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With a closely watched trial set to begin next month, a federal judge on Wednesday struck a blow to left-leaning groups seeking to expand Floridas vote-by-mail procedures.

U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle denied most portions of the groups requests for preliminary injunctions in the case, which is a consolidation of three lawsuits, saying the plaintiffs lack a substantial likelihood of succeeding on the vast majority of the issues.

In one of the lawsuits, the group Priorities USA and other plaintiffs want the judge to extend a deadline for mail-in ballots to be returned and require free postage for the ballots. Theyre also challenging a provision in Florida law restricting paid workers from collecting mail-in ballots.

But Hinkle rejected the plaintiffs argument that requiring voters to pick up the tab for stamps amounts to an unconstitutional poll tax.

Postage charged by the United States Postal Service like the fee charged by any other courier or the bus fare for getting to the polls to vote in person is not a tax prohibited by the Twenty-Fourth Amendment. And the requirement to pay postage also does not violate any other federal provision, Hinkle wrote in Wednesdays five-page order, referring to the U.S constitutional amendment that bars poll taxes.

The judge also swatted down plaintiffs attempt at extending the deadline for supervisors of elections to receive mail-in ballots. Under current law, the ballots must be received by 7 p.m. on Election Day. The plaintiffs want ballots postmarked by 7 p.m. on Election Day to be valid, as some states allow.

But Hinkle noted that the deadline is discretionary.

States can reasonably decide to require ballots to be received on or before the day of the election, he wrote.

This eliminates the problem of missing, unclear, or even altered postmarks, eliminates delay that can have adverse consequences, and eliminates the remote possibility that in an extremely close election Florida has had some a person who did not vote on or before Election Day can fill out and submit a ballot later, he said.

Hinkle also rejected most of the numerous claims in a lawsuit filed by the group Dream Defenders and individual plaintiffs. Some claims in the lawsuit are unlikely to succeed on the merits because they are based on existing declarations of the COVID-19 emergency, and the possibility of a different emergency declaration is too speculative to constitute an injury in fact, he wrote.

The plaintiffs also have failed to show that they will suffer irreparable harm before he issues a ruling after a trial set to begin on July 20, Hinkle said.

Part of the explanation is that no elections will occur during that period with the possible exception of one local election the plaintiffs have not even mentioned and the plaintiffs can work around the alleged registration deficiencies, he added, referring to a request for changes to the states online voter-registration system.

However, Hinkle said a claim regarding blind voters was worthy of attention.

The Dream Defenders are asking the judge to order supervisors of elections to provide electronic ballots so blind voters can cast their ballots in secret, without assistance from other people.

It will take at least 45 days for the state to order and set up a system the plaintiffs say is necessary to address the electronic ballots, according to the plaintiffs. Since Secretary of State Laurel Lee and county supervisors of elections havent responded to the issue yet, Hinkle allowed the issue to remain pending.

Although the federal judge signaled where he stands on some of the issues, he cautioned against reading too much into Wednesdays order.

The parties should draw no inference one way or the other about likely success on items not addressed in this section of this order. The ruling does not limit the evidence that may be presented or foreclose a contrary ruling at the forthcoming trial on the merits, Hinkle noted.

The case in Florida, a battleground state considered critical for a White House win in November by President Donald Trump and presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden, has drawn national attention. Hinkle allowed the Republican National Committee and other state and national GOP groups to intervene in the case.

The state late last month asked Hinkle to dismiss the challenges, arguing that they are based on speculative fears about what might occur later in the year.

Attorneys for the DeSantis administration and the Republican organizations argued that the plaintiffs are asking Hinkle to rewrite Floridas elections laws.

The governor is working with county supervisors and others to address challenges posed by the novel coronavirus, which causes the respiratory disease COVID-19, DeSantis lawyers said.

But the plaintiffs accused Florida officials of ignoring the harsh reality of the pandemic.

The scrutiny of the states vote-by-mail processes comes as supervisors of elections are encouraging voters to cast their ballots by mail, following widespread issues during the March presidential primary. In April, the supervisors asked DeSantis for emergency measures they said would help them cope with an anticipated significant statewide shortage of poll workers because of the coronavirus.

County elections officials encountered significant challenges during the March presidential primary elections, such as polling places becoming unavailable, difficulty in acquiring hand sanitizer and other supplies and substantial numbers of poll workers deciding not to work, Levy County Supervisor of Elections Tammy Jones, a former president of the Florida Supervisor of Elections organization, wrote to DeSantis on April 6.

More than two months later, DeSantis has not agreed to the supervisors requests.

Faced with the virtual certainty that Florida voters will flood the vote-by-mail system and potentially stretch it beyond its limits, Floridas elected officials stand idly by and disclaim responsibility for ensuring that voters can effectively cast their ballots, lawyers for the Priorities USA plaintiffs wrote in a brief filed on June 15.

