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A conservative judge changes his mind

When John Roberts was nominated to the Supreme Court in 2005, he assured the nation that his decisions would be guided by something loftier than his own whims or predilections. I will decide every case based on the record, according to the rule of law, without fear or favor, to the best of my ability, he told the Senate. And I will remember that its my job to call balls and strikes and not to pitch or bat. It all sounded very reasonable, and its a fiction deeply embedded in our judicial system. Most legal opinions are written as if the conclusion is so apparent, so free of personal bias, so certain, as to be almost inevitable. You dont often see an opinion that begins, This one was a really close call; it could have gone either way! Instead they read as if no reasonable person could have concluded anything else.

All of which makes this weeks opinion from Fifth Circuit Judge Don R. Willett a refreshing surprise. Willett changed his mind. And he reversed himself on one of the more troubling decisions weve seen recently, which is saying quite a bit.

The case, whichThe Daily Appealdiscussedlast week, was based on a lawsuit thata federal judgesaid bordered on the delusional. A Louisiana police officer injured in a protest tried to sue the hashtag#BlackLivesMatter, which amounted, wrote JudgeBrian A. Jacksonof the Federal District Court in Baton Rouge, to picking a fight with an idea,wrote Adam Liptakfor the New York Times. The officer also sued Black Lives Matter, which the judge said was also a nonstarter A third part of the lawsuitseeking to hold a leader of the movement [DeRay Mckesson] liable for the officers injuriesreached the Supreme Court on Friday. Judge Jackson had dismissed that part of the case on First Amendment grounds, but an appeals court revived it, alarming civil rights lawyers and experts on free speech.

The principles outlined in this decision put civil disobedience at risk, Alanah Odoms Hebert, the head of the ACLU of Louisiana, toldThe Atlantic. If this doctrine had existed during the civil rights movement there would not have been a civil rights movement.Othersnoted the irony that officers are allowed to commit acts of violence with near impunity because of qualified immunity, while protest organizers can be sued for the acts of others, if they injure police.

But Willett, a Trump appointee, changed his mind. I have had a judicial change of heart, Willett wrote inhis new opinion. Admittedly, judges arent naturals at backtracking or about-facing. But I do so forthrightly. Consistency is a cardinal judicial virtue, but not the only virtue. In my judgment, earnest rethinking should underscore, rather than undermine, faith in the judicial process. As Justice Frankfurter elegantly put it 70 years ago, Wisdom too often never comes, and so one ought not to reject it merely because it comes late.

In this case, reexamination led Willett to see two gaping holes in the majoritys case. First, he pointed out, despite the panels earlier decision, its not clear that even Louisiana tort law would support a lawsuit against Mckesson,writeslaw professor Garrett Epps for The Atlantic. Willett further wrote that, having insisted on reaching the free-speech issue, the panel botched that as well. Does complaint alleged that Mckesson incited the violence that led to Does injuries. But Does lawyer didnt even bother to explain how.

Epps writesthat even though the original opinion still stands, Willetts change of heart is a sign of life for old First Amendment precedents. But it is also a sign of life for judicial humility, and the idea that our legal system ought to be guided by accuracy and justice, not expediency. When, recently, the issue of convictions by nonunanimous juries camebefore the Supreme Court, those arguing to preserve this practice posited that any ruling to the contrary would be too great an administrative burden on state courts. The same arguments were made when it came to reviewing life without parole sentences for those convicted as children. The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1966 might be the starkest example of how our system favors administrative ease over fairness. It was designed to limit the avenues for people on death row to challenge their convictions, anda study showedthat it reduced the success rate for federal habeas petitions to levels about a fifth of what they previously were, and at the time of the studys publication, those numbers were continuing to decline.

