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Urged by some for at least a year to adopt an anti-hate resolution, the Thousand Oaks City Councilfinally did Tuesday night in the wake of a recent white supremacist demonstration in Newbury Park.

"It is of deep concern to me that they choseour town … perhaps thinking that their views might be welcomehere," Mayor Bob Engler said. "These reprehensible views are not welcome anywhere, much less in the city we all love."

"The resolution has been attacked as not strong enough or too strong or unnecessary," hesaid. But "to not pass this resolution tonight sends a message, and I'm afraid it will be the wrong message."

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The resolution, introduced by council memberClaudiaBill-de la Pea, was passed on a 4-0 vote with council member Kevin McNamee abstaining on free speech grounds.

Voting for it wereBill-de la Pea, Engler, and councilmen Al Adamand Ed Jones.

The resolution states that while the city "supports the First Amendment rights of all people, and will protect the rights of all to peaceably speak and assemble, the city will also vigorously protect the rights, equality, and safety of all.

Thus, the resolution authorizes the City Council to take "an official position againstbigotry, white supremacy, anti-Semitism and hate speech in the city."

It states that in doing so, the City Council continues to be guidedby its No. 1 goal of creating a "more equitable, accessible, safe, welcoming, and inclusive government and community regardless of race, color, ethnicity, religion, sex, physical or mental ability, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, age, language, education, and/or socio-economic status."

Speak out:White supremacists rally in Thousand Oaks; some wonder why city leaders lag in response

The council adopted the resolution atthe conclusion of a lengthy hearing in which several dozen public speakers addressed it, many in favor,many against.

Thousand Oaks resident Cindy Goldberg supportedthe resolution, noting that the councilrefusedto adopt one last year.

"I support the city's public affirmation denouncing racismand bigotry in our community," she said. "There'san old saying that ends, 'if not now, when?'" shesaid.

"I understand that there was anti-racism resolutionpresented to the council last year for review, and it never materialized on the agenda," Goldberg said."I hope this time, the city takes action. It should not be difficultto publicly state that there is no room forhate in Thousand Oaks."

Bill-de la Pea agreed, saying, "I'm glad to have an opportunitythis eveningto do something that should have been done a year ago."

La Shaun Aaron told the councilshe is continually surprised that "you all are so surprised about racism and acts of racism" in Thousand Oaks. "We have spoken time and time again at council meetings … (and)I see complicity and I see silence.

"Some council members and unfortunately some community members as wellkeep coming to these meetings saying, 'Well, I don't see racism.'" said Aaron, co-founder of anti-hate racismgroup 805 Resistance, which unsuccessfully pushedthe councillast year to adopt an anti-hate resolutionand to create an equity commission.

Tim Totonis one of them, saying, there is"a non-existent, manufactured racistsociety narrative.

"The good people of Ventura Countyare sick and tired of race-baiting," he said.

In deciding to abstain, McNamee said that while he does not tolerate any kind of hate, "the challenge here is that it's under freedom of speech and as much as I deploreit, they have the freedom of speech to say so."

"Thereare some racists within our community," he said. "There are some white supremacists within our community. But in total, I don'tsee Thousand Oaks asbeing aracist community."

Hate not welcome:Ventura City Council reaffirms condemnation of racism, white supremacy

Bill-de la Pea introduced the resolutionin response to the white supremacist demonstration Feb 12.

About a dozen masked white supremacistsbriefly unfurled banners from the Highway 101 Borchard Road overpass, including two that said, "White Lives Matter," and "Honk If White Lives Matter."

Another banner said, "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children."

According to the Anti-Defamation League'swebsite, that sentence is the so-called "14 words," "the most popular white supremacist slogan in the world."

Using a drone, the demonstrators made a video of the so-called "banner drop," and posted it online on a messaging app calledTelegram.

Officials say the demonstration action was meant to be a recruitment tool.

Newbury Park resident DanielMoody, who monitors hate groups online, said he's certain the white supremacists who conducted the Newbury Park action were members of the Southern California chapterof a white supremacist/neo-Nazi group called White Lives Matter.

Dan Meisel, the ADL's regional director for Ventura, Santa BarbaraandSan Luis Obispocounties, also said the demonstrators appear to be partof the White Lives Matter network. The nonprofit ADL fights anti-Semitism and hate.

Thousand Oaks Police Chief JeremyParis said at Tuesday night's council meeting that the demonstrators don't appear to be local.

"All indications are that … these people came from out of the area," hesaid. "And that this was part of a nationwide planned activity."

Mike Harris covers the East County cities of Moorpark, Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks, as well as transportation countywide. You can contact him at mike.harris@vcstar.com or 805-437-0323.

