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Justice Dept. moves to cancel police reform settlements reached with Minneapolis
Law Firm Business |
2025/05/21 19:33
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The Justice Department moved Wednesday to cancel a settlement with Minneapolis that called for an overhaul of its police department following the murder of George Floyd, as well as a similar agreement with Louisville, Kentucky, saying it doesn’t want to pursue the cases.
Following a scathing report by the Justice Department in 2023, Minneapolis in January approved a consent decree with the federal government in the final days of the Biden administration to overhaul its training and use-of-force policies under court supervision.
The agreement required approval from a federal court in Minnesota. But the Trump administration was granted a delay soon after taking office while it considered its options, and on Wednesday told the court it does not intend to proceed. It planned to file a similar motion in federal court in Kentucky.
“After an extensive review by current Department of Justice and Civil Rights Division leadership, the United States no longer believes that the proposed consent decree would be in the public interest,” said the Minnesota motion, signed by Andrew Darlington, acting chief of the special litigation section of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “The United States will no longer prosecute this matter.”
The Justice Department announced its decision just before the five-year anniversary of the murder of George Floyd. Then-officer Derek Chauvin used his knee on May 25, 2020, to pin the Black man to the pavement for 9 1/2 minutes in a case that sparked protests around the world and a national reckoning with racism and police brutality.
However, no immediate changes are expected to affect the Minneapolis Police Department, which is operating under a similar consent decree with the Minnesota Human Rights Department.
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara reiterated at a news conference Tuesday that his department would abide by the terms of the federal agreement as it was signed, regardless of what the Trump administration decided.
The city in 2023 reached a settlement agreement with the state Human Rights Department to remake policing, under court supervision, after the agency issued a blistering report in 2022 that found that police had long engaged in a pattern of racial discrimination.
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Supreme Court could block Trump’s birthright citizenship order
Law Firm Business |
2025/05/15 18:59
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The Supreme Court seemed intent Thursday on keeping a block on President Donald Trump’s restrictions on birthright citizenship while looking for a way to scale back nationwide court orders.
It was unclear what such a decision might look like, but a majority of the court expressed concerns about would happen if the Trump administration were allowed, even temporarily, to deny citizenship to children born to people who are in the United States illegally.
The justices heard arguments in the Trump administration’s emergency appeals over lower court orders that have kept the citizenship restrictions on hold across the country. Nationwide, or universal, injunctions have emerged as an important check on Trump’s efforts to remake the government and a mounting frustration to the Republican president and his allies.
Judges have issued 40 nationwide injunctions since Trump began his second term in January, Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the court at the start of more than two hours of arguments.
Birthright citizenship is among several issues, many related to immigration, that the administration has asked the court to address on an emergency basis.
The justices are also considering the Trump administration’s pleas to end humanitarian parole for more than 500,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela and to strip other temporary legal protections from another 350,000 Venezuelans. The administration remains locked in legal battles over its efforts to swiftly deport people accused of being gang members to a prison in El Salvador under an 18th century wartime law called the Alien Enemies Act.
Trump signed an executive order on the first day of his second term that would deny citizenship to children who are born to people who are in the country illegally or temporarily.
The order conflicts with a Supreme Court decision from 1898 that held that the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment made citizens of all children born on U.S. with narrow exceptions that are not at issue in this case.
States, immigrants and rights group sued almost immediately, and lower courts quickly barred enforcement of the order while the lawsuits proceed. The court’s liberal justices seemed firmly in support of the lower court rulings that found the changes to citizenship that Trump wants to make would upset the settled understanding of birthright citizenship that has existed for more than 125 years.
Birthright citizenship is an odd case to use to scale back nationwide injunctions, Justice Elena Kagan said. “Every court has ruled against you,” she told Sauer.
But if the government wins on today’s arguments, it could still enforce the order against people who haven’t sued, Kagan said. “All of those individuals are going to win. And the ones who can’t afford to go to court, they’re the ones who are going to lose,” she said
Several conservative justices who might be open to limiting nationwide injunctions also wanted to know the practical effects of such a decision as well as how quickly the court could reach a final decision on the Trump executive order. |
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Judge to weigh Louisiana AG’s challenge to city jail’s ‘sanctuary’ policy
Law Firm Business |
2025/04/30 13:52
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Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill is pushing forward with her efforts to force Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson to drop a longtime policy that generally prohibits deputies from directly engaging in federal immigration enforcement within the city’s jail.
In legal filings, Murrill claims that the policy — which the state characterizes as a so-called “sanctuary city” policy — is in direct conflict with a newly passed state law that requires state and local law enforcement agencies to cooperate with federal immigration agencies.
“The consent decree now sits fundamentally at odds with state law as applicable to immigration detainers,” Murrill said in court documents filed Friday.
A federal court will now determine whether to allow the state of Louisiana to join a 2011 federal suit that resulted in the policy and whether to throw out the policy altogether. A hearing has been set for April 30.