One case in Missouriexemplifies the dominance of administrative ease over serious concerns about fairness and justice. Lamar Johnson was convicted of killing Marcus Boyd in 1995. He was sentenced to life. But years after the killing, the states only witness recanted his identification of Johnson as the shooter, and two other men have confessed to Boyds killing and said Johnson was not involved. And Johnson has gained the support of the prosecutor, Kim Gardner, whose office was responsible for his conviction nearly 25 years ago. After looking into his case with lawyers at the Midwest Innocence Project, Gardner asked for a new trial in July saying she believes her office engaged in serious misconduct, including secret payments to the witness, falsified police reports, and perjured testimony.

Gardner believes that she is duty bound to correct past wrongs, but in a case thatone commentator saidshowed just how much the criminal justice system favors form and finality over substance, a judge disagreed. Judge Elizabeth B. Hogan based her decision on a statute that requires the relevant motion be made within 15 days of the conviction. She told prosecutors they were late by approximately 24 years. But in so doing, the judge seems to have ignored case law that allows the motion to be heard beyond the 15-day deadline in extraordinary circumstances and in the interests of justice. A 1984 Missouri appeals court ruled that a perversion of justice would occur if we were to close our eyes to the existence of the newly discovered evidence solely because of a missed deadline. In herdecision, Hogan seems eager to find reasons to reject Gardners attempt to right a possible wrong.

Advocates for Johnson, including professors from law schools across the country, have appealed to Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt to drop his opposition to Gardners efforts. The circuit attorney needs to have a means to correct that injustice, Gardners attorney, Daniel Harawa, told the appeals court. But Schmitt has steadfastly opposed. His offices reasoning is not exactly lofty. Assistant Attorney General Shaun Mackelprang said in court that the courts jurisdiction over Johnsons case expired when he was convicted and sentenced in 1995. Why turn a blind eye to a possible wrongful conviction? Our laws have meaning and our rules have meaning, and for people to operate within those boundaries,Mackelprang said.

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A conservative judge changes his mind - The Appeal

The Editorial Board, USA TODAY Published 5:45 p.m. ET Dec. 19, 2019 | Updated 12:35 p.m. ET Dec. 20, 2019

Russia is still trying to exploit divisions in America. USA TODAY is trying to heal the nations wounds and identify areas of agreement: Our view

Russias information warfare campaign against the United States began with the goal, in the words of the Mueller report, of sowing discord in the U.S. political system.

In a bid to exploit divisions in American society, Russian hackers posed as, among other things, anti-immigration groups, Tea Party activists and Black Lives Matter protesters.

The Russians undoubtedly see their continuing campaign as a spectacular success, judging by the way Americans are at each others throats these days, on impeachment and a variety of other topics.

In an effort to help heal the nations wounds and identify areas of agreement on major issues, USA TODAY and the nonprofit group Public Agenda are partnering on a yearlong project called Hidden Common Ground.

The commentary portion of the project includes columns by centrist voices who tend to get drowned out by the partisan extremes, and by people with widely divergent views who are nevertheless working together to fix a problem.

Voting in 2016.(Photo: Eugene Garcia/epa)

You wouldnt know it from watching cable news, but in the last presidential election 39% of voters described themselves as moderate (versus 35% as conservative and 26% as liberal). In the initial Public Agenda/USA TODAY/Ipsos survey for the project, more than nine of 10said its important to reduce divisiveness.

So far, criticism of Hidden Common Groundhas focused on two questions:

Isn't it ludicrous to talk about bipartisan compromise when my side is 100% right and the other side is 100% wrong?

Isnt it hypocritical for the Editorial Board to support common ground solutions while endorsing the polarizing act of impeaching President Donald Trump?

The short answers are noand no.

Its true that agreementis difficult when one side won't accept basic facts. It's also truethat certain issues involving basic moral beliefs or human rights dont lend themselves to split-the-difference solutions. But many others do.

On immigration, for example, theres clearly common ground to be found between open borders on one side and mass deportations on the other. The long-obvious deal would pair better border security with a pathway to legality for millions of undocumented immigrants already interwoven in American society.

On health care, theres common ground between mandatory "Medicare for All" and repealing Obamacare. One idea is to preserve private insurance but improve the Affordable Care Act by adding a public option or letting certain people under 65 buyMedicare coverage.