Continued here:
Judge Rejects Injunction Requests In Vote-By-Mail Fight - WUFT

Jarrett Tonn, a veteran Vallejo police officer identified by multiple law enforcement sources as the officer who shot and killed Sean Monterrosa earlier this month, was recently named in a federal excessive force lawsuit, court records show.

Filed June 17, the first amended complaint alleges Tonn, corporal Jerome Bautista, and officer Kevin Barreto forcibly detained Jose Villalobos in a case of mistaken identity during a Nov. 4, 2018 incident.

The lawsuit alleges that Villalobos, who traveled to St. Catherine of Siena Catholic Church with his family for religious services, was stopped by the officers as he opened the door to the churchs bathroom. The officers, not in uniform, snatched Villalobos arm and twisted it behind his back, the lawsuit alleges.

Villalobos, who is blind in one eye, said he cried out that he didnt have any money, thinking he was the victim of a robbery. The lawsuit alleges he was struck in the face and then wrestled to the floor.

The city previously said members of the Vallejo Police Departments Crime Reduction Team were conducting an uncover investigation in connection with a sexual predator who had been soliciting minors at the church.

They also denied the officers mistook Villalobos for another person, and they also denied he was hit in the cheek, according to Vallejos April response to the lawsuit which was filed in December 2019. The initial lawsuit didnt list the officers names.

Also in April, a federal judge denied the city of Vallejos attempt to squash the lawsuit when he ruled that he couldnt infer during the early stages of the lawsuit that Villalobos resisted arrest and the force applied by the officers was reasonable as claimed by the city.

At this stage, the court must make all inferences in favor of plaintiff, U.S. District Judge William Shubb wrote in his four-page ruling on April 1. Because officers continued to exert that force after plaintiff allegedly saw uninformed men, cried that he had no money, and informed the officers of his injured shoulder, the allegations in the complaint plausibly allege the officers intended to exert that unreasonable force or at least acted with a reckless disregard for plaintiffs fourth amendment right to be free from excessive force.

The complaint therefore plausibly states a claim under the Tom Bane Act and the court will not dismiss this claim, Shubb wrote.

Vallejo police have not confirmed that Tonn is the officer who shot Monterrosa, of San Francisco, outside a Vallejo Walgreens during the early morning hours of June 2. Tonn, along with several witness officers, were placed on administrative leave follwoing the shooting.

The officer mistook a hammer near Monterrosas waist for a gun, and fearing for his safety, fired five shots through his patrol cars windshield, striking and killing Monterrosa.

Last week, the Vallejo Police Officers Association filed a temporary restraining order in Solano Superior Court to prevent the city from releasing the name of any officer involved in the fatal shooting.

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Vallejo cop who shot and killed Sean Monterrosa is named in excessive force case alleging mistaken identity - The Mercury News

This book explains what policies led to the militarization of Americas policeit provokes genuine outrage at the misuse of state power in its most brutal and unaccountable form: heavily armed police raiding the homes of unarmed, non-violent suspects on the flimsiest of pretexts, and behaving more like an occupying army in hostile territory than guardians of public safety.

This months BookClub pick, Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of Americas Police Forces by Bradley Balko, is a historic look at the causes and effects of the radical militarization of the United States police force. It is well researched, well-argued, and makes the problem of police brutality relevant to the average citizen.

NationofChange highly recommends this timely and authoritative look at the problem that has ignited a nation and outraged the world.

You can get your paperback copy of Rise of the Warrior Cop free with your one-time or recurring donation to NationofChange.

You can donate using the form below.

The last days of colonialism taught Americas revolutionaries that soldiers in the streets bring conflict and tyranny. As a result, our country has generally worked to keep the military out of law enforcement. But as weve seen over the last several decades and particularly in recent years, from Ferguson to Minneapolis, Americas cops have increasingly come to resemble ground troops. The consequences have been dire: the home is no longer a place of sanctuary, the Fourth Amendment has been gutted, and police today have been conditioned to see the citizens they serve as an other-an enemy.

Todays armored-up policemen are a far cry from the constables of early America. The unrest of the 1960s brought about the invention of the SWAT unit-which in turn led to the debut of military tactics in the ranks of police officers. Nixons War on Drugs, Reagans War on Poverty, Clintons COPS program, the post-9/11 security state under Bush and Obama: by degrees, each of these innovations expanded and empowered police forces, always at the expense of civil liberties. And these are just four among a slew of reckless programs.

In Rise of the Warrior Cop, Balko shows how politicians ill-considered policies and relentless declarations of war against vague enemies like crime, drugs, and terror have blurred the distinction between cop and soldier. His fascinating, frightening narrative shows how over a generation, a creeping battlefield mentality has put Americas police on a collision course with the values of a free society.

