Mediaboss Marketing

Douglas Storys white supremacist street cred was easy to find. He had a white pride tattoo and a neo-Nazi license plate. In extremist online forums he made ominous, N-word-filled posts about President Obama: If someone puts a 30.06 round into the base of his skull, huh ya think?" The Aryan Nations even booted Story from its website when he sought help for converting his AK-47 rifle into a fully automatic machine gun a federal crime.

But none of that factored into his 2012 sentencing after the FBI arrested him in Virginia for possession of that modified gun. A federal judge blocked prosecutors from discussing Storys white supremacist views, because the First Amendment protects speech, no matter how offensive. Prosecutors could only focus on Storys illegal weapon.

Storys path to a prison cell reveals a common workaround that police and prosecutors use when investigating those who spew white supremacy, far-right or violent anti-government rhetoric. Its easier to send someone to prison for traditional crimes, often involving guns or drugs, than to convince a judge that repulsive hate speech breaks the law.

In the wake of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, federal law enforcement is fending off complaints that it goes easy on white supremacists while monitoring Black and Muslim activists. These frustrations escalated after last months mass shooting in Atlanta that killed six Asian women. Many Democrats, advocates and even some within the ranks of law enforcement have long criticized the FBI and federal prosecutors for not doing more to crack down on white extremists. Some are now pushing again for a law that labels such crimes as domestic terrorism, but civil rights proponents worry that would also increase policing of communities of color.

On Tuesday, Attorney General Merrick Garland acknowledged the increasing problem with hate crimes and ordered a 30-day review of how the Justice Department combats it.

To understand how white supremacists are policed and punished, The Marshall Project analyzed nearly 700 federal prosecutions from 2012 to 2020 that involved what the FBI calls racially and ethnically motivated violent extremism and hate crimes. Academics at the University of North Carolina mined Justice Department press releases for cases involving extremism. Almost all the cases involved White men.

The research did not include Black extremist groups because few exist, said Ashley Mattheis, a communications expert at the University of North Carolina who studies violent extremism and propaganda. Its an incredibly small percentage, she said.

Two-thirds of the 671 cases The Marshall Project analyzed involved gun and drug charges against white supremacist gangs that formed in prison and spread to the outside world. Convictions and lengthy prison sentences were common.

But when we dug into the remaining 194 cases, we found that:

A third of the non-prison gang cases involved guns, silencers and bombs. Given the First Amendment complications, prosecutors say they prefer to bring these easier-to-win criminal charges as a workaround. Often these investigations featured lone wolves flagged for advocating ethnic hatred. If they had a criminal past, federal prosecutors slapped them with charges such as a felon in possession of a firearm. "Federal firearm laws are the Achilles heel of white supremacists," said Tom Brandon, recently retired acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

A quarter of the cases involved threats made online, in person or on the phone but not carried out. The victims were diverse: Tulsas district attorney and his daughter, who are White, received death threats; a Black city council candidate in Charlottesville, Virginia, was pressured to quit the race after a torrent of racist vitriol; a pair of halal grocers in Florida complained that law enforcement ignored threats to blow up their stores.

In a handful of threat cases, prosecutors resorted to other workarounds, such as accusing people of lying on federal job applications or failing to disclose mental health histories to the military.

Our analysis reflects only a portion of the FBIs work: investigations that ended with charges filed. It doesnt include the untold hours agents spend watching people they think could end up breaking the law.

FBI guidelines prohibit launching any investigative activity solely on the basis of someone's race, religion or identity. The guidelines allow agents to explore publicly available information such as social media posts and to do knock and talks unannounced visits where agents ask people to talk voluntarily.

The FBI doesnt release data on knock and talks and other surveillance activity. Nor does the agency share information about its investigations unless charges are filed in court.

We are not seeing that full picture, said Hugh Handeyside, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, which is suing the FBI for surveillance files on Black demonstrators.

Activists in the Muslim community and the Black Lives Matter movement say these knock and talks are terrifying and all too common. The Council on American Islamic Relations said the FBI visited more than 100 Pakistani families across the country in 2016 on the grounds agents were investigating threats to the election, said Zahra Billoo, who heads the organizations office in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The bar for prosecutions is much higher. While Black Lives Matter activists and Muslim communities have sued the government over what they say is unfair surveillance, we found that criminal charges for racially motivated extremism which require probable cause, a much higher standard of proof involved almost exclusively White men.

