Author: admin

In 1975, the federal government convened an interagency committee to “(1) coordinate development of common definitions for racial and ethnic groups; (2) instruct the Federal agencies to collect racial and ethnic enrollment and other educational data on a compatible and nonduplicative basis.” Although the report that spurred the existence of the committee had focused on the lack of uniform definitions of Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, and American Indians, the committee decided that it would make recommendations for racial and ethnic categorizations for the entire American population.

The groups and definitions recommended by the committee form the basis for the groups and definitions we still use today, with one major exception. Here is the committee’s recommendation and explanation for the definition of a person in Caucasian/White category:

A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, or the Indian subcontinent. The major problem associated with this category, as with the “Asian.. –” category (above) was how to deal with persons from the Indian subcontinent. The question at issue was whether to include them in the minority category “Asian…” because they come from Asia and some are victims of discrimination in this country, or to include them in this category because they are Caucasians, though frequently of darker skin than other Caucasians. The final decision favored the latter. While evidence of discrimination against Asian Indians exists, it appears to be concentrated in specific geographical and occupational areas. Such persons can be identified in these areas through the use of a subcategory for their ethnic subgroup.

A Indian-American newspaper described what happened next:

In January 1976 … board members of the Association of Indians in America (AIA) and their legal counsel met with the Federal Interagency Committee’s representatives in Washington D.C. with the purpose of effecting a change in the Indian classification from the “White” category into the “Asian or Pacific Islander” category. Dr. Manoranjan Dutta, president of the AIA, said that his organization began its campaign for the reclassification in the wake of numerous complaints by Indians of alleged discrimination. According to Dr. Dutta, Indians were not getting equal opportunity in jobs, for example, and any discrimination which they faced was being covered up under the guise of their “White” classification—a sort of “hidden” discrimination. Only if they were classified in the “correct” category of “Asian” could they seek immediate legal redress in cases of discrimination. Furthermore, the Asian category appeared to be more appropriate due to geographical reasons—India is a part of Asia.

In August 1976, a review of the five categories was indeed made, and the Federal Interagency Committee agreed by consensus to move the Indian immigrants from the “White” category to the “Asian and Pacific Islander” category… Dr. Dutta announced later in November of 1976 the finalization of the classification change to the Indian media, but it tended to be largely ignored by the American press.

Interestingly, “another group of Indians, who disagreed with this change, and who preferred that Indians be classified as ‘White’ in this context, later approached Hall’s office to lobby for a return to the ‘status quo,’ but the effort was in vain, as the group had no data to back up their cause.”

The final rule, promulgated by the Office of Management and Budget, did place Indians in the “Asian” category, where they have remained ever since.

The reason that they were put in the white category to begin with has been lost to history, beyond what the report quoted above said. I suspect that part of the issue was that the category used previously for “Asian” was “Oriental,” by which people typically meant those from East Asia. Given that the largest relevant groups in the U.S. by far were Chinese, Japanese, and Filipinos, with very few Indians in the U.S. at the time, the committee was likely still used to separating East Asian “Orientals” from others.

In any event, that’s how Asian Indians, who had been deemed non-white by the Supreme Court in the days of the Asian Exclusion Act in the 1920s, almost became white in the 1970s.

For what it’s worth, it’s long been known that the initial committee report placed Indians in the white category and it was then changed to Asian, but I believe I’m the first one to dig up an account of what happened in the interim.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2NbiInj
via IFTTT

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced Wednesday that her office is introducing a package of legislation to reform the city’s punitive vehicle impound program, which was the subject of a 2018 Reason investigation and several ongoing civil rights lawsuits.

Lightfoot’s proposed ordinance would reduce impound fines and cap storage fees, end impoundments for many non-driving offenses, and add an “innocent owner” defense for those whose cars were used without their knowledge.

