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April 2010

April 20, 2010
Dorothy Height, Civil Rights Hero, Dies
Dorothy Height, a trailblazing civil rights figure, died today, at the age of 98. The Associated Press said she was "the leading female voice of the 1960s civil rights movement and a participant in historic marches with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and others ...," and The Washington Post remembered her as "a founding matriarch of the American civil rights movement whose crusade for racial justice and gender equality spanned more than six decades ...."
In a press statement, President Obama called Height "the godmother of the Civil Rights Movement and a hero to so many Americans.

Obama continued:

Ever since she was denied entrance to college because the incoming class had already met its quota of two African American women, Dr. Height devoted her life to those struggling for equality. She led the National Council of Negro Women for 40 years, and served as the only woman at the highest level of the Civil Rights Movement - witnessing every march and milestone along the way. And even in the final weeks of her life - a time when anyone else would have enjoyed their well-earned rest - Dr. Height continued her fight to make our nation a more open and inclusive place for people of every race, gender, background and faith. Michelle and I offer our condolences to all those who knew and loved Dr. Height - and all those whose lives she touched.

The Washington Post's Bart Barnes wrote:

As a civil rights activist, Ms. Height participated in protests in Harlem during the 1930s. In the 1940s, she lobbied first lady Eleanor Roosevelt on behalf of civil rights causes. And in the 1950s, she prodded President Dwight D. Eisenhower to move more aggressively on school desegregation issues. In 1994, Bill Clinton awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor."

...

In the turmoil of the civil rights struggles in the 1960s, Ms. Height helped orchestrate strategy with movement leaders including the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Roy Wilkins, A. Philip Randolph, Whitney Young, James Farmer, Bayard Rustin and John Lewis, who later served as a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Georgia.

In a press statement, President and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights Wade Henderson said:

It is with a heavy heart that I mourn the passing of our chairperson, Dr. Doroth I. Height. For the past seven decades, her work and her wisdom have enriched and ennobled the civil rights movement and our nation.

Dr. Height has been an extraordinary leader, a gifted organizer, a trusted adviser, and a shrewd strategist from the days of the New Deal to these times of the Raw Deal for so many Americans. She was at every important meeting, participated in every historic struggle, and advised major national leaders from Eleanor Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Henderson's full statement is here. A a blog post from The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights is here.

Both The Post and Associated Press noted, one of Height's famous sayings, "If the time is not ripe, we have to ripen the time." In a 1997 interview with the news service, Height said the civil rights movement had seen progress, but much had yet to be accomplished.

"We have come a long way, but too many people are not better off," Height said. "This is my life's work. It is NOT a job."

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Civil rights, Equality and Liberty, Civil Rights Movement, Dorothy Height, Dorothy I. Height
April 20, 2010
High Court Strikes Federal Law Banning Depictions of Animal Cruelty
The U.S. Supreme Court today voted 8-1 to invalidate a federal law that outlawed commercial depictions of animal cruelty. The majority opinion in U.S. v. Stevens concluded that the 1999 law, aimed at curtailing the distribution of videos and other material showing cruelty to animals, was overly broad and therefore a violation of the First Amendment. When Congress passed the law it was intended to curb the distribution of "crush videos," which show women crushing animals to death. The ruling upheld a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, which overturned a Virginia man's conviction under the law. Robert Stevens was convicted of violating the law for selling videos showing dog fights and other animal cruelty.
Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts cited precedent dating back to 1791 that allows for very few government restrictions on the "content of speech." The federal government in defending the law argued that limiting depictions of animal cruelty should be added to the list of speech not protected by the First Amendment.

"It contends," Roberts wrote, "that depictions of ‘illegal acts of animal cruelty' that are ‘made, sold, or possessed for commercial gain' necessarily ‘lack expressive value,' and may accordingly ‘be regulated as unprotected speech.'" Roberts disagreed, writing, "The claim is not just that Congress may regulate depictions of animal cruelty subject to the First Amendment, but that these depictions are outside the reach of that Amendment altogether - that they fall into a ‘First Amendment Free Zone.'"

In analysis for SCOTUSblog, Lyle Denniston noted that the majority decision did stress "that it was not restricting the power of the government to punish actual acts of animal cruelty, and it noted that such prohibitions have ‘a long history in American law.'"

Justice Samuel Alito was the only judge to dissent, writing that the majority's opinion, which "has the practical effect of legalizing the sale of such videos and is thus likely to spur a resumption of their production, is unwarranted." Alito also said the majority opinion erred in deciding that the federal government's law was overly broad.

Before the case was argued, The Humane Society's Wayne Pacelle provided his thoughts on its implications for ACSblog. His guest post is here.