SUPPORT LOCAL JOURNALISMand get all the latest Moorpark, Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks, and transportation news from Star reporter MikeHarris. Get a digital subscription

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Thousand Oaks adopts anti-hate resolution in wake of white supremacist demonstration - VC Star

These are scary times for teachers and academics, and the situation is only getting worse. The pace and scope of educational gag orders, laws regulating what can and cannot be taught about divisive topics, such as race in America, is increasing.

Texas, where I live and teach at a public university, saw the passage of new legislation last year regulating K-12 curricula around issues of race. This caught my eye, because it will affect what my children learn in school. But truth be told, the anticritical race theory agenda driving this legislation has been on my radar for some time now, since it makes me worried for my academic career. I teach and publish on topics such as racial disparities in the criminal justice system.

At the moment, my state is not on the growing list of those with pending or enacted legislation targeting institutions of higher education. But it seems only a matter of time. Just this past week, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick announced his desire to see legislation dismantling tenure protections for Texas public university faculty who teach critical race theory. The optimistic take is that this is mere posturing for the coming election cycle. Im not so sanguine.

Why am I so worried? Because of what the past and present portend.

Teachers all over the country are even more under the microscope than just a year ago. The Texas legislation includes provisions that effectively deputize parents to police those working hard, for little pay, to educate their children. Making matters worse, the language in these bills is often vague. With their livelihoods on the line, who could fault teachers for playing it safe and shying away from presenting students with unpopular truths?

And its not just those explicitly targeted by these bills who should be alarmed. Even though it doesnt (yet) apply to higher education, the legislative attack on the free discussion of ideas here in Texas is already having a chilling effect on college campuses. A colleague recently wondered aloud how much longer shed be able to teach Black history; in the next breath, she worried about the risks of doing so. I dont blame her. Indeed, I share her concern.

Its tempting to think this is just another outrage cycle that will soon pass and that, in the meantime, we can rely on the protections afforded us by institutional commitments to academic freedom and our individual right to free speech. But we should resist the temptation. When push comes to shove, theres no guarantee our universities will have our backs. And even if these laws are found unconstitutional, which I hope they will be, it will come too late. To generate the kind of test case typically required for the courts to decide the issue, someone will need to be prosecuted for something. In the time it takes to get answers, harm will be done.

How do I know? Because of what my family endured more than a half century ago.

My grandfather Ed Yellin was summoned to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee in the winter of 1958. Citing the First Amendment, he refused to answer questions about his ties to the Communist Party. The saga dragged on for five years, until his conviction for contempt of Congress was reversed on a technicality by the U.S. Supreme Court in the summer of 1963.

Together with my grandmother Jean Fagan Yellin, he wrote a memoir about this ordeal. In Contempt: Defending Free Speech, Defeating HUAC (University of Michigan Press, 2022) contains some important lessons for those of us concerned with combating similar forces in the current moment.

As my grandparents put it, with a nod to Henry David Thoreau, it isnt much fun to be the friction that slows the machine. Its hard to know what effect their ordeal had on their careers. At one point, my grandfathers National Science Foundation fellowship was revoked, and his plans to pursue his doctoral research as a special student at Johns Hopkins University were scuttled. They had to move their young family across the country, from Baltimore to Urbana, Ill., on short notice and a shoestring budget.

Despite all this, they were both able to complete their degrees at the University of Illinois and had very successful academic careers. Ed retired as professor emeritus in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and Jean retired as Distinguished Professor Emerita of English at Pace University, both in New York. But the toll on their young children was clear. They endured social ostracization when neighbors got word of their fathers conviction. Too young to understand he was only leaving for a Supreme Court hearing in D.C., they worried this was the last time theyd kiss their father goodbye. The whole family lived for some time haunted by the specter of his yearlong jail sentence. These heartbreaking details show the collateral damage wrought by government persecution for ideas, even when the one being persecuted doesnt serve time and is eventually acquitted.

Their story also illustrates the important truth that systemic injustice can outlast those who set it in motion. My grandfather appeared before HUAC years after Senator Joseph McCarthy was censured, and even after his death. Cries of a new McCarthyism are useful to contextualize whats going on, but its important not to fetishize particular figures. Fixing the current problem isnt simply a matter of ensuring the Dan Patricks and Donald Trumps of the world dont occupy positions of power.

At the same time, the solution isnt just about replacing bad laws with good ones. True, these are mechanisms by which injustice gets institutionalized, but attending to them alone can serve as an evasive maneuver.

The U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari because my grandfathers case presented constitutional questions of continuing importance. And yet they did not take up the constitutional questions, instead reversing his conviction for refusing to testify on the grounds that HUAC violated one of its own rules. Disappointingly, there was no discussion of the First Amendment issues. Focusing just on rules and policies is one way the ideology underlying the system escapes scrutiny. And its the ideology that really powers the machine.

Surely, political participation is key to resisting current efforts to prohibit the discussion of controversial ideas. Knocking on doors and getting out the vote are key, but they arent enough on their own. This is a struggle over who gets to shape the collective memory. How things turn out will depend, in crucial part, on shaping the hearts and minds of our fellow citizens of all ages. Those flexing their political muscle to regulate what gets taught in classrooms across the country understand this. Those of us doing the teaching need to as well.

