Bail Bondsman in Sanford – The Supreme Court Sets a Higher Standard for Special Education

Source     : Real Clear Education News
By             : Brian Rogers, Mihir Zaveri, and Gabrielle Banks
Category : Bail Bondsman in Sanford , Bondsman in Seminole County

The Supreme Court Sets a Higher Standard for Special Education

Amid the Neil Gorsuch confirmation hearings, the Supreme Court ruled on the case of Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District and handed down what may prove to be the most important special education ruling in thirty-five years. The unanimous decision in Endrew F. smacks down the Rowley decision which has, since 1982, fueled an often-contentious relationship between parents and school districts. It was tough news for a man awaiting confirmation to the highest court as Gorsuch had supported the Rowley standard as a federal judge in the Tenth Circuit. Despite that drama, the Endrew F. ruling is good news for children, families and special educators, and a crucial milestone in the 40th year of implementing federal special education law. Under Rowley, public schools were only required to establish a floor for opportunity through their special education programs. The Endrew F. decision ruled that a floor, alone, was insufficient. It reflects a belief in the potential of all students by requiring that schools offer “an IEP [individualized education plan] reasonably calculated to enable a child to make progress appropriate in light of the child’s circumstances.”  Endrew F. is not specific; it does not prescribe a definition of progress or offer grade level equivalents that are the basis of mainstream schooling.  The Endrew F. case shifts the position of the school district from one that must satisfy a minimum standard to one that must offer a reasonable hope of progress and in doing so, takes a step toward fulfilling the promise of special education that started with President Ford’s signing of Public Law 94-142 in 1975.

Few teachers today can remember the “bad old days” when a school administrator could refuse to enroll a child with a disability. When Congress passed Public Law 94-142, it was focused on the million children who were excluded from public schools and on the lack of quality services for many of those severely challenged children who were enrolled. It became illegal after the law to exclude children from school because of a disability. The law was rooted in a commitment to access—all children are entitled to a public education. But the law was not written for benefit. Public Law 94-142 and its successor, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), do not set academic, social or behavioral expectations. The law watched after the outcomes for children by giving parents an unprecedented role in designing and approving the program for their children. Giving parents a voice in their child’s IEP was an amazing feat. Congress knew that parents were not educators and that many parents lacked an adequate education themselves. But Congress also knew that parents love their children. Giving parents a voice was revolutionary in 1975 and still remarkable today. But the administrative realities of having mom and dad engaged in the IEP process mounted as the number of children covered under the law grew to more than 6 million.

Perhaps it should be no surprise that a law designed to address access ultimately failed to advance equity. Compliance superseded opportunity as the law’s primary focus. Sadly, the cost of compliance fueled fiscal nightmares for state and district leaders. Special education became a maintenance system for too many students whose disabilities remained static. Serving the students was mandatory; improving their lot in life was not. But Endrew F. changes that. The reauthorization of IDEA now looms large and presents an opportunity for the U.S. Department of Education to recapture the high ground in special education. While President Trump’s “skinny budget” showed no decrease in support for special education, it also showed no increase or no move to the full funding that has eluded federally guided special education since its implementation. Endrew F. is an upgrade for children and a concomitant increase in expenditures for school districts. States and districts will now look for guidance and leadership from an understaffed U.S. Department of Education in the application of Endrew F. In recent decades, special education has drifted from its role as a champion of access and of care for those with disabilities to a compliance-driven model. Children should not have to pay for the organizational inadequacies of the education system or for the underfunding of special education. But they do. The Endrew F. decision provides a mandate for school districts to move beyond de minimus and toward appropriate progress. It’s a step in the right direction and a move in keeping with the law’s original intent as a champion for those with disabilities.

