the vicious cycle of drug-addicted ex-cons giving birth to children they cannot support and who might one day become drug users and criminals themselves. “I hope to encourage them to take personal responsibility and give them a chance, when they do get out, not to be burdened with children,” he said in an interview with Nashville’s News Channel 5. “I understand it won’t be entirely successful, but if you reach two or three people, maybe that’s two or three kids not being born under the influence of drugs. I see it as a win-win.”

Not everyone agrees. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) released a statement on Wednesday calling the program “unconstitutional:”

Offering a so-called ‘choice’ between jail time and coerced contraception or sterilization is unconstitutional. Such a choice violates the fundamental constitutional right to reproductive autonomy and bodily integrity by interfering with the intimate decision of whether and when to have a child, imposing an intrusive medical procedure on individuals who are not in a position to reject it. Judges play an important role in our community – overseeing individuals’ childbearing capacity should not be part of that role.

There is also dissent closer to home. Tennessee’s District Attorney Bryant Dunaway has instructed his staff not to make arrangements regarding the program. “Those decisions are personal in nature and I think that’s just something the court system should not encourage or mandate,” he told local news station WTKR.

So far, 32 female volunteers have received their implants. The male volunteers are still waiting for their procedures to begin.

Delaney Cruickshank

Delaney Cruickshank is a Staff Writer at Law Street Media and a Maryland native. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in History with minors in Creative Writing and British Studies from the College of Charleston. Contact Delaney at DCruickshank@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Tennessee Inmates Trading Time in Prison for Birth Control and Vasectomies appeared first on Law Street.

As incidents of police-related violence have become more widely publicized over the past several years, the public’s interest in police accountability has increased alongside it. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania recognized this trend on Tuesday and ruled that the public should have access to police dashcam video unless the footage is proven to be related to an ongoing investigation.

A 5-2 majority in the state’s highest court pointed out that there is no blanket rule against these recordings being released. Instead, release decisions must be made on a case-by-case basis where the videos are each analyzed to determine their relationship with any ongoing investigation. However, police have the burden to show why a video is exempt from release.

The case revolved around Michelle Grove, a Pennsylvania woman who requested a copy of a police report as well as any video or audio recordings pertaining to a 2014 car accident she was involved in. She believed at the time that she would receive these documents because of the state’s Right-to-Know Law, which states that commonwealth agencies must provide copies of all public records upon request. Instead, she was denied.

Prior to this ruling, Pennsylvania police officers were denying public access requests that asked for dashcam footage, arguing that anything captured on those cameras were criminal investigative records, which made them exempt under the Right-to-Know Law and the Criminal History Information and Records Act. But the court found in favor of Grove because the video in question only showed state troopers investigating the scene and talking to the drivers and witnesses.

“[Pennsylvania State Police] simply does not explain how the video portion of the [recordings] captured any criminal investigation,” Justice Kevin Dougherty wrote in his majority opinion.

The court did give some leeway to the state police. While the video was released to the public, the court agreed that the audio from the police interviews with the drivers and witnesses did contain investigative information. As a result, the court ruled that any audio of interviews had to be edited out.

Grove’s lawyer, Helen Stolinas, told the AP that the decision is “a decisive victory for the citizens of Pennsylvania and the press to remain aware of the activities of state and local officials and be able to scrutinize how public servants are performing their duties.”

But the ruling comes at the same time that state lawmakers are planning to vote on a bill that creates a blanket exemption from the Right-to-Know Law for police video and audio recordings. Senate Bill 560 passed the state House on Tuesday and now only needs to have its changes approved by the Senate before it is passed to Governor Tom Wolf who believes it is “a step in the right direction,” according to a spokesman. The bill would require anyone who was denied access to police recordings to petition the court for a hearing to appeal to the police directly. The move would cost $125 to initiate and a judge would then have to determine if the requested video’s release outweighed the nondisclosure interest of an individual, law enforcement, or the Commonwealth.

This bill has been met with pushback from the American Civil Liberties Union. Reggie Shuford, director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania, said the legislation would hide police camera footage from the public, effectively making it just a tool for surveillance.

“If the public cannot obtain video produced by police cameras, they shouldn’t be used at all,” Shuford said in a press release. “While body cameras may be valuable to officers in carrying out their daily duties, the idea of using these cameras came to prominence because people were demanding that police operate with transparency, fairness, and accountability.”

Lawmakers expect SB 560 to be put to vote sometime next week, according to the AP.

Pennsylvania’s relationship with releasing documents from public servants has been complicated, to say the least. Prior to its rewrite in 2009, the state’s Right-to-Know Law had ranked among the worst public information law in the country when it came to giving people access to government records and information because it presumed government records were not public, unless someone who wanted the record could establish otherwise.

Gabe Fernandez

Gabe is an editorial intern at Law Street. He is a Peruvian-American Senior at the University of Maryland pursuing a double degree in Multiplatform Journalism and Marketing. In his free time, he can be found photographing concerts, running around the city, and supporting Manchester United. Contact Gabe at Staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Pennsylvania’s Confusing Struggle Over Police Dashcam Footage appeared first on Law Street.

JPMorgan Chase, one of the largest banks in the world, has been accused of discriminating against fathers when it comes to parental leave. The ACLU has filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) on behalf of a worker named Derek Rotondo. Rotondo claims that the bank discriminates on the basis of sex when it comes to paid parental leave, by guaranteeing women 16 weeks, but men only two.

Rotondo, a father of two, has worked for JPMorgan Chase for seven years. The current parental leave policy at the financial institution guarantees 16 weeks for the “primary” caregiver and two weeks for the “secondary” caregiver. When Rotondo’s youngest child was born, he decided to apply for parental leave granted to a “primary” caregiver, because he intended on playing that role with his son. But because he is the child’s father and not a mother, he was told that the company makes the presumption that the “primary” caretake is the mother, and he has to prove that he will be acting as a primary caretaker.

Because his wife, who is a teacher, would also be home, he didn’t meet the definition and wasn’t given the 16 weeks of leave. Rontondo claims that it was only men who would be forced to prove that they’re the primary caretaker, and in doing so, the bank is violating federal civil rights law. Essentially, he claims that if the roles were reversed, he would have received the leave, no questions asked. As Rontondo wrote in a piece posted on the ACLU website:

J.P. Morgan’s parental leave policy is outdated and discriminates against fathers who want a meaningful amount of time off to be at home with their kids–just like mothers who work for the company. The policy also discriminates against both moms and dads by enforcing two related stereotypes: that raising children is women’s work and that only men should return to work immediately after their children are born. This doesn’t even begin to address how same-sex and adoptive parents fit into the equation. What would a two-dad family do under J.P. Morgan’s policy, for example?

If the EEOC finds that there’s merit to Rontondo’s complaint, it could open the door for a federal lawsuit filed against the banking giant. In a nation that seriously lags behind when it comes to parental leave as a whole, this could be a good thing.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post JPMorgan Chase Accused of Discriminating Against Dads appeared first on Law Street.

According to figures released by Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Wednesday, arrests of undocumented immigrants rose by 38 percent in the first three months of the Trump Administration, compared to the same time period last year.

A vast majority of those arrested, 41,318 from January 22 to April 29, have criminal records. But the number of detained non-criminal undocumented immigrants also rose sharply, reflecting the directive President Donald Trump issued in January that deemed any immigrant in the U.S. without documentation a priority for arrest and deportation.

“These statistics reflect President Trump’s commitment to enforce our immigration laws fairly and across the board,” Thomas Homan, the acting director of ICE, said in a statement. “If you look at the numbers, then men and women of ICE are still prioritizing these arrests in a way that makes sense,” he added in a phone call with reporters after the figures were released.

Acting on his promise to strictly enforce immigration laws, Trump issued an executive order on January 25 “to employ all lawful means to enforce the immigration laws of the United States.” The order effectively reversed an Obama Administration policy that directed ICE agents to prioritize for deportation undocumented immigrants convicted of violent crimes. Under Trump, all immigrants in the country illegally were subject to deportation.

Trump’s crack-down on illegal immigration, a stance that helped propel him to the White House, has not been implemented with impunity, however. A recently-passed spending bill does not include funding for Trump’s long-proposed border wall on the Mexican border. And federal judges throughout the country have stymied his efforts to ban or severely limit travel from a handful of mostly Muslim countries.

Still, Trump is on-track to match or surpass the arrests of undocumented immigrants at the Obama Administration’s peak in 2013, when over 662,000 undocumented immigrants were arrested. After a pointed effort to focus only on high-level criminals, that number dropped in subsequent years.

And although the number of migrants crossing the southern border has precipitously dipped–which accounts for the 12 percent decrease in total deportations this year so far–the rise in arrests of non-criminal undocumented immigrants suggests a greater willingness to enforce the existing rules.

According to the ICE figures, over 10,800 undocumented immigrants without criminal records have been arrested so far. More than 2,700 have been convicted of violent crimes, however, including assault, rape, kidnapping, or murder.

But of those that made up the 38 percent jump in arrests during the first three months of the Trump Administration, over half had been immigrants without criminal records. Their only crime: being in the country without documentation.

Omar Jadwat, the director of the Immigrants’ Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, sees the increase in arrests as a way to beef up numbers without implementing a broader strategy. “What it tells me is that the department is willing to put enforcement numbers ahead of any kind of strategy that would actually try to keep us all safer going forward,” he said.

Alec Siegel

Alec Siegel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. When he’s not working at Law Street he’s either cooking a mediocre tofu dish or enjoying a run in the woods. His passions include: gooey chocolate chips, black coffee, mountains, the Animal Kingdom in general, and John Lennon. Baklava is his achilles heel. Contact Alec at ASiegel@LawStreetMedia.com.

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In honor of Mother’s Day this Sunday, the Black Lives Matter movement is giving the gift of freedom to several black women in dozens of jails across the country. At least 30 women will be bailed out just in time to spend the holiday with their children, for what they’re calling National Mama’s Bail Out Day.

This year, give the gift of freedom for Mother’s Day #EndMoneyBail #FreeBlackMamas https://t.co/7YhBtmHkAi

— NationalBailOut (@NationalBailOut) April 27, 2017

According to The Nation, many of these women are in jail for low-level offenses such as loitering or small-scale drug possession. These women haven’t been convicted, but remain jailed because they can’t afford bail.

A coalition of 25 black-led organizations, including organizers with Southerners on New Ground (SONG), the Movement for Black Lives, and ColorOfChange, raised more than $250,000 toward the release of women in Atlanta, Houston, Los Angeles, and several other cities.

Sixty-two percent of people in jail can’t afford to post bail. This coordinated bail-out is meant to underscore not only that issue, but other major problems with the criminal justice system–especially those affecting poor black women. Women in local jails make up the fastest growing demographic in the U.S. incarceration system, and black women make up 44 percent of women in jails.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service, about 70 percent of female offenders are mothers. The majority of these women are single mothers with at least two young children; therefore, an extended jail stay is often significantly more devastating for their home life than, let’s say, the incarceration of a male without children.

Once arrested, defendants face a litany of fees, which could add up to thousands of dollars–whether they can afford them or not–aside from just bail. These include public defender application fees; reimbursement fees for representation; and supervision, programming, and electronic monitoring fees for those released on pretrial supervision.

“The National Black Mama’s Bail Out Day Action is part of the growing movement to end mass criminalization and modern bondage,” the SONG website states.

It is rooted in the history of Black liberation, inspired by the enslaved Africans and Black people who used their collective resources to purchase each other’s freedom. Through this action, we will support birth mothers, trans mothers, and other women who [are] mothers and are entangled in the criminal legal system.

Arissa Hall, a national Mama’s Bail Out Day organizer and project manager at the Brooklyn Community Bail Fund told The Nation that “it’s a myth that folks don’t come back to court” when released on their own recognizance.

According to her, upwards of 95 percent of people helped by bail funds return to court for their scheduled appearances. “People will come back to court regardless of whether or not bail is set.”

The bailouts are scheduled to happen on Thursday and Friday, with Mother’s Day celebrations scheduled for Sunday. The coalition is continuing to raise money for more bailouts, and is even considering a potential Father’s Day effort.

Alexis Evans

Alexis Evans is an Assistant Editor at Law Street and a Buckeye State native. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism and a minor in Business from Ohio University. Contact Alexis at aevans@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Black Lives Matter Activists to Bail Out at Least 30 Women for Mother’s Day appeared first on Law Street.

Welcome to RantCrush Top 5, where we take you through today’s top five controversial stories in the world of law and policy. Who’s ranting and raving right now? Check it out below:

America’s First Female Muslim Judge Found Dead in the Hudson River

Yesterday, police found the body of Judge Sheila Abdus-Salaam, the first female Muslim judge in U.S. history, floating in the Hudson River. Abdus-Salaam was 65 years old and had been reported missing earlier that day. Authorities said there were no signs of foul play so far, but the investigation is ongoing. Abdus-Salaam made history as the first black woman on the New York Court of Appeals–she was nominated in 2013 as part of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s effort to diversify the court. Many described her as a professional and intelligent but above all a warm and empathetic judge who often sided with vulnerable parties. Many high-profile New Yorkers expressed their condolences on social media.

Justice Sheila Abdus-Salaam was a trailblazing jurist and a force for good.

On behalf of all New Yorkers, I extend my deepest sympathies. https://t.co/hnic07Shp1

— Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) April 12, 2017

Emma Von Zeipel

Emma Von Zeipel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. She is originally from one of the islands of Stockholm, Sweden. After working for Democratic Voice of Burma in Thailand, she ended up in New York City. She has a BA in journalism from Stockholm University and is passionate about human rights, good books, horses, and European chocolate. Contact Emma at EVonZeipel@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post RantCrush Top 5: April 13, 2017 appeared first on Law Street.

Soon after President Donald Trump was sworn in, he signed a directive that said for each new regulation, two Obama-era regulations would be revoked; a reverse two-for-one. In his first month and a half as president, Trump and his cabinet have worked at an unprecedented clip to reverse the Obama Administration’s rules. Trump has frozen, suspended, or terminated roughly 90 regulations put in place under Obama, many as a response to opposition from industry leaders and advocates. Here are five rules that Trump has worked to scrap. 