The Justice Department shared an annual tally of people charged with either a federal hate crime, or threatening someone over state lines whether in person, online or by phone. But that tally also includes incidents that dont involve political or racist motives. A spokesperson said the agency didnt have a nationwide breakdown detailing if a suspect had ties to any racist extremists or anti-government groups.

In a recent letter to Congress, the FBI said half its 120 domestic terrorism arrests for the year ending Sept. 30 were linked to racism, with a vast majority involving people who advocate for the superiority of the White race. And 45% were listed as anti-government or anti-authority.

Tom OConnor, a retired FBI agent who specialized in domestic terrorism for 23 years, said the 2012 case he led against Douglas Story in Virginia was a textbook example of the challenges of investigating white supremacists.

Storys vanity license plate, 14CV88, alluded to a white supremacist slogan and a Hitler salute. He hung out on white extremism forums where he vowed to kill police if martial law was ever declared or if a neo-Nazi race war erupted. Story posted that a 30.06 rifle bullet was his preferred way to remove then-Attorney General Eric Holder, the first Black person to hold the office.

Citing such language, the FBI opened a preliminary investigation, but the threats against Obama and Holder were not specific enough to file criminal charges.

Hes not saying hes going to do something, hes not telling someone else to do something, said OConnor. Hes saying that if someone is shot in the head theyre going to die.

The FBI managed to work around the free speech obstacles after Story posted a message on a neo-Nazi website, wanting to convert his AK-47 to a fully automatic machine gun, a felony that could bring up to 10 years in prison.

An FBI agent posing as an underground gunsmith got the job done, leading to Storys arrest.

But when prosecutors detailed Storys hate speech in court documents, his defense lawyer acknowledged it was inflammatory language, but said it had nothing to do with his client owning a machine gun.

The judge ordered prosecutors not to talk about Storys white supremacist posts or his vitriol toward Obama at sentencing. The judge gave him one year in prison, a sentence OConnor described as a heartbeat.

Story did not respond to requests for an interview, but in an email denied being an extremist. I wasn't some wild eyed white supremacist, he wrote. My arrest, in my head, anyway, I consider a combination of FBI entrapment plus stupidity and naivete on my part.

Former federal officials say workarounds are inevitable because threat cases are hard to win. They are certainly more legally complicated than a gun case or a drugs case, said David J. Freed, the former U.S. Attorney in central Pennsylvania who left the post in January.

His office generally chose to forgo threat charges if there were more typical crimes involving violence or vandalism, Freed said. Prosecutors want to avoid courtroom debates over whether threats were a crime or protected speech. Any responsible prosecutor will know, you are buying yourself a fight, he said.

The Marshall Projects analysis showed that prosecutors generally pursued the most severe winnable charge, usually those involving guns and drugs. At least in one case, however, the opposite happened.

In 2016, Omar Rabbo, a halal grocer in Fort Myers, Florida, was angry that local police wouldnt arrest James Benjamin Jones, a 35-year-old White man who threatened to blow up Rabbos store, according to court records.

Frustrated, the Palestinian immigrant called the FBI; an agent was at his shop within an hour.

When the FBI went to Jones home, a psychedelic mushroom farm and illegal moonshine distillery were in plain sight. State prosecutors slapped Jones with felony drug and alcohol manufacturing charges. He faced up to 20 years in a Florida prison.

Prosecutors had a sure win with the drug and alcohol charges, according to Jones defense attorney, Christopher H. Brown, who described what happened next as the strangest swaps in history. Instead of pursuing the state felonies, the U.S. attorneys office told county prosecutors to drop the case, as part of a deal that let Jones plead guilty to two federal hate crimes instead which Brown saw as a way for the feds to win a hate crime prosecution.

In my personal opinion, the U.S. attorney saw it as a statistical thing, to say in this district we have a threat conviction involving Muslims, Brown said. I did the best interest for my client.

The best criminal justice reporting from around the web, organized by subject

A spokesman for the U.S. Attorneys Office in the Middle District of Florida said the Justice Department is still reviewing facts of the case. The crimes Jones admitted to carried a maximum of 10 years in prison for someone with a long criminal history. That was not the case for Jones, who got probation in the deal.