“It is critical that we take this step to help residents that for far too long have suffered at a disproportional impact from an outdated program that too frequently resulted in thousands of dollars in fines and loss of personal property,” Lightfoot said in a press release. “Today marks another monumental step in our work to right the wrongs of the past and offer assistance to residents that need it the most, but while we take this step today, we also realize that there is still work to be done and will remain diligent in our approach to build a fairer, more equitable Chicago.”

The legislation follows investigations by Reason, WBEZ, and ProPublica Illinois that showed that Chicago’s massive vehicle impound program regularly ensnared innocent owners and low-income residents, soaking them in thousands of dollars of fines and storage fees, regardless of their ability to pay. Chicago seizes cars for a litany of offenses, including drug crimes, and even in cases where owners beat criminal charges, they’re still forced to also go through the city’s quasi-judicial administrative hearings court, where low standards of evidence and few procedural protections almost always ensure that defendants and up in debt and bereft of their cars.

For example, Reason profiled the case of Spencer Byrd, a Chicago-area auto mechanic whose Cadillac was seized and impounded after he was pulled over by the police. Byrd was giving a customer, a man he said he’d never met before, a ride, and when police searched the passenger they discovered heroin in his pocket. Byrd was never charged with a crime, and he in fact beat a civil asset forfeiture case against his car in Illinois state court, where a judge ruled he was an innocent owner.

However, Chicago refused to release Byrd’s car, which the city was simultaneously claiming under its municipal code. Byrd was forced to go through the Chicago’s Byzantine impound hearing process, where an administrative law judge found he was liable for having illegal drugs in his car

Former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel steeply raised impound fines in 2011 as part of a larger strategy of using fines and fees to close the city’s budget gaps, but Lightfoot’s press release notes that revenues from the impound program actually declined after 2011. WBEZ’s investigation found that the city sells impounded cars to its sole towing contractor at scrap prices—far below their actual value. Meanwhile, Chicago has become a national leader in Chapter 13 bankruptcy filings by residents, which allows those with regular incomes to develop payment plans to repay their debts.

“The evidence is clear: when cities rely on police to generate revenue through fines and fees, it’s a lose-lose situation for both residents and their local government,” Priya Sarathy Jones, national policy and campaigns director at the Fines and Fees Justice Center, said in a statement. “This is an important step to improve Chicago’s economy and to roll back policies that result in unnecessary encounters between police and residents.”

Last April, the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public interest law firm, filed a civil rights lawsuit against Chicago, alleging that the city’s impound scheme violates the Illinois and U.S. Constitution’s protections against excessive fines and unreasonable seizures, as well as due process protections.

Byrd is one of the named plaintiffs in the lawsuit. Two of the other plaintiffs, Jerome Davis and Veronica Walker-Davis, had their car seized by the city after they dropped it off at a mechanic, who drove it on a suspended license and was pulled over.

“I’m thinking that I’m just going to go and give a statement, show proof that my car wasn’t in my possession, and everything will be okay, but in fact it turned into a last year. “I felt like I was pretty much in The Twilight Zone.”

Because there is currently no innocent owner defense, the couple was found liable for fines and fees. Here’s what happened next:

The couple managed to find a pro bono lawyer and negotiate their fine down to $1,170, but when they arrived with cash in hand, they were told the registration on their car had lapsed in the more than six months it had been sitting in an impound lot, and the city would not release it without a current registration.

Walker-Davis rushed the next day to get their registration renewed, which cost another $101, and got the city to agree to extend the deadline for the couple to pay their impound fines. In an email provided to Reason, a lawyer for Chicago’s law department wrote to the couple: “The City will agree to extend the time for you to pay the settlement agreement to 4/12/19.”

But when the couple showed up to retrieve their car on April 10, it was gone. The city had already sold it off.

Institute for Justice attorney Diana Simpson said in a press release today that Lightfoot’s proposed reforms “are a strong first step to improving the city’s impound racket that ensnares tens of thousands of Chicagoans each year.” 