Lead on Federal Lands

As President Barack Obama was leaving office, he issued an order to ban hunters from using lead bullets and anglers from using lead tackle when hunting and fishing on federal lands. The order was designed to protect wildlife from lead poisoning. Days after Trump’s swearing in, the National Rifle Association (NRA) issued a press release, which said the lead ammunition ban imposed a “considerable financial hardship” on hunters and anglers “by forcing them to use more expensive alternatives.” On March 2, Ryan Zinke, the freshly confirmed Secretary of the Interior, revoked Obama’s order.

Consumer Protection

In January, major communications companies–Verizon, Comcast, AT&T, and others–signed a petition against an Obama-era rule that required “reasonable measures” to protect consumers’ personal information–Social Security numbers, browsing history, and more– from being stolen by hackers or other actors. The rule would have a “potentially deleterious impact on consumers, competition, and innovation,” the companies wrote. Last week, the Federal Communications Commission issued a stay on the rule.

Clean Water Rule

In the waning days of Obama’s tenure, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers broadened the scope of water sources in the U.S. that are to be protected and regulated. The California Farm Bureau Federation responded that the rule would prove “economically harmful for California agriculture.” The group wrote: “In order to comply with the regulation, farmers and ranchers will become increasingly reliant on attorneys and consultants, making farming the land more difficult and costly.” Last week, Trump issued an executive order to review the law, and to begin the process of rolling it back.

Gun Control

Under an Obama-era regulation, people on disability insurance and Supplementary Security Income would be barred from purchasing guns. The Social Security Administration would be forced to give the personal information of people who qualified as “mentally disabled” to the Department of Justice. This rule was equally opposed by two wildly different groups: the NRA and the American Civil Liberties Union. Both groups said that it broadly paints all people with mental disorders as potentially violent, and therefore unfit to own a gun.

In December, soon after Obama enacted the rule, the NRA issued a statement that said the rule “would stigmatize the entire category of beneficiaries subject to reporting.” Last week, Congress repealed the rule, and Trump signed the repeal.

Emissions Standards

On January 12, the Obama Administration issued an order dictating emissions standards and miles per gallon requirements for automobiles by 2025. Two dozen of the world’s largest automakers–from Toyota to Aston Martin–sent a letter to Scott Pruitt, the new EPA administrator. The letter said the rule was rushed, and needs a more thorough evaluation to determine if “the future standards are feasible” and “cost-effective.” While the rule has yet to be revoked, the Trump Administration has signaled it would likely reverse the rule as early as this week.

Alec Siegel

Alec Siegel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. When he’s not working at Law Street he’s either cooking a mediocre tofu dish or enjoying a run in the woods. His passions include: gooey chocolate chips, black coffee, mountains, the Animal Kingdom in general, and John Lennon. Baklava is his achilles heel. Contact Alec at ASiegel@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Here Are Five Obama-era Regulations Trump Has Worked to Scrap appeared first on Law Street.

There was a lot going on last night during the Super Bowl. But caught up in the hysteria–somewhere between people pointing out the game’s eery similarities to this past year’s election, the Tom Brady roasting, the Tom Brady adoration, the Lady Gaga jumping gifs, and the commercials that every American loves to hate or hates to love–a ton of people donated a ton of money to various organizations and charities around the country.

Using the hashtag #AGoodGame, people took to Twitter to pledge to donate a certain amount of money every time their team scored a touchdown or a field goal.

Watching #SuperBowl w/ democracy, civil rights, & environment in mind. #AGoodGame for @ACLU @PPact @splcenter @AWIOnline @NatlParkService pic.twitter.com/SZBYScSnah

— Amber Baillon (@Vambaillon) February 5, 2017

$100 to ACLU, $50 to Planned Parenthood and $50 to Standing Rock Sioux. #AGoodGame #SuperBowl @joshgondelman Thanks for the inspiration!

— Kristen Callisto (@HaleiwaHoney) February 6, 2017

5 Brady sacks = $100 to @splcenter, & $100 to @AlbanySAFEProj to help support survivors of sexual assault and DV #AGoodGame @joshgondelman https://t.co/9Ud0OdEtAn

— Bear Brian (@Brian___H) February 6, 2017

I have paid off my #AGoodGame promise to @SavetheChildren. My math looks like this: pic.twitter.com/komMvvdQ3h

— Owen King (@OwenKingwriter) February 6, 2017

#AGoodGame Donating to Boston area women’s shelter @RosiesPlace pic.twitter.com/09WfXr8T94

— Estelle Nickleby (@estenickleby) February 6, 2017

#AGoodGame was started by comedian Josh Gondelman, a writer for “Last Week Tonight” and a lifelong Patriots fan, who, on Thursday, tweeted his intention to support his team while rejecting the politics of some of the organization’s members.

I’ve been a Patriots fan for my whole life but I am way off on the political spectrum from much of the organization. https://t.co/3p3oVKzwkW

— Josh Gondelman (@joshgondelman) February 3, 2017

I’d like to be able to cheer for the team I grew up loving without cheerleading the Trump administration. Is this anyone else?

— Josh Gondelman (@joshgondelman) February 3, 2017

My friend @emma_sandoe and I thought that maybe people who feel ambivalent could donate to a good cause for every Pats FG or TD.

— Josh Gondelman (@joshgondelman) February 3, 2017

It seems like a practical way to do a little good without staging a (small and ineffective) boycott of the Super Bowl.

— Josh Gondelman (@joshgondelman) February 3, 2017

If you have political Patriots fan ambivalence, maybe pledge a little money to a good cause when they score using the hashtag: #AGoodGame

— Josh Gondelman (@joshgondelman) February 3, 2017

Because of Tom Brady’s garbage politics, I’m donating $100 for every Patriots TD and $50 for every FG to the @NAACP_LDF. #AGoodGame

— Josh Gondelman (@joshgondelman) February 3, 2017

The politics of some of the members of the Patriots organization has been a running sub-plot in the NFL this season. In September, a “Make America Great Again” hat was seen in the Patriots’ superstar quarterback Tom Brady’s locker. Brady has also made comments that have quietly alluded to his support of  President Donald Trump.

In November, Patriots coach Bill Belichick was criticized for sending a letter to Trump congratulating him on a “tremendous campaign” and touting him “the ultimate competitor and fighter.”  Additionally, Patriots owner Robert Kraft has described Trump as a “a very close friend” and was seen at Trump Tower a week after the election ended.

In an interview with Esquire, Gondelman said he would have felt “weird” not acknowledging the relationship these members of the Patriots have with Trump. “I have this large social media reach, and fortunately a little money I could donate to a good cause,” Gondelman said, “So it just felt like to do that would be putting my money where my mouth is.”

While donation totals from #AGoodGame have not been collected yet, last night’s surge of generosity follows a trend that has sprung up in response to some of Trump’s policies. At the end of the weekend Trump’s polarizing travel ban took effect, CNN’s Brian Stelter reported that the ACLU had received 356,306 donations totaling over $24.1 million–five times more than the organization usually receives in a whole year. Planned Parenthood also has seen a rise in donations. According to The Atlantic, Planned Parenthood received 80,000 donations in the three days after the election.

Austin Elias-De Jesus

Austin is an editorial intern at Law Street Media. He is a junior at The George Washington University majoring in Political Communication. You can usually find him reading somewhere. If you can’t find him reading, he’s probably taking a walk. Contact Austin at Staff@Lawstreetmedia.com.

The post Anti-Trump Super Bowl Donation Campaign Raises Money for Various Organizations appeared first on Law Street.

Leaders of tech giants are finding ways to oppose President Donald Trump’s ban on immigrants from Muslim-majority countries, which could hurt their employees and potential new hires.

Apple CEO Tim Cook said he would consider taking legal action against the order, while the heads of other companies have pledged millions of dollars to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

According to the Wall Street Journal, the ban affects hundreds of Apple employees. Cook told the Journal:

More than any country in the world, this country is strong because of our immigrant background and our capacity and ability as people to welcome people from all kinds of  backgrounds. That’s what makes us special. We ought to pause and really think deeply through that.

On January 27, Trump signed the executive order blocking citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Syria from entering the United States for at least 90 days (though the ban could be expanded), citing concerns over foreign terrorism. The measure also prevents refugees from being admitted into the country for four months.

While Cook has not specified exactly what type of action Apple would take, Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos has already taken to court to condemn the ban. The company submitted a sworn statement supporting the Washington state attorney general, who filed a lawsuit against Trump’s order. Amazon employs nearly 50 people born in one of the seven countries, and is currently offering jobs to non-U.S. citizens, some of whom were born in Iran.

Meanwhile, Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey and Chairman Omid Kordestani plan to donate $1.59 million to the ACLU, respectively matching $530,000 that Twitter employees raised for the organization.

The Executive Order's humanitarian and economic impact is real and upsetting. We benefit from what refugees and immigrants bring to the U.S. https://t.co/HdwVGzIECt

— jack (@jack) January 28, 2017

The ACLU sued Trump on January 28 on behalf of two men from Iraq – one of whom is a former engineer and interpreter for the U.S. government – who were detained at JFK International Airport in New York.

The taxi service app Lyft announced support for the ACLU as well, promising to donate $1 million over the next four years. Lyft’s primary competitor, Uber, faced backlash when it continued to pick up passengers from JFK during protests – which some saw as a move to profit from the situation. Uber responded to the complaints by calling the ban “unjust” and setting up a $3 million legal defense fund for its drivers impacted by the ban.

3/ We are donating $1,000,000 over the next four years to the ACLU to defend our constitution. https://t.co/0umGOlkhSx

— logangreen (@logangreen) January 29, 2017

Google cofounder Sergey Brin at SFO protest: "I'm here because I'm a refugee." (Photo from Matt Kang/Forbes) pic.twitter.com/GwhsSwDPLT

— Ryan Mac (@RMac18) January 29, 2017

The blanket entry ban on citizens from certain primarily Muslim countries is not the best way to address the country’s challenges

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 29, 2017

Executives and founders of companies like Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Tesla have also released statements criticizing the order.

Victoria Sheridan

Victoria is an editorial intern at Law Street. She is a senior journalism major and French minor at George Washington University. She’s also an editor at GW’s student newspaper, The Hatchet. In her free time, she is either traveling or planning her next trip abroad. Contact Victoria at VSheridan@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Technology Companies Rally Against Immigration Ban appeared first on Law Street.

When Donald Trump signed an executive order that banned travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries, it came as a shock to most people. All of a sudden, families were stranded abroad, students couldn’t return to school, and refugees from war zones were denied entry. But immigration lawyers had suspected this was coming, based on rumors from the White House, and had already begun to prepare. Last Wednesday, a group of lawyers from the Urban Justice Center called for additional attorneys who could volunteer at airports where refugees were scheduled to arrive, in case an order like the one that came on Friday was announced. When that exact thing happened, lawyers willing to volunteer headed to airports across the country.

In New York, Andre Segura, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) arrived at JFK International Airport and said that one section of the airport was completely flooded by lawyers. “There were attorneys from numerous major law firms, nonprofits, all working together,” he said. “I’ve never seen that immediate coming together of teams to start filing actions to try to protect people.” Thousands of Americans protested outside airports, as lawyers were inside trying to talk to family members of detained travelers and offer their legal services pro bono. Many of these lawyers didn’t sleep all night and didn’t eat. Pictures on social media showed them sitting on floors, with laptops and phones connected to the airport’s power outlets.

Please RETWEET this tweet

Lawyers volunteering their time & knowledge to help free those wrongfully detained at #JFK #MuslimBan pic.twitter.com/Zat5mVToci

— #HeWillNotDivideUs (@HWNDUS) January 29, 2017

On Saturday night, Federal Judge Ann Donnelly announced that people with valid visas could not be sent back to where they came from, as there “is imminent danger” that there will be “substantial and irreparable injury” if they are sent back. Big crowds of people had gathered outside the courthouse and cheered the decision, but the lawyers’ work had just started. The judge’s ruling only specifically said not to send travelers back, but did not say that the detained were free to enter the U.S.

On Sunday, Customs and Border Protection Agents defied the court order, according to several congressmen and lawyers. “Four members of Congress asked CBP officials to enforce a federal court order and were turned away,” wrote Representative Don Beyer on Twitter. In New York, an Iranian Fulbright scholar was put on a plane to be sent back to Iran several hours after the airports had received orders to stop sending people away. She was forced onto an airplane, where she asked the crew to let her out but was ignored. The plane started preparing for takeoff before attorneys finally managed to persuade officials to let the woman out. Becca Heller, director of the International Refugee Assistance Project, said on Sunday that CBP agents handcuffed people, forced them onto departing airplanes, and tried to make detainees surrender their green cards.

As New Yorkers we have no tolerance for intolerance and that’s what we’re going to stand up and say. pic.twitter.com/1b85T3bD6h

— Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) January 29, 2017

One of the most difficult tasks for the lawyers was to determine how many people were in custody, as customs officials wouldn’t provide an answer, despite pressure from congressmen and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s office. This meant that the lawyers needed to improvise most of their work, handwriting signs stating “immigration lawyer” in the hope that family members of detained people would approach them for help. Many lawyers were also shocked by what they were witnessing. “I’ve never seen anything like this in my practice. Maybe if we look back to Chinese exclusion laws in the 1800s,” said one of the volunteer lawyers, Jonathan Mulligan.

I repeat: A FIVE YEAR OLD BOY was detained and kept from his mother at a US airport. In our name. And Team Trump wonders why the outcry?

— Peter Daou (@peterdaou) January 29, 2017

Some volunteer lawyers were physically at the airports, but other lawyers worked on litigation from their offices. “I was sitting at my desk working on a template habeas petition that could be used by lawyers at airports all around the country,” said Cecillia Wang, deputy legal director of the ACLU. Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU’s Immigrant Rights Project, said getting together the paperwork that led to the judge’s stay was not an easy task; they didn’t have anything prepared in advance but had to rush to get something together when Trump’s order came.

And even after the judge’s order, confusion ruled at airports. On Monday it was still unclear how many people remained detained. Although the Department of Homeland Security claimed that everyone had been released, attorneys say that claim is impossible to verify, as the department still hasn’t released a list of names. Judge Donnelly also ordered government attorneys to hand the ACLU a complete list of names of those who were detained, but they have yet to comply. In Washington D.C., some lawyers who were told there were no detainees left at the airport suspect that they have secretly been taken to detention centers, despite the court order.