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Lessons from the past show dangers of attacks on ideas (opinion) - Inside Higher Ed

A "one-of-a-kind case." Judge Amit Mehta's description of the litigation against four principal speakers at the Jan. 6 Trump rally may have been as much a prayer as a portrayal. As famed Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, "Hard cases make bad law and the litigation against President TrumpDonald TrumpJudge strikes down part of Biden surprise billing rules in win for doctors Overnight Defense & National Security More Westernpressure as Russia moves in Jan. 6 defendant who said 'this is war' on social media sentenced to 45 days in jail MORE and his associates is a hard case that just proved Holmes right.

In consolidated cases brought by Democratic members of Congress and Capitol Police officers, Judge Mehta ruled on motions to dismiss by the former president, his son Donald Jr., former Trump counsel Rudy GiulianiRudy GiulianiJudge in Trump conspiracy case links Jan. 6 to history of racist violence 'What-aboutism' Ruling against Trump leaves more questions than answers on free speech Judge rules Trump must face civil suits over Jan. 6 MORE and Rep. Mo BrooksMorris (Mo) Jackson BrooksAll eyes on Trump as Timken gains momentum in Ohio 'What-aboutism' Ruling against Trump leaves more questions than answers on free speech Britt in new ad tells 'boys in Washington' to 'man up' MORE (R-Ala.), as well as several extremist groups like the Oath Keepers. The judge dismissed the claims of a violent conspiracy against Trump Jr. and Giuliani, and he invited Brooks to file a motion to dismiss on the same grounds. He rejected arguments that their speeches at the rallycaused the subsequent rioting in the Capitol. Yet, while admitting that the case raised difficult constitutional questions, he declined to dismiss the claim against Trump.

The ruling will now allow a long-awaited appeal on core constitutional questions, including the protections for inflammatory speech.

Most analysts expected that groups like the Oath Keepers would likely remain in the lawsuit, given their active role in the rioting and therecent chargesof seditious conspiracy filed against them. The most controversial parties were the speakers at the rally near the White House before the riot.

The judge's112-page opinionmakes easy work of dismissing the claims against the other speakers. These speeches were reckless but constitutionally protected. Giuliani's declaration Let's have trial by combat" has been cited by some critics as a clear incitement to an insurrection, but the judge found such arguments were implausible and that Giuliani's words "were not likely" to cause a riot. He also found that Trump Jr.'s comments on the election were "protected speech, and he rejected claims that Brooks urging Trumps supporters to "start taking names and kicking ass" could be the basis for liability.

Ipreviously wrotethat the claims against these four Jan. 6 speakers might find "a sympathetic trial judge" but that "they will likely fail on appeal, even if they survive the trial level litigation." All but one of those claims are now dismissed on the trial level. Moreover, Judge Mehta's opinion seems to reinforce the view that Trump's speech was protected, too.

The judge could well be reversed on the threshold question of immunity, raised by Trump, that presidents cannot be sued for speaking on matters of public interest. Mehta was honest in saying that "this is not an easy issue" and that "the alleged facts of this case are without precedent." Yet, he offered a detailed explanation of why he believes such immunity should not extend to a speech contesting election results the strongest portion of his decision. In so holding, Mehta is making new law and some jurists on appeal, particularly on the Supreme Court, are likely to be concerned over the implications of such liability for a sitting president.

However, it is thefree speech issuethat is most concerning. My concern is not based on any agreement with Trump's view of the election or Congresss certification of it; Icriticized his speechas he gave it and later called forCongress to censure him; nevertheless, his remarks fall well short of the high standard set for criminal or civil liability for speech.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly rejected such liability despite the use of inflammatory or even violent words.

In1969, inBrandenburgv. Ohio, the Supreme Court ruled that even a Ku Klux Klan leader calling for violence is protected under the First Amendment unless there is a threat of imminent lawless actionandis likely to incite or produce such action. InHess v. Indiana, the court rejected the prosecution of a protester declaring an intention to take over the streets because at worst, (the words) amounted to nothing more than advocacy of illegal action at some indefinite future time. In a third case,NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co., the court overturned a judgment against the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People after one of its officials promised to break the necks of opponents.

Although Trump pumped up his Jan. 6 supporters with allegations of election fraud and calls to "fight like hell," Judge Mehta acknowledged that Trump also told the crowd that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard. His comments were consistent with a protest in saying that we are going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.

In fairness to the court, it is merely saying that the cases plaintiffs could possibly prove a conspiracy between Trump and some Jan. 6 groups. But he cites little support for such a conspiracy beyond facts like Trumps earliercontroversial statement in a debatethat the Proud Boys should stand back and stand by.Thecourt's careful, meticulous analysis on the earlier claims seems to break down over Trumps status; it struggles to ignore the clear weight of prior case law and countervailing interpretations of Trumps words.