The plea agreement didnt bother Rabbo, the store owner, who believes Jones was mentally ill and brainwashed by people on the internet. I asked the judge for mercy, he told The Marshall Project.

That was an unusual sentence. Out of the nearly three dozen suspects convicted of federal threat crimes in the eight-year period analyzed, only five were placed on probation. The average prison sentence was 2.5 years, the longest being 10 years.

The Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol reignited a debate over how the country should handle domestic terrorism. There is no official tally of domestic terrorism crimes because there is no law that expressly bans Americans from using or threatening violence for political motives.

After the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally in 2017, Mary McCord, a Georgetown law professor and former federal prosecutor, began urging Congress to create a new criminal charge without increasing police powers. The new law would plainly label racist or extremist plots and attacks as terrorism, which could help thwart future violence, she argued.

McCord pointed to The Base, a violent neo-Nazi group that was building machine guns to trigger a civil war to create a white ethno-state. Prosecutors charged them with firearm violations and harboring an undocumented resident.

"Having crimes that fit the threat you are trying to thwart drives more resources and provides a more appropriate match between the resources and the crime," McCord said. "A statute would say this is a priority."

Proponents also argue a new law would address the lack of consistent punishment when a white extremist threatens to harm someone even high-profile politicians. In recent years a New York man was sentenced to 46-months for threatening to kill Obama and U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters. Yet another New York man got a year in prison for threatening to kill U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, who requested mercy in the case.

Civil rights advocates who oppose a new domestic terrorism law argue that it would only increase police surveillance in communities of color.

"The real solution here is certainly not to expand their budgets or their legal authorities, said Ramzi Kassem, a law professor at the City University of New York, referring to law enforcement. Kassem directs the CLEAR project, which provides legal counseling to people targeted by national security investigations.

When asked why she requested mercy for the man who threatened her, Omar said white nationalism poses a serious criminal threat. But we must also understand that no matter how odious these acts are, taking a punitive approach will not rehabilitate white supremacists, she wrote in a statement. Instead of treating this as a purely criminal matter, we must stay rooted in respect for justice and of human rights and of civil liberties as we respond.

Steve Kunzweiler, the district attorney in Tulsa whose family received threats, still feels cheated. As his office prepared to charge a Tulsa police officer who fatally shot an unarmed Black man, a Connecticut resident began to post the online threats. The poster vowed to kill the families of Kunzweiler, the police chief and other investigators.

Kunzweiler hoped that the judge would rule in favor of iron bar therapy, referring to a lengthy prison sentence. Instead, the suspect received probation for using the internet to send threats across state lines.

We are in this world of criminal justice reform, and I guess courts can look at that and say well, it was just words, Kunzweiler said. Yes, it was just words, but those words were directed at me and directed at my daughter.

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported the academic specialty of Ashley Mattheis. She has a doctorate in communications.

Read more:
Why It's So Hard to Prosecute White Extremists - The Marshall Project

Jury selection in the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, charged with the murder of George Floyd, is complete, opening statements have been made, and the trial is underway. Yet despite the international interest in this prosecution, the courtroom is all but empty of spectators.

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the general public is not allowed to attend in person and press access is severely limited. Instead, in a state where televised trials are the exception, not the ruleand over the objection of the prosecutionChauvins trial is being broadcast and streamed live.

The courts near-total prohibition on in-person attendance is unheard of in the history of criminal trials in Americathe First and Sixth Amendments guarantee open trials on the belief that public access safeguards the integrity of the legal process and allows the public to see that criminal defendants are fairly dealt with.

Thus, the proposal that this extremely high-profile and important trial should occur largely behind closed doors was not an idea our media clients were eager to accept.

As trial planning coalesced, however, it became clear the media could challenge the restrictions on in-person access but be left with an open courtroom much too small to accommodate the dozens of journalists hoping to attend the trial, to say nothing of the demand for seats by the public at large. Or, they could acknowledge the exigencies of the pandemic and ensure that people the world over could watch justice unfold in real time. Our clients chose the latter.

A bit of context: Audio-visual coverage is not presumptively allowed in Minnesota courtrooms during the guilt/innocence phase of criminal trials. Rather, under Minnesotas court rules, all parties must consent. So although Chauvin consented to cameras, when the state filed notice that it did not consent, that would have been the last word under ordinary circumstances.

