discrimination

by Jeremy Leaming

Putting aside the North Carolina vote embracing discrimination against lesbians and gay men, the struggle for marriage equality has seen more victories of late than defeats. Today, for example, Maryland’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, ruled that same-sex marriages recognized in other states, such as New York or Connecticut, will be lawfully recognized in Maryland. The case is Port v. Virginia Anne Cowan. The Maryland legislature earlier this year also passed a same-sex marriage law.

But marriage equality, while an important component to equality, is hardly the pinnacle. As Andy Birkey notes for us in an extensive piece for The American Independent, it is still legal for public officials in the vast majority of states to exclude members of the LGBT community from jury service.

The Constitution, Birkey notes, says criminal defendants are entitled to an “impartial jury,” and the U.S. Supreme Court has determined that jurors cannot be excluded because of gender or race. Sexual orientation and gender identity, however, remain open to discrimination.

“Federal courts,” he writes, “have consistently declined to prohibit attorneys from openly discriminating against LGBT people during jury selection. And as recently as last year, the U.S. Department of Justice told a panel of judges that it ‘takes no position’ on whether the case law that prohibits attorneys from removing jurors based on race or sex should be extended to cover sexual orientation.”

Only a few states have taken action to prevent government officials from yanking prospective jurors because of beliefs they are gay or transgender. California is the exception. When former Calif. Gov. Gray Davis enacted a law barring such discrimination, he said “No Californian should be deprived of the opportunity to share in our system of justices simply because they are gay or lesbian.”

by Jeremy Leaming

East Haven, Conn., Mayor Joseph Maturo, perhaps not surprisingly, is displaying staunch support for the city’s police department after the U.S. Department of Justice lodged criminal charges against several of its officers for misconduct aimed at the city’s Latino community.

As The New York Times reported this morning, federal authorities, after lengthy investigations, have accused a group of East Haven police officers of targeting the Latino community. “They stopped and detained people, particularly immigrants, without reason, federal prosecutors said, sometimes slapping, hitting or kicking them when they were handcuffed, and once smashing a man’s head into a wall,” the newspaper reports. “They followed and arrested residents, including a local priest who tried to document their behavior.” The FBI arrested four East Haven officers yesterday, The Times reports, “on charges of conspiracy, false arrests, excessive force and obstruction of justice over what the indictment described as years of mistreatment of individuals, especially Hispanics, and efforts to cover it up.”

Maturo (pictured) told The Times that it was “a sickening feeling to have your officers arrested, but nevertheless they’re innocent until proven guilty.” He added that he has “confidence” in the entire Department.

The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division following an investigation of the East Haven Police Department (EHPD) issued a report concluding that it engaged in discrimination against the Latino community, and failed to take action to stop the misconduct.

The EHPD “engages in a pattern of systematically discriminating against Latinos by targeting Latinos for discriminatory traffic enforcement, treating Latino drivers more harshly than non-Latino drivers after a traffic stop and intentionally failing to design and implement internal systems of control that would identify, track and prevent such misconduct,” Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez said in press statement. “We found that the pattern of practice and unlawful conduct was deeply rooted in the Department’s culture.”