Sanford Bail Bonds – Supreme Court: Cities can sue banks under U.S. housing law

Source     : DenverPost News
By             : Mark Sherman | The Associated Press
Category :  Bail Bond Sanford , Sanford Bail Bonds

Supreme Court: Cities can sue banks under U.S. housing law

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that cities may sue banks under the federal anti-discrimination in housing law but said those lawsuits must tie claims about predatory lending practices among minority customers directly to declines in property taxes. The justices’ 5-3 ruling partly validated a novel approach by Miami and other cities to try to hold banks accountable under the federal Fair Housing Act for the wave of foreclosures during the housing crisis a decade ago.

But the court still threw out an appellate ruling in Miami’s favor and ordered a lower court to re-examine the city’s lawsuit against Wells Fargo and Bank of America to be sure that there is a direct connection between the lending practices and the city’s losses. Miami claimed that Wells Fargo and Bank of America, as well as Citigroup, pursued a decadelong pattern of targeting African-American and Hispanic borrowers for costlier and riskier loans than those offered to white customers. The loans to minority homeowners went into default more quickly as well, the city said.

Wells Fargo and Bank of America appealed the ruling by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to the Supreme Court, arguing that cities can’t use the Fair Housing Act to sue over reductions in tax revenues. The banks said the connection between a loan and the tax consequences is too tenuous. Citigroup did not appeal, though its lawsuit also would be affected by what the appeals court does in response to Monday’s ruling. Justice Stephen Breyer wrote in his majority opinion a city can make claim for financial harm under the anti-discrimination housing law. But he said the second issue, tying the loans to the drop in tax revenues, is more difficult. Breyer wrote that there must be “some direct relation between the injury asserted and the injurious conduct alleged.”

The appeals court should decide that issue, Breyer said. Writing in dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas said he would have given the banks what they asked for and dismissed Miami’s lawsuit. Justices Samuel Alito and Anthony Kennedy sided with Thomas. The banks claimed that a ruling for Miami could lead to lawsuits asking for billions of dollars. The city said those fears were unjustified and pointed to similar lawsuits filed by Baltimore and Memphis, Tennessee, that were settled for less than $10 million each.

Read more here : denverpost.com/2017/05/01/supreme-court-us-housing-law-cities-sue-banks/

Bail Bond Sanford – Gorsuch On Sidelines As Supreme Court Decides Insurance, Legal Sanctions Cases

Source     : Forbes News
By            : Daniel Fisher
Category :  Bail Bond Sanford , Sanford Bail Bond

Gorsuch On Sidelines As Supreme Court Decides Insurance, Legal Sanctions Cases

The U.S. Supreme Court issued a pair of decisions today affecting legal sanctions and the power of states to control insurance contracts, noting in each one the non-participation of the court’s newest Justice, Neil Gorsuch. Gorsuch heard his first oral arguments yesterday and will likely contribute to a few decisions before the end of the session, restoring the court’s 9-0 roster after more than a year of operating with a deadlock-prone eight justices following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. In Coventry Health Care v. Nevils, the nation’s highest court reversed its equivalent in Missouri, ruling that federal law trumps a Missouri statute prohibiting insurance companies from collecting medical expenses from the lawsuit winnings of policyholders.

The 8-0 decision rejected the Missouri Supreme Court’s reasoning that the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, which gives Congress the power to overrule state laws, doesn’t extend to contractual provisions of health insurance policies provided to federal employees. Coventry had demanded that plaintiff Jodie Nevils repay $6,592 in medical expenses from a car accident that he later recovered in a lawsuit against the driver of the other vehicle. Missouri, like several other states, has laws prohibiting insurers from collecting from policyholders in such conditions, a process known as subrogation. But Congress clearly intended federal law governing health policies for government employees to preempt any law regarding the payment of benefits, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in the unanimous opinion.