Read more here : realcleareducation.com/articles/2017/04/11/the_supreme_court_sets_a_higher_standard_for_special_education__110141.html

Bondsman in Seminole County – European Court of Justice lays down the law on Kodipocalypse

Source     : The Register News
By             : Andrew Orlowski
Category :  Bail Bondsman in Sanford , Bondsman in Seminole County

European Court of Justice lays down the law on Kodipocalypse

Europe’s highest court has made it easier for member states to halt the sale of media sticks with preloaded pirate streaming links and add-ons. The past few months have seen significant growth in pre-configured streaming boxes or USB sticks. These use the Kodi platform, an open-source player, configured by a vendor with add-ons that enable access to pirate TV services.

The UK has approved realtime blocks by ISPs during popular Premier League games until the end of the English season to gauge the effectiveness of blocking the streams at source. Meanwhile, trading standards officers and police have launched raids on vendors. The European Court of Justice was invited to give its opinion on a Dutch district court case involving a vendor of one player, filmspeler.nl. The court today decreed that the vendor’s actions constituted a “communication to the public”.

This is a peculiar doctrine specific to European law, not found in the Berne Convention, which some of Europe’s top legal experts believe is based on a mistranslation. URLs were deemed not to be a “communication to the public” last September. It’s a cumbersome analog to the idea of secondary liability, which takes into account intent, as it did for Grokster in the US Supreme Court in 2005. But the advantage for legal wonks and lawyers in Europe is that they can continue to evolve the concept for years to come. Only a cynic would suggest that lawyers and legal academics profit from such confusion, so we won’t.

The ECJ decided that: In the present case and having regard, in particular, to the content of the advertising of the multimedia player and to the fact that the main attraction of that player for potential purchasers is the pre-installation of the add-ons concerned, the Court finds that the purchaser of such a player accesses a free and unauthorised off.

Read more here: theregister.co.uk/2017/04/26/ecj_kodi_addons/

Bail Bondsman in Sanford – State’s high court to ‘ride the circuit,’ visit high school

Source     : MC Clatchy DC News
By             : The Associated Press
Category :  Bail Bondsman in Sanford , Bondsman in Seminole County

State’s high court to ‘ride the circuit,’ visit high school

The Rhode Island Supreme Court will hear oral arguments at Woonsocket High School in a tradition known as “riding the circuit.” The state’s high court will hear three cases at the school Wednesday. Chief Justice Paul Suttell says it’s an opportunity to take the court’s work out of Providence to show students and the public how their justice system works.

The court will hear arguments in a lawsuit involving serious injury to a man while target shooting, an appeal of a criminal conviction for robbery and an appeal of a criminal conviction for possession of a firearm.

The court revived the centuries-old tradition of traveling throughout its jurisdiction within the last 16 years to reach out to the community.

Read more here: mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/national-politics/article146277844.html

Bondsman in Seminole County – Is the Supreme Court acting less like a court?

Source     : The Conversation News
By             : Bob Egelko
Category : Bail Bondsman in Sanford , Bondsman in Seminole County

Is the Supreme Court acting less like a court?

As the pinnacle of the judicial branch, the U.S. Supreme Court is necessarily involved in some of the highest-profile, most controversial and most political cases across the country. And it is one of the most widely respected government institutions in the country. Some of its reputation may be because the justices are not seen as mere “politicians in robes.” Research also tells us people respect the Supreme Court in part because it shares traditions and pageantry with the larger judicial system – such as judges in robes wielding gavels. As members of a team of legal scholars and information scientists who use computational methods to study the judicial system, we wondered whether another potential source of the Supreme Court’s public esteem is its use of language. Like other courts, the Supreme Court doesn’t announce its rulings with one-line tweets, for example, the way many politicians declare their intentions to vote for or against legislative bills. Rather, it issues lengthy documents setting out facts and legal precedents and connecting them to each other in ways that both declare an outcome and explain (or object to) how the court reached that decision. The more these written opinions suggest the court is set apart from the political fray, the more they can help its reputation. But how can we know if the Supreme Court is writing like a judicial body rather than a more political institution? One way is to compare its decisions to those issued by the next-highest level of federal courts, the U.S. Courts of Appeals, which are widely perceived to be less politically partisan and more focused on addressing run-of-the-mill legal issues. Our comparison found that from 1951 to 2007, Supreme Court opinions have indeed become increasingly different in their content from opinions issued by lower federal courts, indicating that over time, the court appears to be drifting away from its judicial roots.