On climate change, theres common ground between do-nothing denialism and a Green New Deal that unrealistically attempts to remake the entire economy. A tax on carbon emissions, with the proceeds refunded to consumers, would make green energy more competitive; a more robust research and development program could unearth technological fixes.

On these and other public policy questions, to see compromise as a dirty word simply ensures that nothing gets done and problems fester.

As for impeachment, it can be argued that Trump with his constant name-calling, erratic edicts and dismissal of scienceis himself the biggest impediment to finding common ground at the federal level. (In our tradition of giving readers more than one side of an issue, our editorial endorsing the two articles of impeachment was accompanied by an opposing view from the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee.)

Senate acquittal appears assured, but even ifTrump were to be removed from office for his abuseof power and stonewalling of Congress, does anyone doubt that incoming President Mike Pence would improve the tone in Washington while continuing to champion conservative causes?

In fact, impeachment and deal-making arent incompatible. Conditions are ripe for successful negotiations because both sides have an interest in demonstrating cooperation.

Heading into an election year, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants to showthat congressional Democrats can do more than impeach. President Trump wants to show that hes not paralyzed or consumed by that process.

Just in the past week, Democrats and Republicans have reached agreement on a major trade deal, passed in the House on Thursday,and an array of thorny budget issues, including $425 million to help states improve election security. Imagine how much better off the nation would be if they could manage to keep it up.

By Bill Sternberg for the Editorial Board

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Impeachment of Donald Trump doesn't remove the need for common ground - USA TODAY

Her voice is weary yet chilling, telling us she is not complicit in a world edging toward destruction. Shes still in her teens, an inheritor of generations leaving her the burdens of global warming, economic inequality and a ravenous social media that thrills her even as it exploits and strips away the tender gifts of her youth.

Zendaya as Rue Bennett in the HBO drama Euphoria is a prescription-drug-addicted high schooler wandering through the wreckage of sexting, statutory rape, body shaming, mass shootings and lives playing out on smartphones, where avatars and parallel realities prompt one of her friends to muse: I dont think I have an attention span for real life anymore.

Euphoria is a stark dive into Gen Z, those born into a post-9/11 planet of rising tides, starving polar bears, TikTok videos, selfies, invasive algorithms and the specter of the YouTube star. They are the latest iteration in an America whose sense of itself is often marked by generational divides between baby boomers, Gen Xers, millennials and teens like Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old Swedish climate activist who admonished Congress and U.N. world leaders for not doing a better job at preserving the planet.

It has been a year of skirmishes between young and old. From Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez jolting C-SPAN with her progressive politics to the resurfacing (yes, really) of the Brady Bunch stars to celebrate the shows 50th anniversary. We hang in that surreal balance. Rifts between generations are part of the natural order, but these days the differences echo with existential questions over climate change and how artificial intelligence and other technologies will reshape the way we live. Even the sisters in the Disney blockbuster Frozen 2 must contend with environmental damage wrought by their elders.

Will Miami disappear this century under rising waters? Will the robots we create subsume us? Will we endure endless superhero reboots? Disappear into our virtual reality headsets? Will Mark Zuckerberg and his ilk mine every sacred piece of our identity? Such questions for younger generations are not rhetorical. Frankenstein is here; the Black Mirror is eerily ascendant.

Anxiety over the future is seeping into a cultural landscape altered in recent years by the MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements. The Trump presidency, with its impeachment troubles, anti-immigration fury and multiplying lies, has divided the country, distorting our reality and cheapening the creeds that made us a nation. One can understand why the Gen Z characters in Euphoria pedal through suburban neighborhoods numbed and perplexed.

Even I dont fully get it, Zendaya told The Times this year. But I understand a good percent of it. Rue says in the first episode something like, We just showed up here without a map or compass. And its true, because we dont know what the were doing. Nobody actually knows what theyre doing. Imagine growing up in social media and being a child. Its not easy. Its confusing. And its uncomfortable. Its a lot of things. Its created by the very people that call us the zombies or whatever. Its like, were the byproduct of this , you know?