The court sent the case back to Missouri for reconsideration after the Office of Personnel Management issued an opinion asserting preemption. But the Missouri Supreme Court held its ground, saying the Supremacy Clause only affects “laws,” not contractual terms between the government and private insurers. Ginsburg dismissed the distinction as “semantics” and ordered the case reversed and remanded. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a concurrence agreeing in the judgment but voicing concern that the federal law could give the President unconstitutionally broad powers to dictate the terms of contracts. But since nobody brought up that argument, he said, it should be left to the lower courts to consider on remand. The court also decided unanimously, in Goodyear Tire v. Haeger, that the oft-overturned Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals got it wrong again when it upheld $2.7 million in sanctions against the tire maker for failing to turn over potentially incriminating evidence in a lawsuit over a tire blowout. The lower court approved of the sanctions because Goodyear’s behavior was “truly egregious,” but it should have restricted sanctions to legal fees the plaintiffs incurred directly because of the missing evidence. Justice Elena Kagan wrote the opinion.

Read more here: forbes.com/sites/danielfisher/2017/04/18/gorsuch-on-sidelines-as-supreme-court-decides-insurance-legal-sanctions-cases/#408326a73fb2

Sanford Bail Bond – US Supreme Court Strengthens Fashion Copyright

Source     : Apparel News
By             : Andrew Asch
Category : Bail Bond Sanford , Sanford Bail Bond

US Supreme Court Strengthens Fashion Copyright

The fashion business might become more litigious, thanks to a recent Supreme Court decision, according to a discussion about the court’s decision at law firm Freeman Freeman & Smiley LLP in Los Angeles’ Century City district. The Supreme Court made a decision March 22 on the case Star Athletica L.L.C. v. Varsity Brands Inc. At issue in the case was whether Varsity Brands could copyright an element of a cheerleading uniform such as a chevron or a stripe. The court voted 6–2 in favor of Varsity Brands, a Memphis, Tenn.–headquartered company that is the dominant manufacturer of cheerleading uniforms. It had sales of $1.2 billion in 2014, according to a statement from company owners Charlesbank Capital Partners.

On the day of the decision, Varsity Brands Chairman and Founder Jeff Webb said that the court ruling was a vindication for designers. “We were honored to serve as advocates and fighters for the basic idea that designers everywhere can create excellent work and make investments in their future without fear of having it stolen or copied,” Webb said in a statement. The Council of Fashion Designers of America wrote an amicus brief supporting Varsity Brands’ case. Todd M. Lander, an intellectual-property litigator with Freeman Freeman & Smiley, said that the decision would set the tone for fashion copyright for years. “I don’t see in the ensuing few years any real movement in the courts to restrict protection in textile designs,” he said during a March 23 discussion of the case at Freeman Freeman & Smiley’s office, which offers a panoramic view of West Los Angeles stretching to downtown. “If you are a manufacturer, you should assume that designs are protected irrespective of how generic or ubiquitous you believe designs are in the marketplace. If you lend money to manufacturers, this has become a cost of business. This will be part of the apparel industry for the foreseeable future.”

Lander said that litigation over textile copyright has dramatically increased in the past 15 years. Robert Ezra, head of Freeman Freeman & Smiley’s Fashion Law department, said that the recent decision might result in an uptick of copyright litigation. “Copyright protection has been expanded,” Ezra said. “The more rights a holder has, the more likelihood that there is a violation of those rights.”

During the case, lawyers for Star Athletica, a St. Louis–area company that also makes cheerleader uniforms, argued that design details such as chevrons, zigzags and stripes could not be separated from cheerleading uniforms. These details have no separate identities and cannot be protected by copyright. If details are taken away, the cheerleading uniform would be nothing but a dress, Star Athletica’s attorneys said. According to federal law, details from a garment must be recognizable by themselves, or must be able to stand alone from the garment, in order to be considered worthy of a copyright. While Star Athletica said that stripes, chevrons and other details on cheerleader uniforms were generic and could not be protected by copyright, Varsity Brands’ lawyers argued stripes, chevrons and other markings defined and created points of difference between cheerleading uniforms. Take the details away, a cheerleading uniform could be identified as a cheerleading uniform. Other manufacturers could make a garment with the same cheerleader’s silhouette and have it be identified as a cheerleader’s uniform. But companies such as Varsity Brands can copyright art details and protect them, Varsity Brands’ lawyers contended. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the opinion of the court. “Just as two-dimensional fine art correlates to the shape of the canvas on which it is painted, two-dimensional applied art correlates to the contours of the article on which it is applied. The only feature of respondents’ cheerleading uniform eligible for a copyright is the two-dimensional applied art on the surface of the uniforms,” Thomas wrote. Justices Anthony Kennedy and Stephen Breyer dissented from the opinion.

