Muneer Awad of the Council on American-Islamic Relations spoke with Tricia Perry about the recent ballot initiative in Oklahama, where voters approved a measure prohibiting state courts from considering international and Islamic ("Sharia") law. Listen as they discuss the potential impact of the law and pending legal challenges.
Listen to the full interview series here.
Last month, the Supreme Court decided it would hear another set of cases that deal with campaign spending and freedom of speech as guaranteed by the First Amendment. The two lawsuits, McComish v. Bennett and Arizona Free Enterprise Club's Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett, concern a new Arizona law that provides public funding to candidates underfunded in local elections. According to the Brennan Center, which will be defending the law in the Supreme Court, the voters of Arizona passed the “clean elections” law in response to a series of corruption scandals that involved an elected official stuffing money into a gym bag. The Act established a voluntary public financing system for legislative and statewide executive political elections. John McComish, the Arizona Free Enterprise Club’s Freedom Club PAC and others claim that their freedom of speech is violated by the section of the law that provides additional money to candidates facing high spending opposition. While a federal appeals court upheld the “clean elections” law in April, the Supreme Court elected in June to put enforcement of the law on hold pending further review.
Along the lines of the landmark ruling in Citizens United earlier this year, the arguments in these cases are highly polarized. Those who have sued to challenge the laws assert that donating money in support of a political candidate is a First Amendment right and that the government should not tamper with or otherwise invalidate the private will. At the other side of the spectrum, “Arizona lawmakers have argued there is a compelling state interest in equalizing resources among competing candidates and interest groups.” And many people are worried more generally about the influence of money in elections and are concerned about corporate interests allowing some candidates to outspend their opposition.
As ever, stay tuned.
(Photo by Indiana Public Media.)
As the Senate prepares to vote on the DREAM Act, there's rarely a day that those of us here at NCRCR don't find ourselves thinking about the intersections between race, class, nationality and legal status and how these issues are addressed in the courts. As such, the issues faced by undocumented students trying to get an education are of particular interest. Through no act of their own (and more often than not an act of economic desperation on the part of their parents), thousands of smart and talented young people graduate high school in the U.S. each year and, because of their immigration status, find themselves ineligible for the federal loans that “finance” the college educations of their documented peers. To make matters worse, several states have passed laws making these undocumented students ineligible for the “in-state” reduced tuition rate at public universities and colleges available to legal residents of the state. Because these undocumented students’ families usually do not have the means to throw down $20-40,000 per year on tuition, the students hit a dead-end, ostensibly ensuring their inability to enter an increasingly competitive job market in what is, in some cases, the only country they have ever known.
There are laws that make this situation questionable: Title VI and VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibit discrimination based on race or national origin, and the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution promises the equal protection of a state's laws to any person within that state’s jurisdiction and allows the courts to enforce the principle that “all men are created equal.” In support of this constitutional right, the Supreme Court held in the 1982 case Plyler v. Doe that undocumented immigrants were entitled to a free and equal K-12 public education. This key ruling was based on the premise that everyone, regardless of immigration status, has the right to an education. With this decision states could no longer withhold a state-funded, public primary and secondary education to undocumented children. When it comes to college, however, no effort has been made to address this issue on a federal level, and the battle over access to an affordable college education for undocumented students is being fought in the courts. In a recent victory for these students, the California state Supreme Court ruled that undocumented students who attended at least three years of high school in California must be eligible for in-state tuition at public universities. This can amount to a difference of up to $12,000 per year, which certainly makes trying to get a college education less daunting. Nine other states have similar legislation, though lawsuits are pending in two states in order to challenge these laws -- but each ruling in favor of such laws adds legitimacy to the right of all young people in the U.S. to get a quality and affordable education.
If the DREAM Act passes, undocumented students will also have a pathway to pursue U.S. citizenship after graduating from college or a trade school. As ever, progress is gradual and the courts continue to play an important role in ensuring that progress is made.
(Photo by Gord McKenna.)
By Richael Faithful
I “came out” when I was 14, about eleven years ago, as a teenager living in Northern Virginia. For the most part I was left alone by classmates, rarely at the other end of taunting or verbal abuse, and never at the other end of targeted violence. I had, and continue to have, very proud parents and friends—proud of whom I am, not necessarily of my “queer” identity. But I am aware that my affirmative experience as a LGBTQ person is relatively uncommon.
