new jersey football and god don't mix!

and yet another milestone in the fight for freedom from religion...

while the chicago tribune announced on 4/15/08 that Court says coach can't kneel, bow head as team prays (sorta a loaded title, huh?), NSBA legal clips gives us an unbiased summary:

N.J. district's policy against faculty joining student prayers upheld

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit (DE, NJ, PA, V.I.) has ruled that a New Jersey school district's policy prohibiting faculty participation in student-initiated prayer was not unconstitutional on its face or as applied to the high school football coach who challenged it. The court also ruled that the coach's silent acts of bowing his head or taking a knee during prayer violated the Establishment Clause because, when viewed in light of his 23 years of prayer activities with the team, they would appear to a reasonable observer to endorse religion. The decision reverses a federal district court's ruling that had struck down the policy and held that the coach's silent acts did not violate the Establishment Clause. Marcus Borden, head varsity football coach at East Brunswick High School, had traditionally participated in a team prayer before the pre-game meal and again before the team took the field. When some parents complained and threatened litigation, East Brunswick School District (EBSD) restated its school prayer policy and warned Mr. Borden that his participation, including standing and bowing his head and kneeling, would be considered insubordination and could lead to his discharge. Mr. Borden initially resigned as coach, but returned and agreed to abide by the policy while he brought a lawsuit. A U.S. district court ruled in his favor.

On appeal, the Third Circuit first rejected Mr. Borden's claim that the policy was unconstitutionally overbroad, finding that it merely prohibited expression that amounts to school sponsorship or endorsement of prayer and would violate the Establishment Clause. The court likewise rejected the contention that the word "participate" in the district's policy was unconstitutionally vague, finding that the policy sufficiently elaborates what constitutes participation. Turning to the as-applied challenges, the court noted that the free speech claim would be governed by the two-pronged test established for public employee speech in Connick v. Myers, 461 U.S. 138 (1983). Under the first prong of the test, the court found that the coach's silent acts of expression were not speech on a "matter of public concern" but were "personal to the [coach] and his team…." Because the speech was not protected, the court had no need to balance Mr. Borden's interest in the speech against his employer's interest in limiting it. Addressing the academic freedom claim, the court noted that by Mr. Borden's own admission his acts were pedagogical in nature, and the school district had the authority to deem his methods inappropriate. His freedom of association claim also was without merit, because that right only protects relationships involving a closeness "not present between a high school football coach and his team." As for the due process claim, the court found that because the policy was "not so vague that people of common intelligence must guess as to its meaning," he must demonstrate that it infringed on a fundamental right. However, "Borden has no interest—privacy, liberty, or otherwise—in behavior that violates the Establishment Clause."

Lastly, the Third Circuit concluded that "the school district has a legitimate educational interest in avoiding Establishment Clause violations," and that its policy was reasonably related to that interest. Applying the "reasonable observer" standard under the Establishment Clause's endorsement test, whereby the inquiry is "whether a reasonable observer familiar with the history and context of the display would perceive the display as a government endorsement of religion," the court determined that "[t]he history and context of Borden's prayer activities with the team, if challenged, could have been Establishment Clause violations." The coach's 23 years of leading the team in prayer "signals an unconstitutional endorsement of religion," and his involvement, as participant, organizer, and leader, would lead a reasonable observer to this conclusion. However, the court acknowledged, absent this history "if a football coach, who had never engaged in prayer with his team, were to bow his head and take a knee while his team engaged in a moment of reflection or prayer, we would likely reach a different conclusion because the same history and context of endorsing religion would not be present."

ACLU Seeking Sanction Against New Jersey DOC For Witness Tampering and Retaliation

The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of New Jersey filed court papers today requesting that the New Jersey Superior Court impose sanctions against the New Jersey Department of Corrections (DOC) for witness tampering, official misconduct and violations of court rules.

The ACLU's motion for sanctions charges that the DOC obtained false and misleading statements from women prisoners about conditions in the prison in an attempt to defend the prison against claims of inhumane treatment. A female prisoner who exposed the DOC's misconduct reports being beaten as a result.

The ACLU asserts that James Drumm, Assistant Administrator of the New Jersey State Prison, offered female prisoners reductions in their disciplinary sentences in exchange for making false statements describing women's prison conditions in the New Jersey State Prison (NJSP) - a men's supermax prison - as better than they were.

This is the latest chapter in Jones v Hayman, an ACLU class action lawsuit against the DOC challenging the improper transfer of a group of women to the men's prison and subjecting them to inhumane and virtual lock-down conditions.

Some of the prisoners allege that that if they wrote a letter saying good things about the prison, then their time in segregation would be cut. Unbelievable. A prisoner (Thomas) alleges the day she spoke with ACLU attorneys she received a brutal beating that seemed retaliatory. During the beating, the Guard said: "You have a big mouth" and called her a "nigger with no home training." Thomas also alleges that, following the beating, Drumm told her, "You're causing problems in my institution," and that she should "stop causing trouble."

Read the rest of the article here as the ACLU also charges them with witness tampering and retaliation, if that is not obvious from the facts.

This is not surprising seeing how the guards and many of the folks inside prisons treat people. Because, these guards forget that they are actually people. We often visit prisoners and the guards are arrogant and act like they are doing us a favor just to get to talk to our clients. One guard yesterday held up a visit of a social worker to her client for forty-five minutes because no one told him she was coming. So, he refused her entrance. Luckily, he was dealing with the wrong person. She sat in a chair and told him, "I am not leaving until I see my client." Eventually, requesting to see his supervisor, gaining entry. This "person's" immigration status and time in America hung in the balance, not that he would give a damn.

I say go ACLU. Expose these thugs for what they are worth.