Ilse Metchek, president of the Los Angeles–based California Fashion Association, said that the ruling strengthens current law and reinforces the value of a copyright. “You cannot copyright the shape and pattern work of a garment,” she said, adding that the new ruling doesn’t deviate from existing copyright law, which protects original artwork. “It reestablishes the principle that art is protectable.” Companies looking to protect themselves from litigation might design their own prints, Freeman Freeman & Smiley’s Ezra said. A company could also confirm that fabric suppliers own the prints they sell and possess registration for them. If a company is willing to secure those working with the print against legal responsibility, the company has confidence in using the product.“There is a lot of clip art that is not copyrighted,” Ezra said. “If you need a tulip, go find a tulip in clip art. There are a lot of clip-art designs in the public domain.”

Read more here: apparelnews.net/news/2017/mar/30/us-supreme-court-strengthens-fashion-copyright/

Sanford Bail Bonds – How ‘ideologically uniform’ is the legal academy?

Source     : Washington Post News
By             : Jonathan H. Adler
Category :  Bail Bond Sanford , Sanford Bail Bonds

How ‘ideologically uniform’ is the legal academy?

How much more liberal are law professors than members of the legal profession? A new paper by Adam Bonica (Stanford University), Adam S. Chilton (University of Chicago), Kyle Rozema (Northwestern University) and Maya Sen (Harvard University), “The Legal Academy’s Ideological Uniformity,” provides some answers. Their bottom line: The legal academy is significantly more liberal than the legal profession, which is notable because the legal profession itself is more liberal than the public at large. Here is how the authors summarize some of their findings: We find that approximately 15% of law professors are conservative and that only approximately one out of every twenty law schools have more conservative law professors than liberal ones. In addition, we find that these patterns vary, with higher-ranked schools having an even smaller presence of conservative law professors. We then compare the ideological balance of the legal academy to that of the legal profession. Compared to the 15% of law professors that are conservative, 35% of lawyers overall are conservative. Law professors are more liberal than graduates of top 14 law schools, lawyers working at the largest law firms, former federal law clerks, and federal judges. Although we find that professors are more liberal than the alumni at all but a handful of law schools, there is a strong relationship between the ideologies of professors from a law school and the ideologies of alumni from that school. However, this relationship is weaker for schools with more conservative alumni.

These findings are based upon an examination of reported political donations. While this is an admittedly imperfect measure of ideology, it does allow for comparisons across population groups. Moreover, reliance on political donations is less selective than one might think, as the authors report that more than 60 percent of law professors made reported political donations between 1979 and 2014. Although the authors believe that other factors explain some of the split between the ideology of legal academics and legal practitioners, even after accounting for such factors, they find that law professors are significantly more liberal than lawyers generally. Does this matter? I’ve certainly argued that the ideological uniformity of legal academia affects teaching and scholarship (most recently here). The authors of this study suggest that it could also affect the political relevance and influence of law professors. They write: The ideological tilt of the legal academy has potentially broad implications. For instance, because law professors are overwhelmingly liberal, groups of law professors advocating for liberal positions can easily be marginalized.  This letter was criticized by some as simply representing the views of the left leaning legal academy . . . . To assess … these criticisms, we match the signatories of the letter to our sample of law professor ideology, and find that only 4% of the signatories that appear in our data are conservative. This raises the question of whether the reception to the letter would have been different had more conservative law professors signed the letter. Although we have no way to answer this question, the endeavor might have been given more credence had more conservative professors participated in the letter: observers might have been less likely to expect Republican-leaning law professors to oppose Sessions ideologically, thus making such criticisms more powerful and effective. We argue that this example illustrates that the legal academy’s ideological uniformity limits its political credibility.