The state’s campaign against “sanctuary” policies comes as President Donald Trump is pushing local law enforcement agencies to join the federal government in his promised immigration crackdown. Since his inauguration, Trump has ordered the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to push for more partnerships between local law enforcement units and federal immigration agencies. A few have already signed up. Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, a longtime immigration hardliner and Trump ally, has worked with Republican lawmakers in the state to enact laws that encourage those collaborations.
As attorney general, Landry criticized a policy adopted by the New Orleans Police Department, under a long-running federal consent decree that blocks officers from enforcing immigration laws.
Neither Murrill’s office nor representatives for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement responded to requests for comment.
In court filings, Murrill said Hutson “does not oppose the (state’s) intervention” in the case.” But a spokesperson for Hutson said that’s not exactly true. “It’s more accurate that we take no position regarding the state intervention,” a Sheriff’s Office spokesperson said in an emailed statement on Wednesday.
While she has not taken a position for or against increased collaboration with ICE, in an interview with Fox 8 in December, Hutson noted that the jail’s resources were far too stretched to take on immigration enforcement.
The sheriff’s policy stems from a 2013 federal court settlement in a civil rights case involving two New Orleans construction workers picked up on minor charges in 2009 and 2010. Mario Cacho and Antonio Ocampo sued after they were allegedly illegally held in the city’s jail past the completion of their sentences. The two were held at the request of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The agency issues such “detainer” requests to local law enforcement agencies, asking them to hold onto arrestees who are suspected of immigration violations. Local agencies are only supposed to honor the hold requests for 48 hours, after which they should let detainees free. But in 2009 and 2010, then-Sheriff Marlin Gusman detained Cacho and Ocampo for months, according to legal filings in their case against the office.
Ocampo and Cacho settled the case with the Sheriff’s Office in 2013, and Gusman agreed to adopt a new policy on immigration investigations. The resulting policy blocks the agency from investigating immigration violations and from detaining immigrants for ICE without a court order, except in certain cases where they are facing charges for a small number of serious violent crimes.
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Trump signs order designating English as the official language of the US
Law Firm Business |
2025/03/01 22:09
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President Donald Trump signed on Saturday an executive order designating English as the official language of the United States.
The order allows government agencies and organizations that receive federal funding to choose whether to continue to offer documents and services in language other than English.
It rescinds a mandate from former President Bill Clinton that required the government and organizations that received federal funding to provide language assistance to non-English speakers.
“Establishing English as the official language will not only streamline communication but also reinforce shared national values, and create a more cohesive and efficient society,” according to the order.
“In welcoming new Americans, a policy of encouraging the learning and adoption of our national language will make the United States a shared home and empower new citizens to achieve the American dream,” the order also states. “Speaking English not only opens doors economically, but it helps newcomers engage in their communities, participate in national traditions, and give back to our society.”
More than 30 states have already passed laws designating English as their official language, according to U.S. English, a group that advocates for making English the official language in the United States.
For decades, lawmakers in Congress have introduced legislation to designate English as the official language of the U.S., but those efforts have not succeeded.
Within hours of Trump’s inauguration last month, the new administration took down the Spanish language version of the official White House website.
Hispanic advocacy groups and others expressed confusion and frustration at the change. The White House said at the time it was committed to bringing the Spanish language version of the website back online. As of Saturday, it was still not restored.
The White House did not immediately respond to a message about whether that would happen.
Trump shut down the Spanish version of the website during his first term. It was restored when President Joe Biden was inaugurated in 2021. |
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Supreme Court grapples with governor’s 400-year veto, calling it ‘crazy’
Law Firm Business |
2024/10/12 18:48
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Justices on the Wisconsin Supreme Court said Wednesday that Gov. Tony Evers’ creative use of his expansive veto power in an attempt to lock in a school funding increase for 400 years appeared to be “extreme” and “crazy” but questioned whether and how it should be reined in.
“It does feel like the sky is the limit, the stratosphere is the limit,” Justice Jill Karofsky said during oral arguments, referring to the governor’s veto powers. “Perhaps today we are at the fork in the road ... I think we’re trying to think should we, today in 2024, start to look at this differently.”
The case, supported by the Republican-controlled Legislature, is the latest flashpoint in a decades-long fight over just how broad Wisconsin’s governor’s partial veto powers should be. The issue has crossed party lines, with Republicans and Democrats pushing for more limitations on the governor’s veto over the years.
In this case, Evers made the veto in question in 2023. His partial veto increased how much revenue K-12 public schools can raise per student by $325 a year until 2425. Evers took language that originally applied the $325 increase for the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years and instead vetoed the “20” and the hyphen to make the end date 2425, more than four centuries from now.
“The veto here approaches the absurd and exceeds any reasonable understanding of legislative or voter intent in adopting the partial veto or subsequent limits,” attorneys for legal scholar Richard Briffault, of Columbia Law School, said in a filing with the court ahead of arguments.
That argument was cited throughout the oral arguments by justices and Scott Rosenow, attorney for Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce Litigation Center, which handles lawsuits for the state’s largest business lobbying group and brought the case.