But in a surprising move, the court ordered that, given the pandemic, the only way to comply with the First and Sixth Amendments was to allow the trial to be recorded, broadcast and livestreamed in audio and video.

In a subsequent order, the court specified that the only spectators allowed inside the courtroom would be two media representatives, one technician from Court TV (to provide the live audio and video feed), one member of the Floyd family, and one member of the Chauvin family.

It is an imperfect solution to an extraordinary challenge, but we hope it illustrates the important role cameras play in building, and maintaining, trust and confidence in the judiciaryand in the ultimate verdict, which many fear may unleash the sort of unrest we saw after Floyd died.

With any luck, this trial will encourage Minnesota, and jurisdictions that also do not allow cameras in courtrooms, to rethink their rules once they realize that cameras do not conflict with the goals of an orderly court proceeding.

If, however, these jurisdictions continue to rely on speculative, debunked theories that cameras are disruptive, the courts decision provides useful fodder for future challenges to limits on cameras in courtrooms.

Specifically, in an age of unobtrusive audio and video technology, can limiting the access to only those able to physically sit in a courtroom ever again constitute reasonable accesswhich is what the First Amendment demands, even if there is no per se right to bring a camera to court?

As the court opined when denying the states motion to reconsider its order allowing audio-visual coverage and to instead provide only overflow courtrooms: it begs the question of how many overflow courtrooms would suffice. . . Two? Three? Twenty? Should the [court] pause all courtroom activity for the months of March and April 2021 to allow every courtroom . . . to be used as overflow courtrooms for this trial?

As the court continued, [t]he State merely wants a limited audience. The Court, on the other hand, is concerned that the more the audience is limited, especially in a trial with international interest, the more likely that the constitutional rights associated with a public trial are violated.

Lodging a First Amendment challenge against camera restrictions would, no doubt, be an uphill climb. No court has recognized a First Amendment right to cameras in the courtroom, and many courts have found no such right exists.

But with non-invasive cameras that are virtually invisible to trial participants, is it really reasonable to say that the public has access if a trial is only visible by the 20, 40 or even 100 people sitting in the courtroom?

Perhaps not. As an appellate court of appeals held in 1917, allowing only 25 members of the public to attend a trial when the courtroom could hold 100 people constituted a reversible error. Similarly, perhaps it is not reasonable to allow only 100 peopleor even 500 peopleto observe the administration of justice when we can reasonably allow anyone with a television, internet connection, or data plan to do so.

Given the opportunity, we know that people will tune in: As of September 2020, almost 2 million people had listened to recordings of the Supreme Courts Spring oral arguments. Similarly, the Minneapolis Star Tribunes YouTube channelone of several places to watch the Chauvin trial livegarnered nearly 300,000 views in the first week of jury selection and the number of people watching at the same time hovered consistently at around 2,000. The newspaper expects many more to tune in for the trial.

Although courts should not move to audio-visual access in lieu of in-person access, perhaps it is time to decide that the digital courtroom of the 21st century is akin the 100-person courtroom of the 20th century. We should embrace todays technology, not reject it, and let the world watch. A commitment to transparencyand perhaps even the U.S. Constitutiondemand it.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Bureau of National Affairs, Inc. or its owners.

Write for Us: Author Guidelines

Leita Walker is a partner in Ballard Spahrs Minneapolis office and Emmy Parsons is an associate in the firms Washington, D.C., office. Both are members of the firms Media & Entertainment Group and together represented a coalition of media and open-government organizations that intervened on several occasions in the prosecutions arising from the death of George Floyd. On behalf of the coalition, they also filed a brief supporting the courts access plan.