One could extend this analysis to current controversies at state universities, such as proposed measures to curtail tenure or limit the activities of legal clinics and academic centers at state universities. Appeals to “academic freedom” are less convincing when the only ones in a position to benefit from such principles sit on one side of the aisle. Writing in opposition to a proposed measure in North Carolina that would prohibit the University of North Carolina School of Law’s Center for Civil Rights from engaging in litigation, Gene Nichol suggested the center’s critics are “nakedly ideological” because they would have no problem with law school programs enlisting students in efforts to protect gun rights or religious liberty. He might be right, but how would we know? It’s not as if UNC’s law school has any such programs, or even a critical mass of right-leaning faculty members. I agree with much that Nichol has to say in his piece, but I also suspect his arguments would be more persuasive to a Republican-dominated state legislature if there were more ideological diversity on UNC’s law faculty and within the law school’s academic programming. Assuming there is substantial ideological uniformity in the legal academy, and that this is a problem, there remains the problem of what to do about it. Here the authors of the above-mentioned study note that remedial measures, such as some sort of “affirmative action” for right-leaning faculty, could compromise efforts to advance other values. I agree. However well-intentioned, heavy-handed efforts to impose “balance” on law school faculties could do more harm than good. I believe law schools should seek to encourage more viewpoint diversity within their ranks, but I oppose any such efforts that involve quotas or rigid requirements. This Iowa proposal to require partisan balance in university hiring, for example, strikes me as a supremely bad idea. In my opinion, the way forward begins with efforts to cultivate an appreciation of the value of differing perspectives and viewpoints and a broader recognition that ideological uniformity undermines effective legal education. The first step toward a solution is recognizing there’s a problem.

Read more here: washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/04/17/how-ideologically-uniform-is-the-legal-academy/

Bail Bond Sanford – Colorado Supreme Court upholds state’s DUI laws

Source     : Denver Post
By             : Kirk Mitchell
Category : Bail Bond Sanford , Sanford Bail Bond

Colorado Supreme Court upholds state’s DUI laws

The Colorado Supreme Court has upheld the state’s drunken driving statutes in three cases that had warrantless blood draw evidence thrown out by lower courts, including a case in which a suspect had five times the legal limit of alcohol in his bloodstream. “If this had been allowed to stand, it could have invalidated every breath or blood test that a driver in Colorado provides as part of a DUI investigation, which would obviously have huge ramifications,” said Arapahoe County deputy district attorney Jennifer Gilbert, who handled all three appeals. The three cases involved different elements of Colorado’s expressed consent law, according to a news release from Arapahoe County district attorney George Brauchler. The law says that by driving in Colorado, drivers consent to a blood or breath test to determine their blood alcohol content if the police have probable cause to believe that the driver has committed an alcohol-related driving offense.

In Fitzgerald v. People, the court held that the Fourth Amendment does not preclude prosecutors from using evidence at trial that a suspect refused to take a blood alcohol test, the news release says. In People v. Hyde, the Supreme Court held that an officer with probable cause to believe that an unconscious driver committed an alcohol-related driving crime can order the driver’s blood to be tested. In People v. Simpson, a judge ruled that the very act of reading a driver an expressed consent advisement made the subsequent test inadmissible. But the Colorado Supreme Court held that reading a suspect the expressed consent advisement does not render the test involuntary, the news release says. In the Simpson case, an officer saw William Paul Simpson drive a pickup truck into a curb four times before steering into oncoming traffic, the Supreme Court ruling says. The officer smelled alcohol on Simpson’s breath, the driver readily admitted he was drunk and was unable to climb out of the truck at the officer’s order.