Despite a lengthy, detailed discussion of issues like presidential immunity, Mehta becomes more curt and cursory over Trump's constitutional claims. When Trump's lawyers said his language was largely indistinguishable from that of many Democrats like Rep. Maxine WatersMaxine Moore Waters'What-aboutism' Ruling against Trump leaves more questions than answers on free speech On The Money House panel mulls future of 'stablecoin' rules Lawmakers clash over how to regulate 'stablecoins' MORE (D-Calif.), Mehta chided them for playing "a game of what-aboutism."

That "what-aboutism," however, is precisely the point. The selective imposition of liability for speech is the very thing that the First Amendment is designed to prevent.

Asrioting raged in Brooklyn Center, Minn. and nationwide in 2020, Congresswoman Waters went to Minnesota and told protesters there that they gotta stay on the street and get more confrontational.Others have used language very similar to Trumps in declaring elections to be invalid (includingHillary Clinton calling Trump an "illegitimate president") or urging supporters to "fight" or "battle" against Republicans; Rep. Ayanna PressleyAyanna PressleyTlaib to deliver progressive response to Biden State of the Union address 'What-aboutism' Ruling against Trump leaves more questions than answers on free speech Green groups press for progressive upset in Texas House race MORE (D-Mass.) once said, "There needs to be unrest in the streets for as long as there's unrest in our lives.

All of those statements arguably were reckless but clearly protected speech.

Free speech demands bright lines. While this is a "one-of-a-kind case," Trump's comments were hardly unique. And Judge Mehta does not clearly establish why Giulianis "trial by combat" remark or Brooks taking names and kicking ass" exhortation are not calls for imminent violence or lawlessness but Trumps fight like hell would be.

With three of the four speakers now dismissed from the case, only Trump remains. Along with him remains the most looming question: whether the Jan. 6 speech, which was central to his impeachment, was protected under the Constitution. If Trump prevails on appeal, he may claim a degree of vindication thanks to some of his fiercest opponents.

What the court dismisses as "a game of what-aboutism" is all about free speech.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. You can find his updates on Twitter@JonathanTurley.

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'What-aboutism' Ruling against Trump leaves more questions than answers on free speech | TheHill - The Hill

The Supreme Courts recent decision, reversing that of a lower federal court, to reinstate Alabamas evidently gerrymandered voting map did more than just make it harder for affected voters to have a meaningful say in the November midterms. To be sure, according to the lower courts three-judge panel (which included two Trump appointees), the new map adversely impacts Black Alabamans in a way that violates the Voting Rights Act. The electoral stakes could hardly be higher, potentially determining whether control of Congress will shift to Republicans, leading to a cascade of implications, such as the termination of the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, efforts to impeach President Joe Biden, and possible election trickeryto say nothing of what would come of the normal business of legislating.

But beyond that, the frightening takeaway from Merrill v. Milligan is that a majority of Americas highest court again evinced a disdain for voters and their ability to pick their leaders, intent on cementing a system where this works in reverse, with the entrenched leaders picking their voters in a bid to stay in power indefinitely. By joining the dissent, even Chief Justice John Robertsnot exactly a historical champion of voting rightsseems to think the majority has gone too far, missing the most fundamental message of the U.S. Constitution: no more kings.

Adam Serwer: The lie about the Supreme Court that everyone pretends to believe

The Court neednt have allowed this to happen. Gerrymandering is the practice by which every 10 years, state and local governments carve up and manipulate the geographical boundaries of an electoral district to maximize the power of one political party over the other. Two common techniques are packingthat is, drawing a district in a tortured way that smushes in voters of a certain party, making it all but impossible for others to choose a candidate from a competing party for that district. And crackingtaking a logical geographic boundary that happens to contain a predominant number of voters from a particular party, breaking it up into pieces, and adding those fragments to other districts dominated by the competing party so that those voters voices no longer matter.

With Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Congress drew a legislative line banning gerrymandering based on race and enabling lawsuits to enforce it. And in Shaw v. Reno, the Supreme Court in 1993 held that gerrymandered boundaries that cannot be explained on grounds other than race violate the Constitutions equal-protection clause, declaring that bizarrely shaped districts strongly indicate racial intent. The Voting Rights Act, combined with the Courts earlier constitutional interpretation, provided it with a solid foundation for protecting voting rights and strengthening American democracy. But thats not what the Courts new conservative majority has chosen to do with its power. Instead, it has made an abject constitutional power grabthe tragic outcome of a judicial assault on voting rights that dates back to when, over a trio of rulings, the Supreme Court unnecessarily struck at the very heart of American democracy, potentially fatally.