The air between generations has been arrowed with condescension and dismissive tweets for a while. But GIFs and memes this year poking fun and outrage at baby boomers tapped into a deeper anxiety. The OK boomer social media tag was a jab at a post-World War II generation that millennials (born between 1981 and 1996) and Gen Zers (roughly 19972012) regard as entitled, affluent and blind to the consequences of decades of technological advances and environmental degradation even as dystopian films and literature have flourished.

The young viewed boomers as a cold-blooded and calculating Cersei Lannister in Game of Thrones. Boomers had their own characterizations of Gen Z: smartphone-swooning snowflakes. Millennials were caught in between, and Gen Xers floated in their own orbit. Suspicion played out across generations like an episode of Succession, where the young Roys, stewing in spoiled privilege, maneuver to outwit and unseat their cranky, toxic patriarch.

Much of the criticism against boomers was in satire and jest. Some was more pointed, including Blink-182s song Generational Divide with the lyrics: All we needed was your lifeline. (Is it better? Is it better now?). Social media amplified and democratized OK boomer in a time when the calling out and muting of enemies in a growing cancel culture allows younger generations to peel back the masks and reveal the prevailing sins of those in power. It is mass reckoning carried out by TikTok and Twitter.

Such an atmosphere is informing politics, college campuses and the entertainment industry. Director Martin Scorsese unleashed Marvel-fan wrath when he said that superhero movies resembled more an amusement park ride than serious cinema. His comments pointed not only to a generational gap between Scorsese and Suicide Squad cosplayers but to how computer graphics and special effects are reimagining movies for audiences who minute by minute live in their screens.

Cinema is rapidly changing, much like it did in the 1970s when independent filmmakers, including a young Scorsese, upended Hollywood with realism. Today, technology has given us cosmic fantasy. It has also splintered how and where we watch films and TV. Entertainment common ground between generations is shrinking as each seeks shows, podcasts and video streams that speak directly to them and less to the wider world. This raises questions about shared narratives and the future of art, expression and identity. The trend will accelerate with the streaming wars between Netflix, Disney+, Apple TV+ and other platforms.

It is a progression changed by, but as old as, time. Baby boomers cut their teeth on vinyl records and Easy Rider; Gen Xers had Friends and Reality Bites; millennials watched The OC and The Social Network; and Gen Z is only too familiar with news of school shootings appearing on their social media feeds and turning themselves into avatars and doppelgangers for 15-second TikTok videos.

Yet there are things that transcend and bind generations: Star Wars. The Simpsons. Game of Thrones. The Office. Even Mister Rogers, portrayed by Tom Hanks in the new film A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.

A restlessness among the young has spread to our politics, but older generations still hold sway. Pete Buttigieg, a 37-year-old millennial, is the youngest major candidate among Democrats in a presidential race whose top contenders include Elizabeth Warren, 70, a boomer, and Joe Biden, 77, and Bernie Sanders, 78, both pre-boomers. The winds are shifting, but it may take another four years before someone born after MTV was launched moves into the White House.

Gender and cultural equations are also beginning to be redrawn along generational lines although, like politics, not as quickly as many would like. Women made critically acclaimed films this year, including those by thirtysomething directors Greta Gerwig (Little Women) and Lulu Wang (The Farewell). But no female directors were nominated for the Golden Globes. The youngest of the five males nominated was Todd Phillips, 48, and the oldest was Scorsese, 77.

There has been incremental progress along racial lines. Shows like Insecure, Atlanta and black-ish explore the lives of young African Americans. A rising generation of black playwrights, including Jeremy O. Harris and Jackie Sibblies Drury, are laying bare the caustic legacy of prejudice and slavery in new and riveting language.

Fresh Off the Boat, now heading into its final season, paved the way not only for last years Crazy Rich Asians but the 2019 films Always Be My Maybe and The Farewell, which showed fresh ways of depicting the experiences of young Asian Americans.

