Tag Archives: district

Judge Upholds Arizona Ballot Collecting Ban, Raising Fears of Suppressed Minority Vote

by Finley Kay Posted on September 23, 2016

Mother Jones

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A federal judge denied a Democratic challenge on Friday to Arizona’s ban on collecting other people’s absentee ballots, a move that opponents of the ban fear will suppress the minority vote in the state in the upcoming November elections.

The Arizona Republic reported Friday that US District Court Judge Douglas Rayes ruled that the law didn’t disproportionately impact minority groups. Although it could cause inconvenience for some voters, Rayes found, it didn’t create a significant enough burden to warrant blocking its enforcement during this election. The legal fight over the constitutionality of the law will continue, but the law will not be blocked for the Nov. 8 general election.

The law, Arizona House Bill 2023, targets so-called “ballot harvesting.” It makes it a felony, punishable by up to a year in state prison, for somebody to submit a ballot that isn’t his or hers. Election officials, family members, and caregivers are exempt.

Arizona Republicans have tried for three years to block the ability of people to gather other voters’ absentee ballots and submit them for counting. Republicans have argued that the practice would allow a person to take someone else’s ballot and not turn it in, or to alter it in some way before turning it in, constituting a form of fraud. Arizona Democrats and community activists argued that the practice was common in areas of the state with a substantial minority population, including the Phoenix metro area, and that a ban would be a form of voter suppression. The bill was finally approved this year.

“Voting is a key pillar of our democracy,” said Republican Gov. Doug Ducey when he signed the bill in March. “The bill ensures a chain of custody between the voter and the ballot box.”

State Republicans acknowledged during court arguments in early August that there’s no evidence that a ballot has ever been tampered with or thrown away during the process of ballot collection. But they argued that was irrelevant. “You need not wait until someone breaks into your house before putting a lock on the door,” Arizona Republican Party attorney Sara Jane Agne said during court arguments.

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Judge Upholds Arizona Ballot Collecting Ban, Raising Fears of Suppressed Minority Vote

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This List Shows You How Divided America’s Schools Are

by IolaHopkins Posted on August 23, 2016

Mother Jones

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In the wealthy West Jefferson Hills School District in western Pennsylvania, a new high school with an eight-lane swimming pool and terrazzo flooring was recently approved for construction. Meanwhile, in neighboring Clairton, where the district’s poverty rate is 48 percent, officials wrestled with whether to close schools earlier this year.

That striking disparity is just one of many in a new report that maps the country’s 33,500 school district borders and highlights places where high-poverty districts bump up against wealthy neighbors. The report, put out by the nonprofit EdBuild, sheds light on how these well-established boundaries create “barriers to progress that segregate children” and even worse inequities in the public education system. It also notes that existing school finance system, in which districts rely heavily on property taxes as a source of local funding for schools, creates an incentive for wealthier families to move across district lines to more well-resourced areas.

Between 1990 and 2010, income-based segregation among American school districts grew, according to Stanford’s Center for Education Policy Analysis. Such disparities among districts result in unequal access to resources, such as underqualified teachers and subpar facilities, and could lead to gaps in academic achievement. Another recent Stanford study found that children in the wealthiest school districts performed, on average, four grade levels above children in the poorest school districts. In May, on the anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, the Government Accountability Office found that the share of schools with a high concentration of poor, black, and Hispanic students increased from 9 to 16 percent between 2000 and 2014.

“We’ve created and maintained a system of schools segregated by class and bolstered by arbitrary borders that, in effect, serve as the new status quo for separate but unequal…” conclude the authors of the EdBuild report. “Increasingly, the story of American school districts is a tale of two cities, one well-off and one poor—one with the funds necessary to provide its children ample educational opportunities and one without adequate resources to help its children catch up.”

Here’s a look at the biggest disparities in poverty between neighboring districts:

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This List Shows You How Divided America’s Schools Are

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Is the Louisiana Flooding More Devastating Than Hurricane Sandy?

by BeckySoria Posted on August 22, 2016

Mother Jones

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The relief effort in Louisiana is ramping up after 10 days of monumental flooding. On Tuesday, President Barack Obama will visit Baton Rouge to survey the damage and find out how the federal government can help. The Red Cross has repeatedly described the flooding as “the worst natural disaster to strike the United States” since Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast in 2012.

But for those who aren’t on the ground in Louisiana, it can be difficult to understand what that really means. Here are some numbers that compare the two disasters.