We are being told there aren’t any there. We also believe they are being taken to detention facilities. Updates when we get them. https://t.co/zuCHaLD9yE

— Mirriam Seddiq (@mirriam71) January 30, 2017

But a tweet by the volunteer group at JFK suggests that only one person was still in custody late Sunday night. Though those numbers are not officially confirmed, it seems hopeful, largely thanks to the hard work of these lawyers.

Lawyers at #NoBanJFK still going strong. #NoBanUSA#NotOnOurWatchpic.twitter.com/AfMh3LU112

— NoBanJFK (@nobanjfk) January 30, 2017

Emma Von Zeipel

Emma Von Zeipel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. She is originally from one of the islands of Stockholm, Sweden. After working for Democratic Voice of Burma in Thailand, she ended up in New York City. She has a BA in journalism from Stockholm University and is passionate about human rights, good books, horses, and European chocolate. Contact Emma at EVonZeipel@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Lawyers Rush to Help Travelers as Confusion Continues appeared first on Law Street.

A 29-year-old woman is suing a Tennessee sheriff for $1.5 million, claiming he violated her Constitutional rights when he denied her access to an abortion while she was in jail.

The Tennessean reports that Kei’Choura Cathey was arrested in July 2015 on robbery and murder conspiracy charges in Maury County. She found out that she was pregnant roughly two weeks later. Cathey alerted Maury County Sheriff Bucky Rowland via her lawyer that she wanted to have an abortion, but claims that Rowland told her that his department would not pay to transport her to the clinic unless the abortion was medically necessary or the pregnancy was the result of rape or incest.

Cathey wasn’t able to post bail until January 2016, and by then it was too late to have the procedure. The child was born in April.

Sheriff Rowland disputes her account. “The lawsuit is not correct,” Rowland told the Daily Herald on Tuesday. “We did offer her transportation to and from, if she elected to go through with the procedure. We were not going to take her and pay for the procedure. We felt like it was an elective procedure. We did not feel like the taxpayers should pay for it.”

“Her health and her life [were] not in jeopardy,” Rowland said. “No other circumstances came into play, except she wanted to have an abortion. If she wanted to pay for that, that was up to her.”

The lawsuit was filed December 29 in federal court in Nashville. Cathey alleges in the complaint that Rowland violated her Eighth Amendment rights by inflicting cruel and unusual punishment, as well as her 14th Amendment rights.

In 2007, the Supreme Court ruled in Doe v. Arpaio that an Arizona woman had a Constitutional right to get an abortion off jail grounds.

Imprisoned women have a legal right to obtain an abortion if they want one; however, women receiving non-life threatening abortions are often left financially responsible for the appointment and transportation, regardless of whether or not they are able to pay. Jail and prison policies regarding pregnancy-related health care and abortions vary from state to state.

While the ACLU has often represented women in cases where they believe their right to an abortion was infringed upon, the non-profit is not involved in Cathey’s pending case against Maury County.

Cathey is asking for $150,000 in actual damages and $1.35 million in punitive damages.

Alexis Evans

Alexis Evans is an Assistant Editor at Law Street and a Buckeye State native. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism and a minor in Business from Ohio University. Contact Alexis at aevans@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Jailed Tennessee Woman Claims She Was Denied an Abortion, Sues Sheriff appeared first on Law Street.

When Canadian journalist Ed Ou headed to North Dakota recently to cover the pipeline protests at Standing Rock, he didn’t expect the drama to start as soon as he reached the U.S. border. But border officials decided to detain him for over six hours and confiscate his cellphones, something that is uncomfortable for anyone, but critical for a journalist. He compared having the contents of his phones scrutinized with a doctor giving up confidential information about his patients. If Ou’s sources who have given information on the condition of anonymity are revealed, their lives could potentially be in danger.

The U.S. border agent officers asked Ou to tell them how and why he had traveled to every single country he has visited for the past five years, and if he had seen anyone die. Ou has spent 10 years covering the Middle East, Africa, and Central Asia, which could explain the unusual questions. The agents asked to see his phones to make sure he was “not posing next to any dead bodies.” When he refused, explaining that he is a journalist and needed to protect his sources, they simply took them anyway. When he got the phones back later, it looked as if the SIM cards had been tampered with. Agents also photocopied pages from his personal diary. In the end, Ou was denied entry into the U.S. and put on a plane back to Canada, with no other explanation than that his name matched that of “a person of interest.” One officer said that his refusal to cooperate with the phones “did not help.”

The United States Customs and Border Protection declined to comment on the event. But in a statement it said, “Keeping America safe and enforcing our nation’s laws in an increasingly digital world depends on our ability to lawfully examine all materials entering the U.S.” If the authorities think that that means looking into the contacts of a well-published journalist and then refusing him entry with no valid reason, that is a huge problem for freedom of the press in the U.S.

The incident has been criticized by advocates for press freedom as well as by other journalists.

Journalists don’t get much braver or more talented than Ed Ou. What happened to him at the US border is shameful. https://t.co/4jCjUUqMaw

— Trevor Timm (@trevortimm) December 2, 2016

The way journalists are being treated at the US borders is truly alarming. This happened to photographer Ed Ou https://t.co/ZZi1bNNmB8

— Liz Sly (@LizSly) November 30, 2016

Does the United States believe in freedom of speech? Apparently not @CustomsBorder, which bars entry to accomplished photographer @EdOuphoto

— Neil MacFarquhar (@NeilMacFarquhar) November 30, 2016

The American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU, wrote a letter to Customs and Border Protection and the Department of Homeland Security, signed by attorney Hugh Handeyside, in which it called the detention and treatment “harassing and exceptionally intrusive.” It said that border agents should have realized that Ou was a renowned journalist, who had often traveled to the U.S. as he has well-established professional connections with major news outlets such as Reuters, the Associated Press and the New York Times. The letter stated:

We believe that C.B.P. took advantage of Mr. Ou’s application for admission to engage in an opportunistic fishing expedition for sensitive and confidential information that Mr. Ou had gathered through his news-gathering activities in Turkey, Iraq, Somalia and elsewhere.

Ou was on his way to cover the Standing Rock protests on behalf of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, which the agents were apparently aware of. But individual border officials should not have the power to affect what ends up in the media. The director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, Trevor Timm, said that the practice of forcing journalists who have worked in the Middle East to give up their confidential sources just to get into a country puts the U.S. in a very bad light. “If this is requisite for journalists who are not U.S. citizens to enter the U.S., that is an enormous violation of press freedom,” he said.

An important reminder to #journalists that your #data is not safe at the US Border https://t.co/oqEbH8Xz6q @ACLU @edouphoto pic.twitter.com/jvQiO113tN

— MuckRock (@MuckRock) December 1, 2016

For all intents and purposes, the Fourth Amendment does not apply when you’re at the border. Walking on the street, a police officer likely can’t go up to you and randomly search you without a warrant or arrest order. But in an airport or at a border control stop, agents can search you and your electronic devices without reason or permission from a judge. This is because of a loophole in the law that mentions bags and personal property, but was written in a time before most people had their entire private lives stored in a cellphone. A policy from 2009 says that the owner of a digital device needs to be present when agents perform a search, but that rule can be interpreted very loosely. According to the policy, agents can make copies of data, but they need to be erased within a week unless a crime is suspected or there is a probable cause to keep the data.

This incident raises a deeper question, about press freedom and Freedom of Speech in the U.S., as well as what the role of the CBP should be. As Hugh Handeyside from the ACLU said, “conditioning foreign journalists’ admission to the United States on their willingness to agree to intrusive searches encourages similarly abusive treatment of American journalists in other countries.” To treat journalists like this at borders will discourage them from reporting on important events, and stem the flow of information.

Emma Von Zeipel

Emma Von Zeipel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. She is originally from one of the islands of Stockholm, Sweden. After working for Democratic Voice of Burma in Thailand, she ended up in New York City. She has a BA in journalism from Stockholm University and is passionate about human rights, good books, horses, and European chocolate. Contact Emma at EVonZeipel@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Canadian Journalist Ed Ou Detained and Denied Entry to the U.S. appeared first on Law Street.

In the years following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the CIA broadened its torture toolkit. Detainees were stuffed in boxes. They were forced to spend hours holding uncomfortable positions, sometimes barred from sleeping for days at a time. And of course, there was waterboarding. In October 2015, two men who were subjected to the CIA’s interrogations at secret prisons in Afghanistan filed lawsuits against the two CIA contractors who sculpted the agency’s torture program.

The plaintiffs and their lawyers now question whether their quest for justice could be undermined by President-elect Trump, who has expressed support for torture techniques, and will have the power to unilaterally dismiss the suit if he chooses. No government official involved in a torture program has been held accountable, and this suit, backed by lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union, is the furthest former detainees have gotten.

Suleiman Abdullah Salim of Tanzania, and Mohamed Ahmed Ben Soud of Libya, along with representatives of a third man who died in the CIA’s secret prison, are the plaintiffs in the case. The defendants are James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, both psychologists and contractors who devised and helped implement the torture program.

If Trump, who recently hinted his position supporting torture might have shifted, decides to invoke the state secrets privilege, the case would be dismissed under the grounds of national security. The Department of Justice under President Obama has blocked civil cases against CIA contractors from proceeding under the same pretense.

But in April, a U.S. District Court judge in Washington, where the suit was filed, dismissed a motion that claimed the suit could reveal security-compromising secrets. Under the Alien Tort Statute, which allows foreigners to sue in U.S. courts for human rights abuses, Judge Justin Quackenbush allowed the case to proceed. The trial is set for June 2017.

On Tuesday, Mitchell, one of the defendants, is set to release a book titled “Enhanced Interrogation: Inside the Minds and Motives of the Islamic Terrorists Trying to Destroy America.” According to The New York Times, which obtained an early copy, Mitchell defends his torture program, saying his “unpleasant” techniques “protected detainees from being subjected to unproven and perhaps harsher techniques made up on the fly that could have been much worse.”

The effectiveness of Mitchell and Jessen’s program was questioned in a 2014 Senate Intelligence Committee report, however, which concluded the “inhumane physical or psychological techniques are counterproductive because they do not produce intelligence and will probably result in false answers.”

Alec Siegel

Alec Siegel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. When he’s not working at Law Street he’s either cooking a mediocre tofu dish or enjoying a run in the woods. His passions include: gooey chocolate chips, black coffee, mountains, the Animal Kingdom in general, and John Lennon. Baklava is his achilles heel. Contact Alec at ASiegel@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Trump Could Dismiss Lawsuit by CIA Torture Victims appeared first on Law Street.

Happy Monday Law Streeters! Last week Taiwan readied to become the first asian nation to legalize gay marriage, post-election donations crashed the ACLU website, and Joe Biden memes made all of us laugh. ICYMI–check out the top stories from Law Street below!

1. Taiwan Set to Become First Asian Nation to Legalize Same-Sex Marriage

Taiwan is poised to become the first country in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage. Lawmakers from the country’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party are working on three marriage equality bills at the moment, one of which is expected to pass within the next few months. Read the full article here.

2. ACLU Website Crashes After Tons of Donations

In the wake of Donald Trump’s presidential win on Tuesday night, a lot of people were concerned about what a Trump presidency might mean for Americans’ civil rights. One of the biggest defenders of those rights is the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a legal organization that regularly sues the government when it believes individuals’ rights are being infringed upon. In the wake of Trump’s election, the ACLU has seen record donations, so many, in fact, that the organization’s website crashed on Wednesday morning. Read the full article here.

3. Memes of Biden Trolling Trump Are Helping Us Laugh Away Our Tears

After last week’s poll-defying election results, half of Americans were left stunned and feeling a bit like they’d just been cast in a Doomsday movie. Luckily meme connoisseur Josh Billinson, was there to deliver some much needed comedic relief. Read the full article here.

Alexis Evans

Alexis Evans is an Assistant Editor at Law Street and a Buckeye State native. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism and a minor in Business from Ohio University. Contact Alexis at aevans@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post ICYMI: Best of the Week appeared first on Law Street.

In the wake of Donald Trump’s presidential win on Tuesday night, a lot of people were concerned about what a Trump presidency might mean for Americans’ civil rights. One of the biggest defenders of those rights is the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a legal organization that regularly sues the government when it believes individuals’ rights are being infringed upon. In the wake of Trump’s election, the ACLU has seen record donations, so many, in fact, that the organization’s website crashed on Wednesday morning.

Between Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning, the group recorded almost $1 million in contributions, from 14,000 donations. By Thursday morning, it was up to $2.4 million from 38,626 donations.

These are record-breaking donation totals. Mark Weir, the group’s chief development officer told Business Insider: “In terms of online donations in a single-day, it far exceeds anything we’ve seen before.” The ACLU’s donation website crashed on Wednesday morning, although it’s unclear for how long. According to an ACLU spokesperson who talked to Buzzfeed: “it’s hard to say how long it was down for and we’re trying to pull dollars and gift numbers. Our system is extremely overwhelmed with all of the hits we’re getting.”

The ACLU has been clear that it will sue Trump over some of his proposed policies, should he try to implement them. The organization even took out a full page ad in the New York Times on Friday, making that exact promise:

Today we published a full-page open letter in the New York Times to President-elect Trump pic.twitter.com/FOpRqn9oNY

— ACLU National (@ACLU) November 11, 2016

There are a number of policies that Trump advocated for throughout the election that the ACLU takes issue with, including proposed mass deportation, a ban on Muslim immigration and/or more targeted monitoring of Muslim individuals, changes to abortion laws, and restrictions on Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Press.

It seems that the ACLU’s promise has struck a chord with many Americans, if the donations are any indication.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Arrests for small amounts of marijuana outnumbered arrests for all violent crimes combined last year, according to a new report released Wednesday by the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch highlighting the abundance of drug possession crimes in America.

The 196-page report title “Every 25 Seconds: The Human Toll of Criminalizing Drug Use in the United States,” found that every 25 seconds in the U.S., someone is arrested possessing drugs for their personal use, and on any given day 137,000 men and women are behind bars in the U.S. for drug possession. In fact, one in nine arrests are for drug possession, amounting to over 1.25 million each year.