America has been recently awakened to this reality. Though minimized by stories of extreme gay and lesbian persecution overseas, the truth is that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer-identified or perceived young people in the U.S. face tremendous harassment, bigotry, and discrimination. And despite recent attention to this issue, there is another sad reality, particularly for young people: there is no federal law against bullying or harassment, even though the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 provided support for school safety, generally. In other words, LGBTQ identified or perceived students currently have no real protection against bullying under federal law.
Federal or state laws are not triggered until bullying or harassment leads to a criminal act, such as battery, assault, or stalking. Bullying may also rise to the level of racial, sexual, or disability harassment prohibited by civil rights laws that can be enforced by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. However, bullying in general, especially LGBTQ bullying, has traditionally been treated as a school administrative matter, in which too many administrators were either indifferent or ill-equipped to address mistreatment. A variety of national and local LGBTQ organizations have long-focused on this issue by offering supportive resources and fighting for protective legislation. At the forefront is Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network (GLSEN) which has been working with federal agencies and Congress for over a year, prior to recent tragedies, to pass two pieces of legislation: the Safe Schools Improvement Act and Student Non-Discrimination Act. Both bills are designed to require school districts receiving federal funds to prohibit LGBTQ bullying, and adopt LGBTQ non-discrimination policies. Although such laws cannot dictate progressive thinking about LGBTQ people, they can bring federal power to bear to create safe, even affirming school environments for young LGBTQ people.
The law’s power cannot be under-estimated. During my senior year in high school, I and several friends founded a Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA), with the help of a regional safe schools organization. GSAs are student organizations intended to create comfortable LGBTQ spaces and build positive relationships among students along the sexuality and gender continuum. GLSEN provided important resources for us to organize the organization against strong parental opposition, including our legal rights under the Equal Access Act, which guarantees free speech and non-discrimination rights in public school extra-curricular activities. Protective laws can translate into meaningful quality-of-life changes for LGBTQ young people. That is why young LGBTQ people and their supporters are working toward this goal.
Any person who has been shocked and heartbroken about the recent, high-profile cases of LGBTQ suicides and violence against young people should share these resources in your communities. As one of my favorite LGBTQ organizations, Southerners on New Ground, pointed out, all young people, especially marginalized LGBTQ young people, need us to fight for them, and fight with them. Equally important, we need to help them make things better by creating a culture of acceptance, honesty, and integrity.
Please share these resources today.
• GLSEN, What Can You Do To Make a Positive Difference
• The Trevor Project, Suicide Prevention Resources
• Parents, Families, and Friends for Gays and Lesbians (PFLAG), Open letter to Youth
• Safe Schools Coalition, Resources for LGBTQ Youth of Color
Richael Faithful is a third-year student at American University Washington College of Law. She is Editor-In-Chief of The Modern American, a legal publication dedicated to diversity and the law. She is also a former community organizer with the Virginia Organizing Project. As a law student she continues organize and advocate for radical, transformative change.
(Photo by quixoticlife.)
Last month, the New York Times ‘Toxic Waters’ column published an article on the impact of Supreme Court rulings on the regulation of water pollution. It begins:
Thousands of the nation’s largest water polluters are outside the Clean Water Act’s reach because the Supreme Court has left uncertain which waterways are protected by that law, according to interviews with regulators.
As a result, some businesses are declaring that the law no longer applies to them. And pollution rates are rising.
Companies that have spilled oil, carcinogens and dangerous bacteria into lakes, rivers and other waters are not being prosecuted, according to Environmental Protection Agency regulators working on those cases, who estimate that more than 1,500 major pollution investigations have been discontinued or shelved in the last four years.
The Clean Water Act was intended to end dangerous water pollution by regulating every major polluter. But today, regulators may be unable to prosecute as many as half of the nation’s largest known polluters because officials lack jurisdiction or because proving jurisdiction would be overwhelmingly difficult or time consuming, according to midlevel officials.
The article goes on to discuss the two Supreme Court cases that are collectively responsible for the decline in regulation of waterways. In 2001, the Court ruled in Solid Waste Agency v. Army Corps of Engineers that the Clean Water Act only applies to bodies of water that run between states and not those that are within states. This decision has left a good deal of intrastate bodies of water utterly without defense -- and, really, who’s to know if what flows underground in Kansas City, Missouri, will wind up in Kansas City, Kansas!