Read the rest here:
Chauvin Trial Shows Why Cameras Need to Be in Court - Bloomberg Law

Here is a status report on some bills being considered by Iowa lawmakers

Boost next fiscal years state K-12 education funding by $36.5 million (SF269*)

Require K-12 schools offer in-person classroom instruction option (SF160*)

Revamp early-voting/absentee-balloting election laws (SF413*)

Appropriate $21 million in state supplement to finance Workday contract (SF284*)

Exempt business PPP loans/federal jobless benefits from state taxation (SF364)

Accelerate income tax triggers/phase out inheritance tax (SF576)

Revamp mental health financing/cut property taxes (SF587)

Enact permit-less constitutional carry gun laws (HF756)

Ban hand-held electronic devices while driving (SF330/HF392)

Amend Iowa Constitution to clarify no right to abortion (SJR2)

Amend Iowa Constitution with gun rights protection (SJR7)

Halt high-tech state incentives due to social-media censorship (SF580/HF633)

Add new method for creating charter schools (HF813)

Enact back the blue police protections/enhanced crime penalties (SF534)

Supplement K-12 schools for COVID-19 costs (SF532)

Governors ethanol expansion proposal (SF481/HSB185)

Governors plan to expand broadband grant program (SF390/HF848)

Governors plan to expand affordable housing options (SSB1142/HF178)

Bar interference with transportation of agricultural animal (HF655/SF421)

Require amusement ride attendants be at least age 16 (SF114/HF558)

Create crime for assisted reproduction fraud (SF529)

Cap medical malpractice/trucking mishap awards at $1 million (SF537/HF772)

Crack down on businesses selling glass/metal pipes used to smoke meth (SF363)

Allow parental request for child to retake grade due to COVID-19 progress concerns (SF90)

Provide legal immunity for firearms makers/dealers (HF621)

Make multiple traffic changes/shield police liability in vehicle pursuits (SF333)

Allow licensed cosmetologists/barbers to work at wedding venues (HF760)

Toughen criminal penalties for drivers causing death/injury due to excessive speed (HF753)

Create crime for failing to assist someone in imminent danger of death (SF243)

Designate county flood mitigation as an essential purpose (HF523)

Criminalize sexual exploitation of a minor by adult providing training/instruction (SF562)

Create crime for defrauding employment drug/alcohol test using synthetic urine (SF329/HSB22)

Change number of children allowed at day care centers (HF260)

Bar cities/counties from regulating sale of natural gas/propane (HF555)

Establish lifetime trout fishing license for seniors (HF234)

Allocate state money to K-12 schools to offset cost of COVID-19 in-person learning (HF439)

Clarify deceptive/unfair rental car practices (HF730)

Phase out state tax gambling casinos pay on marketing promotions (SF169)

Establish liability Immunity for agricultural tourism (SF356)

Expand child care opportunities for Iowa families (HF301/HF302)

Allow grocery stores to opt out of bottle-deposit law (SF470)

Bar businesses from requiring employee microchip implants (HF259)

Eliminate diversity plans affecting open enrollment in five school districts (HF282)

Allow 5-year-olds to participate in voluntary preschool for a two-year period (HF318)

Regulate low-speed electric bikes (HF493)

Remove preference for Iowa coal (SF468)

Set Iowa residency requirements at UI medical/dental schools (HF468)

Allow expungement of some non-violent Class D felony convictions (HF831)

Create unauthorized sampling criminal offense for trespassers (HF775)

Allow home-schooling parents to teach drivers education (SF546)

Expand Teach Iowa scholars program (SF547)

Change regulations for highway billboards (SF548)

Enhance penalties for drivers who leave accident scene (HF524)

Enhance penalty for caretakers involved in dependent adult death (SF450)

Exempt legislative pages from some educational requirements (SF517)

Ban sexist/racist stereotyping in diversity training (HF802)

Require regents universities to protect First Amendment rights (HF744)

Ban city ordinances preventing landlords from rejecting federal housing vouchers (SF252)

Allow counties to collect drivers license fees (HF419)

Modify lighting devices on snow plows (HF654)

Create public safety equipment fund (HF708/SF489)

Create civil remedy when sexually explicit images disclosed without consent (SF324/HSB31)

Grant liability immunity for veterinarians aiding authorities in a civil/criminal case (HF746/SF340)

Beef up criminal/civil enforcement of massage therapy activities (SF388/HF452)

Implements process for collection/tracking of sexual abuse evidence collection kits (HF426/SF451)

Create Department of Public Safety cold case investigation unit (HF312/SF561)

Create sexual assault forensic examiner program (HF603/SF570)

Bar harassment by filing false police report (HF821)

Add crimes of assault/financial exploitation of older Iowans (SF522)

Provide state-funded students first scholarships to private-school families (SF159)