Interestingly enough, many of these people haven’t yet been convicted of a crime, but are being detained pretrial because they can’t afford to post bail–leading many defendants to “plead guilty simply to secure their release, in cases where they might otherwise want to go to trial.”

As a result, these convictions exclude them from job opportunities, public housing, quality education, welfare assistance, voting, and more, and subject them to discrimination and lifelong stigma.

“Rather than promoting health, criminalization can create new barriers to health for those who use drugs,” the report says. “Criminalization drives drug use underground; it discourages access to emergency medicine, overdose prevention services, and risk-reducing practices such as syringe exchanges.”

The authors of the report call for drug use to be treated as a public health issue, rather than a criminal issue. The report says:

Ending criminalization of simple drug possession does not mean turning a blind eye to the misery that drug dependence can cause in the lives of those who use and of their families. On the contrary, it requires a more direct focus on effective measures to prevent problematic drug use, reduce the harms associated with it, and support those who struggle with dependence. Ultimately, the criminal law does not achieve these important ends, and causes additional harm and loss instead. It is time for the US to rethink its approach to drug use.

Federal figures bolster the report’s findings. While drug-related arrests have drastically increased since 1979, drug use remains high. In 1979, less than 200 in 100,000 people were arrested on drug charges. By the mid-2000s, that ratio rose to 500 in 100,000, its peak. Today, federal figures estimate 400 in 100,000 people are arrested for drug use or possession.

Proponents of strict drug-use penalties argue that tough sentencing practices can deter use and will keep the public safe. For instance, since 1979, illegal drug use by children age 12 and up was at its highest rate in 2015, at just under 18 percent. That rate was much lower at the peak of drug-related arrests in the mid 2000s, but the full picture is much murkier than just that blip in time.

The report also found that while whites are more likely to use illicit drugs in general, black adults are more than two-and-a-half times as likely as white adults to be arrested for drug possession–furthering problems of racial discrimination.

 Alexis Evans also contributed to this story.

Alec Siegel

Alec Siegel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. When he’s not working at Law Street he’s either cooking a mediocre tofu dish or enjoying a run in the woods. His passions include: gooey chocolate chips, black coffee, mountains, the Animal Kingdom in general, and John Lennon. Baklava is his achilles heel. Contact Alec at ASiegel@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Chelsea Manning, the transgender whistleblower imprisoned for leaking classified government documents to Wikileaks, ended her hunger strike on Tuesday after the U.S. Army agreed to allow her to undergo gender transition surgery to treat her gender dysphoria.

According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Manning, who is a transgender woman, began the hunger strike on September 9 to demand the “medically necessary and recommended treatment” for her disorder.

“This is a monumental day for Chelsea, who can now enjoy some peace knowing that critically needed medical care is forthcoming,” said ACLU attorney Chase Strangio. “This medical care is absolutely vital for Chelsea as it is for so many transgender people–in and out of prison–who are systemically denied treatment solely because they are transgender.”

The former U.S. Army soldier is currently serving a 35-year prison sentence for espionage at Fort Leavenworth, an all-male Army prison in Kansas, after providing hundreds of thousands of documents to Wikileaks while working as an intelligence analyst in Iraq.

Her lawyers claim that while she’s been at Fort Leavenworth, army officials have subjected Manning to long stretches of solitary confinement and forced her to cut her hair to “male hair length standards”–which does not reflect her gender identity. Manning claims that the lack of care for her disorder contributed to her suicide attempt in July.

In 2014, Manning filed a lawsuit against the Department of Defense so she could grow her hair out, use cosmetics, and receive hormone treatment to in order to express her female gender. The Army eventually agreed to allow her to receive hormone therapy, but it refused to allow her to groom as a woman.

In April 2016, Manning’s psychologist recommended she undergo gender transition surgery as part of her treatment. The Army’s decision to proceed with Manning’s treatment will make her the first transgender inmate to undergo the surgery while in prison.

Manning gave the following statement to the ACLU:

I am unendingly relieved that the military is finally doing the right thing. I applaud them for that. This is all that I wanted–for them to let me be me. But it is hard not to wonder why it has taken so long. Also, why were such drastic measures needed? The surgery was recommended in April 2016. The recommendations for my hair length were back in 2014. In any case, I hope this sets a precedent for the thousands of trans people behind me hoping they will be given the treatment they need.

After news broke of the Army’s decision, social media critics came out in droves to condemn the use of  taxpayers’ money on the surgery.

Why exactly are tax payers footing the bill for Chelsea Manning’s surgery and temper tantrum?

— Tawnie (@Tawnie) September 14, 2016

How is it that “Chelsea Manning” gets a gender-change operation on the tax-payers dime? How is that appropriate use of tax-dollars?

— Greg Granger (@BattleCoachella) September 14, 2016

The Daily Beast, however, argues that if you’re ok with prisoners receiving antidepressants, you shouldn’t get worked up over Manning’s medical treatment. Both hormone treatment and gender reassignment surgery can be deemed medically necessary to treat individuals with gender dysphoria or gender identity disorder.

“Thankfully the government has recognized its constitutional obligation to provide Chelsea with the medical care that she needs and we hope that they will act without delay to ensure that her suffering does not needlessly continue,” said the ACLU.

Alexis Evans

Alexis Evans is an Assistant Editor at Law Street and a Buckeye State native. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism and a minor in Business from Ohio University. Contact Alexis at aevans@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Chelsea Manning Ends Hunger Strike to Receive Gender Transition Surgery appeared first on Law Street.

Tennessee’s governor, Bill Haslam, vetoed HB0615 yesterday, a bill that would have designated the Holy Bible as the state book of Tennessee. Before the governor’s veto, the bill was passed in the state house by a vote of 55-38 and in the senate by a vote of 19-8. While some argue that naming the Bible as the official state book would fundamentally intertwine the church and state, others argue that the Bible’s historic and economic significance make it relevant and appropriate as a state book.

Opponents of the bill were outraged by the thought of the Bible being designated as the state book for several reasons and, therefore, thankful that the governor vetoed the bill. First came the obvious question of the government promoting or advancing one religion over another. The ACLU-Tennessee Executive Director Hedy Weinberg pointed out potential issues with the legislation, saying:

Lawmakers’ thinly veiled effort to promote one religion over other religions clearly violates both the United States and Tennessee Constitutions.

Instituting the Bible as the state book would suggest the furtherance of Bible-based religions, like Christianity, over other religions that aren’t based on the bible. It would fundamentally violate the separation of church and state laid out in both the national and state constitutions.

Thank you, Gov. Bill Haslam, for taking a stand for religious liberty and against theocracy. https://t.co/MTREfE6Z9w

— David Waters (@DavidWatersCA) April 15, 2016

Others made fun of Tennessee for being a state so focused on religion with satirical and ironic tweets.

The Tennessee state senate voted to make the Bible the state book, I'm assuming because nobody there could name another one.

— J. Elvis Weinstein (@JElvisWeinstein) April 6, 2016

Hope the new official Tennessee state book doesn't fry in my hands while reading it. Think I'd rather go to hell

— Josh Sebastian (@tnseabass) April 6, 2016

One state Senator, Jeff Yarboro from Nashville, recognized that, even though it may be hard for some members of the legislature to want to vote against an important symbol of their faith, they needed to consider the constitutionality of their actions. “I understand that it’s hard to vote against the Bible—no one wants to do that. We have an obligation to follow the Constitution,” Yarboro told the Tennessean.

The final argument against making the Bible the state book is one that the governor himself made, and it’s not what you might expect. Similar to what our founding fathers claimed about the separation of church and state, Governor Haslam feels that making the Bible the Tennessee state book would trivialize the Bible. He even cited the founding fathers in his argument. In a letter to Beth Harwell, the Tenessee Speaker of the House, he said,

Our founders recognized that when the church and state were combined, it was the church that suffered in the long run.

He also acknowledged the difference between religion being celebrated and openly discussed in government and the actual establishment of religion by government:

Men and women motivated by faith have every right and obligation to bring their belief and commitment to the public debate. However, that is very different from the governmental establishment of religion that our founders warned against and our Constitution prohibits.

In order to override the governor’s veto, the legislature just needs a simple majority in each chamber, which seems like it could be easily attained based on the original vote counts. So, keep an eye on Tennessee everyone. It looks like it could soon become the first state to recognize a religious text as their state book and it will be interesting to see the repercussions that it may face.

Alexandra Simone

Alex Simone is an Editorial Senior Fellow at Law Street and a student at The George Washington University, studying Political Science. She is passionate about law and government, but also enjoys the finer things in life like watching crime dramas and enjoying a nice DC brunch. Contact Alex at ASimone@LawStreetmedia.com

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After significant public controversy, Facebook is making some edits to its problematic “real name” policy. The company received criticism after requiring that users use their “real names,” and allowed other users to flag when someone wasn’t adhering. But critics argued that this policy led to harassment and complications, particularly for the LGBTQ community, performers who go by different names, those who are attempting to hide their identities, and groups whose “real names” didn’t fit the narrow rules prescribed by Facebook–particularly those from Native American backgrounds. But in response to that outcry, Facebook is now making some changes to this policy that should benefit all.

Previously, Facebook required users to use their “real names,” or some semblance of that name. There were a few reasons that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg gave for this policy–including the fact that that it’s easier to find people to connect with when we all use legal names. Additionally, Zuckerberg made the argument that requiring “real names” made it less likely that fake profiles could be used for harassment.

There have been complaints about this policy for a while, but an open letter written recently by a variety of advocacy groups accelerated the discussion. Authors of the letter included the ACLU and the Human Rights Watch, and as a whole represent:

Transgender and gender variant people whose legal names don’t accord with their gender identity.

People who use a pseudonym or name modification in order to protect themselves from physical violence, legal threats from repressive governments, or harassment on the basis of gender, sexuality, religion, or political activities.

People who have been silenced by attackers abusing Facebook’s “Fake Name” reporting option.

People whose legal names don’t fit the arbitrary standards of “real names” developed by Facebook, such as Native Americans, other ethnic minorities, and members of the clergy.

These individuals have often had a hard time reclaiming their profiles after being accused of using “not real names.” More dangerously, sometimes Facebook has reinstated profiles with an individual’s legal name instead of the one they were previously using, possibly outing them or exposing them to violence. Read the full letter below:

In response to this letter, Facebook has announced that it will be making a couple changes to the policy that will help alleviate these concerns. To start, users will be able to provide context to Facebook about the name they choose when they sign up for an account. This will allow Facebook to understand why someone might have difficulty verifying their identity. The other change is that users who flag others for “fake names” will have to explain why they’re flagging an individual, to ensure it isn’t just for harassment purposes. Finally, Facebook will make it easier for those who have been locked out of their accounts due to the policy to regain access. While Facebook hasn’t totally changed its tune, it is a good step in the right direction.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Facebook Makes Changes to Problematic “Real Name” Policy appeared first on Law Street.

After the CIA’s use of torture in interrogations came to light in a controversial Senate report, few people have been held directly responsible for misconduct. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) hopes to change that with a recently filed civil suit against two psychologists who consulted with the CIA to develop and implement the program.

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of two former CIA prisoners and the estate of another who died while in CIA custody, claims that John “Bruce” Jessen and James Mitchell violated international law for their role in the CIA’s use of torture.

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s report on the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation” program reignited the debate about the agency’s use of torture from 2002 to 2009. The so-called “torture report” immediately became controversial, revealing the details of several interrogations and the tactics that were employed by the CIA and its contractors. While the full report, which spans more than 6,000 pages, remains classified, the 512-page executive summary came out last December. Enhanced Interrogation Techniques (EITs) include waterboarding, physical abuse, sleep deprivation, dietary manipulation, nudity, rectal rehydration, mock executions, and isolation in extreme cold and in coffin-shaped boxes for days at a time. Hypothermia is reportedly the cause of Gul Rahman’s death, and according to the ACLU’s complaint:

An autopsy report and internal CIA review found that Mr. Rahman likely died from hypothermia caused ‘in part from being forced to sit on the bare concrete floor without pants,’ with the contributing factors of ‘dehydration, lack of food, and immobility due to ‘short chaining.’

Prior to the Senate report, there was very little available evidence about the CIA’s use of torture in the post-9/11 era. In fact, the ACLU noted that its lawsuit is largely based on the contents of the CIA report. Steven Watt, a lawyer for the ACLU told the Huffington Post that the report is “really why our clients are able to pursue this case.”

According to the complaint, the plaintiffs–Suleiman Abdullah Salim, Mohamed Ahmed Ben Soud, and now-deceased Gul Rahman–were interrogated at CIA black sites using techniques that constitute torture. It further claims that the two psychologists, Jessen and Mitchell, “designed, implemented, and personally administered an experimental torture program for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.”

The lawsuit seeks relief for the plaintiffs based on the Alien Tort Statute, which enables non-citizens to file lawsuits for violations of international laws and treaties. The ACLU has three specific claims against Jessen and Mitchell, specifically the use of “torture and other cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment,” non-consensual human experimentation, and war crimes.

The complaint argues that the defendants’ roles were central to the entire enhanced interrogation program, as they monitored the interrogations, suggested tactics for interrogators, and may have participated themselves. In an interview with Vice, Mitchell admitted to participating in waterboarding a prisoner but has so far refused to give additional details about his involvement.  Their company, Mitchell Jessen and Associates, was contracted by the CIA to oversee and conduct interrogations, for which it received about $80 million. The company also employed 11 of the 13 interrogators used by the CIA. The lawsuit was filed in a federal court in Washington state, which is where the company was headquartered.

Prior to their involvement with the CIA, both Mitchell and Jessen worked for the Air Force’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape program, which trained soldiers to resist coercive and violent interrogation tactics. Based on their experience training people to resist harsh interrogation, the CIA asked them to advise and monitor interrogations of high-level suspects in the wake of 9/11.