At a hospital, Simpson signed a consent form for a blood test. In doing so, however, he signed his name on the officer’s signature line and initialed it on the line labeled “blood.” Simpson’s blood alcohol was measured at 0.448, or more than five times the legal limit of 0.08, the ruling says. At an Arapahoe County District Court motions hearing, Simpson’s attorneys argued their client had been too drunk to consent to a test. Judge F. Stephen Collins ruled that the officer was coercive because he told Simpson that he had already consented to the blood-alcohol test. Collins then suppressed the blood test. The Supreme Court ruled that by choosing to drive in Colorado, Simpson consented to the terms of the expressed consent statute, including its requirement that he submit to a blood draw. “Because Simpson never revoked that consent, the blood draw was constitutional,” the Supreme Court ruled. Suspected drunk drivers were using some recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to challenge Colorado’s drunken driving laws in order to throw out evidence, according to Brauchler’s news release. Had they succeeded, drunken driving laws across the country would have been in jeopardy, he said.

Read more here: denverpost.com/2017/04/17/colorado-supreme-court-state-dui-laws-upheld/

Sanford Bail Bond – State Supreme Court to review law eliminating pension benefit

Source     : SF Gate News
By             : Bob Egelko
Category :  Bail Bond Sanford , Sanford Bail Bond

State Supreme Court to review law eliminating pension benefit

The state Supreme Court agreed Wednesday to review the legality of 2013 legislation, challenged by labor unions, that eliminated a pension benefit for hundreds of thousands of state and local government employees in California. The justices voted unanimously to grant a hearing to the unions and decide whether the law violated the rights of employees to the pension benefits that were available when they were hired.

This benefit, which lawmakers had approved in 2003, allowed employees with at least five years of service to purchase up to five years of additional credits before retiring. A worker who retired after 20 years, for example, could pay for the right to receive a pension based on 25 years of contributions. The 2003 law did not increase costs to government employers, but it added to pensions at a time that statewide public-retirement systems faced increasing deficits, estimated at $500 billion or more in recent studies. Legislators cited those deficits in 2013 when they barred employees from buying future retirement credits.

A union of 6,000 state firefighters, supported by other state and local labor organizations, challenged the 2013 law. The unions argued that their members had a legal right to the pension benefits that were in effect when they were hired and that the state broke its contractual promise to them by eliminating those benefits. The state’s high court had ruled in 1978 that California could legally reduce current employees’ future pensions, but only if the employees remained eligible for benefits that were “substantial” and reasonable” when the state acted. Any cutbacks in benefits, the court said, “should be accompanied by comparable new advantages.”

The state’s First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco ruled Dec. 30 that the 2013 law satisfied that standard. The employees “are entitled only to a reasonable pension, not one providing fixed or definite benefits immune from modification or elimination,” Justice Martin Jenkins said in the appellate panel’s 3-0 written opinion.

Read more here: sfgate.com/news/article/State-Supreme-Court-to-review-law-eliminating-11069304.php

Sanford Bail Bonds – Utah Supreme Court Rules Against Tesla in Push to Sell Cars

Source     : Fox Business News
By             : Michelle L. Price | AP
Category : Bail Bond Sanford , Sanford Bail Bonds

Utah Supreme Court Rules Against Tesla in Push to Sell Cars

Tesla’s push to sell its all-electric vehicles in Utah hit another roadblock Monday when the state Supreme Court upheld a decision by Utah licensing officials to deny the automaker a license to sell new cars. Tesla had argued that a state law barring car manufacturers from owning dealerships didn’t apply to the company. Tesla sells its cars directly to customers rather than using independent dealerships, something Tesla attorneys argued is vital to their business.

Tesla must sell its own cars because a sale depends on convincing customers that electric cars are better than those with a gas engine. The company also argued that Utah law doesn’t block car makers from selling directly_it only blocks car makers from owning a dealership that’s set up as a franchise. In the decision Monday, Supreme Court justices didn’t address whether Utah law blocks a car maker from selling its vehicles directly or whether it’s vital for the car maker to sell its own product.

The justices instead focused on a subsidiary company that Tesla set up to sell cars in the state, called Tesla UT. Tesla UT applied for an auto dealer license, and because Tesla UT is wholly owned by Tesla, state licensing officials were correct in a 2015 decision denying the license, the justices wrote. In a statement, Tesla said the ruling was “disappointing for Tesla and all Utah consumers interested in consumer choice, free markets, and sustainable energy.” The company said it will pursue all options in Utah, including working with the Legislature, and will continue offering service in Utah for Tesla cars.