Deaths and damaged homes: Thirteen people have died and about 60,000 homes have been damaged in the flooding that began in Louisiana on August 12. As of Friday, the Obama administration listed 20 parishes in the state as disaster areas, making federal funding available to assist those communities. Hurricane Sandy had a bigger death toll, claiming 72 lives in the United States and damaging 200,000 homes. But that storm hit a much wider swath of land, including metropolitan centers like New York City, whose population is nearly double that of the entire state of Louisiana.

People in shelters: When you compare the storms in terms of the numbers of people in shelters, the situation is similar.

“The Red Cross has mobilized our largest sheltering and feeding effort since Superstorm Sandy with the flooding in Louisiana,” said Molly Dalton, a spokeswoman for the humanitarian organization. “It’s the largest volume of people in need of emergency shelter in the last four years…In addition, FEMA has reported really high numbers of people registering for emergency assistance, which is another indicator we’re going by.”

About five days after Hurricane Sandy, she said, the Red Cross had 11,000 people in 250 shelters across 16 states. One week into that relief effort, it had about 7,000 people in shelters, “and we’re seeing about the same over the last week” in Louisiana, Dalton said on Friday. “Thursday night we had 3,900 people in 28 shelters, but at the peak of the response we had 10,000 people in 50 shelters in Louisiana. So it’s going down, but there are still a lot of people in shelters.” Sunday night, the Red Cross had nearly 3,000 people in 19 shelters across the state.

Looking at the big picture, the Red Cross and partners have provided more than 40,000 overnight stays since flooding began in Louisiana. That compares with 74,000 overnight stays during the entire relief effort for Hurricane Sandy, and 3.8 million overnight stays for Hurricane Katrina victims who where spread across 27 states.

“It’s not possible to estimate the full impact of the Louisiana floods this early in the response, and every disaster is different, so it would be difficult to make any comparison to past disasters,” another Red Cross spokesperson told Mother Jones on Monday. “But we do know that this is going to be a massive response.”

Meals served: “So far in Louisiana in the first week, we’ve served 158,000 meals, and if you look at the same point in Sandy, we had served 164 thousand,” Dalton said Friday. “So as far as what we’re seeing then and what we’re seeing now, it’s very, very similar.”

It’s important to remember, she said, that Hurricane Sandy struck many more states, stretching from New England as far south as the District of Columbia. “This is just one area of Louisiana,” she added. “So if you look at it that way…it’s a very devastating disaster.”

At the peak of the deluge, Louisiana was hit by 6.9 trillion gallons of rain between August 8 and August 14, or roughly 10.4 million Olympic-size swimming pools‘ worth of water. The flooding is receding now, particularly in the northern reaches of the state, though some areas in the south will take longer to dry out, says Gavin Phillips, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. “It’s going down everywhere now,” he says. “There’s nothing worsening at this point.”

The Red Cross estimates the relief effort in Louisiana could cost at least $30 million, though that number may grow as relief workers learn more about the scope of the disaster. As of Monday, the humanitarian organization had received about $7.8 million in donations and pledges.

While Hurricane Sandy and the recent Louisiana flooding were devastating, they pale in comparison to Louisiana’s other famous disaster, Hurricane Katrina, which hit the Gulf Coast 10 years ago, killing at least 1,833 people.

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Is the Louisiana Flooding More Devastating Than Hurricane Sandy?

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Planned Parenthood Wins in a Florida Court

by ThomasMcPeak225 Posted on August 19, 2016

Mother Jones

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A federal judge permanently blocked parts of Florida omnibus legislation that aimed to cut off state funding for preventative health services at women’s clinics that also provide abortions, a measure that was perceived to have targeted Planned Parenthood clinics. Another provision in the law that would have vastly increased what providers have described as unnecessary records inspection requirements for abortion clinics was permanently blocked as well.

The ruling comes at a critical time for Florida—Zika is now spreading in Miami Beach and north of Miami, Gov. Rick Scott confirmed Friday. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have issued a new travel warning that advises pregnant women to avoid the area. So far, there have been 36 confirmed cases.

“We are grateful the court stepped in to stop Rick Scott in his tracks and protect access to health care,” said Lillian Tamayo, CEO of Planned Parenthood of South, East, and North Florida. “If this law had gone into effect, it would have made a bad situation even worse. With the threat of Zika growing by the day, this care is even more critical. It’s time to stop political attacks on women’s basic health care.”

The legislation passed the conservative Legislature with ease back in March, and Scott signed it into law shortly thereafter. The law specifically took aim at Planned Parenthood’s funding in the wake of a smear campaign by anti-abortion activist David Daleiden that alleged Planned Parenthood was selling fetal tissue for profit. (None of the investigations into Daleiden’s allegations have found the health care provider guilty of any wrongdoing.) In June, US District Judge Robert Hinkle temporarily put provisions in the law on hold after Florida Planned Parenthood affiliates challenged them as unconstitutional.