And while Latino representation in pop culture is still abysmal, especially with Jane the Virgin ending its five-season run this year, a new generation is emerging, with pivotal roles in mainstream films going to Cuban actress Ana de Armas in Knives Out and Colombian actress Natalia Reyes Gaitn in Terminator: Dark Fate.

One of the most potent signs of youth taking over is Billie Eilish, the 17-year-old subversive who has jolted pop music with her debut electro-pulse album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? The work makes Eilish, who at times looks like an end-of-days denizen, the youngest artist to be simultaneously nominated in the major Grammy categories of song, record, album and best new artist.

Of course, each generation thinks it discovered what has already been charted by the one preceding it. Bugs Bunny is as sly as anything on South Park. Socially conscious Gen Zers may be marching against gun violence and climate change, but boomers and their elders born before 1946, including Bob Dylan and Martin Luther King Jr., protested for civil rights and against the Vietnam War. A fine line runs between self-righteousness and forgetting. Or worse, not being aware of what those younger and older than us have been through.

The idea that youth culture is culture created by youth is a myth. Youth culture is manufactured by people who are no longer young, Louis Menand recently wrote in the New Yorker. When you are actually a young person, you can only consume whats out there. It often becomes your culture, but not because you made it. If you were born during the baby boom, you can call yourself a 60s person. You can even be a 60s person. Just dont pretend that any of it was your idea.

Still, each generation has its own style and aesthetic to make sense of its world, or, in the case of the rise of virtual reality, other worlds tempting us in cyberspace. As decades go by, what Gen Z innovations will be praised and admonished long after baby boomers with their trippy playlists and fading idealism have passed into history?

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From Marvel movies to OK boomer, 2019 was the year of the generational divide - Seattle Times

Kamala Harris recently dropped out of the presidential race after months of attacks from the left for her tough-on-crime record as San Franciscos district attorney and as Californias attorney general.

A few years ago, the idea that being tough on crime would be a liability not an asset was unthinkable for both Democrats and Republicans.

Bill Clinton, during the 1992 presidential race, interrupted his campaign so he could return to Arkansas to witness the execution of a mentally disabled man. During Harris 2014 reelection campaign for attorney general, she actively sought and won the endorsements of more than 50 law enforcement groups en route to a landslide victory.

But something has changed in recent years. Harris failure to gain traction as a presidential candidate has coincided with a growing number of progressive prosecutors.

In the past, I would have scoffed at the notion of a progressive prosecutor. It would have seemed like a ridiculous oxymoron.

But in one of the most stunning shifts in American politics in recent memory, a wave of elected prosecutors have bucked a decadeslong tough-on-crime approach adopted by both major parties. These prosecutors are refusing to send low-level, non-violent offenders to prison, diverting defendants into treatment programs, working to eradicate the death penalty and reversing wrongful convictions.

In 1968, when I was 8 years old, my father was sentenced to 22 to 55 years in the Ohio State Penitentiary for the possession and sale of marijuana. During the trial, the district attorney had repeatedly assured the jurors that he hadnt promised the states principal witness then serving a long sentence leniency in return for testifying against my father.

In truth, they had struck that very bargain. After studying the wardens own law books, my father appealed the conviction, representing himself. He was ultimately vindicated by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals after proving that the district attorney had deliberately lied to the jury.

That was in 1974. I went on to become a lawyer and law professor. During the years I spent teaching and studying the relationship between race and the law, the prison population exploded, and my distrust toward government prosecutors only deepened. Too often, it seemed like they were bringing excessively punitive charges in order to force defendants into plea deals. Too often, their approach seemed to reflect a longing for retribution and revenge rather than rehabilitation.

In 2017, law professor John Pfaff was able to show that mass incarceration was due, first and foremost, to the nearly unchecked power of district attorneys.

With reported crimes and arrests steadily declining in the 1990s and 2000s, you might have expected incarceration rates to also fall. Instead, they soared. Pfaff traces this perplexing trend to one key statistic: Between 1994 and 2008, the probability that a district attorney would file a felony charge against someone whos been arrested roughly doubled, from about 1 in 3 to nearly 2 in 3.

