Tag: civil rights

Hospital Pays Job Applicant Who Refused Mandated Flu Shot

A hospital in Grand Rapids, Mich., has agreed to pay a settlement to a job applicant who had been offered a position, but then was arbitrarily rejected because he declined to take a flu shot hospital officials demanded.

News of the settlement comes from Liberty Counsel.

The fight involved Trinity Health Grand Rapids, which previously was known as Mercy Health St. Mary’s. The resolution includes a consent decree that allows paying of some $50,000 to the worker who was rejected.

The case originally was filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and charged the hospital improperly denied a job applicant’s request for a religious exemption to the flu shot.

The requirement for such shots later was dropped by the hospital, which agreed to train leaders on religious rights in addition to paying the settlement.

“According to the EEOC’s lawsuit, even though the hospital’s former flu shot policy allowed for a religious exemption, the hospital determined the applicant’s articulated religious beliefs were ‘insufficient’ to grant the exemption and denied it without an explanation. Trinity Health, which had made a conditional job offer to the applicant, then rescinded that job offer and did not give the applicant an opportunity to address the concerns with his request.”

The EEOC accused the corporation of violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The report explained federal law insists that employers make reasonable accommodations for religious employees – unless those accommodations create an “undue hardship” on the company.

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Ohio prosecutors broke rules to win convictions and got away with it

Ernie Haynes never imagined that taking care of his three grandsons after his daughter’s drug overdose death would turn him into a felon at the hands of a longtime Ohio prosecutor known to sidestep the rules intended to protect a defendant’s rights in criminal trials.

A week after his daughter died in December 2017, the court granted temporary custody of the children to their biological father, a man Haynes said also struggled with drug addiction. When Haynes refused to give up his grandchildren, Wood County authorities arrested him and charged him with six counts of abduction. The action sparked a five-year legal battle to clear his name.

“We never got to grieve … because immediately we were plunged into this hell,” said Haynes’ wife, Marcella Haynes.

Ernie Haynes, 59, didn’t know it, but the assistant prosecutor who would try his case, Thomas Matuszak, had a track record of repeatedly violating legal standards to sway juries at trials and win convictions, according to court findings. He would do the same in Haynes’ case.

And it wouldn’t be the last.

Matuszak is one of about 100 prosecutors across Ohio who the courts found had violated standards meant to preserve a defendant’s civil rights in criminal trials, an investigation by Columbia Journalism Investigations, NPR and member station WVXU in Cincinnati, and The Ohio Newsroom found. He is one of 13 who did so more than once. Together, these 13 prosecutors accounted for nearly one-third of the 104 cases in the state where courts found that prosecutors acted improperly.

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Journalist Files “Cease and Desist” Letter with the CIA

A journalist has sent a “Cease and Desist” letter to the Central Intelligence Agency, citing violations of her 4th, 5th and 14th Amendment rights.

Janet Phelan, who has authored an intelligence exposé, “EXILE,” as well as a book on the pandemic, “At the Breaking Point of History,” levels accusations that agents and assets of the CIA have repeatedly attacked her with unconventional chemical weapons, resulting in a health crisis and hospitalization.

Phelan states that she chose to send this letter to the CIA as this is the agency that is involved in overseas surveillance and operations. Phelan fled the U.S. in 2008 and currently resides in Mexico. She states that the Cease and Desist letter was sent prior to filing a formal legal request for an injunction against the Agency. She has also filed a Form 95, preparatory to suing under the Federal Tort Claims Act.

Phelan is best known for her investigations into U.S. biological weapons violations and her research into mortgages as a vehicle for judicial bribes and payoffs. Her articles appeared in the Moscow-based publication, New Eastern Outlook, for a number of years. She currently writes for Activist Post.

Upon learning of her intent to file for a formal injunction, a lawyer who is conversant with her work on judicial corruption, sputtered, “But this will have to go in front of a judge!”

Indeed, recent legal efforts in a similar vein were all dismissed by a judge, including CAIR’s lawsuit challenging targeting of Muslim-Americans and a lawsuit by a former CNN journalist covering Syria, which alleged that the US tried to blow him up in a number of drone strikes.  Federal judge Rosemary Collyer dismissed this lawsuit on reasons of “state secrets” thereby striking a blow against legal protections for both First Amendment violations as well as any constitutional protections against government abuse.