The slide away from voting-rights protection began in 2010, in the Courts 54 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which held that legislative restrictions on independent political spending from corporations violate the First Amendment right to free speech. Meanwhile, donations directly to campaigns and their committeessomething that individuals, but not corporations, can makeare capped. So, for individuals, donating more than $2,900 to a single candidate is illegal, on the rationale that a greater amount could corruptly sway an elected politicians decision making once in public office. However, if an individual or a corporation buys a $1 million Super Bowl ad containing electioneering communications, the majority reasoned, that speech cant be congressionally restricted, so long as the ad isnt coordinated with the candidate. The trick is that only extremely wealthy individuals and corporations can do such a thingleaving them with much more political power than average people. Its a David-versus-Goliath problem caused not by Congress but by the Supreme Court, which all but obliterated the legislatures gains in leveling the playing field on influencing elections through funding.

The Court ruled this way even though corporations are pure legal fictions, and even though Congress determined in legislation dating back more than 100 years that such spending might unduly influence candidates for office, and warrants regulation. It could easily have gone the other way, in accordance with its earlier precedents, as well as a commensurate respect for the U.S. Congress and the commonsense notion that ours is a democracy by the people, not corporations. To be sure, the Framers did not include an affirmative right to vote in the original Constitution, but corporate entities were nascent in 1791 when the First Amendment was ratified. For conservatives who bill themselves as textualists and originalists, it would have been easy to justify a ruling that the First Amendments free-speech protections were intended for individuals who work for corporations, but not for the legal creation of a corporate entity.

Three years later, in Shelby County v. Holder, the Court, in an opinion written by Chief Justice Roberts, again struck down a key portion of an act of Congressthis time, Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Section 5 was designed to push back on states outmaneuvering of the Fifteenth Amendments postCivil War prohibition on laws restricting ballot access based on race. To keep Black voters from the polls, states enacted arbitrary hurdles to votingsuch as reciting the Declaration of Independence or counting the bubbles in a bar of soapas a precondition to ballot access. These schemes disproportionately impacted Black voters. Section 5 required states with unsavory histories of imposing such barriers to run proposed laws by the Justice Department before the laws could take effect.

The program was a legislative triumph, and Roberts himself wrote in Shelby County that the Act has proved immensely successful at redressing racial discrimination and integrating the voting process. Section 5 was reauthorized multiple times by substantial supermajorities in Congress. Nonetheless, the Supreme Court held that Section 5 was outdated and sent Congress back to the drawing board. Conceding that voting discrimination still exists; no one doubts that, Roberts wrote for the majority that the conditions that originally justified these measures no longer characterize voting in the covered jurisdictions. The formula for determining which states needed the DOJs approval to enact new voting lawsa process known as preclearancewas based on decades-old data and eradicated practices, Roberts reasoned, because minority-voter access had made great strides since 1965. The Court thus deemed the formula an unconstitutional infringement on states ability to regulate elections under the Tenth Amendment.

This was a sharp departure from prior precedent, as the Court had already rejected a similar constitutional challenge brought by Texas after Congress reauthorized the law in 2006. According to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, that congressional determination was based on exhaustive evidence-gathering and deliberative process. Surely, the Court didnt have to strike it down this time. Ginsburg famously quipped in dissent: Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet. The majoritys maneuver, she noted, was instead about the separation of powers: who decides this Court, or a Congress charged with the obligation to enforce the post-Civil War Amendments.

The third nail in the voting-rights coffin came in 2019, with Rucho v. Common Cause. Although the Court had banned racial gerrymandering in Shaw v. Reno, in Rucho, Roberts wrote for a 54 conservative majority that constitutional claims of partisan gerrymandering are political questions that cannot be heard in court. The courthouse doors are thus permanently closed to claims that packing and cracking electoral districts for purposes of entrenching party power are unconstitutional. Voters must go back to gerrymandered politicians for help by asking that they give up the reins of power that gerrymandering provides them with and divide up districts more fairly.

Again, the Court neednt have gone down this path. The political-question doctrine is notoriously squishy and untethered from the constitutional text, and the majority did not deny the broader constitutional implications with political gerrymandering. It just refused to hear them. Justice Elena Kagan bemoaned in dissent: For the first time ever, this Court refuses to remedy a constitutional violation because it thinks the task beyond judicial capabilities. By 2019, Kagan was heavily outnumbered by five staunch conservatives who exercised their collective discretion to put a boot on the neck of voting rights, rather than championing them.

Read: The Supreme Courts dead hand

Voting-rights activists have grasped at other straws. The pending John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which has been languishing for months because of the threat of a Republican filibuster, was Congresss answer to Shelby County. In addition to working via Congress, voters turned to Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act for relief through the courts in the interim. But that strategy, too, was met with the Courts antipathy. In 2021, in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, Justice Samuel Alito wrote a 63 majority opinion (with Justice Amy Coney Barrett now on the Court) that effectively inserted a five-part legislative test into the Voting Rights Act as a prerequisite to voters seeking relief from laws inhibiting ballot access, making Section 2 lawsuits much harder.

