DOE sues New York for allegedly violating civil rights law with Native American mascot ban

The US Department of Education (DOE) announced Friday that New York state has violated federal civil rights law by banning Native American school mascots while permitting mascots derived from other ethnic groups, reported Jurist. This comes after the DOE launched an investigation into the state’s mascot controversy last month.

The investigation was launched after The Native American Guardians Association (NAGA) filed a complaint with the DOE’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR), alleging that the New York Department of Education (NYDOE) and the New York Board of Regents (BOR) are violating federal civil rights law by forcing the Massapequa School District to eliminate its “Chiefs” mascot based on its association with Native American culture. In 2023 the BOR voted unanimously to adopt a NYDOE regulation that prohibits the use of Indigenous team names, mascots, and logos by public schools. Four Long Island school districts filed a federal lawsuit challenging the regulation, claiming that it violated their right to free speech under the First Amendment. The lawsuit was dismissed by a federal district court judge in March, finding that the school districts did not provide enough evidence that the policy infringed on First Amendment rights.

In its subsequent investigation, the OCR concluded that New York’s policy was in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 because it bans names, mascots, and logos based on Native American race and national origin, but does not ban those “that appear to have been derived from other racial or ethnic groups, such as the ‘Dutchmen’ and the ‘Huguenots.'” Title VI prohibits discrimination based on “race, color, religion, sex or national origin” in programs and activities that receive federal financial assistance. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon stated in Friday’s press release:

Rather than focus on learning outcomes, the New York Department of Education and Board of Regents has set its sights on erasing Massapequa’s history—while turning a blind eye to other districts’ mascots that are derived from or connected to other racial or ethnic groups. We will stand with the people of Massapequa until commonsense is restored and justice is served, and until New York comes into compliance with federal law.

The OCR states that New York must rescind the regulation prohibiting the use of Indigenous mascots. The OCR also demands that the state issue letters of apology to Indigenous tribes which acknowledge the BOR “violated Title VI by discriminating against Native Americans” and “silenced the voices of Native Americans and attempted to erase Native American history.” If these conditions are not met within ten days, the DOE notes that it may refer the matter to the Department of Justice (DOJ) for enforcement proceedings, and federal funding may be pulled from the state.

This comes amidst a spate of legal actions surround the DOE. Last month, a federal judge in New Hampshire granted a preliminary injunction that blocks the DOE from withholding federal funding from schools that implement diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. In March, a coalition of Democratic-led states filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration for sweeping layoffs across the DOE, stating that the layoffs represent an illegal dismantling of an agency created by Congress. Executive Order 14242, signed March 20, outlines President Donald Trump’s intention to close the DOE.

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Federal Judge fights back against expansion of qualified immunity

 A Section 1983 claim is a federal law that allows people to sue state and local officials for violating their federal constitutional rights, reported The New Republic. Congress enacted it as part of the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, which is also known as the Enforcement Act, to protect the civil rights of Black Southerners during Reconstruction. Section 1983 cases underwent a revival of sorts in the 1950s and 1960s, only to find themselves curtailed again by the court in Pierson.

Qualified Immunity has made 1983 actions less accessible. Its origins can be traced back to the 1967 case Pierson v. Ray, where the Supreme Court established it in ruling against a group of priests who sued Jackson police officers who had arrested them on spurious grounds at a civil rights protest.

Federal District Judge Carlton Reeves Reeves is fighting the trend of Qualified Immunity. He wrote that it was “difficult to see qualified immunity’s creation as anything other than a backlash to the civil rights movement,” given the historical context. “The justices took a law meant to protect freed people exercising their federal rights in Southern states after the Civil War, then flipped its meaning,” he noted. “In creating qualified immunity, the high court protected the Southern officials still violating those federal rights 100 years after the war ended. Southern trees bear strange fruit, indeed.”

