Source: https://www.inversecondemnation.com/inversecondemnation/2019/04/index.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 04:52:07+00:00

Document:
If you are wondering why the doors to most state, county, and city offices are locked today, remember that it is the day that Hawaii celebrates Good Friday. Good Friday is an an official state-sanctioned holiday in Hawaii, so we're reposting our annual recounting of how it came to be that the State commemorates the date of the crucifixion, and how that squares with the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
Good Friday is a legal holiday in the State of Hawaii pursuant to Haw. Rev. Stat. § 8-1. The day of the crucifixion was originally made a holiday in 1941 by the Territorial Legislature. The statute was recodified upon statehood in 1959, and the holiday has been confirmed via Haw. Rev. Stat. § 89-1, the law that makes the establishment of public holidays -- among many other things -- a product of what the statute calls "joint decision-making" process between the government and the government employee unions (also known as collective bargaining -- and here it was you thought that elected representatives made laws).
[T]he Good Friday holiday was primarily proposed to increase the frequency of legal holidays. It is also noteworthy to point out, as does the State in this case, that the legislative report seems to acknowledge that Good Friday is not an entirely religious day. The 1939 report characterizes Good Friday as in theory at least a day of solemn religious observances, apparently reflecting the legislature's sentiment that Good Friday had lost much of its religious nature and had become a holiday similar in nature to Thanksgiving or Christmas which have been secularized to some extent over the centuries. Indeed, this court is also of the opinion that Good Friday has attained a secular character; for the majority of Americans Good Friday has become more an integral part of a traditional three day secular celebration of Spring which begins on Good Friday and continues through Easter Sunday than a solemn observance of Jesus Christ's crucifixion.
This court concludes that the secular purpose behind the establishment of the Good Friday is manifest. The legislature does not offend the First Amendment by enacting a statute intended to ensure that the people of Hawaii have an adequate number of leave days. This court further concludes that any ancillary sectarian purpose which the legislature may have had in establishing Good Friday as a holiday is not fatal to the Hawaii Rev. Stat. § 8-1, since a clearly secular purpose for the statute exists and since Good Friday, like Christmas, has become secularized to some extent over the centuries.
An examination of the effects of Hawaii Rev. Stat. § 8-1 leads this court to the conclusion that the legislature's intended purpose in declaring Good Friday to be a legal holiday has been fulfilled. While the plaintiffs argue that the effect of the Good Friday statute is to give Christian sects the imprimatur of State approval, an analysis of the effects of the statute compels this court to find that the secular effects of the statute significantly predominate over the sectarian effects of the statute.
We conclude that the Hawaii statute has a legitimate, sincere secular purpose, specifically to provide Hawaiians with another holiday, and thus is not motivated wholly by an impermissible purpose. There is nothing impermissible about considering for holiday status days on which many people choose to be absent from work for religious reasons. That the state legislature was able to accomplish its secular purpose and at the same time accommodate the widespread religious practices of its citizenry is hardly a reason to invalidate the statute.
The holly and the ivy, jingling bells, red-nosed reindeer, and frosty snowmen this is not. What this case is about is Hawaii's endorsement, by means of a state holiday, of a day thoroughly infused with religious significance alone. Because I believe that such a state establishment of religion violates both the purpose and effects prongs of Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602, 91 S.Ct. 2105, 29 L.Ed.2d 745 (1971). I respectfully dissent.
The dissenting judge argued that the court's duty is to seek out whether the legislature had a primarily religious purpose, rather than whether it had any legitimate secular purpose.
So go shopping, or go to the beach today folks. If you do go to church, it's "of no constitutional moment." Because it is plausible, isn't it, that the State had a secular purpose when it officially sanctified "a religious holiday observed primarily by Christians commemorating the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and his death at Calvary?"
As the Church Lady would say, "how conveeeeenient."
Here's the Brief in Opposition, in Like v. Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line Co., LLC, No. 18-1206 (Apr. 17, 2019), the case which we've been following (and in which we filed this amici brief).
This is the case in which landowners are challenging the district court's issuance of an injunction in a Natural Gas Act taking which allow a private condemnor to obtain immediate possession of the land being condemned even though the Natural Gas Act does not delegate to pipeline condemnors the quick-take power.
Whether the decision of the court below affirming the issuance of an injunction granting possession of specific rights of way on each of the Petitioners’ properties by the district court under the Natural Gas Act, after a two day hearing, and after the district court granted partial summary judgment and determined that Transco had the authority to condemn the rights of way under the Natural Gas Act, conflicts with the decisions of this Court or the Seventh Circuit’s decision in Northern Border Pipeline Co. v. 86.72 Acres of Land, 144 F.3d 469 (7th Cir. 1998).
Notwithstanding the Act’s limited delegation, are district courts empowered to enter preliminary injunctions giving private companies immediate possession of land before final judgment in Natural Gas Act condemnations?
Stay tuned for the Petitioners' reply.
Barista's note: the other petition raising the same issue (against the same private condemnor) is set for conference at the Court on April 26, 2019, after the pipeline waived its right to respond.
Pretty simple facts in the North Dakota Supreme Court's opinion in Lincoln Land Development, LLC v. City of Lincoln, No. 20180117 (Mar. 15, 2019): back in the day (the 1980's) the City had a dirt road over private property, used to access its sewage treatment plant. Lincoln Land Development bought the property in 2005. Recently, the City graded and paved the road, raised the road bed, and added things like culverts.
The City denied liability, arguing that Lincoln Development didn't have the right to exclude the City because the City owned an easement -- either by express grant, or by implication or estoppel -- and thus Lincoln Development didn't possess property that the City had taken.
The most interesting part of the North Dakota Supreme Court's opinion, in our opinion, starts on page 5, where the court discusses the easement by prescription claim (after having agreed with the landowner that its deed did not expressly grant and easement to the City). Both parties agreed that the City used the dirt road for more than 20 years, the prescriptive period in ND. Game over?
The final construction plans for the 2011 project show the pre-2011 two-tire track road was between six and ten feet wide and was not elevated above the adjacent ground. The new roadway has a sixteen-foot wide surface with a seventeen-foot road top sub-base and identified stripping limits for either a 4:1 or 6:1 downslope to the original grade of the property. The construction plans showed two to three and a half foot ditches with a flat ditch bottom approximately ten feet wide. The plans also called for installation of culverts, one of which was installed on Lincoln Land Development’s property.
Lesson: just because you own something doesn't mean you own everything. A paved road isn't a dirt road.
The court also upheld the award of attorneys' fees to the property owner as the prevailing party. It rejected the City's argument that it, not Lincoln Development, was the prevailing party, because even though Lincoln Development won only one of its five claims. The trial court held that Lincoln Development didn't actually raise five claims, just one claim with five theories of damage. Slip op. at 8.

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