The court should strike down Evers’ partial veto and declare that the state constitution forbids the governor from striking digits to create a new year or to remove language to create a longer duration than the one approved by the Legislature, Rosenow argued.
Finding otherwise would give governors unlimited power to alter numbers in a budget bill, Rosenow argued.
Justices appeared to agree that limits were needed, but they grappled with where to draw the line.
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Hearing in Karen Read case expected to focus on jury deliberations
Law Firm Business |
2024/08/09 20:14
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nse attorneys for Karen Read are expected to argue Friday that two charges in the death of her Boston police officer boyfriend be dismissed, focusing on the jury deliberations that led to a mistrial.
Read is accused of ramming into John O’Keefe with her SUV and leaving him for dead in a snowstorm in January 2022. Her two-month trial ended when jurors declared they were hopelessly deadlocked and a judge declared a mistrial on the fifth day of deliberations. A new trial is set to begin Jan. 27.
In several motions since the mistrial, the defense contends four jurors have said the jury unanimously reached a not guilty verdict on second-degree murder and leaving the scene of a deadly accident and were deadlocked on the remaining manslaughter charge. Trying her again on those two charges would be unconstitutional double jeopardy, they said.
They also reported that one juror told them “no one thought she hit him on purpose or even thought she hit him on purpose.”
The defense also argues Judge Beverly Cannone abruptly announced the mistrial without questioning jurors about where they stood on each of the three charges Read faced and without giving lawyers for either side a chance to comment.
Prosecutors described the defense’s request to drop charges of second-degree murder and leaving the scene of a deadly accident as an “unsubstantiated but sensational post-trial claim” based on “hearsay, conjecture and legally inappropriate reliance as to the substance of jury deliberations.”
But in another motion, prosecutors acknowledged they received a voicemail from someone who identified themselves as a juror and confirmed the jury had reached a unanimous decision on the two charges. Subsequently, they received emails from three individuals who also identified themselves as jurors and wanted to speak to them anonymously.
Prosecutors said they responded by telling the trio that they welcomed discussing the state’s evidence in the case but were “ethically prohibited from inquiring as to the substance of your jury deliberations.” They also said they could not promise confidentiality.
As they push against a retrial, the defense wants the judge to hold a “post-verdict inquiry” and question all 12 jurors if necessary to establish the record they say should have been created before the mistrial was declared, showing jurors “unanimously acquitted the defendant of two of the three charges against her.”
Prosecutors argued the defense was given a chance to respond and, after one note from the jury indicating it was deadlocked, told the court there had been sufficient time and advocated for the jury to be declared deadlocked. Prosecutors wanted deliberations to continue, which they did before a mistrial was declared the following day.
“Contrary to the representation made in the defendant’s motion and supporting affidavits, the defendant advocated for and consented to a mistrial, as she had adequate opportunities to object and instead remained silent which removes any double jeopardy bar to retrial,” prosecutors wrote in their motion.
Read, a former adjunct professor at Bentley College, had been out drinking with O’Keefe, a 16-year member of the Boston police who was found outside the Canton, Massachusetts, home of another Boston police officer. An autopsy found O’Keefe died of hypothermia and blunt force trauma.
The defense contended O’Keefe was killed inside the home after Read dropped him off and that those involved chose to frame her because she was a “convenient outsider.” |
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Trump election subversion case returned to trial judge following Court opinion
Law Firm Business |
2024/07/29 03:16
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The criminal case charging former President Donald Trump with plotting to overturn the 2020 presidential election was returned Friday to the trial judge in Washington after a Supreme Court opinion last month that narrowed the scope of the prosecution.
The case was formally sent back to U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan for further proceedings aimed at sorting out which acts in the landmark indictment constitute official acts and which do not.
The procedural move is expected to restart the case with a flurry of motions and potential hearings, but the sheer amount of work ahead for the judge and lawyers ensures that there’s no way a trial can take place before the November presidential election in which Trump is the Republican nominee. If Trump is elected president, he can appoint an attorney general who would presumably order the case dismissed.
The four-count indictment, one of four criminal cases brought against Trump last year, accuses him of illegally conspiring to cling to the presidency by working with aides to try to undo the results of the election he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.
But the Supreme Court on July 1 dealt prosecutors a major blow, ruling in a 6-3 opinion that presidents enjoy absolute immunity for core constitutional duties and are presumptively immune from prosecution for all other official acts.
The justices left it to Chutkan, who is presiding over the case, to decide how to apply their opinion to the remainder of the case.
That means she’ll be deciding in the weeks ahead whether key allegations in the case — including that Trump badgered his vice president, Mike Pence, to reject the official counting of electoral votes showing that he had lost the election — can remain part of the prosecution or must be discarded.
The case brought by special counsel Jack Smith had been effectively frozen since last December amid Trump’s appeal, which was argued in April before the Supreme Court, that he was immune from prosecution for the acts charged in the indictment.
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