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Taxpayer-Subsidized Seminars Train Cops To Violate the Constitution

If a driver looks away while passing a police car, cops learn from a checklist promoted at an October 2021 conference in Atlantic City, that is suspicious. But if a driver stares at the police car, that is also suspicious. Hats work both ways too: Wearing one “low to cover [your] face” is suspicious, but so is removing a hat when you are stopped by the police. Other telltale signs of criminal activity, according to Street Cop Training’s list of “reasonable suspicion factors,” include texting, smoking, lip licking, yawning, stretching, talking to a passenger while keeping your eyes on the road, signaling a turn early or late, maintaining “awkward closeness” or “awkward distance” during a stop, standing parallel or perpendicular to the car, saying you are heading to work or heading home, questioning the reason for the stop, and refusing permission for a search.

That Street Cop Training checklist, which offers handy excuses for officers keen to conduct searches for drugs or seizable cash, figures prominently in a recent report from Kevin Walsh, New Jersey’s acting comptroller. The report criticizes the New Jersey company for encouraging officers to make or extend stops without reasonable suspicion and for promoting a “warrior” mentality that fosters the excessive use of force. “We found so many examples of so many instructors promoting views and tactics that were wildly inappropriate, offensive, discriminatory, harassing, and, in some cases, likely illegal,” Walsh said when he released the report this week. “The fact that the training undermined nearly a decade of police reforms—and New Jersey dollars paid for it—is outrageous.”

Street Cop Training was founded in 2012 by Dennis Benigno, who was a Woodbridge, New Jersey, police officer until 2015. Each year the company, which Benigno describes as “one of the largest, if not the largest, police training providers in the United States,” trains about 25,000 officers from agencies across the country. The six-day Atlantic City seminar that Walsh describes in his report attracted nearly 1,000 officers, including 240 from New Jersey. Their employers covered the expenses, which included a $499 fee for each officer, travel and lodging, and paid time off.

What did taxpayers get for their money? Potentially, Walsh argues, greater exposure to more expenses down the road, including millions of dollars spent to litigate and settle civil rights lawsuits. “This kind of training comes at too high a price for New Jersey residents,” Walsh’s report says. “The costs of attendance for training like this is small in comparison to the potential liability for lawsuits involving excessive force, unlawful searches and seizures, and harassment and discrimination.”

While “some of the observations and reasoning” described in Street Cop’s checklist “find support in case law,” Walsh says, “others appear to be arbitrary and contradictory.” Officers who follow Benigno’s advice therefore may end up violating the Fourth Amendment by making or prolonging stops based on factors that fall short of reasonable suspicion. If so, any resulting searches also would be unconstitutional, making any evidence they discover inadmissible.

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Tony Timpa Wrongful Death Trial Ends With 2 Out of 3 Cops Getting Qualified Immunity

At the heart of the civil trial concerning Tony Timpa—who died during a mental health crisis after calling 911 in August 2016—was an appeal made to the jury by the lead defense counsel, Senior Assistant City Attorney Lindsay Wilson Gowin. “Justice here is truth,” she said. Then, invoking allegations that the Timpa family had not been transparent about various dark corners of Timpa’s life, she added: “That’s not how you find the truth.”

She had a point. But that statement, made during closing arguments Tuesday, was a bit ironic, particularly when considering the lengths the government went to in order to obscure basic transparency and keep the events of that summer night a secret. Indeed, the trial, which almost didn’t come to fruition, has come to symbolize how difficult it is for alleged victims of government abuse from stating their case, and the importance of allowing those claims a fair and public hearing, no matter the outcome.

Today, a federal jury rendered their verdict. The panel of eight found that Officer Dustin Dillard, Senior Cpl. Raymond Dominguez, and Officer Danny Vasquez did in fact violate Timpa’s constitutional rights during a roughly 15-minute interaction on Dallas’ Mockingbird Lane. But they gave Dillard and Vasquez qualified immunity, concluding that, while their actions were unlawful, a reasonable officer couldn’t have been expected to know as much. A fourth defendant, Sgt. Kevin Mansell, the highest-ranking officer supervising the scene that evening, was vindicated entirely.