Allow student-athletes to profit from use of name/image/likeness (SF245)

Prohibit/remove most automated traffic enforcement cameras (SF516)

Bar employers from requiring COVID-19 vaccinations (SF555)

Establish daylight saving time as the eventual official time in Iowa (SF335)

End faculty tenure at regent universities (HF490/SF41)

Legalize e-sports wagering (HSB200)

Reduce penalty for first offense marijuana possession conviction (SF533)

Restore voting rights for eligible felons (HF818)

Post information on medication abortions at medical facilities (HF383)

Eliminate statute of limitation on criminal actions involving sexual abuse of minors (SF572)

Cut off state funds for cities/counties that defund police (SF479)

Create offense for slower drivers who camp in divided highway left lane (HF494)

Allow smoking at Iowa Veterans Home under certain circumstances (SF257)

ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ADVERTISEMENT

Instruct Department of Transportation to install adult changing stations in highway rest stops (HF492)

Create Department of Human Services asset/identity verification system for public assistance (SF389)

Bar employers from noncompete agreements with low-wage employees (SF496)

Place four-year limit on term of Iowa Veterans Home commandant (SSB1097)

Bar loaded firearm when operating electric scooter (HF738)

Amend Iowa Constitution guaranteeing right to hunt/fish/enjoy resources (HJR8)

Change front license plate requirement for some vehicles (SF419)

Expand protections for mobile-home owners (SF469)

Establish new remote worker grant fund/program (SF491)

Require in-person regent university graduation ceremonies (HSB246)

Amend state constitution to clarify lieutenant governor line of succession (SJR2003)

Bar employers from knowingly hiring unauthorized aliens (SF339)

Pare back state board appointees/commissioners subject to Senate confirmation (SF423)

Halt privileges to hunt/fish/camp for up to a year for Iowa convicted of littering (SF465)

Amend state constitution to restore felon voting rights (HJR11)

Go here to see the original:
Here is what's alive and dead in the Iowa Legislature - The Gazette

Over a century ago, the framers of the Michigan Constitution created an eight person Board of Regents to have general supervision of the University of Michigan.

We are emeritus members of the Board. We come from diverse personal and professional backgrounds. We havent always agreed on matters of finance and the like. We do all agree that being a Regent means having, in essence, a fiduciary responsibility for the University and its community. The Regents responsibilities include creating a community where justice, dignity, respect, anti-racism, diversity and inclusion, decency and civility are its fundamental core values. The University is deeply committed to those values. We, too, have all beenand remaincommitted to those values and that type of community.

Given the context in which we have worked for many years, we were appalled to hear Regent Ron Weisers remarks delivered in his capacity as Chair of the Michigan Republican Party. As has been widely reported, he described Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Attorney General Dana Nessel and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson as three witches and referred to their being burned at the stake. Showing a perverse political evenhandedness, Mr. Weiser went on to speculate that assassination could be a way to remove Republican Congressmen Fred Upton and Peter Meijer from office because of their vote to impeach President Trump. This casual incitement to violence also runs counter to UMs institutional values.

To be clear, no matter how much we find Mr. Weisers remarks to be abhorrent, he has a First Amendment right to his views. That doesnt mean that if he believes that he is free to denigrate women with whom he disagrees by calling them witches and if he encourages assassination as a way to deal with honorable men of his own party with whom he disagrees he should retain the privilege of remaining a fiduciary for a great university. That is why we are joining many others in calling for his resignation.

The University of Michigan is committed to the education and advancement of women. Here in Michigan, the voters in 2016 elected three talented women to lead our state. Over two million people voted for each of them. Despite their numerous achievements, to hear a Regent casually denigrate them as witches perpetuates gross, sexist stereotypes that are repugnant and unacceptable. Making those remarks while occupying a position of public trust dignifies and, for some, validates sentiments that we know are just plain malignant. If we dont denounce them for what they are, who will? And if the University community doesnt denounce Mr. Weisers remarks and apparent attitudes, how will we look our young women students who justifiably aspire to greatness in the eye? We must actively repair the damage he has done to our women students by his malevolent sexism in trying to brand the top three executive leaders of our state as witches.

To be clear, Mr. Weisers remarks were not taken out of context. They are apparently what he believes, and issuing an apology to those I offended is a tired clich which is customarily thrown out when a person isnt apologetic at all. They are merely in hot water!