Legal Services of New Jersey in Severe Crisis

Word is coming quickly that Legal Services may be in jeopardy of losing nearly half of its IOLTA funding. Half. IOLTA is funded through lawyer trust accounts and is a complicated formula of which is ebbs and flows with the housing market that is tumbling and the projections are that Legal Services could face severe cuts soon.

This is bad news for poor people in New Jersey, while not a perfect organization without Legal Services hundreds of thousands of poor people would not get the civil legal help they deserve. From evictions, consumer law, family and more expansive law such as voting rights, environmental justice, family representation, New Jersey residents will be at a severe disadvantage if the recession continues to spiral.

Here is a hoping a democrat gets elected, that we end this disastrous war that costs Americans $12 Billion dollars a month, that we stop allowing corporations to leech from us. The latest: “A sweeping five-month investigation into the collapse of one of the nation’s largest subprime lenders points a finger at a possible new culprit in the mortgage mess: the accountants.” New Century Financial, whose failure came at the start of the credit crisis, “engaged in ’significant improper and imprudent practices’ that were condoned and enabled by auditors at the accounting firm KPMG.”

We need justice now for the people, not for the corporations.

A Country That No Longer Believes in Integration

In the year 2000 I did not vote for Gore. I was tired of the wimp democrats. And as the criticism mounted the argument was that we would regret our vote for Nader because of the Supreme Court. That did not turn out to happen, no Justices were appointed until, in my humble opinion, the election 2004 was stolen again. How bad has it gotten?

Chief Justice John Robers wrote the opinion in a sharply divided Supreme Court (5-4 of course) overturned school district policies that made race a factor in admissions. The School districts of Seattle and Louisville argued that their children were unfairly denied positions in "magnet" public schools because of their race. Chief Justice Roberts found (along with Kennedy, Scalia, Thomas and Alito) the school districts failed to show that classifying students on the basis of race was the only way to maintain racial diversity.

Think Progress has much more on the story. The decision is now available. Seattle was never the subject of a desegregation suit, but took it upon themselves to voluntarily try to allocate race as a factor and allow for more diverse groups of students in schools. Louisville (Jefferson County, Ky) was the subject of a desegregation lawsuit, but the decree was dissolved when the court found the "vestiges" of prior segregation had been eliminated to the extent possible. But, the school district adopted a plan in 2001 that still chose to integrate. Parents of these school districts who opposed the plan brought the lawsuit arguing using race as the single factor violates the fourteenth amendment equal protection guarantee.

A recent study by the Center for American Progress said that racial minorities benefit from racially balanced schools and learn more and racial integration is a rare case where an educational policy appears to improve educational equity at little financial cost.

The majority court thinks otherwise. "In his opinion for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts writes, 'Before Brown, schoolchildren were told where they could and could not go to school based on the color of their skin.' But, Justice Stevens challenges him and says in his dissent: "The Chief Justice fails to note that it was only black schoolchildren who were so ordered; indeed, the history books do not tell stories of white children struggling to attend black schools. In this and other ways, the Chief Justice rewrites the history of one of this Court's most important decisions."

And Justice Breyer argues in his dissent (taken from Think Progress:

Finally, what of the hope and promise of Brown? For much of this Nation’s history, the races remained divided. It was not long ago that people of different races drank from separate fountains, rode on separate buses, and studied in separate schools. In this Court’s finest hour, Brown v. Board of Education challenged this history and helped to change it. For Brown held out a promise. … It sought one law, one Nation, one people, not simply as a matter of legal principle but in terms of how we actually live. […]

Many parents, white and black alike, want their children to attend schools with children of different races. Indeed, the very school districts that once spurned integration now strive for it. … The plurality would decline their modest request.

The plurality is wrong to do so. The last half-century has witnessed great strides toward racial equality, but we have not yet realized the promise of Brown. To invalidate the plans under review is to threaten the promise of Brown. The plurality’s position, I fear, would break that promise. This is a decision that the Court and the Nation will come to regret.

Abortion advocates should be very nervous what this court will do with a woman's right to choose. Everything we hold dear is being shredded.

See here, however Congress is considering legislation to fix recent supreme court rulings.

Hacking Away at Roe v. Wade (Will the Real Justice Kennedy Please Stand Up?)

Our legal DC guest columnist writes:

i read the Supreme Court's decision in the "partial birth abortion" ban case last night and about 2/3 of the way through, it made me angry and i had to stop. the court has entirely left behind the notion that these laws should have as their purpose, at least in part, the protection of women's health. as far as i can tell, there was nothing in the opinion about that notion except Kennedy's paternalistic statements that we shouldn't allow women to have such abortions because they might regret it some day. as usual, conservatives rail against "big brother" regulations until it's convenient to let big brother make the decisions. it's a complete change in direction for the court and, it seems, the beginning of the end of Roe v. Wade. another rather radical (i think) thing the court did was place Congress's "factual" findings - that really have nothing to do with fact - ahead of actual medical opinions. these "findings" were inserted into the law simply to try to bolster its chances of being upheld (a very similar law was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2000 as unconstitutional). this says to me that the Supreme Court is abdicating its responsibility - if it's going to say, from now on, that whatever Congress says goes, there's no point in having independent constitutional adjudicators.

we must start giving to planned parenthood and other reproductive rights organizations now - they have quite a lot of major fights ahead of them.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/20/us/20assess.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

http://www.slate.com/id/2164512?nav=tap3

and here's the link to the actual opinion, if you want to read pages and pages of descriptions of these abortion procedures and not much legal analysis. ginsberg's dissent is worth a read, though.

http://www.scotusblog.com/movabletype/archives/05-380_All.pdf