Machine reading the law
In other work, our group has studied the evolution of the writing style of the Supreme Court and timescales of influence of opinion as well as ideological expression in judicial opinions. In each project, we applied various kinds of big data text mining tools to collections of tens of thousands of opinions. For our current research, we chose to view judicial opinions as a genre of lawmaking text, akin to legislatures’ statutes, the president’s executive orders (or, these days, tweets) and agencies’ regulations. We analyzed a random sample of 25,000 of the entire corpus of approximately 300,000 opinions issued from the Supreme Court and federal appeals courts between 1951 and 2007. Our analysis included all opinion types, including dissents. We were interested not in whether there were small stylistic differences – such as increased use of footnotes – but whether the actual words of Supreme Court opinions were distinctive from those of the appeals courts, and whether that distinctiveness was changing. Our analysis found that over five decades, the language of the Supreme Court’s opinions became increasingly different from those of the appellate courts. This trend may undermine the court’s popular legitimacy over time, particularly when viewed in concert with other developments indicating the Supreme Court may be becoming increasingly politicized, such as the process of nominating and confirming new justices.

Who wrote that?
The first step in our analysis used a specific type of machine learning, called a “topic model,” which detects groups of words that generally appear near each other with predictable frequency in a given body of texts. For example, it can tell whether a particular opinion is more focused on the equal protection rights under the 14th Amendment as opposed to environmental law because in the former, the words “discrimination” and “race” are more likely to appear together and frequently, while in the latter this is true of the words “pollution” and “water.” For the next step, we used the results of the topic analysis to teach a machine learning program to classify thousands of opinions as either written by the Supreme Court or a federal appeals court. Based on the topic information, the machine was able to pick up on content differences between the two groups of opinions. For example, the Supreme Court’s opinions tend to have more words associated with interpreting laws and constitutional rights, like using the history of Reconstruction to interpret civil rights statutes. The appeals courts’ opinions tended to have more words referring to times, dates, testimony and evidence.

Based on this training, we tested how well the machine was able to guess whether new opinions were written by the Supreme Court. To humanize it a bit, imagine a legal scholar who had read the first set of opinions walking down the street one day and coming across a few pages of a judicial opinion with all identifying information torn away. How good would she be at identifying which court produced it – and does her accuracy vary depending on when the pages were written? Even in the 1950s, the first decade in our sample, the Supreme Court’s opinions were already quite different from appeals court decisions. When presented with opinions written in this period, the machine was able to judge with roughly 80 percent accuracy which opinions were written by the Supreme Court. So its decisions were already fairly easily distinguished from appeals court opinions. But they got even more so as years went by: When presented with opinions written in the 2000s, the algorithm achieved an almost perfect score. An exception that illustrates how this works is the algorithm’s tendency to misclassify the Supreme Court’s 2003 Yarborough v. Gentry ruling. That opinion provides guidance for the lower courts on how to deal with habeas corpus cases, which are a mainstay of their work. It deals with a common issue in the lower courts that does not come up to the Supreme Court as often. As a result, it is not surprising that it might be mistaken for a lower court opinion.