More than stiff drug laws, punitive judges, overzealous cops or private prisons, prosecutors had been the main drivers of a prison population that had quadrupled since the mid-1980s.

Meanwhile, black Americans continued to be disproportionately incarcerated. In 2017, there were 1,549 black prisoners for every 100,000 black adults nearly six times the incarceration rate for whites and nearly double the rate for Hispanics.

This prosecutorial approach wasnt punished at the ballot box; instead, racking up convictions and plea deals seemed to bolster the political careers of district attorneys.

No longer.

Since 2013, roughly 30 reform-minded prosecutors have been elected. A few now preside over prosecutorial staffs in some of the nations biggest cities, like Philadelphias Larry Krasner and Bostons Rachael Rollins. But they also include chief prosecutors of smaller municipalities, like Satana Deberry, who was elected district attorney of Durham County, North Carolina, in 2018, and Parisa Dehghani-Tafti, the commonwealths attorney of Arlington County, Virginia, who won on a platform of ending mass incarceration in 2019.

These prosecutors are reinventing the role of the modern district attorney. Krasner, for example, campaigned on eliminating cash bail, reining in police misconduct and upending a system of mass incarceration that disproportionately imprisons people of color. He won with nearly 75% of the vote in the general election.

In 2018, before a packed lecture hall, Krasner told my law students that ending racialized mass incarceration is the most important civil rights issue of our time. He pointed out that the key difference between a traditional prosecutor and progressive one is that the latter is a prosecutor with compassion and a public defender with power.

This growing crop of prosecutors with compassion and public defenders with power has upended my own binary way of thinking about the role of the district attorney.

Ive realized that a district attorney can adopt a fundamentally different moral compass and conception of justice. While traditional law and order prosecutors possess a moral, legal and political compass that sharply distinguishes between victims and perpetrators, Id argue that truly progressive prosecutors recognize that hurt people hurt people and refuse to subordinate the values of restoration, rehabilitation and redemption to those of retribution, retaliation and revenge.

These two sets of values can collide. Many entrenched judges, prosecutors, police chiefs, police unions and legislators have loudly opposed or have actively resisted this shift to restoration and redemption.

Progressive prosecutors, according to U.S. Attorney General William Barr, are undercutting the police, letting criminals off the hook, and refusing to enforce the law. In a December rally, President Trump singled out Krasner, calling him the worst district attorney, one who lets killers out almost immediately.

The experience of Aramis Ayala, the state attorney for the 9th Judicial Circuit Court of Florida, is a classic example of the obstacles these new prosecutors can face. After being elected in 2016, she announced that she would no longer seek the death penalty for any defendants tried by her office. Florida Gov. Rick Scott responded by reassigning 24 aggravated murder cases to another state attorney who was amenable to the death penalty.

Ayala sued to have the cases returned to her jurisdiction. She lost.

Nonetheless, progressive prosecutors would have never attained power in the first place if their views didnt resonate with voters.

Michelle Alexanders 2010 book, The New Jim Crow, deserves some credit for changing the way activists thought about crime and punishment. Alexander cast mass incarceration as a civil rights crisis by showing that people didnt simply end up in jail because they were bad people who made poor choices. Nor did prison populations explode simply because there were more crimes being committed. Instead, mass incarceration was closely intertwined with race, poverty and government policy.

Among civil rights activists, issues like affirmative action in higher education had been consuming a lot of time, energy and resources. Alexanders book helped redirect attention to racialized mass incarceration as a main battlefront in U.S. race relations.

Since its formation in 2013, the Black Lives Matter movement has made criminal justice reform a centerpiece of their activism. In Los Angeles, for example, the local chapter has led weekly demonstrations for over two years in front of the Hall of Justice. Theyre protesting Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey for failing to adequately address police misconduct.

Lacey, who is up for reelection, faces two opponents. Both of them former San Francisco District Attorney George Gascn and former public defender Rachel Rossi are running on progressive platforms.