By the time the Alabama case reached the Court this winter, voting-rights activists faced a panel with six far-right conservative justicesenough that they can lose Roberts to the Courts moderate wing and still have the majority. And thats just what happened.

Following the 2020 census, Alabama redrew its seven seats in the House of Representatives. Although its statewide population is 27 percent Black, only one of the newly drawn districts has a Black majority. All of the remaining six have a majority-white population. The lower court stayed the plan, giving the state legislature two weeks to draw another map that includes two majority-Black districts. Otherwise, the court said, it would hire an outside expert to do it.

In a single paragraph issued on a motion for a stay of the lower courts order, the Supreme Court reversed that decision and issued an injunction effectively putting the contested plan back in place. The Court did this without the benefit of full briefing and argumentanother invocation of its quick-and-dirty shadow docket procedure. (The Court declined to use this power to stay an unlawful ban on abortion in Texas, mind you.) In a concurring opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh emphasized that the stay order is not a ruling on the merits, but instead simply stays the District Courts injunction pending a ruling on the merits. His partial rationale was that the lower courts ruling was in the period close to an election.

Kavanaughs pretense that the injunction was only a technicality elevates form over substance. As with Texass S.B. 8 abortion law, the Court effectively left in place a potentially illegal law pending full briefing. Roberts again shot back: I respectfully dissent from the stays granted in these cases because, in my view, the District Court properly applied existing law in an extensive opinion with no apparent errors for our correction. Justice Kagans dissent, which Justices Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor joined, was sharper: After considering a massive factual record, developed over seven days of testimony, and reviewing more than 1,000 pages of briefing, a three-judge District Court held that Alabamas redistricting plan violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

Roberts and Kagan underscored the ABCs of how the judicial system works. Unhappy litigants must wait patiently for their bid to come up on appeal. In the meantime, the lower-court rulings stand, absent some egregious immediate harm and a clear error of law.

So there we have it. Congress has in fact passed numerous laws to make elections fairer and ballot access easier. But based on its 1803 decision in Marbury v. Madison making it the arbiter of constitutional ambiguity, the Supreme Court has either slapped such legislation down or added material requirements to a statute to make bringing cases harder for voters. For a particularly problematic category of casespolitical gerrymanderingthe Court has barred all constitutional court actions and sided with states for statutory claims, regardless of the merits, on the theory that its better to err on the side of a potential Voting Rights Act violation because elections are around the corner (inevitably every year in some form or another).

This Court is going to continue to make voting more difficult, leaving it up to a Congress that was substantially voted in under those same unfair standards to fix the problem. Good luck with that. In the meantime, the revisionist justices are deep in the business of snatching power from a supposedly co-equal branch of governmentone that, unlike the Court, is accountable to the voters at the ballot box. This is the sleeping dragon, friends. One-party rule will come to federal, state, and local legislatures across the country. But it is already here on the Supreme Court, in the form of four men and one woman in black robes, with jobs for life and nothing to slow them down other than individual conscience.

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How the Court Became a Voting-Rights Foe - The Atlantic

State attorney Libby Bakalar cites a statute governing the appeal process for election certifications and recounts during a press teleconference at the Division of Elections office in downtown Juneau on Nov. 26, 2018. A federal judge ruled that Gov. Mike Dunleavy violated her First Amendment rights when he fired her on the day he was sworn into office. (Jeremy Hsieh/KTOO)

Recently, a federal district court judge ruled that Gov. Mike Dunleavy violated the First Amendment rights of a Juneau attorney he fired on the day he was sworn into office in December of 2018.

Rashah McChesney sat down with former assistant attorney general Libby Bakalar to talk about what the ruling means.

The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Rashah McChesney: This is kind of a complex timeline, so lets walk through it. You have this blog, One Hot Mess, for several years. At one point, you start writing about former President Trump, and another attorney and the state complains. The state investigates you and your blog and finds no wrongdoing.

Then Gov. Dunleavy gets elected, and he and his former chief of staff, Tuckerman Babcock, send out these demands for resignations to 800-something employees in the state including you. Something thats recently deemed unconstitutional. You resign. Gov. Dunleavy gets sworn in at noon on Dec. 3, and you find out 20 minutes later that youve been fired.

Thats more than three years fighting for this. What was that process like?

Libby Bakalar: You know, it was really slow and grueling, to be honest. I mean, it wasnt like every single day, something different was happening in the case or anything. Its just, its a long time to be in limbo with something like this. You know, I think I wrote about this in my blog it just a takes a very long time to prove this kind of point. When I filed this case, I was like, Ill be surprised if this is resolved within Dunleavys first term of office. So I fully expected it to take pretty much as long as it took. Its just part of being a litigant.