The idiosyncratic court
Over time, by increasingly focusing on an idiosyncratic set of topics and by constructing their arguments in an increasingly unique way, Supreme Court opinions have become more distinctive. That hypothetical random opinion found on the street is easier to identify because the court is expressing itself in a new subgenre of legal writing that is more identifiable. This isn’t just because of differences in the mix of topics the courts rule on. For example, the Supreme Court takes up constitutional issues more commonly than any other type of case. The appeals courts, by contrast, decide the occasional high-profile constitutional cases alongside a large number of unexceptional contract law, administrative law and criminal law matters. Our analysis shows that while the details of these differences shift over the years, the degree of difference didn’t change from 1951 to 2007. What we find, instead, is that the Supreme Court is analyzing and writing about cases in an increasingly idiosyncratic fashion, distinct from the style of the appeals courts. This may contribute to an overall impression within the public that the court is just another political body. If that is true, the Supreme Court’s unique place in American society may be compromised, as the reservoir of prestige and respect that it currently enjoys eventually runs dry.

Read more here: theconversation.com/is-the-supreme-court-acting-less-like-a-court-75910

Bail Bondsman in Sanford – Harvard Law Graduate Gorsuch Confirmed to Supreme Court

Source     : The Crimson News
By             : Jamie D. Halper, CRIMSON STAFF WRITER
Category : Bail Bondsman in Sanford , Bondsman in Seminole County

Harvard Law Graduate Gorsuch Confirmed to Supreme Court

Neil M. Gorsuch became the 113th justice of the United States Supreme Court after the Senate confirmed him Friday, joining five other Harvard Law School attendees on the nation’s highest legal body. Gorsuch, who graduated from the Law School in 1991, was confirmed by a vote of 54-45 after weeks of tension in the Senate. President Donald Trump nominated Gorsuch to the Court in late January, and his Senate confirmation hearings began in March.

Last week, Senate Democrats filibustered Gorsuch’s confirmation, aiming to block the vote by denying him the 60 votes necessary to move forward to a confirmation vote. Senate Republicans, invoking the so-called “nuclear option,” then changed their voting rules to require only a simple majority to break the filibuster. The justice’s nomination came a year after his predecessor Antonin G. Scalia died in February 2016, leaving a vacancy on the Court. Former president Barack Obama nominated Merrick B. Garland ’74—a Harvard College and Law School graduate—to the Court last year, but Senate Republicans refused to hold confirmation hearings, arguing the next president should select the justice to replace Scalia.

Gorsuch, widely known as a conservative respected across the aisle, is expected to maintain a similar judicial philosophy to Scalia, who advocated a strict reading of the U.S. Constitution. Gorsuch’s views on controversial issues the court is likely to hear cases on, such as abortion, are unclear, and his Senate hearings did little to clarify his stance. However, he is expected to take a traditionally conservative stance on most issues. After Trump attacked a federal judge for blocking one of his controversial immigration executive orders last month, Gorsuch condemned Trump’s accusations, which some signaled the justice’s independence from the Trump administration.

Read more here: thecrimson.com/article/2017/4/10/gorsuch-confirmed-supreme-court/

Bondsman in Seminole County – U.S. Supreme Court ruling could affect Connecticut credit card law

Source     : Yankee Institute News
By             : Marc E. Fitch
Category :  Bail Bondsman in Sanford , Bondsman in Seminole County

U.S. Supreme Court ruling could affect Connecticut credit card law

The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously overturned Wednesday a New York law that prevented businesses from charging an extra fee for credit card purchases. The ruling could affect a nearly identical law in Connecticut. Merchants in Connecticut and nine other states can only offer customers a “discount” for using cash but can not charge a “surcharge” for using a credit card. Whether or not the practice is legal depends on how the merchant describes the difference in price, which turned the case into a freedom of speech case.

The Supreme Court’s ruling in Expressions Hair Design v. Schneiderman determined that New York’s law “does regulate speech” and remanded the case to the Court of Appeals to determine whether or not the law is unconstitutional. The ruling could have ramifications for Connecticut’s law regulating surcharges and discounts. According to Connecticut state statute, “no seller may impose a surcharge on a buyer who elects to use any method of payment, including, but not limited to, cash, check, credit card or electronic means, in any sales transaction.” However, the statute also said that a discount is fine; “Nothing in this section shall prohibit any seller from offering a discount to a buyer to induce such buyer to pay by cash, debit card, check or similar means rather than by credit card.”