“The Supreme Court has repeatedly said that a government cannot prohibit indirectly—by withholding otherwise-available public funds—conduct that the government could not constitutionally prohibit directly,” Hinkle wrote in June when he placed the law on hold.

State and federal law already prohibit the use of federal funds to finance abortion procedures. The Florida law would have cut $500,000 in expected state funding that Planned Parenthood uses to fund health care screenings and a school dropout prevention program. Opponents of the law also criticized its requirements for records inspections at abortion clinics, fearing it would jeopardize patient privacy by making it easy to uncover details about mental health history, abortion care history, and HIV status.

As previously reported in Mother Jones, Scott had promised to allocate $26 million in state funds to deal with the health crisis, part of which would pay for CDC Zika prevention kits that include two kinds of mosquito repellent, tablets that kill mosquitos in water, and condoms. He has also said his office and Florida’s Department of Health were coordinating to go door to door in an effort to educate women in areas of concern about the risks Zika poses. It’s unclear whether any of those plans have been enacted.

The state could still appeal the decision, but because Scott ultimately decided to drop further legal action in this case, allowing for the injunction, it seems unlikely. Scott’s spokeswoman told ABC News that the governor is reviewing the order, and maintained that “Scott is a pro-life governor who believes in the sanctity of life.”

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Planned Parenthood Wins in a Florida Court

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The Supreme Court Just Blocked This Trans Kid From the Bathroom of His Choice

by EJZAugusta Posted on August 3, 2016

Mother Jones

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The Supreme Court on Wednesday blocked a lower court order that would have allowed a transgender boy in Virginia to use the boys’ bathroom at his school when he returns for classes in September.

The student in question is 17-year-old named Gavin Grimm who was born female but identifies as male. After he was diagnosed with gender dysphoria in 2014, doctors recommended that he live and be treated like a boy. For about two months, his school allowed him to use the boys’ bathroom, but after receiving complaints from parents, his school board adopted a policy that prevented him from doing so.

On Wednesday, in a 5-3 order, the justices temporarily blocked Grimm from the boys’ bathroom while the Supreme Court considers whether to take up a case concerning the Virginia school board’s policy. If the justices agree to hear the case, it would be the first time the Supreme Court has weighed in on the question of whether trans students should be allowed to use bathrooms corresponding with their gender identity, rather than the sex listed on their birth certificates. Twenty-three states are currently suing the Obama administration over a guidance from the Department of Education that says it’s discriminatory to block transgender kids from bathrooms of their choice.

With help from the American Civil Liberties Union, Grimm sued the Gloucester County school board in June 2015, arguing that its policy blocking him from the boys’ bathroom violated Title IX, a civil rights law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in schools that receive federal funding. Grimm initially lost his case in district court, but in April this year, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in his favor, kicking the case back to the district court and urging it to respect the Obama administration’s guidance. The district court then granted an injunction allowing Grimm to use the boys’ bathroom.

In July, the Virginia school board filed an emergency appeal with Chief Justice John Roberts to put the district court case on hold until the justices determine whether they will review the appeals court decision. The school board also asked Roberts for permission to prevent Grimm from using the boys’ bathroom when school resumes, arguing that parents might otherwise pull their kids out of school.

The Supreme Court agreed on both counts. In a concurring statement, Justice Stephen Breyer said he agreed to temporarily block the lower court order as a “courtesy” because the high court was on recess until October. “Granting a stay will preserve the status quo,” he wrote. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan dissented.

“We are disappointed that the court has issued a stay and that Gavin will have to begin another school year isolated from his peers and stigmatized by the Gloucester County school board just because he’s a boy who is transgender,” ACLU senior staff attorney Joshua Block wrote in a statement. “We remain hopeful that Gavin will ultimately prevail.”

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The Supreme Court Just Blocked This Trans Kid From the Bathroom of His Choice

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A Tea Party conservative just lost to a Trump supporter, because farm subsidies

by Trina69W08377 Posted on August 3, 2016

subsidie another day

A Tea Party conservative just lost to a Trump supporter, because farm subsidies

By on Aug 3, 2016Share

A Tea Party leader in the House of Representatives just lost a primary bid for reelection — a sign that Republican voters may be fed up with Tea Party obstinance and are casting about for something new. Rep. Tim Huelskamp lost his Kansas primary by a huge margin to newcomer Roger Marshall.