According to the complaint, the psychologists utilized research from the 1960s to develop their recommendations for the CIA, specifically the work of Dr. Martin Seligman who experimented with dogs to develop an understanding of learned helplessness. Seligman found that repeated abuse eventually put dogs in a state where they became completely compliant, which is what Jessen and Mitchell sought to reproduce in CIA interrogations. Because many of the prisoners had been trained to resist interrogation, these methods were used to break them down in order to retrieve information. This conclusion is a point of much contention–the Senate report concluded that the enhanced techniques proved ineffective and even counterproductive, while Mitchell has maintained that his advice saved lives. The CIA concluded that it is impossible to tell whether or not the CIA torture had intelligence benefits. Ultimately, the answer to that question has become more a product of individual ideology than the available evidence.

The ACLU’s claims and its underpinnings in the Senate’s report are certainly shocking. One of the few relatively undisputed parts of the report is the actual tactics that were used. The lawsuit focuses on the long-term psychological consequences of the torture that the victims are currently dealing with.

The exact culpability of Jessen and Mitchell is difficult to determine based on the information available, which will make this lawsuit particularly challenging. It is unlikely that the CIA will release new evidence and it appears that based on the contract that the psychologists have with the agency, they will not be paying their legal fees. According to the Guardian,

A Spokane-based company the two founded, Mitchell and Jessen Associates, would secure $75m from the CIA in contracts, in addition to a further $6.1m from the agency for legal expenses in the event of criminal or civil action stemming from the contract.

In light of the government’s unwillingness to hold those who committed and authorized torture accountable, the ACLU’s attempt to seek justice is laudable. But securing sufficient evidence to receive compensatory damages will be particularly difficult, as the program has been and will continue to be shrouded in secrecy.

Kevin Rizzo

Kevin Rizzo is the Crime in America Editor at Law Street Media. An Ohio Native, the George Washington University graduate is a founding member of the company. Contact Kevin at krizzo@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post ACLU Files Lawsuit Against Architects of CIA Torture Program appeared first on Law Street.

The Hastings public school district in Nebraska has recently begun following an old law requiring teachers to pledge their beliefs to American ideals. But now, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Nebraska has gotten involved in the attempt to stop the Hastings public school district from continuing to enforce the law.

The law dates back to 1951, during the height of McCarthyism and the Red Scare. It requires teachers to sign a pledge outlining their loyalty to the United States. The pledge given to the Hastings Public Schools teachers read as follows:

All persons engaged in teaching in the public schools of the State of Nebraska and all other employees paid from public school funds, shall sign the following pledge:

I, ………., do believe in the United States of America as a government of the people, by the people, for the people; whose just powers are derived from the consent of the governed; a democracy in a republic; an indissoluble nation of many sovereign states; a perfect union, one and inseparable; established upon those principles of freedom, equality, justice and humanity for which American patriots sacrificed their lives and fortunes.

I acknowledge it to be my duty to inculcate in the hearts and minds of all pupils in my care, so far as it is in my power to do, (1) an understanding of the United States Constitution and of the Constitution of Nebraska, (2) a knowledge of the history of the nation and of the sacrifices that have been made in order that it might achieve its present greatness, (3) a love and devotion to the policies and institutions that have made America the finest country in the world in which to live, and (4) opposition to all organizations and activities that would destroy our present form of government.

The law is actually still in place in the state of Nebraska, and information about whether or not various school districts follow it appears to be spotty. However, requiring public employees to sign such a pledge has actually been declared unconstitutional multiple times.

Despite the fact that the law has been on the books since 1951, this year appears to be the first time in recent decades that Hastings Public Schools teachers were actually asked to sign it. According to Hastings Public Schools superintendent Craig Kautz, this change is because he was not aware of the law previously, and is now following it based on legal advice. He also points out that if members of the staff choose not to sign it, it will not negatively affect their employment status in the schools.

Regardless, the Nebraska ACLU had a serious problem with the pledge, and sent the letter to warn the Hastings School District about moving forward with its enforcement. In the letter sent to the school district, Amy Miller, legal director for the Nebrasksa branch stated:

You need to know that the statute is a dead letter law which has been clearly overruled by the highest court in the land. Attempting to enforce the state statue is unconstitutional and will expose the school district to liability to a civil rights lawsuit.

Currently, there are discussions in Nebraska about whether or not to change the law, but it seems like there’s plenty of confusion over whether or not it would stand up in court. Rex Schultze, a lawyer who represents some of the Nebraska school districts that require that the law is signed, has stated:

I don’t think the (teacher pledge) law is unconstitutional because it does not require anyone to give up any constitutional rights of free speech or association. All it says is you will, as part of your employment, seek to encourage these things.

Either the Hastings Public Schools will stop requiring teachers to sign the pledge, or this could end up being examined more specifically in court, putting an end to the debate once and for all.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

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New Hampshire voters will have a new way to celebrate their civic duty come the state’s primary election in February. On Tuesday, a federal judge struck down the state’s law that banned voters from showing a completed ballot to anyone–including sharing a photo on social media. According to the ruling, ballot box selfies are now a protected form of free speech.

New Hampshire is not the only state with this sort of law, in fact, most states have laws prohibiting voters from showing their marked ballot to the public. Although many of these laws are on the books, most states tend to have lax enforcement policies. Unlike most states, however, the New Hampshire law was recently updated to include digital images and social media–effectively banning ballot selfies. Those changes prompted the American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire (ACLU-NH) to file a lawsuit against the state, citing the law as an undue ban on free speech.

State Representative Leon Rideout, Brandon Ross, and Andrew Langlois were the plaintiffs in the ACLU-NH’s lawsuit. All three voted in the primary election last September, took pictures of their ballots, and shared them online. Out of protest, Langlois opted to vote for his recently deceased dog, Akira, instead of the available primary candidates. While voting, Langlois took a picture of his ballot with his phone and later shared it on Facebook. Shortly after posting the photo, he got a call from the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office notifying him that he was being investigated for possible election law violations. Before it was stuck down, violating the law was punishable by fines of up to $1,000. Rideout and Ross were also investigated for their posted pictures.

The ACLU-NH argued that the law’s restrictions violate voters’ right to free speech, and the court agreed. On the other hand, Secretary of State William Gardner argued that the law helped stop vote buying and coercion because it prevented someone from proving who they voted for. In a 42-page decision, U.S. District Court Judge Paul Barbadoro ruled that the law was not narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling state interest in regulating free speech, the traditional test in First Amendment cases. While the judge noted that coercion and vote buying have historically been important issues, they no longer pose a risk to the election process. In his ruling, the judge noted,

He [the secretary] produced no evidence that either vote buying or voter coercion are current problems in New Hampshire. Plaintiffs, in contrast, have produced undisputed evidence that there have been no vote buying prosecutions and no complaints of vote buying in the state since at least 1976.

While the law was enacted with good intentions–preventing coercion and vote buying–the issues that it aimed to address are generally not that important anymore. Even if such fraud were to occur, other laws still make it illegal and the government can still prosecute misconduct. More to the point, selfies and the ability to share pictures of civic participation online are important forms of free speech. For better or worse, ballot box selfies are a free expression and they are here to stay–at least in New Hampshire.

Kevin Rizzo

Kevin Rizzo is the Crime in America Editor at Law Street Media. An Ohio Native, the George Washington University graduate is a founding member of the company. Contact Kevin at krizzo@LawStreetMedia.com.

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As if Baltimore has not been in the news enough recently for civil and human rights abuses, yet another report of maltreatment surfaced today. The Baltimore City Detention Center (BCDC) came under fire after the American Civil Liberties Union, the Public Justice Center, and the law offices of Elizabeth Alexander filed a legal motion on behalf of detainees of the center to reopen a suit against BCDC, claiming that the terms of a 2009 settlement have not been met. The motion claims that seven preventable deaths of prisoners have occurred in the last two years due to the appalling living conditions of the center. The motion accuses state officials, who are supposed to oversee that the jail is being run appropriately, of violating the detainees’ Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment.

Medical neglect is reported to be rampant in the BCDC with prisoners housed in moldy, vermin-infested cells with flooding toilets, exposing inmates to bodily wastes that worsen existing health issues. The motion claims that inspections of the center revealed not only horrifying living conditions, health hazards, and a lack of basic medical care, but also that detainees were routinely denied life-saving medications. An examination of the BCDC’s medical records exposed several cases of HIV-positive inmates’ antiretroviral drugs being discontinued. Comparably detrimental were cases of diabetic detainees being denied insulin and having food restrictions ignored and mentally ill prisoners denied psychotropic drugs. The motion claims that a complete lack of medical documentation and health planning is the probable cause for the seven preventable deaths inside the center.

Debra Gardner, the Public Justice Center’s legal director, stated in a press release today, “…detainees in need of medical attention and treatment for infections, injuries, psychiatric conditions, and other urgent health concerns wait for days and weeks, their suffering prolonged to the point of cruelty.” The case’s lead counsel, Elizabeth Alexander, recently stated,

I was struck by the huge number of cells that couldn’t be occupied because they were not habitable. This is a facility that has outlived its physical life.

While all inmates morally deserve human rights and are supposed to legally be afforded them, 90 percent of BCDC inmates are awaiting trial and are therefore still innocent in the eyes of the law. Black Americans make up 62 percent of Baltimore’s population, yet they form about 80 percent of the BCDC population, and 95 percent of all juveniles detained there. Extreme racial issues have proven to be widespread in the city of Baltimore, and the case of the BCDC only continues to shed light on the severity of human rights abuses in the state.

Given that these allegations involve practices that occurred under Presidential candidate Martin O’Malley’s tenure as Governor of Maryland, it is unclear if this case will impact his bid for President in 2017. Either way, O’Malley’s inability to ensure that jails within his state provided proper medical care and basic human rights to its inmates should not be disregarded.

Emily Dalgo

Emily Dalgo is a member of the American University Class of 2017 and a Law Street Media Fellow during the Summer of 2015. Contact Emily at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Horrifying Allegations Shed Light on Conditions of Baltimore Jail appeared first on Law Street.

On October 12, 2012, 16-year-old Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez lay dead on the Mexican side of an international street with almost a dozen bullet holes marring his body. His tragic death has sparked a legal battle that continues to this day.

The shooter, a United States Border Patrol (USBP) Agent named Lonnie Swartz, said he’d fired his .40-caliber pistol through the fence after witnessing a group of people, including Elena Rodriguez, throwing rocks at agents across the border and endangering their lives. The issue is that his description of events may not have been accurate. Two witnesses on the Mexican side of the fence swore that Elena Rodriguez was actually walking down the street when the other youths ran past just before the shooting started.

If there even was a crime, the punishment surely didn’t seem to fit it. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) agreed, calling the boy’s death yet another example of excessive force used by USBP agents and demanded action.

Two-year anniversary of the death of then 16-year-old Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez in Nogales, SON. pic.twitter.com/2d9jdBDoaO

— Yoohyun Jung (@yoohyun_jung) October 11, 2014

Fast forward three and a half years later and Elena Rodriguez’s case still remains suspended in limbo. The ACLU filed a lawsuit in Tucson against agent Lonnie Swartz on behalf of Araceli Rodriguez, the boy’s mother, but a federal judge is considering throwing it out. Why? According to the Associated Press, it’s on the grounds that since the boy was shot across the U.S.-Mexico border and not in the U.S. at the time, he therefore wasn’t under the protection of the U.S. Constitution.

Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, argued in support for Elena Rodriguez’s family telling the AZCentral,

A Border Patrol agent can put his gun up to the fence and shoot a teenager, and the Constitution has nothing to say about that? Everything that took place, except the bullet that killed him, happened in the U.S.

However, Sean Chapman, the private attorney representing Swartz, argued Tuesday before U.S. District Judge Raner Collins that Swartz did not violate Elena Rodriguez’s constitutional rights because the Constitution does not extend to a Mexican citizen in Mexico. There’s a chance Judge Collins could agree with him.

According to the AP, there’s currently case law from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that unanimously decided that Border Patrol agents shooting on U.S. soil cannot be sued if they kill someone across the border in Mexico. While Collins isn’t bound to this ruling, since Elena Rodriguez’s case is in the 9th circuit and the 5th circuit doesn’t take precedent there, it’s something to consider.

Another alarming factor is the glaring similarities between this case and the death of Trayvon Martin. Both teenage boys were around the same age, 16 and 17 respectively, and were portrayed as thugs despite evidence to the contrary. They were also both made symbols for their communities and mourned by thousands, and so far neither one has received any justice for their deaths. Americans are beginning to care when young black boys are killed for no reason (i.e. Baltimore and Ferguson), but apparently our level of awareness hasn’t yet extended to our southern neighbors.

It’s unclear what the judge will decide in Elena Rodriguez’s case, but one thing is clear: our nation is desperate need of more accountability when it comes to these agents and our police forces, even if they are the ones responsible for protecting us.

Alexis Evans

Alexis Evans is an Assistant Editor at Law Street and a Buckeye State native. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism and a minor in Business from Ohio University. Contact Alexis at aevans@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Does a Mexican Teen Killed by Border Patrol Have Constitutional Rights? appeared first on Law Street.

Criminal justice reform in the United States is long overdue as prisons are overcrowded, racial profiling remains a problem, and rehabilitation practices are often overshadowed by questionable “tough on crime” policies. After high-profile incidents of police brutality began circulating media outlets, the push for criminal justice reform has become greater than ever. Recently, both Republicans and Democrats decided to work together to transform the American criminal justice system, announcing the creation of a bipartisan coalition that would partner with non-governmental organizations and advocacy groups to craft and implement reform. The media called this left and right-wing union an “unlikely alliance,” emphasizing ideological and political differences between the two parties, and highlighting the fact that bipartisanship doesn’t happen very often on Capitol Hill. The question remains whether this bipartisan coalition can transform American criminal justice practices into a more fair, unbiased, and swift system? Read on to learn more about the current bipartisan efforts to reform the criminal justice system in America.

How is bipartisan criminal justice reform coming along?

The Coalition for Public Safety

One of the first  tangible results of this consensus culminated in the creation of the Coalition for Public Safety, introduced on February 19, 2015. It’s a bipartisan coalition of funders and advocacy groups that will work on reforming the current criminal justice system and hopes to find solutions to the most pressing issues in the realm of current practices. The coalition is funded by both conservative and liberal groups such as Koch Industries, the Ford Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. In addition, both right and left-wing organizations such as FreedomWorks, Americans for Tax Reform, the ACLU, and the Center for American Progress will partner with the Coalition to work at all levels of the government (local, state, and federal) to overhaul ineffective criminal justice policies. The initial funding is $5 million, and will be used to launch a campaign to tackle prison overpopulation, mandatory sentencing practices, reduce recidivism, and address many other issues endemic to the American criminal justice system.