The Utah Automobile Dealers Association has argued that Tesla is required by to comply with the franchise law, which is designed to keep large car makers like GM from pushing out independent dealers selling the same cars. Tesla has said that law protects a monopoly by locally powerful car dealerships and violates free-market economic policies in Utah’s constitution. An effort to try to change the law earlier and accommodate Tesla failed in Utah’s Legislature earlier last year after the company pulled its support, saying the fix wouldn’t allow it to keep any inventory in the state. Unable to sell cars through its $3 million showroom in Salt Lake City, Tesla instead decided to take its fight to Utah’s Supreme Court.

Read more here: foxbusiness.com/politics/2017/04/03/utah-supreme-court-rules-against-tesla-in-push-to-sell-cars.html

Bail Bond Sanford – Supreme Court Orders New Look at New York Credit-Card Surcharge Ban

Source     : Bloomberg News
By             : Greg Stohr
Category : Bail Bond Sanford , Sanford Bail Bond

Supreme Court Orders New Look at New York Credit-Card Surcharge Ban

The U.S. Supreme Court ordered closer scrutiny of a New York law that bars merchants from imposing surcharges on credit-card purchases, giving a group of retailers a partial victory by saying the measure might violate their free-speech rights. Chief Justice John Roberts said the federal appeals court that upheld the law was wrong to analyze it as a form of price regulation. Writing for the high court, he said the measure regulates speech, requiring it to meet a tougher legal test. The decision to return the case to the lower court was unanimous. The case is part of a broader fight by retailers to reduce the $50 billion in “swipe fees” they pay card companies each year. Merchants say they could discourage card use — and reduce those fees — if they were allowed to explicitly impose surcharges on credit purchases.

New York is one of 10 states that limit how merchants can describe the lower prices they charge for cash transactions. The high court has been deferring action on similar appeals from Florida and Texas while considering the New York case. The credit-card industry pushed states to enact the disputed laws after a federal surcharge ban expired in 1984. The industry isn’t directly involved in the court fights over the surcharge laws, instead leaving it to the states to defend their measures. Federal appeals courts had been divided on the issue, upholding surcharge bans in New York and Texas while striking down Florida’s.

Speech or Conduct

A core question was whether no-surcharge laws regulate speech or instead target conduct. Roberts said the New York law regulates how sellers may communicate their prices, making it a speech regulation. “A merchant who wants to charge $10 for cash and $10.30 for credit may not convey that price any way he pleases,” Roberts wrote. “He is not free to say ‘$10, with a 3% credit card surcharge’ or ‘$10, plus $0.30 for credit’ because both of those displays identify a single sticker price — $10 — that is less than the amount credit card users will be charged.” “Instead, if the merchant wishes to post a single sticker price, he must display $10.30 as his sticker price,” the chief justice wrote.

Roberts characterized the dispute as a narrow one, saying the retailers weren’t seeking to invalidate the entire statute. He said they were aiming only to ensure they could post a cash price and explicitly add a surcharge for credit-card users. During arguments in January, a lawyer for the state said retailers could still offer discounts for cash or post two different prices for cash and credit-card purchases. Retailers say those approaches don’t do as much to discourage credit-card use. Three justices — Sonia Sotomayor, Stephen Breyer and Samuel Alito — suggested in separate opinions that the federal appeals court might ask New York’s highest court to clarify what the law covers.

Read more here: bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-03-29/high-court-orders-new-look-at-new-york-credit-card-surcharge-ban

Sanford Bail Bond – New Victoria youth justice probe, legal fight

Source     : SBS News
By             : Associated Agecy Press
Category : Bail Bond Sanford , Sanford Bail Bond

New Victoria youth justice probe, legal fight

Yet another probe into Victoria’s youth justice system is under way, just as human rights lawyers start a new legal challenge against the use of adult jails to house teenagers. Victorian Ombudsman Deborah Glass will investigate what needs to be done to ensure the state’s prisons and youth justice centres conform to an United Nations protocol.