The practice is most commonly seen at gas stations which list one price for credit card purchases and a second for cash purchases. Businesses pay a 2 to 4 percent processing fee to credit card companies for every purchase a customer makes using a credit card. Credit card companies contractually prohibit merchants from applying a surcharge to customers but this practice has been repeatedly challenged in court on antitrust grounds. In the court’s decision, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that state laws which mimicked and extended these contract provisions invited scrutiny because the antitrust suits have “created uncertainty about the legal validity of such contractual surcharge bans.”

The implication is that these state laws were designed to protect credit card companies in case their contractual prohibitions are ever ruled illegal. The case originated out of New York when a lawyer noticed a sign at Expressions Hair Design that informed customers they would be charged an additional fee for payment by credit card.

Read more here: yankeeinstitute.org/2017/03/u-s-supreme-court-ruling-could-affect-connecticut-credit-card-law/

Bail Bondsman in Sanford – Legal Test Of School’s Responsibility In $41.5 Million Hotchkiss Case

Source     : Courant News
By             : JOHN C.P. GOLDBERG, BENJAMIN C. ZIPURSKY
Category : Bail Bondsman in Sanford , Bondsman in Seminole County

Legal Test Of School’s Responsibility In $41.5 Million Hotchkiss Case

The Connecticut Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Munn v. Hotchkiss, a tragic personal injury case. The court will be sorely tempted to make bad law in Munn. It must resist that temptation. Cara Munn, 15, was bitten by a tick while hiking on a mountain in China during a summer trip organized by The Hotchkiss School, her private school. The tick transmitted encephalitis, which has left her permanently unable to speak. Cara and her parents sued Hotchkiss in a federal court, arguing that the school was negligent for failing to warn them that the trip might bring her into contact with disease-bearing insects and for failing to take steps to ensure that she used insect repellant, wore proper clothes while walking in forested areas and checked herself for ticks. A jury awarded her $10 million in economic damages and $31.5 million in noneconomic damages.

Hotchkiss appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Unsure about how to apply Connecticut tort law (as it is required to do), the Court of Appeals invited the Connecticut Supreme Court to provide it with guidance on two questions: (1) whether a private school owes a duty of care to students when they participate in school trips, and (2) whether the jury’s damages award was excessive. Tort cases that seem to present simple legal issues often in reality are hiding complex ones. Not so with Munn, at least with respect to the first question. Hotchkiss is urging the court to rule that schools do not owe their students on field trips a duty to be careful to protect them from dangers. This is as preposterous in tort law as it is in common sense. The very able lawyers for Hotchkiss seem to have convinced the Second Circuit that the existence of this legal duty is an open question, but it is not. Under the law of Connecticut and probably every other American jurisdiction, schools owe a common law duty of care to 15-year-old students under their custody.

A much more difficult question is whether Hotchkiss fulfilled its duty: Was Hotckiss really careless in failing to provide Cara with sufficient warning of and protection from insect-borne illnesses? A jury concluded that the school was careless, but was the jury right? The correctness of that conclusion, however, is not before the state’s high court. Indeed, this is why Hotchkiss’ lawyers are going for broke by arguing that the school had no duty at all to be careful. It is also argued on behalf of Hotchkiss that the $41.5 million verdict is excessive, and that damage awards like this could overwhelm even wealthy schools, let alone those that are strapped. The award is so large, the school’s lawyers claim, as to demonstrate that the jury was inflamed by anger or prejudice and hence vastly exceeded any plausible notion of fair compensation.