The Coalition for Public Safety emphasizes a smarter, fairer, and more cost-effective criminal justice system. It identifies five main goals:

Reduce our jail and prison populations and associated costs; end the systemic problems of overcriminalization and overincarceration — particularly of low-income communities and communities of color; ensure swift and fair outcomes for both the accused and the victim; and make communities safe by reducing recidivism and breaking down barriers faced by those returning home after detention or incarceration.

The overall plan of the Coalition is to replicate state practices that have proven to be successful in dealing with specific issues of the criminal justice system on the federal level. As the Coalition is diverse in its political affiliations, the plan is to divide spheres of influence between conservatives and liberals while lobbying for reform.

Koch Industries and other organizations on the right will try to persuade Republicans, while the Center for American Progress and other liberal think-tanks will work on convincing Democrats to engage in meaningful dialogue about criminal justice reform. Other organizations such as the ACLU will lobby at the state level to include criminal justice reform issues on state ballots in 2016.

The Bipartisan Summit for Criminal Justice

Another early milestone of the criminal justice reform movement was the Bipartisan Summit for Criminal Justice held in Washington D.C. on March 26, 2015.

The summit brought together lawmakers, advocates, religious groups, and criminal justice leaders, totaling 600 people. There were 90 speakers who shared their experiences and proposed possible solutions to fix the American criminal justice system. Newt Gingrich and Van Jones hosted the event, putting their differences aside. Among the most prominent speakers and participants were Attorney General Eric Holder, Mark Holden (senior counsel for Koch Industries), David Simon (“The Wire” creator), Labor Secretary Tom Perez, Georgia Governor Nathan Deal, Piper Kerman (author of “Orange is the New Black”) and Senator Cory Booker. Non-profit organizations that advocate for justice were present  as well.

So, it’s clear that criminal justice reform is gaining momentum, but why did both parties come on board in the first place?

 Why are both parties on board with criminal justice reform?

Players across the political spectrum have begun to form a bipartisan consensus, but do they care about the same things? Both conservatives and liberals have agreed that criminal justice reform is necessary, however, their reasons for engaging in the initial dialogue seem rather different.

Conservatives are particularly worried about the high costs of maintaining the prison complex as it operates right now. Financially speaking, criminal justice spending is soaring. Some conservatives also cite religious arguments as a reason to give second chances to those who acted wrongly. This philosophy is in accordance with Christian tradition. In this view, prison reform requires rehabilitation, not just incarceration.

Democrats tend to be more concerned with minority rights and the personal freedoms of American citizens that are being diminished by the current criminal justice system. They propose well-funded social programs in impoverished and vulnerable communities instead of an aggressive expansion of the prison complex.

Why does America need criminal justice reform?

(Un)Fairness of the Current System

The American criminal justice system has multiple issues with which to contend. One of the biggest is the disproportionate incarceration of Black and Latino youth and men. In addition, 60 percent of those who await trial, meaning they have not yet been formally convicted of any crime, are housed in detention facilities for months. The majority are lower income individuals who cannot afford to make bail. These holdings lead to many issues for these individuals, including loss of employment, housing, and even family.

In addition, civil asset forfeiture practices are often viewed as unfair as property can be confiscated at the pre-trial stage, without a formal conviction. In some cases, family members can suffer property seizure due to the actions of their children or other close family members.

Overall, the prison population is soaring with non-violent offenders, who are incarcerated for drug crimes, including simple possession or selling a small amount of marijuana.

It’s Too Expensive

The criminal justice system, particularly prison complexes, drain taxpayers’ money. On average, it costs $80 billion a year to maintain the American correctional system, not counting other criminal justice agencies and courts. As 86 percent of all prisoners are housed in state, not federal, correction facilities, state governments spend large sums of money on incarceration, leaving fewer resources for education, mental health, and social services. In addition, it costs around $88,000 a year to house a young offender in a juvenile facility. Juveniles in particular have more developmental and educational needs which have to be addressed by the prison facility where they are housed.

Recently, costs associated with police misconduct, such as fees and settlements, are also soaring as more incidents are published and openly discussed.

It Doesn’t Solve Problems

The current criminal justice system incarcerates violent and non-violent offenders alike without any consideration for the mental health, drug, or alcohol issues these people may face. Moreover, it doesn’t provide tools for those who have been released from prison to reintegrate back into society. Formerly incarcerated individuals are largely disenfranchised through laws restricting Pell Grants, voting, certain types of employment, and housing.

Overall, left and right-wing politicians have gotten it right: current criminal justice system is costly, ineffective, and unfair in many ways, and it needs fixing. Watch the video below to learn more about reasons why America needs a comprehensive criminal justice reform:

Are there any signs of progress?

This new wave of bipartisan criminal justice reform is still in its infancy, but signs of progress in changing ineffective criminal justice practices are seen in both state and federal initiatives.

State Practices

Many states have already enacted innovative programs to overhaul civil assets forfeiture practices and restore voting rights to those who bear the stigma of a criminal conviction. For example:

• State Representative David Simpson (R) introduced a bill that could potentially prohibit civil asset forfeiture without formal conviction in Texas. State Senator Nathan Dahm (R) proposed similar legislature in Oklahoma.
• Many states have enacted so-called “Ban the Box” laws that prohibit asking about criminal convictions in employment applications. Currently, “Ban the Box” laws have been successfully implemented in states such as Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota and New Mexico. In addition, individual jurisdictions in various states have begun to use this practice.

Watch the video below to learn more about “Ban the Box” movement:

Federal Initiatives

On a federal level, Senator Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, is one of the most vocal proponents of criminal justice reform:

• Paul and Tim Walberg (R) from Michigan introduced the Fifth Amendment Integrity Restoration (FAIR) Act, that raises the burden of proof on the government for asset seizure.
• Rand Paul and Senator Harry Reid, the Senate Minority Leader, re-introduced the Civil Rights Voting Restoration Act of 2015 as a bipartisan effort to restore voting rights to non-violent formerly incarcerated individuals.
• Rand Paul, Brian Schatz (D) from Hawaii, and two U.S Representatives, Corrine Brown from Florida and Keith Ellison from Minnesota introduced the Police Creating Accountability by Making Effective Recording Available (Police CAMERA) Act of 2015 that creates a pilot grant program for police departments across the country who are willing to use body cameras.

In addition, education reform is being worked on, and the Comprehensive Justice and Mental Health Act is on its way. Both pieces of legislation are important components of re-designing the American criminal justice system by breaking the school-to-prison pipeline, and increasing access to treatment for mentally-ill people in the criminal justice system.

What are the concerns over bipartisan criminal justice reform?

Not everybody believes in the future of bipartisanship, as history has consistently proven that consensus could be compromised at any stage of the process. For example, a recent human trafficking bill with bipartisan support was filibustered over anti-abortion language, and, consequently, died in the chamber. Doubts remain that bipartisanship could be successful as Congress starts its legislative process. Such concerns are voiced due to the profound differences in the two parties’ ideologies, as well as their social and economic views.

These differences also incite worries over the redistribution of prison money. Liberals generally seem to hope that after reform, money that was formerly used for incarceration will be released for education and social services. However, conservatives mostly remain silent on this issue, postponing the discussion for a later date.

Some critics on the left believe that bipartisan criminal justice reform was “right-wing” from the beginning, initiated by the Koch brothers, and then marketed as a “bipartisan” effort. In this view, the movement serves the conservative agenda by pushing the expansion of for-profit community correctional facilities, including the consolidation of medical treatment programs within prison complexes. The rationale is as follows: if non-violent offenders are released to community corrections rather than to prison confinement, it will produce a new source of revenue for private companies that provide treatment for addiction and other medical and mental health issues. The money will be channeled through non-profit organizations that are free to sub-contract their services.

In addition, the Coalition has heavy representation of conservative think-tanks and  prominent liberal groups, but it doesn’t include grassroots community and advocacy groups that could bring the voices of poor communities of color to the table.

Another point of criticism is centered on the notion that the Coalition doesn’t ask the right questions and completely ignores the issue of structural racism that fuels the community-to-corrections pipeline. It acknowledges “over-criminalization” and “over-incarceration” of individuals from these communities, but doesn’t address the underlying reasons for it.

Conclusion

Criminal justice reform is inevitable as there are multiple concerns about the current criminal justice system. However, will it produce the intended changes and improve the American criminal justice system? The Coalition has all the tools to initiate reform, but political differences and personal motivations of certain players can easily change the course of reform at any given moment. It’s a shaky “unlikely alliance,” but it’s certainly better than nothing at all.

Resources

Primary

LegiScan: Bill Text: TX HB3171 | 2015-2016 | 84th Legislature | Introduced

LegiScan: Bill Text: OK SB621 | 2015 | Regular Session | Introduced

Rand Paul: Sens. Paul, Schatz & Reps. Brown, Ellison Introduce Bipartisan Legislation To Help Expand Use of Police Body Cameras

Rand Paul: Sen. Paul Introduces Civil Rights Voting Restoration Act

The U.S. Department of Justice: Attorney General Prohibits Federal Agency Adoptions of Assets Seized by State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies Except Where Needed to Protect Public Safety

Additional

#cut 50: A Bipartisan Summit on Criminal Justice Reform

Huffington Post Politics: Georgia Governor Signs ‘Ban The Box’ Order Helping Ex-Offenders Get Jobs

National Journal: This May Be the Year Crime Finally Stops Being a Wedge Issue

NBCNews: Editorial: Could Criminal Justice Reform Create Bipartisanship?

Politico: Fixing Justice in America

Slate: A Koch and a Smile

Southern Coalition for Social Justice: Ban the Box Community Initiative Guide

The Daily Caller: Red State Forfeiture Bills Signal Bipartisan Push For Justice Reform

Truth Out: “Bipartisan” Criminal Justice Reform: A Misguided Merger

Truth Out: Smoke and Mirrors: Essential Questions About “Prison Reform”

Truth Out: Confidence Men and “Prison Reform”

U.S. News: Lawmakers Outline Path Forward on Criminal Justice Reform

U.S. News: Democrats Block Human Trafficking Bill Over Abortion Language

Justice Policy Institute: The Costs of Confinement: Why Good Juvenile Justice Policies. Make Good Fiscal Sense May 2009

Vera Institute of Justice: The Price of Prisons. What Incarceration Costs Taxpayers

Valeriya Metla

Valeriya Metla is a young professional, passionate about international relations, immigration issues, and social and criminal justice. She holds two Bachelor Degrees in regional studies and international criminal justice. Contact Valeriya at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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The Boy Scouts of America (BSA) and the Girl Scouts of the USA (GSUSA) are staples of American society that have each been around for more than 100 years. Although they are separate organizations, as each has its own congressional charter and upholds its own membership rules, they both promote leadership and civic duty. It is inarguable that the two organizations instill many important values in their young troops; however, they have had radically different approaches to modernization, particularly when it comes to LGBT acceptance. While the Girl Scouts accept girls and women of all different backgrounds, the Boy Scouts still discriminate against gay adult leadership. Read on to learn how and why the BSA and GSUSA have gone down such divergent paths.

 Who are the Boy Scouts of America?

The BSA was established in 1910 and it has four fundamental groups: Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, Varsity Scouting, and Venturing. There are more than 2.6 million youth members and over one million volunteers involved in BSA. Boy Scouts aim to earn merit badges, awards given by demonstrating mastery of a skill or field of study, including camping, citizenship in the community, and first aid.

• Mission Statement: “The mission of the Boy Scouts of America is to prepare young people to make ethical and moral choices over their lifetimes by instilling in them the values of the Scout Oath and Scout Law.”
• Scout Oath: “On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law; to help other people at all times; to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.”
• Scout Law: “A Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent.”

BSA Stance on Homosexuality

The BSA affirmed its position against admitting gay scouts and leadership in 1991. The release included the following statement:

We believe that homosexual conduct is inconsistent with the requirements in the Scout Oath that a Scout be morally straight and in the Scout Law that a Scout be clean in word and deed, and that homosexuals do not provide a desirable role model for Scouts. Because of these beliefs, the Boy Scouts of America does.

In 2007, the BSA confirmed, “we do not grant membership to individuals who are open or avowed homosexuals,” although the organization claimed to not actively seek out a person’s sexual orientation.

Opposition to Those Policies

In 2012, Merck & Co pulled funding because of the BSA discrimination policy. The prior year, Merck had donated $30,000 to BSA. Other companies that followed suit included Intel, UPS, Ernst & Young, IBM, Levi Strauss & Co., J.P. Morgan, American Airlines, Medtronic, Portland General Gas and Electric, Hewlett Packard, Textron, Fleet Bank, CVS/Pharmacy Stores, and Carrier Corp.

Even President Obama advocated for the BSA to lift the ban.

In house, the BSA sent a survey to one million of its members regarding their position on gay members. The results said “overwhelming majorities of parents, teens and members of the Scouting community felt it would be unacceptable to deny an openly gay Scout an Eagle Scout Award solely because of his sexual orientation.”

Policy Change

At a meeting in Grapevine, Texas in 2013, the BSA voted 61-38 to overturn the standing rule regarding BSA youth. The ruling officially came into effect January 1, 2014 stating “no youth may be denied membership in the Boy Scouts of America on the basis of sexual orientation or preference alone.” However, the ban was not lifted for scout volunteers and leaders over the age of 18. Lifting the ban for leadership was never under consideration.

Backlash From Both Sides

The ban lift resulted in a wave of criticism from both ends of the spectrum. In an interview with ABC, the President of the Southern Baptist Convention executive committee, Frank Page, stated, “I think I can say with pretty strong accuracy that the vast majority of Southern Baptists are very disappointed in the latest change in policy…deeply disappointed.”

The Southeast Christian Church, located in Louisville, Kentucky, publicized a move to sever ties with the Boy Scouts, forcing the BSA to lose approximately 300 families. The Assemblies of God, the world’s largest Pentecostal group, also withdrew support.

