PSJD Public Interest News Digest – June 5, 2020
Sam Halpert, NALP Director of Public Service Initiatives
Interested public. I compile this digest each week (well, most weeks) to bring you public interest law news. This week, the news is that public protests and the forces of the law are in perilous tension. After Minneapolis law enforcement slowly murdered a Black man in their custody in broad daylight and in full view of multiple witnesses and cameras, people across the United States have been moved to protest against systemic racial oppression. Law enforcement officers have responded with brutal violence while many mayors demonstrated bipartisan disinterest in police accountability. The President of the United States has placed the District of Columbia under military occupation and threatened sovereign U.S. states with similar treatment rather than consider meaningful reforms. Retired and serving members of military leadership have begun to remind soldiers of their Constitutional oaths while the U.S. Attorney General deploys heavily-armed, unmarked forces in downtown DC.
The legal community, in response, has begun bringing lawsuits. Lawyers across the country have committed to serving protestors pro bono. The Supreme Court of the United States weighed whether to revisit the doctrine of “qualified immunity” for law enforcement. The Supreme Court of Washington issued a challenge to the legal community:
Finally, as the New York Attorney General says “she’s prepared to legally challenge President Donald Trump’s threat to send in the military”, at least one legal commentator (Elie Mystal of the Nation) questioned the relevance of a legal response to a military encounter:
“If the military is told to occupy New York City or Los Angeles, they’ll go. If they’re told to secure the streets, in violation of the constitutional right to peaceable assembly, they’ll do it. If they’re told to round up and arrest protesters, or members of the press, they’ll do it. They won’t even have to open fire on a crowd of unarmed civilians—the threat that one of them might is more than enough to vitiate any pretense of constitutional democracy…People have to think [] about how to stop a man who is above the law, using all the peaceful tools (always the peaceful tools) available to us.”
These stories are in the links below.
Take care of one another,
Sam
- In Washington DC, “Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said [] George Floyd, the African American man who died following a violent arrest in Minnesota, was “murdered” at the hands of the Minneapolis Police Department….Appearing on CNN a short time later, she was even more blunt calling Floyd’s death ‘an execution’.”
- As USA Today describes the public response, “[t]here have been demonstrations in at least 430 cities and towns so far, large and small, across all 50 states [and t]he number of places that have held rallies or protests is still growing[.]”
- Across the country, protestors and journalists documented law enforcement officers engaging in acts of violence.
- The Baltimore Sun: “As demonstrators took to the streets in cities across the nation to decry police brutality in the wake of the ruthless killing of yet another unarmed black man by a white police officer, law enforcement throughout the country again and again reacted with violence.”
- Slate: “police all over the country tear-gassed protesters, drove vehicles through crowds, opened fire with nonlethal rounds on journalists or people on their own property, and in at least one instance, pushed over an elderly man who was walking away with a cane[; …] law enforcement officers escalated the national unrest.”
- The Guardian: “These lawless rioters are out of control. They have driven an SUV into a crowd, tossed journalists to the ground and pepper-sprayed them, beaten people with batons and even blinded a woman in one eye. They have been launching unprovoked attacks on peaceful, law-abiding citizens exercising their constitutional rights. The violent behavior of these mobs should be condemned by all. We need to restore order: someone must stop the police.”
- The ACLU: “Police violence is one of the leading causes of death for Black men in America, and police officers who kill rarely face any type of accountability. This needs to stop. Yet in too many cities, the police response has been only more brutality.”
- Police departments have engaged in this behavior despite the fact that, as the Marshall Project notes, “[r]esearchers [who] have spent 50 years studying the way crowds of protesters and crowds of police behave…will tell you [that] disproportionate police force is one of the things that can make a peaceful protest not so peaceful.”
- Mayors of many prominent cities sought to justify law enforcement’s actions–although some elected officials’ positions have moved. A few examples:
- In New York NY, the Center for Constitutional Rights stated that “mayor [Bill de Blasio]’s justification of police brutality, including the mowing down of protestors with police vehicles reminiscent of the depraved actions by white supremacists in Charlottesville, is unconscionable. Add to that his disregard for the rights of citizens to protest for their very lives, and it is clear that he is fully committed to protecting police impunity…we call on Mayor de Blasio and Commissioner Shea to resign.”
- In Los Angeles CA, “Mayor Eric Garcetti said Tuesday he still has confidence in Los Angeles Police Department Chief Michel Moore, despite his comments when he equated looting to the in-custody death of George Floyd.”
