San Francisco City Attorney Kathleen Morris was joined by Professor David Barron and Professor Gerald Frug of Harvard Law School and Professor Richard Ford of Stanford Law School to discuss whether local governments are powerless instrumentalities of states or whether they should be allowed to pursue constitutional claims on behalf of their constituents. HarvardCRCL.org blogged the discussion live.
U.S. jurisprudence has dealt with constitutional rights since the enactment of the U.S. Constitution. In contrast, it was explicitly decided by the framers of the Australian Constitution to not include a similar Bill of Rights, although the American notions of judicial review, separation of powers, and federalism were incorporated. Accordingly, throughout Australian history courts have rarely acted to protect civil rights on the basis of constitutional interpretation. This method of rights protection has been largely inadequate to protect Indigenous Australians from breaches of their civil rights, particularly in regards to equal protection and racial discrimination.
This year in May, Georgia passed “one of nation’s the toughest immigration measures.” It is one of the many copycat laws modeled after Arizona’s severe immigration legislation. A month after its passage, a federal judge blocked provisions of the law that required police officers to check the immigration status of suspects without an identification card and that punished people who knowingly harbor or transport illegal immigrants. The judge found that the law reflected a misinterpretation of federal law and could violate civil rights.
The national debate over illegal immigration has been dramatically altered since 9/11. In his book The Latino Threat, Leo R. Chavez argues that Latina/o immigrants—including those U.S. populations that physically resemble them—have been socially constructed as grave risks to the United States. Arizona Senate Bill 1070 typifies the aggressive backlash that recently occurred in response to this perceived threat.
In a relatively little-noted decision last term, the Supreme Court favored a particular vision of federalism over the protection of religious freedom. The 6-2 ruling, in Sossamon v. Texas, barred money damages in private actions brought by prisoners against state and local governments under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 (RLUIPA). Sossamon continues a trend of denying prisoners any effective opportunity for the enforcement of their rights.
In October, California will become the first state in the country to implement a publicly-funded pilot program that provides appointment of counsel to very low-income persons in certain civil proceedings where basic human needs are at stake. While the Supreme Court ruled in Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963), that criminal defendants have a right to counsel based on the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments, that decision does not extend to civil cases. California’s Sargent Shriver Civil Counsel Act (AB 509), signed by Governor Schwarzenegger in October 2009, marks a trend in a number of states to address this need for counsel in cases where basic human needs are on the line.
Arizona, home of SB 1070, has proven itself to be ground zero in the nation’s immigration debate. At the center of racially charged controversy is Tom Horne, former Superintendent of Public Instruction and current state Attorney General, who has waged a four-year campaign to eradicate the Tucson Unified School District’s Mexican-American/La Raza Studies Program.
On the eve of Title IX’s fortieth anniversary, news of the federal government’s failure to meaningfully enforce the law’s provisions is troubling. The Office for Civil Rights must overhaul its enforcement efforts if the progress that Title IX has made in expanding women’s rights is to continue.
Since the Supreme Court’s decision in Carlson v. Green, inmates have been able to sue individual prison officials for violating their Eighth Amendment rights. A recent trend in federal prisons is threatening to destroy this cause of action for prisoners. Now it is up to the Supreme Court to clear up this controversial question and resolve the circuit split.
The Crime Victims’ Rights Act gave crime victims the right to notice of any public court proceeding involving the perpetrator and full and timely restitution. Under the CVRA, notice is given to victims whenever a criminal defendant, anywhere in the country and who would otherwise have been unknown to the victim, is convicted of any child pornography offense involving their images, including cases where the defendant only possessed images without having done more. Suddenly, victims could go after a new and potentially massive group of defendants for restitution.
Trial for Lobato v. State started this week in a Colorado district court, a case in which 14 school districts from the relatively low-property tax area of San Luis Valley sued the State of Colorado, the State Board of Education, and the Governor, arguing the state has violated Colorado’s constitution by mandating programs in low-income schools that are already underfunded. The plaintiffs have asked for ongoing injunctions requiring the state to restructure school funding and ensure adequate education for all students via judicial oversight until the overhaul of the funding scheme is complete.