“Unfortunately, her proposed ordinance does not go far enough to right the wrongs of the city’s impound scheme,” Simpson continues. “It still does not fix the burdensome and confusing system that owners must traverse to get their cars back. The city still unconstitutionally ransoms people’s cars, refusing to release them until owners have paid all fines and fees that might be due—even without a judge finally determining the car was properly impounded. And the reforms do nothing to help most people who have already been victimized by the impound program, including those whose cars the city has destroyed.”

Chicago’s impound program is being challenged in a separate lawsuit by Andrea Santiago, a Chicago woman with multiple sclerosis whose van, which included a $10,000 wheelchair lift, was improperly towed and destroyed last year.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2YeyJ2k
via IFTTT

I dubbed June 15, 2020 “Blue Monday.” Conservatives went 0-4, losing on guns, immigration, the death penalty, and Title VII. I previously associated June 15 with Magna Carta day, an important day on the calendar for the rule of law. Now, another sentiment occupies that day.

Blue Monday has now turned into Blue Week, with a loss in the DACA case. Conservatives are 0-5. How did President Trump respond? With a promise for another Supreme Court list!

…Based on decisions being rendered now, this list is more important than ever before (Second Amendment, Right to Life, Religous Liberty, etc.) – VOTE 2020!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 18, 2020

Those sorts of promises are no longer meaningful. And more importantly, they will no longer appeal to donors. I think the latter fact will quickly modify the former strategy.

Alas, I suspect that Blue Week will turn into Blue June. I previously made predictions for assignments. Let me update my predictions.

January Sitting

There were eight cases argued during the January sitting. Only one is outstanding: Espinoza. Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Breyer have not yet written for that sitting. I don’t think either Justice is willing to write an opinion that declares Blaine Amendments unconstitutional nationwide. Certainly stare decisis on the Kagan Court requires standing by the longstanding Blaine Amendments. I view either assignment as a defeat for conservatives: either Roberts or Breyer writes a baby-splitting decision that leaves no one happy. I’m not sure what the middle-ground is here, but they’ll think of something.

February Sitting

There were nine cases argued during the February sitting. Four are outstanding: Thuraissigiam, Seila Law, Liu, and June Medical. Roberts, Breyer, Alito, Sotomayor have not yet written.

Justice Sotomayor will write Liu v. SEC, an unremarkable criminal law case. And Roberts will assign Thuraissigiam to Justice Alito. I’m sure Roberts is content to narrow the scope of the Suspension Clause, especially in light of his Guantanamo decisions.

The Chief will assign Seila to Justice Breyer, who upholds the CFPB in its entirety. That agency is far too important to cripple before an election. Vice Presidential candidate Warren would love that sort of ruling to run on! And this decision avoids the need to clarify severability doctrine. Muddled doctrine is ideal in John Roberts’s multiverse of madness. Meanwhile, here on Planet Earth, courts and lawyers suffer from this lack of clarity. Justice Kavanaugh dissents, and, as he did in the D.C. Circuit, rules that the Court can simply sever the for-cause removal provision. Gorsuch and Alito find that the for-cause provision is not severable and the entire agency is invalid. Justice Thomas argues that severability doctrine violates Article III, and the remedy should be limited to the Plaintiffs’ injuries.

Finally, the Chief Justice will write June Medical. My prediction: he concludes the Fifth Circuit disregarded binding precedent in Whole Woman’s Health. June will be blue.

If I am right, the only ostensible conservative victory would be Thuraissigiam, which frankly, no one outside the immigration bar will care about beyond.

I’ll hold off on making predictions for the remaining 10 cases argued in May. We probably won’t see any decisions for those cases in the next two weeks. Will there also be a Blue July? Probably.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3efYsgi
via IFTTT

The day after the June 12 shooting of Rayshard Brooks during an arrest for driving under the influence at a Wendy’s restaurant in Atlanta, Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said she did not think Officer Garrett Rolfe’s use of deadly force was justified. Rolfe was fired immediately, and yesterday—five days after the incident—Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard announced that the former officer had been charged with felony murder, which is punishable by life in prison or the death penalty, along with 10 counts of assault, aggravated assault, property damage, and violations of his oath.