The 2006 decision in Rapanos v. United States further muddied the water. Five members of the Supreme Court -- four Justices who came to agreement plus Justice Kennedy, who wrote his own opinion -- limited the enforcement of the federal Clean Water Act, dismissing a lawsuit against a developer who was building a mall on a wetland. The bigger question before the Court, though, was whether federal law applies to wetlands, and if so, which wetlands can be regulated.
Justice Stevens, who wrote a dissenting opinion, was critical of the Court for departing from thirty years of tradition in interpreting the Clean Water Act and also from the intent of the law, which was to protect the environment. He commented:
The broader question is whether regulations that have protected the quality of our waters for decades, that were implicitly approved by Congress, and that have been repeatedly enforced in case after case, must now be revised in light of the creative criticisms voiced by the plurality and Justice Kennedy today….
In my view, the proper analysis is straightforward. The Army Corps has determined that wetlands adjacent to tributaries of traditionally navigable waters preserve the quality of our Nation’s waters by, among other things, providing habitat for aquatic animals, keeping excessive sediment and toxic pollutants out of adjacent waters, and reducing downstream flooding by absorbing water at times of high flow. The Corps’ resulting decision to treat these wetlands as encompassed within the term “waters of the United States” is a quintessential example of the Executive’s reasonable interpretation of a statutory provision.…
While the Court did vote to dismiss the case against the developer, the justices couldn’t agree on which waters are covered by the Clean Water Act. This, in turn, created confusion at the Environmental Protection Agency regarding what the agency can regulate and, also, among potential polluters.
While these two cases may seem technical, they are very important in that they have brought about a new era of freedom for polluters. These court decisions present another chapter in the recurring narrative of court actions that are weakening laws intended to protect Americans.
Access to a clean and safe environment is a basic civil and human right. The Clean Water Act's objective is “to restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the Nation’s waters”. The law further states that “it is the national goal that the discharge into the navigable waters be eliminated by 1985.” Twenty-five years later, the Clean Water Act has made a big difference in our water quality -- but the past few years have seen a steady decline in enforcement.
Protecting the environment is not a partisan issue. It's not Democratic or Republican. As Americans, we are all responsible for protecting the environment -- but we also assume that our government has the power to protect the air we breathe and the water we drink. It's upsetting to think that the majority of our top judges are protecting the economic rights of polluters and developers rather than the safety of our planet.
(Photo by tracyyxx.)
Ever since 1996, when Congress passed a piece of legislation known as the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), people in jail have had a harder time filing lawsuits in federal court to challenge conditions, denials of medical care, or harsh treatment. Some cases do get into court, though, and the judiciary plays a key role in allowing prisoners to seek justice and enforce their rights.
A federal appeals court in New York recently heard arguments in a case involving a group of Muslim inmates at the Westchester County Jail who alleged that prison officials refused to serve them the Halal meat required by their religious doctrine. In Perez v. Westchester County Dept. of Corrections, inmates alleged violations of their right to freedom of religion and the ban on cruel and unusual punishment. They also alleged that the jail violated their right to equal protection under the law by not providing treating them equally with Jewish inmates, who received Kosher meals.
The district court denied a motion by the Department of Corrections to dismiss the case, and ultimately the case settled. Under the settlement agreement, the jail modified its policies and agreed to provide Halal meat with the same frequency that it provides Kosher meat. This came on the heels of a similar ruling in Massachusetts that mandated that Muslim inmates could not be denied Halal meals on a daily basis. These cases represent a "significant departure from current case law with respect to Muslim inmates' equal protection rights to receive Halal meals containing Halal meat, as opposed to a vegetarian diet, which up until this case was arguably the constitutionally reasonable alternative meal plan."
Unfortunately, the Perez case didn’t quite come to an end with this progressive ruling. When the current and former Muslim inmates filed to have their attorney’s fees paid by the prison, as is standard practice for the winning party in these kinds of cases, the prison objected on a technicality that no one outside of the legal profession would enjoy hearing about. In short, the prison tried to avoid paying its due, or at very least to have their responsibility capped in accordance with another provision of the Prison Litigation Reform Act. Both the district court and the Court of Appeals ruled that while the inmates were entitled to fees, the PLRA did effectively limit how much they could receive.
In the midst of all the injustices that Muslim Americans have been facing in the post-9/11 era, it is reassuring to see that the courts remain open, even a crack, to enforce laws designed to ensure respect for the cultural and religious traditions of all people. We should, however, remain wary of the subtle ways that people are discouraged from seeking justice, and act to remedy them.
(Photo by dogbomb.)