The UN’s Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment will be ratified by the federal government in December. “I am undertaking this investigation in order to help all parties involved in OPCAT gain an understanding of where the challenges to Victorian implementation of the protocol lie,” Ms Glass said in a statement on Monday.

Ms Glass is not actively seeking submissions for the investigation, but people wanting to make contact are welcome to. The youth justice system has been under heavy scrutiny after months of riots rendered parts of the Parkville centre uninhabitable, a mass break-out from the Malmsbury centre in January, and a legal fight over whether the youths can be housed in an adult prison.

Some detainees are now being held in the Grevillea unit of the Barwon maximum security prison despite court challenges. The latest legal challenge began in the Supreme Court on Monday. The Human Rights Law Centre is fighting the state government over the prolonged solitary confinement of detainees in Grevillea, the use of capsicum spray by guards, and assaults.

“We’re asking for a court ruling that an adult maximum security jail is unlawful as a youth justice facility,” Mr Hugh de Kretser said outside the Victorian Supreme Court on Monday. A parliamentary committee and the Commission for Children and Young People are investigating the system, while a Department of Health and Human Services review is also under way. In early February, Ms Glass released a report on facilities in the Grevillea unit, Malmsbury and Parkville, raising concerns over the conditions detainees were subjected to.

Read more here: sbs.com.au/news/article/2017/04/03/new-victoria-youth-justice-probe-legal-fight

Sanford Bail Bonds – America’s Supreme Court hints it may keep a closer eye on the executive branch

Source      : Economist News
By              : Press Release
Category  : Bail Bond Sanford , Sanford Bail Bonds

America’s Supreme Court hints it may keep a closer eye on the executive branch

In the midst of a fresh crack-down on undocumented migrants and a pending revision of the president’s travel ban, the Supreme Court heard an immigration case with potentially wide-ranging implications. Esquivel-Quintana v Jefferson Sessions is the first Supreme Court case naming Donald Trump’s new attorney general as a party—though it concerns a matter that took place well before he joined the cabinet. Depending on how the justices rule, immigration authorities may soon either enjoy a freer hand to deport non-citizens or find themselves judicially constrained in these efforts. Juan Esquivel-Quintana arrived in America from Mexico with his parents at the age of 12 and became a lawful permanent resident. In 2009, Mr Esquivel-Quintana served 90 days in jail and five years on probation for statutory rape. He was found to have violated California’s penal code by having sex, at the age of 20, with his 16-year-old girlfriend. (The law criminalises sexual relations between an adult and “a minor who is more than three years younger than the perpetrator”.) Later, after moving from California to Michigan, Mr Esquivel-Quintana became subject to removal proceedings by the Department of Homeland Security. The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) provides that “sexual abuse of a minor” is an “aggravated felony” and constitutes grounds for deportation. Mr Esquivel-Quintana’s crime, authorities said, fit that bill. Three rounds of litigation later, Mr Esquivel-Quintana found no relief. An immigration judge, a panel of the Board of Immigration Appeals, and the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals all confirmed the decision to send him back to Mexico. In his final appeal to the Supreme Court, however, Mr Esquivel-Quintana seemed to have some hope of staying in America. The case turns on the meaning of the phrase “sexual abuse of a minor”. Jeffrey Fisher, Mr Esquivel-Quintana’s lawyer, told the justices that his client’s actions would not have cost him a day in jail in 43 states. And of the seven remaining states, most construe sex with near-17-year-olds as a misdemeanor, “and only one of those seven states calls that conduct abuse”. On top of that, Mr Esquivel-Quintana’s behaviour would not have been a crime under either the Model Penal Code (a project in the 1960s to standardise state criminal laws) or federal law. In sum, Mr Fisher argued, the justices “could decide this case by saying that the seven states that have laws like California’s…but draw the age of consent at 18, automatically fall outside of sexual abuse of a minor”. Taking in the full “sweep” of state and federal law, Mr Fisher proposed, 16 ought to be accepted as the age of consent for the purposes of the INA.