Rashah McChesney: One of the reasons that Tuckerman Babcock said that he did it was because he didnt like your resignation letter. Im wondering if you could tell me a little bit about that letter and sort of describe what you were thinking when you wrote it.

Libby Bakalar: Well, so the attorney general at the time, Jahna Lindemuth, gave everybody a template to write the resignation letters on. So every attorney who submitted the resignation letter used the same template. I may have added something like, Im doing this under duress, or Im doing it because, you know, Mr. Babcock said I was going to be terminated if I didnt do it. I kind of wanted to make it clear that my resignation wasnt voluntary. But that language about the resignation being involuntary was in the template. And as Judge [John] Sedwick said, another attorney who used the exact same language that resignation letter wasnt accepted. So that was just something that I think that we found completely not credible. And I think when you read the letter, you can see its completely professional and completely anodyne. So, you know, that was clearly pretextual and Sedwick saw right through that.

Rashah McChesney: When you submitted that resignation letter did you expect that they were going to accept it and that you were going to lose your job?

I think in the back of my mind, I was worried about losing my job, but I knew that what I was doing was legal. Thats the thing, right? I knew my work was good. I knew my relationships with my clients and colleagues were good. My work was beyond reproach, right? And I knew I had the constitutional right to speak on these matters. And so my mistake was assuming that these folks were going to comply with the law, right? And I think I must have thought that because, you know, when they called me and told me about this, that I was fired, I was like, I picked up the phone, and I said, Are you calling and telling me Youre firing me? And like, yeah, sorry, basically. So it kind of, you know, wasnt like this huge shock, I guess. But I think deep down, I was like, they couldnt really do this, because this is against the law, right? And they did it anyway. And were, you know, were a firm of lawyers. So I thought, Theres no way that these lawyers are going to carry out this illegal order, from Tuckerman Babcock, and I was wrong about that. I was wrong about that. So I think I was surprised on some level.

Rashah McChesney: This is a little bit of a rabbit hole, but there was another lawsuit against the governors administration, for demanding those resignations. These psychiatrists from Alaska Psychiatric Institute sued over the same thing, over being asked to resign.

Libby Bakalar: Right. The ACLU filed a case on their behalf of at the same time that they filed my case. And in that case, the psychiatrist plaintiffs did not submit resignation letters at all, and because of that, the judge had a different analysis. Theres these two lines of free speech cases like this. And one of them has to do with patronage schemes, and one of them has to do with policymaking and disruption at work. And the former line of cases is what the psychiatrist case was about, because they did not submit those resignation letters. And so the judge was able to find in that case, that the entire scheme itself, the resignation letter scheme itself, the very act of submitting of was essentially an unconstitutional patronage.

Rashah McChesney: So, they were just on some kind of parallel track this whole time?

Libby Bakalar: The judge declined to consolidate those two cases early on, the ACLU asked to have them consolidated and for a number of reasons, he denied that motion. And I think when you see the two orders, in those two cases, you can kind of see why. There are a lot of different issues. Obviously the psychiatrists, they didnt have this blog. There wasnt this whole question of whether they were policymakers there wasnt, there was just kind of some different issues going on, different fact patterns.

So yeah, they were similar in some ways. But in a way, it was the best possible outcome, in my opinion that these two cases were decided separately and on different grounds. Because what the judge did, essentially within one case, he invalidated the resignation demand scheme on its face. And in my case, he invalidated it as applied to me. Its sort of a double whammy. I think in the end, it was good because we got those two separate rulings that essentially validated the illegalality of this entire scheme, both as it was conceived and as it was applied.

Rashah McChesney: Now that its been ruled that they fired you unconstitutionally how do they pay for it?

Libby Bakalar: So thats yeah, thats the question. Its either gonna be through a settlement or a jury trial. And so this is kind of like the analogy would be the sentencing hearing, kind of. After someones convicted, right, theres a whole other sentencing phase. Its kind of like that. So the judge basically, you know, quote, unquote, convicted them on this wrongdoing. And now theres the quote, unquote, penalty phase, thats more or less the analogy in the civil setting. So its over in the sense that the merits of the case have been decided, I mean, they could always appeal for all I know, they might appeal. And that could change the picture somewhat. But we have this ruling that says they broke the law, right? So now its like, well, how do you remedy that? And thats an open question.

Rashah McChesney: There could still be a fair amount of wrangling.

Libby Bakalar: Theres a fair amount of loose ends. Its not just, like, completely over. Its a win there. Its a pretty much an unqualified win, in my opinion, just because for me, just psychologically, I just, this whole time, all I ever wanted was for a judge to say, Yes, this was unconstitutional. Yes, this was illegal. And that finally happened. And so for me, its over in my mind on that front. In terms of my feelings of vindication on the merits of what they did, how theyre going to pay for it, whats going to happen in the future, how this will affect state employees. What I really care about is that this never happened to another state employee ever again. I never want to see a mass resignation scheme. I never want to see a partially exempt, non-unionized state employee some geologist, biologist, architect, you know be forced to resign their job every four years. Thats just insane.