We take, at face value, that Mr. Weiser cares about the University of Michigan. He has been a generous donor to it. That makes this unfortunate situation sad. We ask Mr. Weiser to show his ongoing commitment to the Universitys role, mission and wellbeing by resigning from the Board. We understand that may be tough for him to do, but, given his recent remarks, we believe that it is also the only honorable course of action available to him.

Paul Brown Sr. Olivia P. Maynard

Julia Donovan Darlow Philip H. Power

Laurence B. Deitch S. Martin Taylor

Shauna Ryder Diggs Nellie Varner

See the article here:
University of Michigan Regents Emeritus call for Weiser's resignation - Fox17

IOWA CITY University of Iowa administrators should have known better when they discriminated against religious student groups several years ago amid an uproar over a Christian organizations refusal to let a gay member become a leader of the group, a federal appeals court ruled Monday.

Nearly four years after the Business Leaders in Christ student group sued the UI for violating its free-speech, free-association and free-exercise rights by deregistering it for barring a gay member from a leadership post, a U.S. Court of Appeals found individual UI officials can be held personally accountable.

A District Court in 2018 had ruled they could not granting them qualified immunity because the law was not clearly established. But the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed at least regarding the free-speech and free-association claims from the student group, which goes by BLinC.

We note at the outset what is not at issue in this appeal. The university defendants have not appealed the District Courts holding that they violated BLinCs First Amendment rights to free speech, expressive association, and free exercise through their disparate application of the universitys Human Rights Policy, according to a majority opinion from the three judges. Instead, the focus of this appeal is limited to whether, for purposes of qualified immunity, the law was clearly established that the individual defendants conduct violated those rights.

The majority agreed the law was clear on BLinCs free-speech and free-association claims, but not its free-exercise assertions, making UI administrators liable for two of the three issues.

In a statement, the UI said it is currently reviewing the decision and its options.

Mondays decision doesnt necessarily mean individual UI administrators will have to pay the defendants any money.

This is not a big money case, said Daniel Blomberg, senior counsel for the Washington, D.C.-based Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, representing BLinC.

ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ADVERTISEMENT

What was at issue was making sure this doesnt happen again, he said. Thats what makes the ruling today so significant is that it sends a message. Not only that a constitutional violation occurred but that its clearly established that this kind of selective enforcement violates the First Amendment.

That, Blomberg said, is precedent-setting.

Thats going to be very important for religious student groups across the country, and at the University of Iowa, he said.

While the appellate court judges didnt agree the law was clear on BLinCs free-exercise assertions one judge, Jonathan A. Kobes, argued it was.

I write separately because I think the law is clearly established on its free exercise claim, too, Kobes wrote. The individual defendants choice to deny BLinC an exemption from the Human Rights Policy while allowing exemptions for other secular and religious groups (that they approve of) shows that they sought to advance their interests only against specific religious conduct.

He argued BLinC should have been entitled to the benefits afforded other student groups, including secular ones allowed to limit leadership posts to those who affirm their beliefs or who meet gender or racial qualifications,

The purpose of qualified immunity is to shield good-faith actors who make mistaken judgments about unresolved issues of law, and it protects all but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law, which Kobes argued describes the UI administrators who had more than fair warning that their conduct was unconstitutional.

The law is clear: state organizations may not target religious groups for differential treatment or withhold an otherwise available benefit solely because they are religious, he wrote. That is what happened here. The individual defendants may pick their poison: they are either plainly incompetent or they knowingly violated the Constitution. Either way, they should not get qualified immunity.

The decision comes amid a state legislative session rife with debate over free-speech issues across Iowas public universities including Republican bills and oversight hearings aimed at improving the campus climate for conservative students, faculty, and staff.

ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW ADVERTISEMENT

Rep. Bobby Kaufmann, R-Wilton, is among legislators who have hammered the universities for disparate treatment of conservatives. This court ruling is more confirmation of his constituents concerns, he said Monday.

This just is further proof that on university campuses in Iowa, there seems to be two different sets of rules one for conservative students and one for everybody else, he said. This is unacceptable. It needs to stop. And it will stop.

Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com

Read more:
Court: University of Iowa officials can be held liable for First Amendment violations - The Gazette