The outgoing Huelskamp is an ideological conservative with a PhD in agricultural policy, and so he was against subsides whether they went to the poor or industry. He repeatedly voted against the Farm Bill even though his district is packed with farms. His obstinance so infuriated former House Speaker John Boehner that he kicked Huelskamp off the agriculture committee.

Marshall, on the other hand, is a Trump supporter who backs subsidies for farming and has earned endorsements from the agriculture lobby.

This fits with one theory of Trump-ism: The new wave of populist Republicans aren’t against all government payouts; just ones that go to people of a different culture or complexion. They’re fine with handouts — like ag subsidies — that go to their people.

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A Tea Party conservative just lost to a Trump supporter, because farm subsidies

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Georgia GOP Elector Says He Might Not Cast His Electoral Vote for Trump

by BarbaraNewcomer Posted on August 3, 2016

Mother Jones

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Georgia Republican Baoky Vu is about to remind American voters—particularly Donald Trump supporters—that the process for selecting a president isn’t quite as democratic as they imagine.

Vu will be on the ballot this fall to become one the state’s 16 electors in the Electoral College. When people cast votes for president, they’re actually selecting electors who have pledged to back their candidate of choice—a distinction that generally has no practical implications. But Georgia is one of 21 states that don’t legally require electors to vote in accordance with the outcome of the popular vote in their state. And according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution‘s Jim Galloway, Vu not only won’t be voting for Trump in November as a citizen; he might not vote for the Republican nominee if he goes to the Electoral College.

An immigrant from Vietnam, Vu called out Trump for his recent attacks against Khizr Khan, the father of a slain American soldier. “Rather than earning the American people’s respect and trust through the duration of the past year, Donald Trump’s antics and asinine behavior has cemented my belief that he lacks the judgment, temperament and gravitas to lead this Nation,” Vu wrote in a statement. “Throughout the process, he has hurled insults at our heroes and their families, denigrated the disabled and praised dictators. Forget political incorrectness, this is simply despicable demagoguery.”

Vu wouldn’t be the first elector to betray the will of the voters. There’s been a long line of so-called “faithless” electors, including Democrat Barbara Lett-Simmons, who abstained from voting for Al Gore in 2000 to highlight the District of Columbia’s lack of congressional representation. But electors normally don’t telegraph those decisions so far in advance, instead making the move out of principle when it does not affect the outcome of the election.

Conservative commentator Erick Erickson cheered Vu’s decision:

It’s unlikely Vu’s sole vote would swing the final outcome of the election. But his decision to so publicly buck the norms of the Electoral College represents yet another instant of party resistance to Trump’s candidacy, and if more electors follow suit, it could change the electoral calculus. Vu’s move could offer a boost to efforts to replace the institution with a national popular vote, an idea that became popular among liberals after Gore lost in 2000, but less so among conservatives. The Republican Party platform even attacks the suggestion, saying, “We oppose the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact and any other scheme to abolish or distort the procedures of the Electoral College. An unconstitutional effort to impose National Popular Vote would be a grave threat to our federal system and a guarantee of corruption, as every ballot box in every state would offer a chance to steal the presidency.”

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Georgia GOP Elector Says He Might Not Cast His Electoral Vote for Trump

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Circuit Court: North Carolina Law Targeted African-Americans "With Surgical Precision"

by HyeMarshall Posted on July 30, 2016

Mother Jones

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I wrote my post yesterday about the North Carolina voting law before I had a chance to read the 4th Circuit Court opinion that struck it down. It turns out to be even more amazing than I thought. The court wrote that various provisions of North Carolina’s law “target African Americans with almost surgical precision,” and they weren’t kidding:

The original version of SL 2013-381 provided that all government-issued IDs, even many that had been expired, would satisfy the requirement as an alternative to DMV-issued photo IDs….With race data in hand, the legislature amended the bill to exclude many of the alternative photo IDs used by African Americans. As amended, the bill retained only the kinds of IDs that white North Carolinians were more likely to possess.

….Legislators also requested data as to the racial breakdown of early voting usage….The racial data provided to the legislators revealed that African Americans disproportionately used early voting in both 2008 and 2012….After receipt of this racial data, the General Assembly amended the bill to eliminate the first week of early voting.

….Legislators similarly requested data as to the racial makeup of same-day registrants….SL 2013-381 eliminated same-day registration….Legislators additionally requested a racial breakdown of provisional voting….With SL 2013-381, the General Assembly altogether eliminated out-of-precinct voting….African Americans also disproportionately used preregistration…. Although preregistration increased turnout among young adult voters, SL 2013-381 eliminated it.