The Supreme Court’s current articulation of qualified immunity hinges on whether a police officer violated a “clearly established right.” This is more bizarre in practice than it sounds in theory. What counts as “clearly established”? In many cases, it means that a federal appeals court previously ruled that the officer’s specific acts violated some part of the Constitution. But lower courts often take an extremely narrow view of whether an act was “clearly established,” and appellate courts aren’t obligated to “clearly establish” it for future cases, either.

Reeves noted that this requirement is “unusual in the law” and that no other claims require it. “If a surgeon accidentally leaves a sponge in your abdomen before stitching you up, you do not have to point to an existing appellate decision ‘clearly establishing’ his error before proceeding with your claim,” he observed. “You simply state the facts and explain that the surgeon’s conduct fell below the standard of care.”

To highlight its absurdity, he pointed to a number of surprising instances in other courts where misconduct wasn’t “clearly established.” The Ninth Circuit once ruled, for example, that officers who stole a $225,000 rare coin collection “did not have clear notice that it violated the Fourth Amendment,” essentially ruling that committing the crime of theft did not violate the victim’s rights. The Fifth Circuit held that it was OK to keep a prisoner “in a frigid cell” where he was “covered in other persons’ feces and forced to sleep naked in sewage” for six days because the “clearly established” precedent only barred it for “months.” In another case, a court held that it was not “clearly established” that prison guards who watched a mentally unstable inmate hang himself should have called for paramedics.

I could list more examples, and so could Reeves, but you probably get the point by now. “[Qualified immunity] discourages victims of misconduct from bringing lawsuits, and those who do file suit sometimes recover nothing because of it,” he wrote. “Qualified immunity accomplishes this by preventing victims of government misconduct from using the discovery tools available to other litigants.” He also noted the obvious effects it had on racial inequality, since Black defendants are statistically more likely to face interactions with law enforcement than other Americans.

Reeves, as a federal district court judge, is not free to simply ignore Supreme Court precedent. But he denied qualified immunity to Thomas all the same. He sided with Green on every portion of his claim, rejecting even some plausible defenses that Thomas had raised. When courts consider a defendant’s motion to dismiss, they typically assume that the plaintiff’s allegations are true and interpret any factual disputes in the plaintiff’s favor. The reasoning for this is simple: If a case can’t survive under even the friendliest circumstances, then it shouldn’t.

Reeves leaned heavily on this principle to allow the malicious prosecution and false arrest claims to go forward. He also used to it defeat Thomas’s insistence that the grand jury’s involvement made her less liable for what happened. Reeves noted that, as alleged by Green, the officer had not told the grand jury that the jailhouse informant had serious credibility issues or that they had contradictory evidence about Robinson’s death. “Had she provided the grand jury with full and complete information, Green alleges, he would not have been indicted,” the judge concluded.

Reeves also took aim at some occasional defenses made of the Supreme Court’s current approach to qualified immunity. He rejected an assertion made by the court in 2018 that it was Congress’s responsibility to address the issue, noting that qualified immunity was a creature of the federal courts’ own making. “Qualified immunity does not appear in the text of the Ku Klux Klan Act,” he observed, quoting from precedent. “It is not found in any constitutional provision or other statute. Nor does it ‘help give life and substance’ to the ‘specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights.’ The defense has the opposite effect. It nullifies the guarantees of the Bill of Rights.”

At one point, he also criticized the Supreme Court for its inaction on qualified immunity by pointing to how it abolished a constitutional right to obtain an abortion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. As its name suggests, that case also involved Jackson, Mississippi. Reeves had been the trial judge in the case and ruled in favor of the clinic challenging the state’s restrictions.

On appeal, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the state instead and overturned Roe v. Wade along the way. Reeves noted that qualified immunity opponents and anti-abortion opponents had made similar arguments: The latter had alleged that previous generations of justices had created an atextual rule though “raw judicial power” and had “short-circuited the democratic process” along the way. “The arguments against qualified immunity are stronger than the arguments [Mississippi] presented in Dobbs,” he concluded.