Get a free copy of Rise of the Warrior Cop with your one-time donation of $30 or your $15 monthly recurring donation.

You can also donate via ActBlue by clicking here.

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Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces (Book) - NationofChange

ANNA LIZ NICHOLS, Associated Press/Report For America

LANSING, Mich. (AP) Michigan voters will decide in the November election if electronic data and communication should be considered personal property, safe from unreasonable search and seizure.

A bill to put the measure on the ballot passed the state House on Wednesday. The ballot measure would amend the Michigan constitution to include electronic data and electronic communications as items law enforcement would require a search warrant to access. If passed, the amendment would apply the same protections to person, houses, papers and possessions that are in the state constitution and the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Michigan is not the first state to try to legislate for reasonable cause and a search warrant to obtain electronic data. Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire and more have also tried.

Though the Supreme Court maintains law enforcement already needs reasonable cause to obtain a warrant to access electronic data during an arrest, amendment sponsor Sen. Jim Runestad, a White Lake Republican, has said that is not enough.

In a committee meeting in October, he said third-party companies can forward electronic data to law enforcement, avoiding the requirement of a warrant.

___

Anna Liz Nichols is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

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Michigan voters to decide in November on data protections - Huron Daily Tribune

Unlimited law enforcement application of facial recognition software to surveillance footage is an unreasonable search and a violation of Constitutional rights for people in a peaceful crowd. An officer should need to demonstrate probable cause that the investigated face on camera is a criminal in order to receive official permission to identify a face in a crowd with artificial intelligence.

This should not be controversial.

I wrote that we are swimming in a sea of digital surveillance camerasand that police should be required to secure a warrant before running facial recognition software on a public crowd particularly a crowd assembled for political protest. I believe this approach is practical for law enforcement, protective of our First and Fourth Amendment rights, and consistent with the current U.S. Supreme Courts decisions on how to limit police access to information only available due to rapidly improving technology.

And I am not alone in this belief. In November of last year, U.S. Senators Coons and Lee introduced bi-partisan legislation requiring federal law enforcement to obtain a court order before using facial recognition technology. This law provides a logical framework for protecting Americans from a powerful new state-operated technology that has grown unchecked as a tool for intruding on citizens privacy.

Obtaining a warrant is practical for law enforcement. This is the system all of our policing agencies use when they want to go somewhere or do something that might otherwise intrude on the Fourth Amendment right to be secure in our persons, homes and papers. The officer simply needs to show that she has a reasonable suspicion that a person has committed a crime, and then the officer is issued a warrant that allows intrusion on private spaces and information.

This keeps our police force from just searching everyone and everything hoping to find something to arrest someone for. Thats why the protection was written into the Constitution by our nations founders. It is supposed to slow the process down so that someone can think about whether the one group in society with a legal monopoly on violence should be pushing down your front door and rifling through your underwear drawer.

Police already have the right forms to fill out. They know how the process works. Judges are addressing these matters all the time. In other words, the only extra time required will be the extra time that police are supposed to take when they intrude on a persons privacy.

Nothing lost from how law enforcement is supposed to be operating.

And requiring a warrant for police to run facial recognition software would protect our Constitutional rights. Lets say that a crowd was lawfully demonstrating against the police force itself this could be because the police are enforcing restrictive gun laws or because the police have misbehaved in some way. Every color of the political spectrum is affected by this concern. Would demonstrators feel violated if law enforcement used its multiple surveillance cameras to capture their activity? Maybe, but they are likely to expect to be seen by cameras. Would they feel violated if police ran an artificial intelligence program over the camera footage to take down the names of all people who demonstrated against them? You bet.

As a judge for the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals pointed out in language quoted by the U.S. Supreme Court, Awareness that the Government may be watching chills associational and expressive freedoms. And the Governments unrestrained power to assemble data that reveal private aspects of identity is susceptible to abuse. The net result is that GPS monitoringby making available at a relatively low cost such a substantial quantum of intimate information about any person whom the Government, in its unfettered discretion, chooses to trackmay alter the relationship between citizen and government in a way that is inimical to democratic society.

Seventh Circuit Judge Flaum was writing in 2011 about tracking a persons body around town everywhere it goes. The same logic also applies to technology that allows police to not only see all the people in a given space at any particular time, but to apply names to all the faces that appear there.

We cant just bury our heads and pretend that the new technologies arent affecting the relationship between police and citizens. Even self-claimed originalist Justice Scalia has written, Applying the Fourth Amendment to new technologies may sometimes be difficult, but when it is necessary to decide a case we have no choice. Because, in an Originalist greatest hit that may help in my argument, Scalia wrote, We must assur[e] preservation of that degree of privacy against government that existed when the Fourth Amendment was adopted. In other words, if the technology allows law enforcement to intrude deeply into our lives in new ways that would have been unconsidered two hundred and fifty years ago, it must be checked by the Fourth Amendment requiring police to obtain a warrant before using the intrusive tech.