On the damages issue, Hotchkiss has a far stronger argument. While Connecticut courts have upheld large verdicts in the past, and while the computation of damages is normally for the jury, this award is so large that the state Supreme Court would be entitled to instruct the Second Circuit that Connecticut law does not require deference to the jury in this case. Indeed, it would be within its rights to recommend that the damages be substantially reduced or even that a new trial be ordered. Although we have suggested that Munn’s duty question is easy, we understand why the Second Circuit may have thought the case was sufficiently challenging to pass onto the Connecticut Supreme Court. A young woman losing her capacity for speech because of her school’s carelessness is horrific and tragic. Even if a $41.5 million award is too high, it is hard to say why it is too high (or what an appropriate award would be) and it is hard to say whether an order requiring the parties to start all over with a new trial after years of litigation would be fair. These are the difficult judgments in Munn, and the court will be tempted to finesse them altogether by embracing the defendant’s legally unsupportable “no duty” argument. The court must stand firm on the duty question and do its best to provide the Second Circuit with a legally tenable framework for reducing damages.

Read more here: courant.com/opinion/op-ed/hc-op-goldberg-hoctchkiss-liability-case-key-questions-0326-20170324-story.html

Bondsman in Seminole County – California justice doesn’t want immigration arrests in court

Source      : NJ Herald News
By              : Press Release
Category  :  Bail Bondsman in Sanford , Bondsman in Seminole County

California justice doesn’t want immigration arrests in court

The chief justice of the California Supreme Court asked federal immigration agents Thursday to stop making arrests at courthouses, saying “stalking undocumented immigrants” at the facilities thwarts people’s access to justice. Chief Justice Tani G. Cantil-Sakauye wrote in a letter to top federal officials that she is concerned about recent reports of immigration agents going to the courts to track down immigrants for arrest, saying the practice will affect the public’s confidence in the court system. “Courthouses should not be used as bait in the necessary enforcement of our country’s immigration laws,” she wrote in the letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, adding that crime and domestic violence victims and witnesses all go to the courts seeking justice and due process of the law. The letter comes amid a series of reports of arrests at courthouses in California, Oregon and Texas as federal immigration agents have been called on to step up deportations under President Donald Trump.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement weighs many factors when deciding where to make an arrest, including whether authorities have a home or work address for the person they are seeking and what is safest for officers and community, said Virginia Kice, an agency spokeswoman. “While ICE does arrest targets at courthouses, generally it’s only after investigating officers have exhausted other options,” she said in a statement. A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment on the letter. Last month, immigration agents in Texas arrested a woman at an El Paso courthouse while she was obtaining a protection order against an alleged abuser. The arrest sparked an outcry from victim’s advocates, saying it would dissuade others from coming forward to report abuse for fear of being deported.

ICE said it also has made arrests in recent months at courthouses in Oregon and Southern California. Many of those taken into custody at courthouses have criminal convictions but are no longer turned over to federal agents by local law enforcement as they were some years ago, Kice said. Courthouses can be seen as a relatively safe place for federal immigration agents to make arrests because people pass through metal detectors to enter. But many advocates for immigrants and victims decry the practice, saying immigrants will be afraid to report crime or show up for hearings.

“Enforcement policies that include stalking courthouses and arresting undocumented immigrants, the vast majority of whom pose no risk to public safety, are neither safe nor fair,” Cantil-Sakauye wrote. “They not only compromise our core value of fairness but they undermine the judiciary’s ability to provide equal access to justice.” The practice also can create additional legal problems. Immigration attorney Philippe Martinet said he was recently in court in Arizona when a man identified himself as an immigration officer and arrested his client. Because of the immigration arrest, the client missed his trial date on assault charges and the judge issued a warrant for him.

Martinet said that whatever new policies ICE is implementing, they need to be thought out thoroughly because they can derail criminal trials. “You need to implement it in a way that doesn’t throw a wrench in the system,” he said. The letter from the California chief justice was welcomed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, which several years ago raised concerns about deportation agents making arrests at courthouses in Kern County. At that time, ICE said it would refrain from making such arrests, except in “exigent circumstances.”