On the other hand, according to Rich Ferraro, a spokesman for the gay-rights watchdog group GLAAD, “Until every parent and young person have the same opportunity to serve, the Boy Scouts will continue to see a decline in both membership and donations.”

In accordance, Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, called the rule “incoherent,” claiming, “The proposal says, in essence, that homosexuality is morally acceptable until a boy turns 18 – then, when he comes of age, he’s removed from the Scouts.” He claims that it sends a message that gay adults are somehow inadequate to lead and mentor troops.

Disney also announced it would pull all funding from the BSA starting in 2015 because of the ban on gay leadership.

How is BSA not breaking anti-discrimination laws?

As a private, religious organization, the BSA is shielded from federal and state discrimination laws based on the freedoms of speech and association. They can legally exclude atheists, agnostics, and people in the LGBT community.

The American Civil Liberties Union is one organization that has ceaselessly attacked the BSA for this policy. For example, it was present in the 2000 Supreme Court case of The Boy Scouts of America v. James Dale. Dale, a former Assistant Scout Master, was kicked out of the BSA for his sexuality. In New Jersey, there is a law preventing discrimination based on sexual orientation. The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled in Dale’s favor, but the opinion was overturned a year later by the U.S. Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision.

Chief Justice William Rehnquist stated in the majority opinion:

The Boy Scouts’ right to express their views against lesbians and gay men would be hampered if the organization was forced to admit openly gay people as leaders…lesbians and gay people, if they are honest about their sexual orientation, make a statement in their very existence, and groups like the Boy Scouts therefore have a right to exclude them.”

The ACLU called it a “damaging but limited” defeat as the “ruling is limited to groups that exist for the purpose of expressing views and ideas.” So, any nondiscriminatory progress the BSA has made or will make in the future will be made from within. Legally, its hand cannot be forced.

Leaders Kicked Out

Jennifer Tyrrell was a former den mother of her son’s Cub Scout chapter. In April 2012, she was told she could no longer hold her position due to sexual orientation. She had served in the position for over a year. When she was kicked out, she started her advocacy against the BSA to end its discrimination of the LGBT community and launched a petition, stating, “the Boy Scouts are once again forcing me to look my children in the eyes and tell them that our family isn’t good enough.”

In the following video, Tyrell talks about the BSA’s policy change and her petition.

Geoff McGrath, a former Scout leader from Seattle, Washington, is often considered one of the first leaders removed after the policy change. BSA stated they did not know about his sexual orientation when his chapter was approved, although McGrath reported that he never hid his gay identity or support of gay rights. In an interview with NBC News he stated, “They are complaining that the problem is a distraction to Scouting and they don’t seem to understand that the distraction is self-inflicted.” McGrath’s brother and nephew rode their bikes from the Northwest to Boy Scout headquarters in Texas in order to raise awareness of the policy.

Who are The Girl Scouts of the USA?

Juliette Gordon Low founded the Girl Scouts in Savannah, Georgia in March 1912. Currently, there are approximately 2.8 million Girl Scouts and volunteers affiliated with the organization. GSUSA aims to encourage healthy living opportunities, promote economic opportunities, foster global citizenship and a global voice, and support a strong nonprofit community and girl scout experience for girls. A core value and key component in GSUSA is diversity. It strives to reach girls from all different backgrounds.

GSUSA’s Position on Sexual Orientation

A GSUA document entitled Girl Scouts Beyond Bars, explains its policy.

Regarding sexual orientation, Girl Scouts of the USA holds fast to a commitment to embrace diversity and has in place a policy that prohibits discriminatory treatment of any kind, including on the basis of sexual orientation. This policy which applied to interactions with girls and adults, must be honored by every person working in the Girl Scout movement. Keep in mind that it is not appropriate to ask or assume what a girl’s sexual orientation is.

How has GSUSA supported the LGBT community?

GSUSA’s inclusion policy allows transgender children to be Girl Scouts. Girl Scouts of Colorado stated, “We accept all girls in kindergarten through 12th grade as members. If a child identifies as a girl and the child’s family presents her as a girl, Girl Scouts of Colorado welcomes her as a Girl Scout.”

In 2007, GSUSA honored 18-year-old Girl Scout Madeline as a National Young Woman of Distinction for her project promoting awareness to the intolerance shown to the LGBT community. This is the highest award given by GSUSA.

GSUSA has featured additional resources on its website for Girl Scouts to research, such as the Global Fund for Women and Tolerance.org. Each of these sites provides information and supports LGBT initiatives.

At a 2011 Convention, GSUSA held a seminar called “Moving Beyond Diversity to Inclusion,” which discussed some LGBT issues. At this same convention, GSUSA honored Annise Parker, Houston’s first openly gay mayor, as a guest speaker.

LGBT Activists/Leaders of GSUSA

Unlike the BSA, GSUSA welcomes leaders who are members of the LGBT community. Debra Nakatomi, GSUSA Board Member, is an LGBT activist who provides training in advancing LGBT rights. Lynn Cothren, former GSUSA Director of Administration from 2005-12, is a gay-rights advocate, speaker, and former board member of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. Timothy Higdon, former GSUSA Chief of External Affairs from 2010-12, is an LGBT activist, employee of Amnesty International, and a leader in the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

Conclusion

Whether the BSA’s lifted ban on gay membership will ultimately extend to adults is up in the air. Hopefully, its first step toward tolerance will not be its last as there are more hurdles to overcome. There are ramifications for the BSA only lifting its ban on youth members, as many worry that the message sent is that gay leaders are somehow inadequate. The policy also tells Scout youth that being an openly gay adult is unacceptable. Critics of the policy are concerned that a gay scout who has upheld the Boy Scout code during his entire career is stripped of his titles when he reaches 18, and condemn the policy as unfair. However, many see  the Girl Scouts of the USA as trailblazers who exemplify the civil freedoms America represents. Two similar organizations have ended up on significantly different paths–while modernization is always a slow process, it seems as though GSUSA will end up on the right side of history.

Resources

Primary

Boy Scouts of America: About the BSA

Boy Scouts of America: Current Policy

Girl Scouts: Who We Are

Girl Scouts: America’s Top Girl Scouts Named 2007 National Young Women of Distinction

Additional

100 Question for Girl Scouts: The Girl Scouts and the LGBT Agenda

ABCNews: Some Churches Say They’ll Cut Ties to Boy Scouts Following Its Lifting Ban on Gay Scouts

ACLU: U.S. Supreme Court Ruling That Boy Scouts Can Discriminate is Damaging but Limited

CNN: Disney to Pull Boy Scouts Funding by 2015 Over Policy Banning Gay Leaders

DiversityInc: Merck Condemns Boy Scout Gay Ban, Halts Funding

FoxNews: Transgender Girl Scout Controversy Sheds Light on Organization’s ‘Inclusive’ Policies

GLAAD: Boy Scouts of America: Reinstate Cub Scout Leader Who Was Removed For Being Gay

Huffington Post: Geoff McGrath, Gay Boy Scout Troop Leader, Allegedly Kicked Out of Organization

Scout and Pride: BSA and Homosexuality

WNDMoney: Look Which Companies Dumping Boy Scouts

Jessica McLaughlin

Jessica McLaughlin is a graduate of the University of Maryland with a degree in English Literature and Spanish. She works in the publishing industry and recently moved back to the DC area after living in NYC. Contact Jessica at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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A fight is brewing between law enforcement officials and Facebook, and it’s just gotten some new players in the form of other social media companies. New York City has been trying to use evidence posted on Facebook as proof of fraud committed by government employees. The city has now run afoul of some of the largest social network companies, who are arguing that the actions taken by the NYPD and prosecutors are violating their users’ Fourth Amendment rights.

It all started when the NYPD discovered that a number of government employees–including fireman, police officers, and others–had been taking disability payments without actually being disabled. Evidence of their fraud came from their Facebook accounts–some of the employees supposedly on disability were also engaging in clearly strenuous physical activities during the same time period. There were also private messages sent through the social network in which the alleged fraudsters admitted to their wrongdoing.

The investigators got a warrant to search the Facebook accounts of the employees that they thought were breaking the law, as well as accounts of their families, friends, and other acquaintances. While they did eventually succeed, it was only after Facebook argued strongly against the investigation. Facebook claimed that the search of private accounts is “unreasonable” and skirts Fourth Amendment protections. The company is now filing an appeal making the same argument–and they’ve got some friends backing them up. Foursquare, Kickstarter, MeetUp, and Tumblr have all decided to stand with Facebook. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the New York Civil Liberties Union will also be getting involved.

This case is yet another example of how the intersection between new technology and existing laws can get quite messy. The warrant originally requested by the NYPD involved a grand total of 381 Facebook accounts–many of which were only connected tangentially. The requested accounts had interacted with those of the accused–nothing more. Facebook argued that the search of those 381 accounts was tantamount to searching roughly 400 homes. That argument is fair, but a bit stretched. If there was a crime committed, the NYPD would have the right to search 400 houses, as long as they could prove it was reasonable.

In response, Facebook’s Deputy Chief Counsel Chris Sonderby argued,

It appeared to us from the outset that there would be a large number of people who were never charged in court. The district attorney’s response was that these people would have their day in court. There are more than 300 people that will never have that chance.

But according to NYPD and prosecutors, they did just that–they provided almost 100 pages of documentation explaining why they were searching each account when they requested the warrant.

There’s also the question of what right Facebook has to the accounts in their system. They challenged the warrant on behalf of their clients, and there’s a lot of legal ambiguity as to whether they were able to do so. They most certainly could not have alerted their clients that they were being investigated–that would have been impeding an investigation. Facebook claims that this created a big problem for their attorneys–they couldn’t do anything to stop it on their clients’ behalf, and they couldn’t do anything to warn their customers to get them involved.

The fact that other social networks have now said they’re going to join this legal fight will go a long way. As electronic communications become more and more popular, existing laws may not be able to keep up. While the collective action of social media companies may be forming a powerful lobby, whether or not their arguments for privacy and Fourth Amendment rights will prevail is up to the appeals court.

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Anneliese Mahoney (@AMahoney8672) is Lead Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured image courtesy of [Nick Booth via Flickr]

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Social Media Search Warrant Fight Heats Up appeared first on Law Street.

Several LGBT rights groups have withdrawn their support for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), a bill that would ban employers from refusing to hire or discriminating against workers based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. A coalition of groups that support LGBT rights, such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Lambda Legal, and the National Center for Lesbian Rights, is leading the charge away from the ENDA. This comes as a surprise, given that ENDA previously had strong support from these same groups. They are pulling support from a bill they have long worked to pass for only one reason–the recent ruling in the Hobby Lobby case. The problem is that they may be overreacting.

Since the ruling was handed down in the Hobby Lobby case, there have been misinterpretations of the case from both sides of the aisle. The liberal side of the debate has rallied behind Justice Ginsburg’s dissent, saying that the “floodgates” have been opened for religious freedom suits. That argument is the reason why so many LGBT groups have removed their support for the ENDA. They fear that corporations who wish to discriminate will be able to sue under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), the same way that Hobby Lobby did. They are scared that the Supreme Court could rule that a religious corporation not being allowed to discriminate on the basis of sexuality is a violation of RFRA. I understand this fear, excellently articulated here by our blogger Chris Copeland, but I think that they are simply overreacting to Justice Ginsburg’s dissent. The ruling itself was very narrow and will likely never serve as a precedent for sexual discrimination.

How am I so sure of this? Let’s put it this way, these suits will almost definitely not happen as long as Justice Anthony Kennedy remains the swing vote on the Supreme Court. Kennedy did vote with the majority on Hobby Lobby, but it is clear from his concurring opinion that his vote came with some serious strings attached. Kennedy implied that he only voted the way he did because of the narrowness of the case. He believed in this specific instance that the least-restrictive means test was not met, and pointed out that the government already allowed exceptions for non-profit corporations. The court’s ruling made it clear that the decision only applies to a religious exception for the contraceptive mandate, and that all other potential religious exceptions must be evaluated individually. Simply put, Hobby Lobby is not an invitation to use the RFRA to allow sexual discrimination.

If a case arguing that job discrimination should be allowed under the RFRA ever made it to the Supreme Court, there is no way Kennedy would vote to allow it. There are several reasons for this. Kennedy wrote the majority opinion in Lawrence v. Texas, a case that ruled any law prohibiting sexual acts between members of the same sex in private was unconstitutional. He also authored the opinion in United States v. Windsor, the ruling that struck down the Defense of Marriage Act. Kennedy has long defended the rights of the LGBT community and I do not think he would change his mind if a corporation sued to use RFRA as a basis for legal sexual discrimination. The government banning sexual discrimination would meet the least-restrictive means test, while the contraceptive mandate did not, a distinction that would surely be important to Kennedy.

It’s sad to see these LGBT groups end their support for the ENDA. It is still a law that could do a lot of good. Any challenge to the ENDA under the guise of religious freedom would almost certainly turn out differently than the Hobby Lobby case, but with support being pulled from the law, it will probably never become an issue.

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Matt DeWilde (@matt_dewilde25) is a member of the American University class of 2016 majoring in politics and considering going to law school. He loves writing about politics, reading, watching Netflix, and long walks on the beach. Contact Matt at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured image courtesy of [Ted Eytan via Flickr]

Matt DeWilde

Matt DeWilde is a member of the American University class of 2016 majoring in politics and considering going to law school. He loves writing about politics, reading, watching Netflix, and long walks on the beach. Contact Matt at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post LGBT Rights Groups Pulling Support for ENDA in Light of Hobby Lobby Ruling appeared first on Law Street.

Two big fights are happening between the White House and the Senate over judicial nominees. Well, that’s nothing new, of course, but the two fights are pretty interesting.

Want to guess the two sides?

Well, if you guessed Democrats vs. Republicans…you’re wrong. The two sides in opposition are the Obama Administration and some Senate Democrats, although for very different reasons when it comes to the two nominees.

The first nominee is Michael Boggs. If appointed, he would have a lifetime seat on the US District Court for the Northern District of Georgia. He’s a pretty conservative man–as a Georgia legislator he voted very much to the right on some contentious issues. These include voting to keep the Confederate symbol on the flag of Georgia, make abortion laws stricter, banning gay marriage, and defending discrimination against gay couples.

