June, 27 2011, 12:26pm EDT
Supreme Court Ends Pro-Business Term With Important First Amendment Rulings
The Supreme Court today ended a 2010 Term marked by big victories for big business with two important free speech decisions reflecting the Court's expansive view of the First Amendment.
WASHINGTON
The Supreme Court today ended a 2010 Term marked by big victories for big business with two important free speech decisions reflecting the Court's expansive view of the First Amendment.
Once again wading into the roiled waters of campaign finance reform, the Court struck down Arizona's public financing system, which provides matching funds to publicly financed candidates to ensure that they are not outspent by privately financed opponents and to encourage candidates to participate in the public financing scheme. The decision in Arizona Free Enterprise v. Bennett is certain to reignite the heated debate that followed last year's ruling in Citizens United upholding corporate campaign expenditures.
In addition, the Court struck down a California law prohibiting the sale of violent video games to minors in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association. Stressing that minors have First Amendment rights as well as adults, the Court rejected calls to treat violence like obscenity and carve out a new exception to the First Amendment for violent speech directed at children.
"This is a Court that takes an expansive view of the First Amendment. It is particularly sensitive to any claim that the government is using its power to censor unpopular speakers or unpopular speech," Shapiro said.
That view was evident earlier this year in Snyder v. Phelps when the Supreme Court overturned a jury verdict against members of the Westboro Baptist Church who had picketed the funeral of an Iraqi war veteran with signs proclaiming their view that the death of U.S soldiers was a punishment by God for America's tolerance of homosexuality.
"This Term also highlighted the Court's pro-business reflex," Shapiro added. "Unfortunately, the instinct to protect business interests often comes at the expense of ordinary citizens looking for justice."
Of course, to say that the Roberts Court is pro-business does not mean that business always wins. In Chamber of Commerce v. Whiting, a case where the ACLU served as co-counsel, the Court held that federal law did not bar Arizona from imposing its own severe sanctions on employers in the state who hire undocumented workers.
But, more typically, the Court held in Wal-Mart v. Dukes that a sex discrimination lawsuit against America's largest employer could not proceed as a class action. It did so, moreover, by reinterpreting the class action rules so that it will now be harder for other class actions to go forward as well, leaving many employees with grievances that they can no longer afford to pursue.
Similarly, in AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, the Court held that companies can effectively shield themselves from consumer class actions simply by including a clause in the standard consumer contract that all claims must be resolved through individual arbitrations. When the amount at stake is less than $40, as it was in this case, most consumers will simply give up.
"The Roberts Court is undeniably conservative, but it is a particular kind of conservatism," Shapiro explained. "This is not a libertarian court. It is not a state's rights court. It is a pro-business court."
Employees and consumers were not, however, the only ones denied their day in court this Term.
In Connick v. Thompson, the Court ruled that an individual who spent 14 years on death row after being wrongfully convicted of murder could not sue the prosecutor's office that unconstitutionally withheld critical evidence from his defense lawyers.
In Arizona School Tuition Organization v. Winn, an ACLU case, the Court held that Arizona taxpayers could not challenge the use of state tax credits to subsidize religious education because tax credits involve funds diverted from the state treasury as opposed to funds spent out of the state treasury. The majority decision provoked Justice Kagan's first dissent as the newest member of the Court.
In Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, another ACLU case, the Court held that former Attorney General John Ashcroft was immune from damages even assuming that he had authorized the use of the material witness statute as a pretext after 9/11 to detain terrorism suspects without probable cause.
Still, there were several notable criminal justice victories this Term in a Court where such victories are often few and far between.
In Brown v. Plata, the Court upheld an order requiring California to reduce its prison population significantly after the state had failed to correct the unconstitutional conditions resulting from prison overcrowding for more than a decade.
And, in J.D.B. v. North Carolina, the Court ruled that the age of a child being questioned by the police is a relevant factor in deciding whether the child is "in custody," thus triggering the need for Miranda warnings.
Shapiro is available for television interviews using the ACLU's in-house studio facility, which has an outbound fiber line for standard definition (SD) video.
The American Civil Liberties Union was founded in 1920 and is our nation's guardian of liberty. The ACLU works in the courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to all people in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States.