Read More :  njherald.com/article/20170316/AP/303169691#

Bail Bondsman in Sanford – Tasmanian bail law reform set to ‘increase community safety’

Source     : Examiner News
By             : Melissa Mobbs
Category  : Bail Bondsman in Sanford , Bondsman in Seminole County

Tasmanian bail law reform set to ‘increase community safety’

Tasmania’s bail laws will come under the microscope this year with the state government planning to overhaul the system. Under Tasmania’s existing laws, a volunteer Justice of the Peace has the power to grant bail to alleged offenders when they appear in an out-of-hours court session.

Attorney-General Vanessa Goodwin said reform was needed to increase community safety and create greater confidence in the state’s justice system. “The community and police are tired of hearing stories of offenders being granted bail only to re-offend,” Dr Goodwin said. “The safety of the community should always be a primary consideration when a defendant is considered for bail, and the government intends to provide a clear statutory basis to ensure this happens.”

The announcement comes less than two months after Victoria revealed plans to change its own system in the wake of the Bourke Street Mall tragedy, where a man allegedly drove his car into the shopping precinct and killed five people, including a three-month-old baby. The accused killer, 26-year-old Dimitrious Gargasoulashad, was facing an assault charge a few days before the attack. Despite opposition from police, he was released from custody by a bail justice.

The Victorian government is now expected to introduce a “night court” system to ensure magistrates will hear bail applications, rather than volunteer bail justices. “Other Australian jurisdictions have moved to provide clear statutory frameworks for what a court should consider when granting bail – the government will move to do the same for Tasmanian courts,” Dr Goodwin said.“These reforms will ensure the bail system is in line with community expectations and will allow increased confidence in our justice system.”

While still in its early stages, the overhaul could see defendants forced to justify their release, particularly when facing serious charges. The government will now seek input from community and legal stakeholders before any changes to the system go ahead.

Read More : examiner.com.au/story/4511443/safety-a-focus-of-bail-law-overhaul/

Bondsman in Seminole County – OR Supreme Court art tax hearing starts Monday

Source     : Koin 6 News
By             : Jim Redden, The Portland Tribune
Category : Bail Bondsman in Sanford , Bondsman in Seminole County

OR Supreme Court art tax hearing starts Monday

The Oregon Supreme Court will hear arguments concerning the constitutionality of the Portland Art Tax on Monday morning. Two lower courts have upheld the constitutionality of the $35 a year tax. It must be paid by all Portlanders 18 and older, except for those living in households with incomes below the poverty level or whose primary incomes come from certain government pensions.

Despite the exemptions, Portland resident and retired lawyer George Witteymer argues the tax violates the Oregon Constitution’s prohibition against “head taxes.” A Multnomah County Circuit Court judge rejected that argument, ruling the exemptions mean that it does not unconstitutionally apply to everyone. The Oregon Court of Appeals affirmed the ruling without additional comment. Witteymer calls the ruling “political,” arguing that all previous head taxes that the constitutional amendment sought to outlaw had exemptions.

“This is a wrong statement, a false statement, and an incorrect statement both factually and legally. It makes no sense. It is not legal analysis. It is poiitical obfuscation of the worst kind,” Witteymer writes in his appeal.

The Portland Tribune is a KOIN media partner
The tax was approved by a majority of city voters returning ballots in the November 2012 election. It is intended to provide Portland schools with funding for art teachers that have been lost because of state education funding shortfalls. Nonprofit arts organizations in Portland receive some of the money, too.  As of December 2016, the tax raised nearly $9.9 million from the 2014 tax year. A little more than $1 million — about 10 percent — was spent on collection costs. Schools received 70 percent and the Regional Arts & Culture Council received 20 percent. By 2016, about one-third of those required to pay the tax had not done so. On June 16 of that year, the City Council voted to refer those who owned more than $100 to can outside collection agency.

Read More : koin.com/2017/03/05/or-supreme-court-art-tax-hearing-starts-monday/