Speaking for the federal government, Allon Kedem refuted the notion that the definition of “sexual abuse of a minor” is a function of counting up laws in the 50 states and finding an average. This technique (taking a “multijurisdictional survey”, in legalese) has not been the Supreme Court’s strategy in most similar cases, Mr Kedem argued. All but twice, the justices have ignored or “specifically rejected the relevance of those multijurisdictional surveys, saying that they would shed no light on the central inquiry”. There is good reason for eschewing a glance over the nation’s many conflicting sex-crime laws, Mr Kedem claimed. First, there are “very difficult line-drawing problems”. How many states would be needed to pinpoint a common thread? “Is it 50 percent? Two-thirds? Three-quarters? Something else?” Second, there is the complication of widely varying state populations. It “seems somewhat anomalous to treat Wyoming’s statute exactly the same as California’s, even though California’s statute applies to m ore than 50 times the population”. Should the justices conduct a weighted survey based on the number of people subject to various permutations of the law? These are all reasonable objections, yet Mr Kedem had trouble coming up with a justification for his own, quite expansive, definition of child abuse. It seems a few of the justices found it rather unfair to put a consensual relationship that is, in Justice Elena Kagan’s words, “really like a freshman in college going out with a junior in college” into a category of “aggravated felony”. Should a young man face deportation from America for such an act? Ms Kagan seemed to hold her nose at the sources Mr Kedem summoned: “a single dictionary definition and some legislative history that even you indicate is sparse”. And the justices teamed up to ridicule the definition, which held that (only) “a parent, guardian, relative, or acquaintance” could be the perpetrator. “If somebody meets someone at a bar and doesn’t even know them”, Justice Stephen Breyer said, pushing on the “acquaintance” requirement, “and gets the person drunk and they go home and they have sex…that would sound much more like sexual abuse of a minor than a senior in college dating and living with a sophomore”.

Reeling from this exchange, Mr Kedem pivoted in his final minutes by pleading for deference. The INA makes “an explicit delegation of interpretive authority”, providing that “the attorney general not only gets to conduct removal proceedings, but gets to render interpretations in those proceedings that are, quote, ‘controlling’”. Administrative agencies, Mr Kedem continued, “are actually quite good at drawing these sorts of lines”. On the other hand, it’s “sort of problematic for courts to do it”. Better to let a “politically accountabl[e]” agency determine what counts as abuse than to entrust the job to unelected judges. In making this final point, Mr Kedem appealed to the so-called Chevron doctrine developed in the mid-1980s: when a statue is ambiguous, the courts should defer to the relevant administrative agency’s interpretation thereof rather than issue a definitive judgment themselves. The late Justice Antonin Scalia was a fan of Chevron deference. Notably, his probable successor, Neil Gorsuch, is not. In an opinion last summer, Mr Gorsuch wrote that Chevron permits agencies “to swallow huge amounts of core judicial and legislative power” and to “concentrate federal power” against the wishes of the founders. In Monday’s hearing, Justices Kennedy and Breyer both voiced some hesitation about the breadth of Chevron. When it comes to an agency that has “special expertise in regulating the environment or the forest service or fisheries or nuclear power”, Mr Kennedy said, deference makes sense. But “why does the INS have any expertise in determining the meaning of a criminal statute?” Perhaps the justices are better suited to that task. These glimmers of scepticism about the reach of Chevron—and hints that the justices may employ the “rule of lenity” to give the benefit of the doubt to the defendant—suggest that Mr Esquivel-Quintana has a chance of avoiding deportation. They also hold open the possibility that once Mr Gorsuch takes his seat on the bench, the court may begin a move away from bowing to the discretion of the executive branch in close cases. The implications of such an evolution in the law of administrative agencies are complex and vast, but they point in one curious direction: the possibility that at the dawn of the Trump presidency, courts will begin asserting themselves more in keeping an eye on—and checking—the administration.

Read more here: economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2017/02/deportation-and-law