When we operate in this manner, if you are caught on camera throwing a Molotov cocktail through the plate glass window of a local business, the police can clearly and easily use a facial recognition program to find you and bring you to justice. But, under my rule as supported by Senators Coon and Lee and Justice Scalia, if you are simply walking in a peaceful political demonstration the police would not be allowed to run facial recognition software to place you in the crowd at that time. They can run the program now under no limitations.

Finally, requiring a warrant to use this powerful tech is not an outlandish request and it may even be required soon by this U.S. Supreme Court as currently constituted. The Court has already begun to move toward this conclusion, and has started to insist on Fourth Amendment protections for transformative technologies, requiring for example that police need a warrant to place a thirty-day tracking beacon on your personal vehicle and that police need a warrant to open and review the contents of your smart phone. SCOTUS even changed their previous rule that information held by a third party was not protectable in this manner when they recently held that police need a warrant to request the past months worth of cell phone tracking records to pinpoint your location at different times in the past.

Seventy years ago the Supreme Court held that keeping your name from being associated with your political causes was a part of your right to free speech and free association. You may have reason to fear the government taking note of your association, which is why that particular Supreme Court decided that the State of Alabama in the 1950s was not allowed to require a list of all local NAACP members. The unfettered technology to see who is entering gay bars, gun clubs, and political protests, and then to identify each individual, allows the government to invade and chill peoples speech and assembly rights.

This concern for privacy even in public places is echoed by our current Chief Justice, writing, A person does not surrender all Fourth Amendment protection by venturing into the public sphere. To the contrary, what [one] seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected. In the past, attempts to reconstruct a persons movements were limited by a dearth of records and the frailties of recollection. . . [With current technology] police need not even know in advance whether they want to follow a particular individual, or when.

So the court has recognized that attending politically sensitive meetings anonymously is an important right covered by the First Amendment, and that limited technological intrusions on privacy is an important value of the Fourth Amendment. So it seems well within the courts present mindset to limit the governments use of overly intrusive technology, like running facial recognition systems on people in the public sphere without specific law enforcement reason to do so.

Chief Justice Roberts notes recently, harkening back to one of the first important privacy opinions written in 1928, As Justice Brandeis explained in his famous dissent, the Court is obligatedas [s]ubtler and more far-reaching means of invading privacy have become available to the Governmentto ensure that the progress of science does not erode Fourth Amendment protections. Here the progress of science has afforded law enforcement a powerful new tool to carry out its important responsibilities. At the same time, this tool risks Government encroachment of the sort the Framers, after consulting the lessons of history, drafted the Fourth Amendment to prevent. [citations omitted]

And when will the technology rise to level that a warrant is required? The court, in the recent Kylo decision, held that aFourth Amendmentsearch occurs when the government violates a subjective expectation of privacy that society recognizes as reasonable. If peaceful political protesters subjectively fear being named to police during political gathering, their concern certainly seems reasonable to me.

I would ask whether people reasonably expect that their movements will be recorded and aggregated in a manner that enables the Government to ascertain, more or less at will, their political and religious beliefs, sexual habits, and so on. I do not regard as dispositivethe fact that the Government might obtain the fruits of [new technology] through lawful conventional surveillance techniques. Writes Justice Sotomayor. She continues, I would also consider the appropriateness of entrusting to the Executive, in the absence of any oversight from a coordinate branch, a tool so amenable to misuse, especially in light of theFourth Amendments goal to curb arbitrary exercises of police power to and prevent a too permeating police surveillance.

I know that the best choice in this circumstance is for Congress or multiple state legislatures to place limits on policing power by requiring warrants to run biometric ID software. Several Justices agree, as they joined Justice Alito in his sentiment, In the pre-computer age, the greatest protections of privacy were neither constitutional nor statutory, but practical. Traditional surveillance for any extended period of time was difficult and costly and therefore rarely undertaken. . . In circumstances involving dramatic technological change, the best solution to privacy concerns may be legislative. A legislative body is well situated to gauge changing public attitudes, to draw detailed lines, and to balance privacy and public safety in a comprehensive way.

So forward this to your legislators or relevant portions of it, as many people dont like to read long discussions. Make the argument that we would all be better off by limiting the police from using powerful identification technology without a reasonable suspicion that the person on camera has committed a crime. Dont wait for the off chance that a suitable case rises to the Supreme Court within the next five years. We need the protection now.

[View source.]

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The Constitution Protects Faces in the Crowd | Womble Bond Dickinson - JD Supra