The swift action against Rolfe was welcomed by Brooks’ family and many critics of police abuse. But the timing and context of the dismissal and the charges, along with details of the deadly encounter that Howard glossed over during a press conference yesterday, create the appearance that he and Bottoms rushed to judgment about the shooting. The incident provoked vigorous local protests (including an arson fire at the Wendy’s where Brooks was killed) on the heels of nationwide demonstrations in response to the suffocation of George Floyd by Minneapolis police on Memorial Day.

“As protests were touched off across the country by the death of Mr. Floyd, amid a pandemic that has disproportionately affected African-Americans, the demonstrations in Atlanta were especially heated,” The New York Times notes. But notwithstanding the justified outrage at Floyd’s death, it is important to recognize that some excessive-force cases are more complicated than others. The question of whether Rolfe committed murder hinges on the facts of this particular case, which should not be overlooked to make a statement about holding police accountable, as important as that goal is.

“While there may be debate as to whether this was an appropriate use of deadly force,” Bottoms said on Saturday, “I firmly believe that there is a distinction between what you can do and what you should do.” Yet “whether this was an appropriate use of deadly force” is the crux of this case, and the mayor had already concluded that it was not, less than 24 hours after it happened.

“Mr. Brooks never presented himself as a threat,” Howard told reporters yesterday. The district attorney was referring to what happened after a Wendy’s employee called police at 10:33 p.m. last Friday to report that a driver had fallen asleep in the restaurant’s drive-through lane. Officer Devin Brosnan arrived nine minutes later, woke Brooks up, and asked him to move his car to a nearby parking space. Seven minutes after that, Brosnan called for another officer to assist him, and Rolfe arrived at 10:56 p.m.

As Howard emphasized, Brooks was polite, cooperative, and even cordial during the first 41 minutes of his interaction with the officers, which included a consensual pat-down, a field sobriety test, and a breath test that put his blood alcohol concentration at 0.1 percent, slightly above the legal limit of 0.08 percent. But things changed dramatically when Rolfe announced that Brooks “had too much drink to be driving,” grabbed him from behind, and tried to handcuff him. Howard said Rolfe violated department policy at that point by failing to explicitly inform Brooks that he was being arrested for driving under the influence, which is the basis for one of the charges against Rolfe.

Brooks responded to the sudden transformation of what had until then been a surprisingly friendly encounter by pulling away from Rolfe. He ended up wrestling with the officers on the pavement of the parking lot. They asked him to “stop fighting” and warned him that he would be tased if he did not. When Brosnan drew his Taser and tried to subdue Brooks with it, Brooks grabbed the weapon. After some more wrestling, Brooks stood up, punched Rolfe, and ran away, still holding the Taser. Rolfe ran after Brooks, firing his Taser in an unsuccessful effort to stop him. After Brooks fired Brosnan’s Taser at Rolfe, his aim too high to hit the officer, Rolfe drew his handgun and fired three shots, two of which struck Brooks in the back.

Under the Supreme Court’s ruling in the 1985 case Tennessee v. Garner, the crucial question about Rolfe’s use of deadly force is whether he had “probable cause” to believe that Brooks posed “a significant threat of death or serious physical injury” to Rolfe or others. After reviewing eyewitness reports, physical evidence, and video from dashcams, body cameras, the restaurant’s surveillance system, and bystanders’ cellphones, Howard concluded that such a belief was not justified by the circumstances.

That conclusion is debatable. As The New York Times noted earlier this week, “officers are trained that they have the right to escalate their use of force if they believe someone is threatening to incapacitate them.” Brooks had already taken Brosnan’s Taser. If he had managed to use it effectively against Rolfe, the officer might have been thinking, Brooks also could have grabbed Rolfe’s gun.