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'Racist POS' Mike Collins Cheers Video of Ole Miss Mob Attack on Black Student
"This is not about Israel, Palestine, or Gaza. This is old-fashioned American racism and misogyny," said one observer. "These are the types of young white men who will grow up to be Republican governors, senators, and members of Congress."
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Republican Georgia Congressman Mike Collins came under fire Friday over a social media post applauding video of white University of Mississippi students racially abusing a Black woman participating in a campus protest for Palestine.
Collins posted the video—in which numerous people can be heard grunting like apes and one young man is seen jumping up and down like a monkey in front of the Black woman—with the caption, "Ole Miss taking care of business."
Collins—or whoever's in charge of his social media accounts—sparred with Black leaders who called out his racism. When former Democratic Ohio state senator Nina Turner said the video showed "anti-Blackness," the congressman shot back, "*Anti-terroristness."
When Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) accused Collins of "fueling white supremacy," the Republican retorted, "Don't take down any more signs at our workplace, please" along with a photo of the Democrat triggering a fire alarm in a House of Representatives office building last year.
Around 30 protesters were rallying in support of Palestine in the Ole Miss Quad when counter-protesters gathered near the demonstrators. Some booed and chanted, "We want Trump!" Others singled out the Black woman—who NBC Newssaid is a graduate student at the school—chanting "Lizzo, Lizzo, Lizzo," "take a shower," "your nose is huge," "fuck you, fat bitch," and "lock her up!"
The counter-protesters also sang the "Star-Spangled Banner." Republican Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves shared a separate video of the singing students on social media, captioning his post, "Warms my heart" and "I love Mississippi."
No racist language can be heard in the video shared by Reeves.
The Daily Mississippianreports the demonstrators were escorted off the Quad after counter-protesters threw water bottles at them.
Collins is no stranger to accusations of racism. Earlier this year, he suggested murdering migrants by throwing them from helicopters into the sea, in the manner of U.S.-backed South American dictators in the 1970s.
He also
introduced the Restricting Administration Zealots from Obliging Raiders (RAZOR) Act, which would ban the federal government from removing or altering "any state-constructed barriers installed to mitigate illegal immigration," such as the razor buoys installed in the Rio Grande by Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
Collins was also
accused of antisemitism after he amplified an anti-semitic social media post by an avowed neo-Nazi targeting a Washington Post reporter for being Jewish.
Ole Miss said Friday that "statements were made at the demonstration on our campus Thursday that were offensive and inappropriate."
"We cannot comment specifically about that video, but the university is looking into reports about specific actions," the school added. "Any actions that violate university policy will be met with appropriate action."
The Ole Miss incident comes amid rapidly spreading campus protests across the U.S. and around the world in response to Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza, which has killed, maimed, or left missing around 5% of the embattled strip's 2.3 million people, most of them civilians, while forcibly displacing nearly 9 in 10 people and driving hundreds of thousands to the brink of starvation.
While numerous Ole Miss students said they did not understand what the pro-Palestine protesters hoped to accomplish, others voiced support for the demonstrators—and for Palestine.
"As we've seen throughout history, time and time again, the student movement is never wrong. Time and time again, anytime there's a student protest, and you're against it, you're on the wrong side of history," Xavier Black, a junior majoring in international studies, told
The Daily Mississippian. "So I would like to be on the right side."
One Palestinian American Ole Miss student was teary-eyed as she thanked the protesters.
"Hey guys, I know that what just happened was really intimidating, and it was a little scary, but I just want to say I'm so proud of you guys," the student—who gave only her first name, Jana—said,
according toMississippi Today. "This wasn't going to happen... without all of you guys. Palestine was being heard. And I just want to thank you guys so much."
"I know that was such a big risk, but this is the most that people have ever thought for us, so don't give up," she added. "I know that was really hard, but we need to keep fighting. This was just the start of it, okay?"
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Nearly two weeks after the British Conservative Party pushed through a proposal to deport asylum-seekers to Rwanda in what one lawyer called "performative cruelty" in the name of winning the general election expected later this year, the local election results announced throughout the day Friday made increasingly clear the ploy hadn't worked.