The city will have to pay Timpa’s son $1 million in damages.

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Idaho Christians Are Compensated $300,000 for Rights Violations

Just how untethered to the rule of law did the United States come during the Covid response?

Before March 2020, most Americans would think that monitoring church attendance, banning Easter services, and arresting hymn singers were practices reserved for Eastern-style totalitarianism. The Soviet Union persecuted Christians and the Chinese have Muslim concentration camps, but Americans’ freedom of worship is enshrined in the Bill of Rights.

The free exercise of religion precedes all other liberties in the First Amendment. It was born of a core conviction that the New World could do it better than the Old World of religious wars and persecution. Freedom, the Founders believed, would not diminish religious experience but rather bolster it through toleration and peace. This was a radical conviction at the time, a dramatic departure from centuries and millennia of costly struggle.

Government guaranteed everyone’s religious liberty. And the system worked. Religious conviction did not diminish but rather intensified throughout the 19th century. Most governments in the world followed similar guarantees never to interfere with religious practice. Even in the 21st century, when the country in general had become increasingly secular, few could imagine that political leaders would launch a crusade against organized religion.

Yet that’s exactly what happened. As the Covid creed emerged as the national faith, the American tradition of religious pluralism withered away. Freedom of worship was replaced by widespread demands for conformity.

This wasn’t limited to the devoutly godless shores of Marin County or East Hampton. Christians in Idaho recently reached a $300,000 settlement with a local city after they were arrested for attending outdoor church services in September 2020. Christ Church Pastor Ben Zornes organized the worship. “We were just singing songs,” he explained at the time.

The local police chief had no patience for the violation of corona law. “At some point in time you have to enforce,” he told the press after arresting attendees at the “psalm sing.”

But did they have to enforce the orders? Was arresting Christians legally required, or was it an explicit violation of the First Amendment?

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Circle the Wagons: The Government Is On The Warpath

“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.”—Harry S. Truman

How many Americans have actually bothered to read the Constitution, let alone the first ten amendments to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights (a quick read at 462 words)?

Take a few minutes and read those words for yourself—rather than having some court or politician translate them for you—and you will be under no illusion about where to draw the line when it comes to speaking your mind, criticizing your government, defending what is yours, doing whatever you want on your own property, and keeping the government’s nose out of your private affairs.

In an age of overcriminalization, where the average citizen unknowingly commits three crimes a day, and even the most mundane activities such as fishing and gardening are regulated, government officials are constantly telling Americans what not to do.

Yet it was not always this way.

It used to be “we the people” giving the orders, telling the government what it could and could not do. Indeed, the three words used most frequently throughout the Bill of Rights in regards to the government are “no,” “not” and “nor.”

Compare the following list of “don’ts” the government is prohibited from doing with the growing list of abuses to which “we the people” are subjected on a daily basis, and you will find that we have reached a state of crisis wherein the government is routinely breaking the law and violating its contractual obligations.

For instance, the government is NOT allowed to restrict free speech, press, assembly or the citizenry’s ability to protest and correct government wrongdoing. Nevertheless, the government continues to prosecute whistleblowers, persecute journalists, criminalize expressive activities, crack down on large gatherings of citizens mobilizing to voice their discontent with government policies, and insulate itself and its agents from any charges of wrongdoing (or what the courts refer to as “qualified immunity”).

The government may NOT infringe on a citizen’s right to defend himself. Nevertheless, in many states, it’s against the law to carry a concealed weapon (gun, knife or even pepper spray), and the average citizen is permitted little self-defense against militarized police officers who shoot first and ask questions later.

The government may NOT enter or occupy a citizen’s house without his consent (the quartering of soldiers). Nevertheless, government soldiers (i.e., militarized police) carry out more than 80,000 no-knock raids on private homes every year, while maiming children, killing dogs and shooting citizens.

The government may NOT carry out unreasonable searches and seizures on the citizenry or their possessions, NOR can government officials issue warrants without some evidence of wrongdoing (probable cause). Unfortunately, what is unreasonable to the average American is completely reasonable to a government agent, for whom the ends justify the means. In such a climate, we have no protection against roadside strip searches, blood draws, DNA collection, SWAT team raids, surveillance or any other privacy-stripping indignity to which the government chooses to subject us.

