Source: https://law.marquette.edu/facultyblog/category/civil-rights/page/7/
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 02:53:56+00:00

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In 1999, Cheryl Perich began service as a lay teacher at the Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School in Redford, Michigan. A year later, she became a “called teacher,” selected by the congregation to serve as a commissioned minister and charged with duties of a more pastoral nature, such as teaching religion classes, leading the students in devotional exercises, and participating in weekly chapel functions, though continuing to teach predominantly secular subjects.
Michael Ratner would have treated the pursuit of Osama bin Laden as a law enforcement matter, not as a matter of war. He would rather have seen bin Laden arrested, brought to trial, and given the rights of a criminal defendant than shot on the spot by Navy SEALS.
This almost certainly doesn’t put Ratner in the mainstream of American opinion, but it is consistent with what Ratner has advocated as president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York-based non-profit organization, and as an attorney who has played key roles in defending the legal rights of prisoners at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay and in opposing interrogation techniques Ratner considers torture.
Ratner visited Eckstein Hall last week to speak to about 20 people at a lunch session of the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy, Milwaukee Lawyer Chapter.
Connick v. Thompson: Both Answers Are Right — What Was the Question Again?
By: Michael M. O'HearPosted on March 30, 2011 March 31, 2011 Categories Civil Rights, Criminal Law & Process, Public, U.S. Supreme Court1 Comment on Connick v. Thompson: Both Answers Are Right — What Was the Question Again?
In Supreme Court cases, the majority and dissent sometimes talk right past one another, framing the question for decision so differently that they almost seem to be writing about different cases. See, e.g., the dueling opinions earlier this week in Connick v. Thompson (No. 09-571). Thompson was convicted of attempted armed robbery and murder, and then sentenced to death. A month before his execution, a bloodstained swatch of cloth came to light that proved Thompson was not the perpetrator in the robbery prosecution. The murder charge was eventually retried, and Thompson was acquitted. In all, he served 18 years in prison based on his wrongful convictions. Moreover, it turns out that an assistant district attorney who was part of the team that prosecuted Thompson deliberately withheld the swatch. The District Attorney’s office now concedes that Thompson’s constitutional rights were violated under Brady v. Maryland. The question now is whether the DA’s office should be civilly liable to Thompson for this violation.
Prior cases interpreting 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (the federal civil rights law Thompson invoked in his lawsuit) reject vicarious liability for the government when a government employee violates consitutional rights; in order to recover, as matters unfolded, Thompson was obliged to show that the District Attorney had been deliberately indifferent to a need to train his subordinates regarding their Brady responsibilities. Prior cases also establish that a “failure to train” claim must ordinarily be based on multiple violations of constitutional rights; a single violation, such as that suffered by Thompson, would require extraordinary circumstances to justify relief.
Rinold George “Ryne” Duren, one of Wisconsin’s most famous baseball pitchers, passed away at his Florida winter home on January 6, at age 81. Born in Cazenovia, Wisconsin in 1929, Duren was not permitted to pitch while a high school student out of fear for the safety of the other players; however, he did star in the amateur adult Sauk County League, where he averaged 22 strike outs per game.
He signed a professional contract with the St. Louis Browns in 1949, and later pitched for seven different major league teams between 1954 and 1965. He is best remembered as a star relief pitcher for the New York Yankees from 1958 to 1961. In that role, he was instrumental in the Yankees victory over his home state Milwaukee Braves in the 1958 World Series.
But the folks on the left also had a point. Although one cannot expect mass political movements to be marked by the dispassionate and, we hope, carefully reasoned discourse to be heard in the court room or lecture hall, supporters of the health care bill argued (with some justification) that the over the top rhetoric obscured rather than clarified. Tea parties, they said and still say, are exercises in political hysteria and ignorance in which honest differences of opinion are turned into existential conflict and ordinary political opponents are portrayed as extraordinarily evil. Mass opposition to disfavored legislation and politicians is fine as long as it is accurate and temperate. This is what they say.
Arizona recently passed into law provisions that make a person’s illegal presence in the state of Arizona — currently a civil violation under federal law — a crime under state law. The Arizona law also provides for the arrest of persons where the police have a “reasonable suspicion” that the individual is unlawfully present and where the individual cannot produce the proper documentation. Last minute changes were made to the law this past Friday in order to prohibit the use of racial or ethnic profiling by police in determining who to stop and question, and to clarify that questions about an individual’s immigration status should only be asked as part of an investigation of non-immigration related violations. These changes to the original language were made to try and stave off several threatened lawsuits intended to challenge the constitutionality of the Arizona law.
Thomas E. Perez, assistant attorney general for the civil rights division of the US Justice Department, had a clear and firm message when he visited Marquette University Law School on Friday: He’s aiming to do the job he has held since October energetically and thoroughly.
That wouldn’t seem like a noteworthy statement, except for the political context of Perez’ situation and the controversies that attend many of the areas of enforcement in the civil rights division.
Perez said he would prefer to be like “the proverbial Maytag man,” sitting around with no one needing his services. But that is hardly how he described the work load of his division.
In the past, I have written about my belief that public employees’ rights to sexual privacy should enjoy the same protection afforded First Amendment rights to speech and religion.
The United States Supreme Court granted cert today in the public employee privacy case of NASA v. Nelson, No. 09-530 (petition for cert here). The case will consider whether NASA, a federal agency, violated the informational privacy rights of employees, who worked in non-sensitive contract jobs, by asking certain invasive questions during background investigations.
General Kagan, for the government, filed the petition for cert and is asking the Court to overturn the 9th Circuit decision which directed a district court to issue a preliminary injunction on behalf of contract workers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) operated by the California Institute of Technology under a contract with the federal government. The General maintains that the privacy expectations of the employees are minimal because they have are in the government employment context, these are standard background forms that the government is using, and the Privacy Act of 1974 protects this information from disclosure to the public.

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