In March, well see if the Los Angeles County District Attorneys office the nations largest county-wide prosecutorial agency will be the latest to join the progressive prosecutor movement.

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How being 'tough on crime' became a political liability - The Conversation US

This article has been updated to include additional statements from University spokesperson Brian Coy and president of the Queer Student Union Blake Hesson.

A Beta Bridge mural that said, PROTECT BLACK TRANS WOMEN, was found painted over Saturday morning with statements including, 2A, GUNS, and an arrow through WOMEN. Although people repainted the initial message Saturday, 2A and GUNS were found repainted Sunday night and were covered again.

The initial mural had been painted by the secret SABLE Society Dec. 3 as part of a campaign across Grounds to raise awareness of the difficulties faced by Black transgender women, who are murdered at higher rates than other demographic groups.

It is yet unclear who wrote the 2A and GUNS messages, which appear to be in reference to the Second Amendments granting of the right to bear arms and the recent wave of counties and towns across the Commonwealth declaring themselves Second Amendment sanctuaries, which will not enforce any unconstitutional restrictions on gun rights, in anticipation of the entrance of a Democrat-controlled state legislature in January for the first time in years.

The Albemarle County Board of Supervisors have not passed any resolutions declaring the county a Second Amendment sanctuary, although they have heard support from residents.

In a statement, University spokesperson Brian Coy said the University was aware of the changes repeatedly made to the initial message.

Beta Bridge is a long recognized public forum that may on occasion cause controversy or disagreement about the messages expressed or the intentions of individuals who choose to paint the bridge, Coy said. We hope that community members will continue to honor this long-standing tradition of public expression in a way that respects every member of this community and the viewpoints they bring to Grounds.

Coy said the University wants to ensure that community members impacted by the incident were aware of resources that could help, including Counseling and Psychological Services, the University Faculty Employee Assistance Program, the LGBTQ Center and the Office for Equal Opportunity and Civil Rights Gender Diversity Resources.

The University of Virginia welcomes and values every member of this community regardless of their race, religion, sex, gender identity and expression, or other protected characteristics, Coy said. We recognize that people, particularly black trans women, feel demeaned or threatened by this message and the way it appeared on Beta Bridge. We also recognize that black trans women are among one of the most vulnerable populations in our country.

Lyle Solla-Yates, software platforms and technology lead in the School of Architecture, posted a photo of the defaced mural Saturday morning on Twitter.

I appreciate that there are people who firmly believe in the Second Amendment, but this looked like something that was supposed tomake people not inspired to protect the Second Amendment but be afraid, and I was upset, Solla-Yates said in an interview with The Cavalier Daily. I was a little reluctant to share it, because I dont like sharing hate messages, but I feel like people have to be cautious about people like this.

In a statement prior to the second defacement, the SABLE Society said the student body must stand united against hate that harms members of the community.

One of our guiding principles is to give voice to those that are often ignored and unheard, the society said. On Beta Bridge, we endeavored to shine a light on the heartbreaking tragedy of the persecution of Trans members of our Black community. We are shouting to the world that All Black Lives Matter, and we stand in solidarity with the Trans community. They are neither invisible nor disposable; they are our brothers and sisters.

Blake Hesson, president of the Queer Student Union and a fourth-year College student, said they believe the incident speaks to a wider problem where hateful messages are directed towards marginalized people around the University.

This speaks to something that's continued and probably will continue but I think this is where the University should come in and say what kind of things should be allowed, and how we should respect and respectfully disagree, even though I don't think you can really disagree with a human being and [how their identity informs how they live their lives], Hesson said.

Latrell Lee, a fourth-year Commerce student and community leader, said he was not surprised by the incident.

I was pissed to say the least, Lee said in an email. Especially given U.Va.s history and the way that Black people are looked at in general, let alone Black trans women.

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Pro-gun messages repeatedly written over PROTECT BLACK TRANS WOMEN painting on Beta Bridge - University of Virginia The Cavalier Daily