Furthermore, although Tasers are promoted as “less than lethal” weapons, they can be deadly. Howard’s own office described the Taser as “a deadly weapon” in a recent case involving an assault by Atlanta police officers on nonviolent protesters.

Howard disputed that potential defense. At the point when Rolfe shot Brooks, the district attorney said, the officer knew that the Taser had already been fired twice, which meant it was no longer effective and therefore “presented no danger to him or to any other persons.” Howard also said Rolfe violated his oath by firing his Taser at a fleeing suspect, which department policy forbids, and recklessly endangered other people in the parking lot when he fired his handgun, which is the basis for several assault charges against Rolfe. Howard noted that one round hit a Chevrolet Trailblazer, which is the basis for another charge: criminal damage to property.

Lance LoRusso, Rolfe’s attorney, vigorously disputed Howard’s characterization of the incident. “Mr. Brooks violently attacked two officers and disarmed one of them,” he said in a press release. “When Mr. Brooks turned and pointed an object at Officer Rolfe, any officer would have reasonably believed that he intended to disarm, disable, or seriously injure him.” That description suggests Rolfe did not necessarily realize Brooks was firing a Taser. According to Howard, the pat-down had discovered a “bulge” in Brooks’ pants pocket, but the officers accepted his assurance that it was a wad of bills.

Brosnan is charged with violating department policy and assaulting Brooks by standing on his shoulder as he lay on the ground after the shooting. Brosnan, who recalled standing on Brooks’ arm rather than his shoulder, said he did that because he was not sure whether Brooks had a weapon. Rolfe is charged with assaulting Brooks by kicking him after the shooting, which he presumably will argue was justified by a fear of further violence.

“This was not a rush to judgment,” said Don Samuel, Brosnan’s lawyer. “This was a rush to misjudgment.” Samuel said Brooks initially shot Brosnan with the Taser he grabbed from him, causing Brosnan to fall backward and suffer a concussion as his head hit the pavement.

Howard charged Rolfe and Brosnan with failing to promptly treat Brooks’ wounds. Samuel denied that, saying Rolfe ran to his car to get a first aid kit “less than a minute” after the shooting and “Devin did what he could to save Mr. Brooks.” According to a video-based reconstruction of the incident by The New York Times, Rolfe ran to his SUV a minute after the shooting and called for an ambulance. The Times says the two officers began to “provide medical assistance” at 11:25 p.m., two minutes after the shooting, when Rolfe can be seen bandaging Brooks’ torso.

Howard described Brosnan as a “cooperating witness” who was ready to testify against Rolfe, a characterization that Samuel immediately disputed. “We’ve never agreed to testify,” Samuel told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “We’ve never agreed to cooperate. We’ve never agreed to plead guilty.”

The newspaper notes that the charges against Brosnan, who has been an Atlanta police officer for just two years, “were a surprise to many,” since he “interacted politely” with Brooks and “didn’t reach for his gun” even after “Brooks took off with his Taser.” It adds that “the contradiction” between what Samuel said and Howard’s description of what Brosnan had agreed to do, along with “other unusual aspects” of the press conference, raised “questions about the speed with which Howard completed his investigation.”

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI), which “investigates nearly all police shootings in the state,” typically “takes between 60 and 90 days to complete probes,” the Journal-Constitution says. The GBI has not yet announced its findings regarding Rolfe’s shooting of Brooks, which happened less than a week ago. The agency said it was “not aware of today’s press conference before it was conducted” and was “not consulted on the charges filed by the District Attorney.” The Journal-Constitution notes that “the GBI is currently investigating Howard, who faces a tough runoff election against his former chief deputy prosecutor Fani Willis in August, and his use of a nonprofit to funnel at least $140,000 in city of Atlanta funds to supplement his salary.”