Rashah McChesney: Is this case as simple as a free speech test? And should every state employee go out now and write whatever they want about the president on a personal blog and feel reasonably certain that they wont be fired?

Libby Bakalar: I dont know. I definitely would hesitate to answer that question in the affirmative. I dont think thats true. I think there is a fact-based analysis of like, what positions are really policymaking positions for which political affiliation is actually a job requirement? I dont think the court order really answers that question in any kind of uniform way. It certainly doesnt say every non-unionized state employee can say whatever they want, whenever they want. Like, thats not what it says. But I think what it does do is it sends a message that, you know, at least in some cases, you know, non unionized state employees do have free speech rights. Its not a good faith constitutional use of personnel resources, to demand resignations, and to make personnel decisions, based strictly on peoples off-duty speech, right?

But there again, theres complicated case law, and these complicated tests and balancing tests and applying all these factors and things. So its not as cut and dried as now, you know, every non-unionized state employee, every partially exempt state employee can say and do whatever they want. No, thats not what this order says. But I think it does send a message that there are still, there are limits, you know, to what the government can do to you. And we do have, we still have democracy, at least nominally. And we still have free speech rights in this country. And even if you work for the state, and thats, thats been established now. And I think it was established before it should have been known before. But now its been reiterated in no uncertain terms.

So I think future administrations are going to think twice before they try anything like this ever again. So functionally, I think its going to be there will be much more deliberation about that transition. About who is told to leave their job, and who was forced to resign their job. And under what conditions, right? I think I will have set some precedent, these two cases will have set some precedent in that respect.

Rashah McChesney: Right, because this is something that happens during every governors administration, generally, is that they asked for the resignation, but usually of political appointees, right?

Libby Bakalar: Usually commissioner-level and director-level people, deputy director levels people who are quite comfortably within that policymaking framework, right. Not typically ever, you know, a Fish and Game biologist, or, you know, city water, a state water inspector or something. I mean, jobs that have absolutely no policymaking, you cant even make a good faith argument that these are policymaking jobs. But, you know, that was all based on norms before, and this administration shattered those norms.

Just because it had never been done before. And the reason it had never been done before was because you would never even consider asking non policymaking employees to resign. And yet, they did do that as some sort of, quote, bold new thing or something to quote Tuckerman Babcock. But what it was, it was a flex, you know. It was a flex. It was an intimidation tactic. It worked. You know, for the past four years, three-and-a-half years people have been absolutely terrified in this administration.

I hear from state employees every day, how scared they are working for these people. And with good reason. They have shown absolutely no compunction about violating the law and penalizing people for quote-unquote disloyalty.

So there was like, a few different kind of iterations of this, right? And all of it just sent this general message of intimidation. And the idea that youre, you know, the administration is lurking on your social media, and theyre just waiting to pounce on you for disloyalty. I mean, thats a terrible and completely undemocratic way to exist as a government employee. And it just made me so angry. And I think thats what fueled this entire thing for me, is that I just wanted to do something impactful for the entire state employee workforce.

Rashah McChesney: In that other case that we were talking about earlier were a couple of doctors sued over this resignation letter requirement. The judge ruled that Tuckerman Babcock and and Governor Dunleavy dont have qualified immunity in that situation. Does that apply to your case as well?

Libby Bakalar: No, it doesnt, and I didnt expect it to either. Qualified immunity is a very hard thing to lose. You have to really do something bonkers to lose it. And I was actually surprised in the psychiatrists case to see Dunleavy and Babcock stripped of qualified immunity, because its functions, in practice, like absolute immunity, it really does.

Ive never seen it happen where a government defendant in a civil case like this loses qualified immunity. Its just unusual, its very unusual. Because if government workers were able to be held personally liable in their jobs, no one would ever work for the government, right? So there has to be some form of protection there.

But I think what the judge was saying is that they went so far with this, this was so out of the realm of reason to do this, that they were personally liable for it. I think, in a way, I think qualified immunity is good for government workers. In another sense, it also disincentivizes good faith conduct on the part of people in power in government, because unless its their personal assets on the line in these types of situations somebody is acting in bad faith theres no incentive to obey the law.

Take my case, for example. Ive been gone from the Department of Law for three-and-a-half years. They got what they wanted, they got me gone, Im gone. Im not there, right? Theyve gone on. And now like the damages phase is, you know, the damages go to the state of Alaska, not to them. So they lost nothing. So when you lose qualified immunity, at least that sends the message of you cant just do whatever you want. At some point, theres going to be a point at which you are going to have to worry about your personal assets in these things. And you cant just disobey the law, and expect to completely get away with it every time and have the State of Alaska foot the bill in the end.

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After winning, Juneau attorney reflects on her years-long First Amendment case - Alaska Public Media News