While this type of direct criticism is somewhat unusual for a federal judge, it is pretty standard for Reeves. Over the last few years, he has pointedly criticized the court on other issues, notably in Second Amendment cases. In a 2022 case, he applied the court’s new history-and-tradition text while adding that neither he nor the justices are “trained historians.” Last summer, at a later stage of the case’s proceedings, he aired his concerns about originalism and its role as “the dominant mode of constitutional interpretation” nowadays. “This court is not so sure it should be,” Reeves wrote, referring to himself.

Thomas will undoubtedly appeal the ruling to the Eleventh Circuit, which may take a different view of things. Even if the appeals courts overturn Reeves’s ruling, however, they can’t stop him from pointing out qualified immunity’s deep and inextricable flaws. Nor can they reverse the growing chorus of calls for the Supreme Court to rethink the matter. As Reeves pointedly observed, it is a problem that only they can truly solve.

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Dr. King remembered 55 years after his murder

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated 55 years ago today, on the balcony of the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, TN.

The night before his murder, King gave a speech at the Mason Temple in support of the Memphis sanitation works that were on strike. He closed his remarks with the following painfully prophetic statement:

“I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the Promised Land.”

The struggle continues!

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Right-wing robocalls targeting Black voters violated the Voting Rights Act and Ku Klux Klan Act

Right-wing activists Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman’s robocalls targeting Black voters violated the Voting Rights Act and Ku Klux Klan Act — and the question isn’t close enough to require a jury, a federal judge ruled, reported Law and Crime News.

“The Court recognizes that the free exchange of ideas on issues of public concern and the ability to engage in robust political discussion constitute the foundations of a democratic society,” Senior U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero wrote in a 111-page order on Wednesday.

Marrero nonetheless found that the evidence “establishes that the neighborhoods that Defendants targeted were not accidental or random,” finding that a reasonable jury couldn’t escape the conclusion that the pair wanted to “deny the right to vote specifically to Black voters.”

“Goofballs and political hucksters”

The ruling spells victory without a trial for The National Coalition on Black Civic Participation (NCBCP), a civil rights group that sued Wohl and Burkman in the Southern District of New York before the 2020 presidential election.

New York Attorney General Letitia James, who joined the lawsuit, said in a statement on Wednesday saying:

“Your vote is your voice, and I am proud that today the court ruled in our favor to uphold the most important cornerstone of our democracy. Wohl and Burkman engaged in a disgraceful campaign to intimidate Black voters, using threats and lies to keep them from making their voices heard in an attempt to secure the election for their preferred presidential candidate. I will always stand fierce in defense of New Yorkers’ right to vote, and anyone who attempts to take away that right will be met with the full force of the law.”

Wohl and Burkman have been tied to multiple political hoaxes targeting perceived rivals of former President Donald Trump, including then-Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Anthony Fauci, and ex-Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Prosecutors, regulators and common citizens claimed the duo crossed a line with 85,000 robocalls, sent out nationally to such locations as New York, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois and Pennsylvania.

Recorded by a woman identifying herself as “Tamika Taylor,” the robocalls largely targeted diverse regions with the false message that “if you vote by mail, your personal information will be part of a public database that will be used by police departments to track down old warrants, and [will] be used by credit card companies to collect outstanding debt.”

Though Wohl and Burkman painted themselves as “goofballs and political hucksters with an irreverent sense of humor,” Judge Marrero rejected that the robocalls were “mere hyperbole.”

“In addition to the specific harms that the call threatened, Defendants dressed the call with a veil of legitimacy to mislead its listeners into believing the statements made in the call were true,” Marrero added. “The Robocall framed Wohl and Burkman’s organization, Project 1599, as a ‘civil rights organization’ with a name reminiscent of the 1619 Project, an initiative of the New York Times that sought to recognize and commemorate the history of the first slave ship that carried enslaved Africans into the United States.”

The stunt also led to criminal prosecution. In the Ohio case, Wohl and Burkman were sentenced to spend 500 hours registering voters living in low-income neighborhoods in the Washington, D.C., area. That was after they pleaded guilty to a felony count of telecommunications fraud. Another case in Michigan remains pending.

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