The government is NOT to deprive anyone of life, liberty or property without due process. Nevertheless, the government continues to incarcerate tens of thousands of Americans whose greatest crime is being poor and not white. The same goes for those who are put to death, some erroneously, by a system weighted in favor of class and wealth.

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Illinois to Allow Noncitizens Access to Standard Driver’s License Regardless of Immigration Status

Under House Bill 3882, signed by Illinois Governor JB Pritzker on Friday , immigrants in the state will now have access to standard driver’s licenses that can be used for identification with or without permission from U.S. immigration authorities.

The current “Temporary Visitor Driver’s License” (TVDL) will be phased out. While TVDLs look similar to a standard driver’s licenses, they contain a purple strip across the top that reads “TVDL” and specifies that the it is not valid for identification.

Capital News Illinois reports:

“This legislation is a significant step in eliminating the barriers to opportunity that many undocumented immigrants face,” Pritzker said in a statement. “We’re ensuring every eligible individual can obtain a driver’s license, making our roads safer, decreasing stigma, and creating more equitable systems for all.”

TVDLs look similar to a standard driver’s licenses, except they have a purple strip across the top that reads “TVDL” above the words “NOT VALID FOR IDENTIFICATION.” Under the new law, those people will qualify for standard licenses that carry the words “Federal Limits Apply” at the top, but which do not qualify as REAL ID for travel purposes.

Immigrant rights advocates say the purple bar on the TVDL stigmatizes the people holding them, creates barriers to other kinds of services that require identification such as picking up medication from a pharmacy or signing an apartment lease, and exposes them to law enforcement action.

Although many in the state  are increasingly outraged by how the crisis brought on by Joe Biden’s broken border policy is being addressed, Illinois continues to provide bills to allow migrants perks regardless of immigration status.

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HOW THE PRISON LITIGATION REFORM ACT BLOCKS JUSTICE FOR PRISONERS

In 2014, Abu Huraira, 45, was transferred to Georgia State Prison after 16 years in the custody of the Georgia Department of Corrections (GDC). On his arrival, prison officials failed to give him an initial medical screening, violating GDC policy. Because of that, Huraira went weeks without receiving medication for his chronic pain or dental care for a decaying tooth, despite submitting multiple requests to medical staff at the prison. Additionally, prison officials forced Huraira, a Muslim, to shave his beard using unsanitized clippers, exposing him to the risk of bloodborne diseases, and denied him access to Islamic prayer services, according to a lawsuit he later filed in federal court.

When Huraira sued GDC for violating his rights to medical care and religious liberty, GDC attorneys didn’t dispute the substance of his allegations. Instead, they argued that he had no right to sue at all because he had not filed a formal grievance with prison authorities. Even though Huraira told the court that corrections officers had refused to allow him to file a grievance, a federal judge ruled in GDC’s favor and dismissed Huraira’s lawsuit on the grounds that he had “failed to exhaust administrative remedies.”

All of this was possible thanks to a little-known federal law called the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA). Signed into law in 1996 by President Bill Clinton, the PLRA sought to tamp down on “frivolous” lawsuits filed by prisoners by making it easier for courts to dismiss cases before they ever went to trial. The law also capped the amount of damages prisoners could collect from prison officials who violated their constitutional rights, discouraging professional attorneys from taking on prisoners’ cases.

As a result, the PLRA has made it virtually impossible for prisoners to hold corrections officials accountable for civil rights violations like excessive force or inadequate medical care. Without judicial oversight, corrections officials act with impunity because they rarely face consequences for violating prisoners’ rights.

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DOJ Accuses Louisville Police Of Civil Rights Violations, Discrimination After Breonna Taylor Investigation

Louisville’s police routinely violate constitutional rights and federal law, the Department of Justice (DOJ) said following a two-year investigation following the death of Breonna Taylor.

The DOJ announced the findings of its investigation on Wednesday in a press conference and 90-page report. Federal investigators said their review found that officers of the Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) “engage in a pattern or practice of conduct that violates the U.S. Constitution and federal law.”

Some of the report’s findings include use of excessive force, executing search warrants without knocking or announcing, using invalid search warrants, and violating the rights of protesters.

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