Category Archives: Courts

More Obama Administration Stonewalling

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President Barack Obama’s State Department is resuming its efforts to delay release of Hillary Clinton’s email collection, which she created on the private server she used in substitution for State’s legally mandated government-controlled server while she sat in the SecState chair.

State filed, in the records-release case brought by Citizens United (yes, that Citizens United), a request that all such cases be consolidated under one Federal judge, and the filing added

A significant amount of time is required to process the records and determine which documents are responsive and what portions of the documents are exempt….

I agree that a significant amount of time is required for this. State has had that significant amount of time afforded it already: some of these cases have been in progress for years, and it wasn’t until a Federal judge earlier this year ordered State to stand and deliver on a regular schedule that those deliveries began.

No, State has already had the time it’s requesting. Produce the emails. Full stop.

Another Example of Central Government Intrusion

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…into the States’ internal affairs. This one is via The New York Times and a piece Matt Apuzzo has there [emphasis added].

Burlington, WA, was a small city fighting what seemed like a local lawsuit. Three poor people said that their public lawyers were too overworked to adequately represent them in municipal court cases. The dispute went mostly unnoticed for two years, until the Obama administration became involved.

Unannounced, the Justice Department filed documents in the case and told the [Federal] judge that he had broad authority to demand changes in Burlington and nearby Mount Vernon. The judge quickly agreed and ordered the cities to hire a new public defense supervisor. He also said he would monitor their legal aid program for three years.

That the local case was being heard by a Federal judge isn’t the problem here; it’s that a coequal branch of the central government acceded to the demands of the Executive Branch and let DoJ prejudice the judge’s handling of the case.

That’s had far-reaching consequences:

Recently…the Justice Department has filed statements of interest in cases involving legal aid in New York, transgender students in Michigan, juvenile prisoners in solitary detention in California, and people who take videos of police officers in Baltimore. The government has weighed in on employment discrimination claims brought by transgender plaintiffs and a lawsuit over the right of blind people with service dogs to be able to use Uber, a car-sharing service.

DoJ has even less interest in these matters in what’s supposed to be a federal political structure, emphasized by the 10th Amendment (and in no small degree by the 9th Amendment), than does the Federal judiciary. These all are local matters, legitimately determined by institutions internal to the States involved. That such handling might (likely will) result in 50 different solutions to seemingly similar problems is part of the strength of a federal political arrangement. In the end, these seemingly similar problems are not that similar: they differ critically simply by their existence in widely differing political and social environments: those different States.

The Federal judiciary has lost sight of this. By acceding so blithely to Executive Branch intrusions, both branches are actively satisfying John Jay’s goal: reducing the States to the same relationship to the central government as counties have relative to their States, that of serving merely as districts to facilitate enforcement of the central government’s requirements.

There are Iron Curtains, and there are iron curtains.

Another Thought on SEC “Courts”

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The SEC runs its own courts as it looks to punish those it has decided have engaged in civilly, if not criminally, wrong doings. As I’ve written before, the SEC brings its cases, appoints and pays the judges who’ll adjudicate the cases, and it has first say on any appeals.

In just such a case, an accused person facing a flipped witness (one to whom the SEC has made certain blandishments regarding is own misbehaviors in return for his testimony against a fellow misbehaver) is worried about the effects of those blandishments over the course of his trial.

Critics…worry that key safeguards on the use of cooperators in criminal cases are lacking in the SEC’s administrative courts, where the agency…[has] the power to decide what to fine the cooperator after he or she testifies.

The agency’s multiple roles strike at the “fundamental fairness” of its hearings, violating the checks and balances required by the constitution, [accused’s’] lawyers said in a court filing.

Because the SEC is in an even better position—its in-house position—to effectively “encourage” proper testimony from its “cooperating” witnesses than are prosecutors in actual State or Federal trial courts.

Naturally, the presiding SEC administrative judge demurs.

The SEC in-house judge overseeing the case rejected this argument, saying it was an “attack on the administrative framework” of the SEC’s internal tribunal.

Well, NSS. It’s a valid attack, too, against a tribunal sorely lacking in fairness, much less due process.

Some of the Wages of Terror

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Families of victims, and some victims, of Palestinian Authority and Palestine Liberation Organization terror attacks against Israel from 2001 to 2004 won a judgment of nearly $220 million in February. Naturally, the PA is appealing the judgment.

“This could be the end of the Palestinian Authority,” Palestinian Authority attorney Mitchell Berger said in court. “And that’s why we’re here to argue over the judgment.”

Tough. You should have thought about that first. Your alleged inability to pay for your atrocities is not relevant to whether you should pay for your atrocities.

Just to add interest to the matter, President Barack Obama’s DoJ

which had previously not been involved in the 11-year-old case, informed the court it was considering filing a “statement of interest” in the case by Aug 10….

Naturally, Justice is refusing to tell us what its intervention is about. On the heels of the travesty of a deal just concluded with Iran over the latter’s nuclear weapons program, and considering that the PA terrorists remain clients of Iran, look for Justice to try to tell the appellate court that it must set aside the judgment.

School Choice and Unions

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There’s a contradiction in terms.

In January parents filed a petition to convert Palm Lane Elementary in Anaheim into a charter under California’s 2010 parent-trigger law, which allows a majority of parents in any failing school to force changes.

Naturally, the school’s district officials and teachers union demurred. Never mind that

Palm Lane had made the state Department of Education’s list of underperforming schools since 2003. Fewer than 40% of students scored proficient in English in 2013. About 85% are Hispanic, and most are low-income.

(Where is the Obama DoJ and disparate impact? Oh, wait…).

The officials and the unions went so far as to disregard California law as they dragged their feet and openly obstructed the conversion—and loss of union jobs and of income for the district officials’ use.

[U]nion even complained that signature gatherers were bribing parents with free iPads, a false allegation that the district superintendent repeated in a cautionary letter to parents.

Though more than 60% of parents signed the petition, the district threw out dozens of signatures that could not be “verified.” That is, the parents could not be reached between the hours of 8:30 am and 4:30 pm to confirm that they signed the petition. Maybe that’s because they were working.

Fortunately, and once again, a judge got one right.

Last Thursday Orange County Superior Court Judge Andrew Banks ruled in favor of the parents on all counts and rebuked the district’s conduct as “unreasonable, arbitrary, capricious and unfair.” He also scored district officials for violating their obligation under the trigger law to work in good faith with parents….

Judge Banks has ordered the district to accept the petition and allow parents to immediately begin soliciting charter school proposals.

Been all right, too, if the Judge also had ordered the district officials and the union to compensate the petitioners for their time wasted fighting these frivolous delays. Such an order might have given these officials pause as they plan their inevitable, time-wasting, delaying tactic of appeals.

Still, it’s a good ruling.