Philip Holloway, a former prosecutor and local criminal defense attorney, told the paper Howard is “clearly not interested in what the GBI has to say,” adding, “It will be very interesting if GBI doesn’t come up with the same conclusions that he did. If not, they will become star witnesses for defense.”

Under Georgia’s felony murder statute, prosecutors have to show that Rolfe caused Brooks’ death while committing a felony—in this case, aggravated assault, which he allegedly committed by firing his gun at Brooks. In other words, the same conduct that killed Brooks is also the predicate felony for the murder charge, which means prosecutors do not have to prove that Rolfe intended to kill Brooks. Yet the penalty—death or life imprisonment—is the same as the penalty for intentional, premeditated murder.

If Rolfe’s use of deadly force was justified, he did not commit aggravated assault when he fired his weapon and he therefore cannot be guilty of felony murder. Jurors historically have been extremely reluctant to second-guess police officers’ judgment in cases like this, although that may change because of the impact that George Floyd’s death and other recent travesties have had on public opinion. Leaving aside the double standard that police tend to benefit from when it comes to the use of deadly force, the question is whether prosecutors can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Rolfe did not have probable cause to believe, given the circumstances, that Brooks posed “a significant threat of death or serious physical injury.”

Howard argues that Rolfe’s demeanor at the time of the shooting suggests he was not really afraid of Brooks. “At the time that the shot was fired, the utterance made by Officer Rolfe was, ‘I got him,'” he said at the press conference. “The demeanor of the officers immediately after the shooting did not reflect any fear or danger of Mr. Brooks, but their actions really reflected other kinds of emotions.”

Notwithstanding Howard’s purported insight into the officers’ hearts and minds, their lawyers will argue that they dealt professionally and appropriately with a violent suspect who had repeatedly assaulted them, who had fired a Taser at both of them, and who may have continued to pose a threat even after he was shot because they were not sure whether the Taser was the only weapon they had to worry about. Whether or not that story is true, a jury might very well find it plausible enough for reasonable doubt about the prosecution’s case.

The outcome of what should have been a routine DUI arrest is obviously horrifying. No one deserves to be killed by the police because he drove a car after he had a little too much to drink—a low-level misdemeanor that typically is handled with sanctions such as fines, probation, community service, and license suspension. Rolfe and Brosnan arguably had several opportunities to avoid that deadly outcome.

Brooks would still be alive if Brosnan had followed his initial inclination to let him pull out of the drive-through lane and take a nap in a parking space. “He was not an experienced DUI investigator, so that’s why he called Officer Rolfe in,” Howard said. “He indicated to us that he was somewhat surprised that it accelerated into an actual arrest, because he thought that the situation might have been resolved before then.”

Brooks repeatedly volunteered to lock his car and walk to his sister’s house, which was nearby. He would still be alive if the officers had let him do that. At the same time, one can imagine the outcry against such lenience if Brooks had later returned to his car and gotten into an accident.

The charge that Rolfe violated department policy by failing to explicitly tell Brooks that he was being arrested for DUI may seem picayune. But Brooks might not have resisted his arrest if Rolfe had not sprung it on him so suddenly. One second, he was chatting amiably with the officers, and the next he was being grabbed and handcuffed.

Finally, Rolfe could have let Brooks go when he ran away and tracked him down later based on his driver’s license and car registration. When Rolfe decided to chase Brooks, it seems, he was simply trying to detain him and complete the arrest. There was no reason to think that Brooks at that point posed any danger to the general public. But Rolfe was not obligated to let Brooks go, and what happened next, by Rolfe’s account, was determined by what Brooks did: He fired the Taser at Rolfe, who according to his lawyer did not know whether it was a stun gun or perhaps a firearm that the pat-down had missed.

What was Rolfe’s state of mind at that moment, and was it justified by the circumstances? Those are the questions a jury will have to confront. They have nothing to do with George Floyd’s death or the general problem of police brutality. But it sure looks like those issues have colored the public and official reaction to the shooting.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3fDEvQN
via IFTTT