So why in the world would President Obama nominate Boggs? Well it’s all part of a deal. Georgia, like much of the United States, has long been plagued with a shortage of judges. There are constantly open seats on every level of the judiciary. Anytime one side nominates someone too controversial, they get bogged down and that seat never gets filled. So Obama made a deal with the two Republican Senators from Georgia–Senators Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson. They compromised on seven nominees–four of whom were GOP picks, three are liberal. And the nominees are a package deal, meaning the Senate need to approve all or nothing.

It was a gutsy move on Obama’s part. And it looks like it is really not panning out well at all. They do not appear to have a problem with the other three conservative nominees, but many Democrats say that Boggs is just too much of a compromise.

For example, Human Rights Watch released a statement, saying, “through this clear and unapologetic record Boggs has signaled his hostility towards issues of equality in his home state as an elected official. If confirmed, Boggs’ could entrench these destructive, anti-equality values on the federal bench for generations to come.” The Congressional Black Caucus said they were taken by surprise by the nomination and condemned the nomination. The hearing will be today, and it will be interesting to see if there’s enough opposition for this deal to fall completely apart. 

But Michael Boggs isn’t the only judicial nominee that’s causing problems for the White House. Obama nominated David Barron, a Harvard Law School Professor to a seat on the First Circuit Court of Appeals. Unlike with Boggs, the disagreement isn’t over Barron’s politics–he’s actually pretty liberal. Instead the hesitation comes from his work on a particular case, the killing of an American extremist named Anwar al-Awlaki.

Barron worked on the team that put together the legal justification for the killing of al-Awlaki by American forces. Liberal criticism of Barron includes the fact that they do not believe the White House has released enough information on Barron’s views and involvements on the subject. Prominent liberal lobbying group ACLU, as well as both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have demanded the release of supposed memos detailing that involvement.

All of these judicial nominees hang in the balance, which is sad because the deal would make progress in filling seats, and David Barron himself is supremely qualified. And honestly speaking, I think the problems come from a lack of prudence in the White House and a strange and surprising disconnect between Obama and fellow Democrats. He’s not running for election again, obviously, but that doesn’t mean that Obama can afford to piss off too many of his usual allies. They hold the power to make the last few years of his presidency pretty ineffectual. If they deny these nominees, lots of behind-the-scenes work will be thrown out of the window, leaving behind the problem of empty courts and backed up cases. Obama has a couple choices here: asking for permission or for forgiveness. So far he’s been choosing the latter, but at this point, the former may be better advised.

[Msnbc]
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Anneliese Mahoney (@AMahoney8672) is Lead Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

Feature image courtesy of [Tim Evanson via Flickr]

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Obama Administration Struggles with Judicial Nominees appeared first on Law Street.

The fourth amendment is supposed to protect Americans against unreasonable searches and seizures. You may think that law enforcement officials always need a search warrant, or at least probable cause, to confiscate and look through items like electronic devices. But if you live, or just happen to be, within 100 miles of the American border, you would be wrong.

Assisted by the ACLU, Pascal Abidor brought a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, after his laptop was searched without probable cause after he returned from an overseas trip to Lebanon.

While on a train from Canada to New York, Abidor was approached. Officials told him to enter his password on the computer, and subsequently saw pictures from Hezbollah rallies in the Middle East. Abidor claims they were for educational purposes (he is an Islamic Studies student), but the officers proceeded to detain him for several hours, further searching the computer and questioning him. He was held for several hours and eventually released without being charged, but his laptop was not returned to him for over 10 days.

The government has historically been able to conduct searches for just about any reason if they take place at, or around, the US border. But this case, and others like it, has sparked a debate about 21st century searches: ones that involve electronic devices.

In this case, the ACLU contended that broadly allowing the government to search electronic devices at the border could lead to unfairly targeting individuals who may not be breaking the law, or using the “buffer zone” (the 100-mile radius in which these kinds of searches are allowed) around the US border, in which these searches without probable cause are allowed, as an excuse to search random persons.

But Judge Korman, who ruled on the case on December 31, 2013, thought otherwise. He noted that searches at the border have been common, as well as legally allowed, to take place at the border historically. It only makes sense, then, to extend that precedent to electronic devices like laptops in the 21st century, which were not previously accounted for only because they did not exist.

The Supreme Court has not ruled on the issue of pursuing electronic devices specifically, but there are two cases that are often cited in support of the government’s border-searching ability. In 2005, the 4th circuit Court of Appeals decided in U.S. v. Ickes that a search of a laptop in a man’s car, on which child pornography was discovered, was indeed legal.

In 2008, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals filed a similar ruling in USA v. Arnold, which upheld the practice allowing US Customs and Border Control agents to inspect computers without probable cause.

So with this historical precedent, what is the confusion over these searches?

One problem might rest with the fact there is so much information stored on things like laptops and cell phones. Where historically searches were limited to physical items, searching electronic devices presents a difficulty in that they have virtually no boundaries. While some things, like files and pictures, are contained on the physical device, others, like email and social media sites, are connected to the Internet. Theoretically, a person’s contacts, connections, and other personal information could all be searched at any airport or border inspection, without probable cause. This amount of information has never been accessible to agents before.

Additionally, some believe that until the Supreme Court has reviewed and ruled on the practice, we have no way of knowing if it will be upheld Constitutionally. But there is no guarantee the Supreme Court will ever hear the matter, so for now, only rulings that matter are those handed down by the various appellate courts.

While proponents of these border searches point to the security benefits attached to them, it is important to question whether the information gained from these searches outweighs the personal liberty and security that has been lost by them.  We must take into account how an age filled with technology and near unlimited information accessible on mobile electronic devices may be a different ball game than searches and seizures at borders in the past.

 [Huffington Post] [RT] [U.S. v. Ickes] [U.S. v. Arnold] [Abidor v. Napolitano] [ACLU]

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Molly Hogan (@molly_hogan13)

Featured image courtesy of [Office of Public Affairs/Shane T. McCoy/US Marshals via Flickr]

Molly Hogan

Molly Hogan is a student at The George Washington University and formerly an intern at Law Street Media. Contact Molly at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Warrant Not Necessary appeared first on Law Street.

2013 was the year that brought us the NSA spying scandal, thanks to Edward Snowden. 2014 may be the year that brings us answers about what the NSA was doing, thanks to the American Civil Liberties Union.

Today, the ACLU filed a lawsuit that if successful, would require the NSA to disclose the details of their spying program, under the parameters of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

The two sides of the argument are anything but clear. The ACLU is filing in regards to Act 12333, signed in 1981, which allows surveillance of foreign targets. The ACLU is claiming that the actions taken by the NSA go beyond what is allowed by the Act 12333. This is just the latest in multiple ACLU lawsuits agains the NSA and other related government agencies and departments. Other lawsuits have included arguments that the NSA spying in unconstitutional under the First and Fourth amendments, or that it goes beyond what is allowed by the Patriot Act.

The government has obviously not lain out a public defense yet, but there has been speculation about how this lawsuit will fare. One of the ways that the government might address the controversy is to emphasize a long history of the third party doctrine. The third party doctrine was born out of a few different Supreme Court cases, originally Smith v. Maryland and United States v. Miller. In the Miller case regarding government access of a citizen’s bank account, the Supreme Court stated,

The depositor takes the risk, in revealing his affairs to another, that the information will be conveyed by that person to the Government. This Court has held repeatedly that the Fourth Amendment does not prohibit the obtaining of information revealed to a third party and conveyed by him to Government authorities, even if the information is revealed on the assumption that it will be used only for a limited purpose and the confidence placed in the third party will not be betrayed.

Essentially, this means that our right to privacy does not guarantee our privacy from warrantless searches if the information has been provided to third-parties on a voluntary basis.  This third party doctrine was obviously much different before our constant use of technology. Now, almost everything we do online can fall under the third party doctrine–meaning that almost everything we do is hypothetically fair game for the NSA. Another way in which the government could defend their actions could be a Patriot Act based argument.

Of course, we don’t know if these arguments, or something completely different, will be how the Government defends their actions in court, or even if it will make it that far. A spokesman for the Justice Department has stated that the government plans to respond to the lawsuit in court. Given the amount of similar lawsuits by the ACLU that have been rejected and are now up for appeal, this could very well lead to a very public Supreme Court battle that will decide the future of government oversight through electronic means.

[The Atlantic]

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Anneliese Mahoney (@AMahoney8672) is Lead Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured image courtesy of [National Security Agency via Wikipedia]

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post ACLU Files New NSA Suit appeared first on Law Street.

The old saying “crime pays” has typically been used to explain organized crime, but few people consider organizations on the other side of the law, where private prisons profit for every additional prisoner housed in their facilities. These companies have been developing a significant amount of political clout recently, and their influence on state and local governments only continues to grow.

Some quick facts about prisons in the United States:

• In 2010, there was an estimated 2,266,832 prisoners in the United States.

• There were 130,950 prisoners in private correctional facilities in 2011, which is more than 12 percent of total prisoners in the U.S.

• The private prison population has almost doubled since 1999.

• The U.S. incarceration rate (prisoners per 100,000 U.S. citizens) has risen from 131 in 1978 to 492 in 2012.

• The United States has the largest amount of prisoners in the world, in both total number and percentage of its population. [NY Times]

Prison privatization in the United States began in the 1980s when massive growth in prison populations forced many states to find new solutions for housing their criminals. This trend has picked up again in recent years, as budgetary constraints have caused local governments to pursue methods of cutting costs in public detention facilities. Although the financial benefits of privatized prisons has been called into question, states continue to agree to large contracts with the major private corrections companies.

The United States houses 16.4 percent of its federal prisoners and 6.8 percent of its state prisoners in privately owned correctional facilities. A report published by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) determined that there has been a 700 percent increase in the U.S. prison population from 1970 to 2005, an increase that far exceeds the population and crime rate changes during the same period. The effects of the prison population growth has primarily been reflected in private correctional facilities, as their increase in prisoners has dramatically outpaced those in public facilities.

The bottom line is: people are being sent to jail more frequently than ever before, and the private prison industry is experiencing significant benefits as a result.

The most shocking detail about the recent prison privatization trend has been the presence of “occupancy guarantees” in contracts made between state governments and prison contracting companies. Many of these guarantees require states to maintain 90 to even 100 percent occupancy rates in private facilities. Not only can such guarantees cost states money when requirements are not met, but it may even prevent sentencing reform, as local governments now have an interest in keeping their prisons full.

Click here to see the Huffington Post’s map detailing the locations of prisons that have occupancy rate guarantees of 90 percent and above.

A recent example of occupancy guarantees’ negative financial consequences occurred in Colorado. In this case, the state managed to close five different prisons since 2009 because of its declining crime rate, but as a result Colorado was forced to move over 3,000 prisoners from public prisons to private ones in order to fulfill its contractual obligations.  An article in the Washington Post notes that doing so cost the state nearly $2 million in 2013 compared to what the use of public correctional facilities would have cost.

Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and the GEO Group are the two largest private prison companies in the United States. CCA, the largest company in the industry, posted revenue numbers totaling at $1.75 billion in 2012 alone, according to the companies’ most recent SEC filing. The private prison industry is extremely large, and as CCA’s board of trustees states in its annual letter to investors, “our revenue is primarily from government entities at the federal, state, and local level”. Prison expenses are a significant part of most states’ budgets; according to a survey of 40 states conducted by the Vera Institute of Justice, the average cost per inmate was $31,286, and total expenses added up to almost $39 billion each year, among the states who participated.

The private prison lobbying groups have also been gaining a significant amount of political influence, as politicians have started to rely on campaign donations from the industry. According to a report by the Justice Policy Institute, the three major methods that the prison lobbying groups have employed are direct campaign funding, lobbying, and the formation of relationships with legislators.

Corrections Corporation of America was co-founded by three men in Tennessee, one of whom was Tom Beasley, who prior to starting the company was the head of the State Republican Party in the same state. CCA has had close ties with politics from its inception, and because nearly all of its business is done with the government, therefore, it was able to penetrate the market with ease.

Both the GEO Group and CCA have their own political action committees (PACs), which they have been employed to lobby for bills and donate to congressmen with favorable policy views. To avoid attention, most of the companies lobbying efforts are spent on campaign donations, rather than specific bills and ballot measures. However, the connections that the company has formed provides unique political power. According to an article in the Tulsa World, CCA’s spokesman Steve Owen stated that it has historically been company policy to not lobby or advocate for any policy that would affect the “basis or duration of an individual’s detention or incarceration”. Yet, a lot of gray area remains regarding what constitutes supporting a policy or its policymaker.

Two notable political issues where the private prison industry has profited the most are the war on drugs and the immigration debate. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 52.1 percent of federal prisoners and 17.4 percent of state prisoners have been imprisoned due to drug related offenses. Because drug crimes contribute to a very large proportion of U.S. prisoners, they have been able to keep the demand for correctional facilities high.

Private prisons have also taken on a greater role in housing illegal immigrants in their facilities, as more and more people are being detained each year. According to the AP, there are some 400,000 illegal immigrants in US prisons each year, which cost Americans nearly $2 billion in 2012 alone. Like the war on drugs, immigration detainment has had significant effects on maintaining and increasing the american prison populations, which statistics show have unevenly benefitted private prisons in recent years.

Private prisons have been dramatically increasing their share of the United States prison population in recent years. Budgetary pressures and corporate lobbying has placed pressure on public officials at the federal, state, and local levels to pursue new means of imprisonment. The CCA and the GEO Group have gained an unprecedented amount of political influence, leading to the creation of what some have referred to as the “Prison Industrial Complex”. Their influence continues to grow as incarceration rates remain high and very little has been done to control their ability to develop relationships with politicians. Arguably, the most startling product of this political allegiance has been the adoption of contracts with occupancy guarantees, which have costed states large amounts of money that many of them cannot afford. As the cost effectiveness of private prisons continues to be debated, the question remains: why are representatives from every level of government pursuing privatization?

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Featured image courtesy of [Kate Ter Haar via Flickr]

Kevin Rizzo

Kevin Rizzo is the Crime in America Editor at Law Street Media. An Ohio Native, the George Washington University graduate is a founding member of the company. Contact Kevin at krizzo@LawStreetMedia.com.

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