Elections expert John Curtice projected the Tories could ultimately lose up to 500 local council seats as vote counting continues into the weekend, following elections in which voters cast ballots for 2,661 seats.
The Conservatives have lost around half of the seats they are defending Curtice told BBC Radio.
"We are probably looking at certainly one of the worst, if not the worst, Conservative performances in local government elections for the last 40 years," the polling expert said.
Curtice added that if the results were replicated in a general election, Labour would likely win 34% of the vote, with the Tories winning 25%—five years after the right-wing party won in a landslide in the last nationwide contest.
Labour leader Keir Starmer said the results represented a decisive call for "change" from British voters, particularly applauding the results of a special election in Blackpool South, where Labour candidate Chris Webb won nearly 11,000 votes while Conservative David Jones came in a distant second with just over 3,200.
Webb's victory represented a 26% swing in favor of Labour.
"That's the fifth swing of over 20% to the Labour party in by elections in recent months and years. It is a fantastic result, a really first class result," Starmer said. "And here in Blackpool, a message has been sent directly to the prime minister, because this was a parliamentary vote, to say we're fed up with your decline, your chaos... your division and we want change. We want to go forward with Labour."
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The Conservatives also lost ground in the northern town of Hartlepool, where they lost six council seats. The region swung toward the Tories after the party led the push for Brexit, the U.K.'s exit from the European Union.
A similar result was recorded in York and North Yorkshire, which includes the area Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak represented as a member of Parliament.
"Yorkshire voted for Brexit in 2016," wrote William Booth, London bureau chief for The Washington Post. "But long gone are the days when many Conservatives want to stand before the voters and extol the advantages of leaving the European Union, which has been, in most sectors, a flop."
Sunak, added Booth, is "betting that immigration is still an issue with resonance and has promised to 'stop the boats,' the daily spectacle of desperate migrants risking their lives on rubber rafts trying to cross the English Channel. Sunak's government plans to fly asylum seekers arriving by boat to Rwanda. No flights have taken off yet. But the Home Office last week began a self-proclaimed 'large scale' operation to detain asylum seekers destined for removal."
The Labour Party has called Sunak's Rwanda plan a "gimmick" and said it would reverse a Tory policy blocking refugees from applying for asylum.
Average wages in the U.K. last year were "back at the level during the 2008 financial crisis, after taking account of inflation," according toThe Guardian.
"This 15 years of lost wage growth is estimated by the Resolution Foundation thinktank to have cost the average work £10,700 ($13,426) a year," reported the newspaper in March. "The performance has been ranked as the worst period for pay growth since the Napoleonic wars ended in 1815."
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Politicoreported Friday that Israel Defense Forces (IDF) officials informed the U.S. government and aid agencies that a plan is in place to remove Palestinians from Rafah, where approximately 1.2 million refugees forcibly displaced from other parts of Gaza are precariously sheltering alongside around 280,000 local residents in the embattled strip's southernmost city.
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The Wall Street Journalreported Friday that Israel has given Hamas until next week to submit to a cease-fire proposal or face an invasion of Rafah.
"Such an invasion could lead to horrific massacres and raise scenarios of a second Nakba," the Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights said recently. "After 200 days of horrific genocidal acts in Gaza, the real objectives of the attack are the continuation of the 76-year-long ongoing Nakba and the erasure and genocidal destruction of the Palestinian people in Gaza. Israel is laying the groundwork to fulfill its settler-colonial plan of colonizing Gaza."
Human rights defenders have warned that Israel may ultimately seek to ethnically cleanse as many Palestinians as possible from Gaza.
The situation in Rafah is already dire. Water and other necessities are in desperately short supply. According to James Elder, the global spokesperson for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), there is approximately one toilet for every 850 people in Rafah and one shower for every 3,500 people.
On Friday, Jens Laerke, a spokesperson for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told reporters in Geneva that an Israeli ground invasion of Rafah would put hundreds of thousands of Palestinians "at imminent risk of death."
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Around 5% of Gazans have been killed, maimed, or left missing by Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza, according to a report published Wednesday by the U.N. Development Program and the U.N. Economic Commission for Western Asia. That's more than 120,000 people, the vast majority of whom are innocent civilians, according to Palestinian officials and international human rights groups.
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