….As “evidence of justifications” for the changes to early voting, the State offered purported inconsistencies in voting hours across counties, including the fact that only some counties had decided to offer Sunday voting. The State then elaborated on its justification, explaining that “counties with Sunday voting in 2014 were disproportionately black” and “disproportionately Democratic.”

It’s not just that every provision coincidentally happens to affect blacks disproportionately. In at least a couple of cases, provisions were added only after the legislature had racial breakdowns in hand so they could make sure they weren’t accidentally targeting whites too.

Remarkably, even with this evidence before it, the district court upheld the law. This prompts a longtime question of mine: how far do courts have to go in believing the justification that a legislature provides for its actions? Obviously you want to be careful with this, but there’s a point at which, literally, everyone knows what’s really going on. And yet courts have to pretend to believe something else. This sure seems like a destruction test of this concept.

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Circuit Court: North Carolina Law Targeted African-Americans "With Surgical Precision"

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Planned Parenthood Sting Videographer Cleared of Felony Charge

by BonitaIliffe Posted on July 26, 2016

Mother Jones

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On Tuesday morning, Texas prosecutors dismissed the felony charge against David Daleiden, the founder of the anti-abortion Center for Medical Progress, and Sandra Merritt, one of his associates, related to their work last year in creating sting videos targeting Planned Parenthood. They were facing charges of tampering with a government record over allegations that they had made and used fake drivers’ licenses to facilitate their meetings with Planned Parenthood staffers.

Under Daleiden’s leadership, the CMP last summer released a series of secretly-recorded, deceptively-edited videos which purported to show Planned Parenthood staffers negotiating the sale of fetal tissue, a practice which is illegal. Since then, 12 state-level and 4 congressional investigations have found no such wrongdoing by Planned Parenthood. Despite these exonerations, the video series continued to reverberate, spawning state and federal efforts to defund the women’s health provider.

The charges dismissed today were issued in January by the Harris County District Attorney’s office. After the CMP videos, the office had assembled a grand jury to investigate Planned Parenthood but after an extensive investigation that spanned more than two months, the group cleared the women’s health provider and chose to indict Daleiden and Merritt instead. The grand jury also charged the pair with a class A misdemeanor: offering to buy human organs, namely fetal tissue. The pair was cleared of this charge in June.

After Tuesday morning’s dismissal, Daleiden touted the victory on Twitter:

But Daleiden’s legal troubles aren’t over yet. A lawsuit filed last summer against CMP by the National Abortion Federation is ongoing, as is a suit filed by Planned Parenthood in California in January, accusing the CMP of racketeering, illegally creating and using fake driver’s licenses, and invading the privacy of, and illegally recording, Planned Parenthood officials and staff.

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Planned Parenthood Sting Videographer Cleared of Felony Charge

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A Judge Just Slammed San Francisco Cops for Racist Policing

by GinaShephard Posted on July 1, 2016

Mother Jones

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A federal judge has ruled that there is “substantial evidence of racially selective law enforcement by the San Francisco Police Department.” The holding came on Thursday in a drug-related case, and as several SFPD officers are under investigation for allegedly sending racist and homophobic text messages. That’s the city’s second police texting scandal, and after a record year for fatal police shootings, it serves as more troubling background to the reform efforts following the firing of police chief Greg Suhr.

US District Judge Edward Chen ruled in favor of 12 defendants arrested during Operation Safe Schools, a series of drug stings carried out in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood by the SFPD and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in 2013 and 2014. All 37 people arrested during the stings were black. The defendants maintained they were the victims of racial policing. Noting that ethnicities of drug dealers in the Tenderloin vary, Chen’s ruling signaled he would dismiss all charges if the defendants could prove civil rights violations, and allowed them to seek further information, presumably on the races of arrestees and the agencies’ profiling policies, from law enforcement for the next steps of the trial, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Trial evidence included video of an undercover informant declining to buy drugs from an Asian dealer and waiting for another one, who was black, before making a purchase, according to the Chronicle. In a second video, an officer involved in the sting could be heard saying “fuck BMs”—a law enforcement term for black men—the officer holding the camera offered a warning: “Shhh, hey, I’m rolling!”

The ruling “sends a clear message to the government that racial discrimination and selective enforcement will not be tolerated,” said San Francisco’s chief public defender Jeff Adachi. Adachi has said that if the information obtained by the defendants shows a pattern of racism, it could be used to seek dismissal in other criminal cases.

Under new interim police chief Tony Chaplin, the SFPD has undertaken several reform efforts. Recently, the city’s Police Commission unanimously approved a new use-of-force policy that mandates officers attempt to deescalate conflicts before using force. The department’s policies and practices are also under review by the Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing.

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A Judge Just Slammed San Francisco Cops for Racist Policing

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