Today Pacelle wrote, "With the Court issuing a disappointing albeit carefully crafted decision, it seems that Congress can step in and write a more narrowly tailored federal statute to prohibit the commercial sale of videos depicting extreme and illegal acts of cruelty. Clearly, it should not be legal to stage a dogfight in your basement and then sell the video of this criminal action."

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Supreme Court, Constitutional Interpretation and Change, First Amendment, Animal cruelty, crush videos, First Amendment, U.S. v. Stevens
April 20, 2010
On Justice Stevens' 90th Birthday, a Look Back
BookTalk

John Paul Stevens

An Independent Life

By:
Bill Barnhart & Gene Schlickman

Available Here

By Bill Barnhart, Author, John Paul Stevens: An Independent Life

When World War II ended, Navy Reserve Lieutenant John P. Stevens in Pearl Harbor received a letter from his brother Jim, a lawyer in Chicago. He urged his younger brother, who had begun graduate studies in English literature before the war, to consider law as a profession. John, who had married shortly after enlisting on December 6, 1941, agreed. The rest, as they say, is history.
But not exactly. Justice Stevens has never written any type of memoir or anything else about his background or history for general public consumption. In certain court opinions and speeches to professional groups, he has referred to his past and his family's past, but he is not one to dwell on the past. What is your favorite case, I once foolishly asked him. "The one I'm working on now," he replied.
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Supreme Court, Bill Barnhart, Biography, BookTalk, Gene Schlickman, John Paul Stevens: An Independent Life, Justice John Paul Stevens, Otto Kerner
April 19, 2010
Argument Mounts Against Attacks on Health Care Law
In an op-ed for The Indianapolis Star, David Orentlicher, a law professor at Indiana University School of Law-Indianapolis and co-director of the Hall Center for Law and Health, argues that the recently enacted health care reform law is constitutionally sound. Orentlicher also maintains that the legal challenges by a string of states' attorneys general against the law are wobbly.
Orentlicher points to the Congress' taxing and commerce clause powers in knocking critics' claims that the Affordable Health Care Act, signed into law by President Obama in March, subverts the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution.

He writes:

It is clear that Congress acted within its constitutional authority. Critics invoke interpretations of the Constitution that might be derived from the constitutional text or that the U.S. Supreme Court once made. However, court decisions for the past 70 years have rejected those interpretations.

...

It is important to consider constitutional constrains when Congress passes major legislation. But as attorneys general in Ohio, Kentucky and other states have concluded, lawsuits against the healthcare law lack any legal merit.

For more on the constitutionality of the health care reform law, see an ACS Issue Brief by Simon Lazarus here.

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Constitutional Interpretation and Change, Equality and Liberty, Affordable Health Care Act, David Orentlicher, Health Care Reform, President Obama
April 19, 2010
Public Universities Shouldn’t Be Forced To Support Clubs That Discriminate
Guest Post
By Paul Cates, Communications Strategist, American Civil Liberties Union

Cross-posted at ACLU's Blog of Rights

Today the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case that could have serious implications for the laws we have created to ensure that everyone has an equal opportunity to participate in society.

The central question raised in Christian Legal Society v. Martinez is whether a public university, the University of California's Hastings College of the Law, can be forced to officially recognize and provide funds to clubs that violate the school's nondiscrimination policy. Although Hastings allows the Christian Legal Society to meet and recruit on campus, the group is claiming that it should be entitled to official club status and its share of the small amount of money set aside for school clubs even though it denies membership to anyone - even fellow Christians -- who doesn't follow the Club's view of Christianity, which includes the belief that gay conduct is sinful.

In our view, Hastings has done a thoughtful job of balancing all interests. Hastings does not restrict official clubs in their beliefs or speech. Other official clubs at the university range from the Clara Foltz Feminist Association and the Hastings Federalist Society to the Hastings Democrats and the Hastings Animal Law Society. Hastings has one simple rule: If a club wants to use the university's name and receive university funds, anyone must be allowed to join. That means men are able to join in the feminist club, Republicans may join the Democratic club, and so on.

Defenders of CLS claim that denying the club official status somehow impinges on its constitutional freedoms. But CLS and other unofficial clubs are allowed to meet and recruit on campus, and to use campus bulletin boards and chalk boards to make announcements. CLS is free to hold whatever beliefs it likes, and to exclude anyone from membership on the basis of any characteristic or belief. But if it chooses to exclude students based on their religion or sexual orientation, it cannot then also demand public funding and official recognition. Publically funded universities have a financial, historical, and legal imperative to ensure that tuition-paying students are not discriminated against in the pursuit of any educational opportunity.

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Civil rights, Supreme Court, Constitutional Interpretation and Change, First Amendment, Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, CLS v. Martinez, Guest Post

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