- In Philadelphia PA, “Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw…and Mayor Jim Kenney both defended the department’s use of tear gas and other tactics…Police arrested more than two dozen people in the highway protest Monday evening, when they fired bean bags and rubber bullets and lobbed tear gas at protesters who had nowhere to run.”
- In Murfreesboro TN, “Demonstrators marched…in a largely peaceful display for George Floyd[;]…Video provided to News 2 by Tyler Croney shows what appears to be law enforcement deploying [tear] gas into a crowd including multiple children. Corney told News 2 none of the children in attendance were older than 12 years old…Mayor Shane McFarland [said] the gas was necessary to break up protesters who were blocking the intersection and on top of cars.”
- Meanwhile, in Washington DC:
- “Trump and some of his advisers calculated that he should not speak to the nation because he had nothing to say, according to a senior administration official. He had no tangible policy or action to announce, nor did he feel an urgent motivation to try to bring people together. So he stayed silent.”
- Silent, that is, until “[i]n a massive show of force, federal law enforcement officers fired rubber bullets and chemical gas at peaceful protesters outside the White House on Monday evening as President Trump appeared in the Rose Garden to threaten the mobilization of ‘thousands and thousands of heavily armed soldiers’ to quell ‘lawlessness’ across the country…Arlington County officers who were supporting Park Police at Lafayette Square were ordered to leave downtown after county officials realized they had been a part of what they called a presidential publicity stunt.”
- Steve Herman, White House bureau chief for Voice of America, reported that Principal Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley told reporters on Thursday,“ ‘All options are on the table’ for use of the military to deal with nationwide unrest[.]” Herman went on to note that Ted Lieu (CA-33), a member of the House Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security, reacted to this statement with alarm.
- Additionally, “[t]ensions between President Trump and U.S. military leaders have escalated over the handling of protests, culminating in officials reminding troops about their oath to the Constitution. Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley, Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy, and National Guard chief Joseph Lengyel have sent out guidance to take that oath seriously as protests swell across the country in response to the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man who died after a white police officer knelt on his neck for more than eight minutes while Floyd pleaded for his life.”
- Relatedly,
- “On Wednesday, Secret Service and National Guard troops created a perimeter between protesters and the White House. Several [] unidentified officers also stood guard.They declined to specify where they came from, according to reporters at the White House, who said some of the officers identified themselves only as affiliated with the Justice Department. The reporters speculated they were likely prison officers because a few wore gear marked with acronyms and other small insignias from federal prisons.”
- DC Mayor Muriel Bowser noted, in her formal objection to military and unidentified federal forces’ presence in the District, that “[w]hen citizens are unable to clearly identify legitimate law enforcement officers, it creates unnecessary risks for both protesters and officers. In fact, we found many years ago that conflict between police and citizens is reduced when law enforcement affiliation is apparent[.]”
- In the Legal Community:
- The ACLU has begun bringing lawsuits in collaboration with protest organizers:
- In Washington DC, “[s]everal protesters and the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit Thursday challenging the federal use of force to disperse a peaceful protest in Washington, DC, ahead of President Donald Trump’s photo-op at a local church.”
- In Minneapolis MN, “[t]he American Civil Liberties Union this week filed a lawsuit against a number of Minnesota law enforcement agencies alleging that they violated journalists’ constitutional rights by interfering with their coverage of protests and riots in the Minneapolis area in the wake of George Floyd’s death in the custody of the Minneapolis Police Department.”
- In Los Angeles CA, “[t]he American Civil Liberties Union and Black Lives Matter L.A. have filed a lawsuit against local political and law enforcement leaders, calling for an end to the “draconian curfews” imposed as largely peaceful protests continue throughout Southern California.”
- Across the United States, “attorneys and law firms have publicly volunteered free services.” (This link includes a list of such offers.)
- Notably, in Indianapolis IN, “Midwest boutique Saeed & Little [has received s]o many [pro bono requests], in fact, that the firm has relied on volunteer law students to call back and take down information.”
- In Washington DC, “the U.S. Supreme Court [] consider[ed] whether to revisit its 50-year-old doctrine of “qualified immunity” for law enforcement officers, which has shielded cops from civil lawsuits even in cases where a citizen’s rights have been violated.”
- In New York, Attorney General Letitia James felt the need to make this statement: