UPDATED::Atheists Ask Judge Not to Dismiss Lawsuit Involving Banned (and Completely Inoffensive) Bus Ad

UPDATE:: Please tell me exactly what year and century are we in!!  I give Justin a huge round of applause for sticking to his guns on this debacle.  As Hemant Mehta notes, "It’s disappointing atheists have to jump through this many hoops to get the same sort of treatment religious people get automatically, but I’m glad the fight will continue."

COLTS’ motion to dismiss lawsuit is denied

Yesterday, United States District Judge Malachy E. Mannion denied COLTS’ motion to dismiss the lawsuit. Consider viewing the relevant documents below.

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County of Lackawanna Transit System officials gave conflicting reasons why they rejected an ad from an atheist group, raising the specter that their actions were a cover-up for discriminatory practices, an attorney for the group says in court papers.

The Northeastern Freethought Society also has evidence that COLTS displayed “God Bless America” on its electronic bus signs at some point and that it only altered its policy regarding religious ads after the group sought to advertise, said attorney Monica Clarke Platt of the American Civil Liberties Union.

The arguments are among several Platt raises in response to a motion COLTS filed in June that seeks to dismiss a federal lawsuit the group filed against the agency. The lawsuit, filed in April, alleges COLTS violated the Freethought Society’s First Amendment right to free speech when it rejected several ads that included the word “atheist.”

In the motion to dismiss, William McPartland, attorney for COLTS, argued space on the agency’s buses and other property is a limited public forum, which gives it the right to restrict ads as long as its policy is “viewpoint neutral.”

Platt contends COLTS has not met the legal standard to qualify as a limited public forum. Even if it did, the society has evidence that COLTS accepted ads from several churches, which clearly shows its policy is not viewpoint neutral, she said. Hemant Mehta also writes about newest development and recaps the history:

Atheists Ask Judge Not to Dismiss Lawsuit Involving Banned (and Completely Inoffensive) Bus Ad

Holder limits seized-asset sharing process that split billions with local, state police - The Washington Post

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Friday barred local and state police from using federal law to seize cash, cars and other property without warrants or criminal charges.

Holder’s action represents the most sweeping check on police power to confiscate personal property since the seizures began three decades ago as part of the war on drugs.

Since 2008, thousands of local and state police agencies have made more than 55,000 seizures of cash and property worth $3 billion under a civil asset forfeiture program at the Justice Department called Equitable Sharing.

The program has enabled local and state police to make seizures and then have them “adopted” by federal agencies, which share in the proceeds. It allowed police departments and drug task forces to keep up to 80 percent of the proceeds of adopted seizures, with the rest going to federal agencies.

“With this new policy, effective immediately, the Justice Department is taking an important step to prohibit federal agency adoptions of state and local seizures, except for public safety reasons,” Holder said in a statement.
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While police can continue to make seizures under their own state laws, Equitable Sharing was easy to use and required most of the proceeds from the seizures to go to local and state police agencies. Some states have higher standards of proof for forfeitures and some require seized proceeds to go into the general fund.

[,,,]
“It’s high time we put an end to this damaging practice,” said David Harris, a constitutional law scholar at the University of Pittsburgh. “It has been a civil-liberties debacle and a stain on American criminal justice.”

Holder’s action comes as members of both parties in Congress are working together to craft legislation to overhaul civil asset forfeiture. On Jan. 9, Sens. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and Mike Lee (R-Utah), and Reps. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) and John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) signed a letter calling on Holder to end Equitable Sharing.

Grassley praised Holder’s decision on Friday. “We’re going to have a fairer justice system because of it,” Grassley said. “The rule of law ought to protect innocent people, and civil asset forfeiture hurt a lot of people.”

[,,,]
The Treasury Department is also changing its asset forfeiture program to follow the same guideline included in Holder’s order, the statement said.

Federal agencies make larger seizures of cash and property through avenues other than Equitable Sharing, typically in cases involving defendants ranging from drug cartel kingpins to Bernard L. Madoff, whose fraud case has resulted in more than $9 billion in forfeitures in recent years.

Those programs are not affected by the changes to Equitable Sharing, but Holder also said the new policy is the first step in a “comprehensive review” of civil forfeiture in general.

On a bit of a side, one comment that stood out concerning this point:

Critics of the decision say that depriving departments of the proceeds from civil asset forfeitures will hurt legitimate efforts to fight crime, drug smuggling and terrorism.

Actually, the opposite is true. Because the police want money they routinely wait until the drugs are converted into cash before performing the raid. In other words, they wait until the drugs hit the streets. (which is no better than the police selling the drugs themselves) They have also based the decision on whether or not to move forward with an investigation based heavily on how much money the suspect has. If the police are focused more on the money they can get out of an investigation than justice they aren't doing their jobs.

Now I don't know if what is stated is "true" but it does make one wonder,,,hmm.



Holder limits seized-asset sharing process that split billions with local, state police - The Washington Post

Court-Sanctioned Extortion by Private Probation Companies: Modern Debtors' Prisons | American Civil Liberties Union

The revival of "debtors' prisons" first hit my radar at the end of last year. It seems it is striving to catch up with prison privatization in terms of abuses.

Yesterday, Human Rights Watch released Profiting from Probation, a report that confirms the ACLU's worst fears about the privatization of probation services: for-profit companies are increasingly working with county and city courts around the country to extort poor people for money, including by illegally jailing them simply because they are too poor to pay court-imposed fines and fees. While poor people suffer and taxpayers foot the bill for hidden costs, private companies make big money—to the tune of an estimated $40 million in revenue in Georgia alone, according to the report.

,,,Yet at no point did Sentinal or the court take into consideration Barrett's ability to pay—the latter, a clear violation of the law. Imprisoning someone because she cannot afford to pay court-imposed fines or fees violates the 14th Amendment.

Barrett is one of hundreds of thousands of poor people across the country who are being squeezed for debt collection by an unholy alliance between private probation companies and cash-strapped county and city courts. More than 1,000 courts across several states, including Georgia, Mississippi, Tennessee, Florida, and Alabama, seek to generate revenue by collecting unpaid debt from those convicted of misdemeanors without hiring staff to administer probation. Instead, these courts contract with private firms that seek s to make a profit and promise to do the job for free. However, privatization simply shifts costs onto poor probationers through fees paid directly to private firms, which are entirely distinct from fines imposed to punish or deter crime. Perversely, those least able to pay remain on probation the longest and pay the most to private probation companies.

Court-Sanctioned Extortion by Private Probation Companies: Modern Debtors' Prisons | American Civil Liberties Union

Local courts reviving 'debtors' prison' for overdue fines, fees | Fox News

My first question would be, what is the impetus behind this "drive to imprisonment?"

As if out of a Charles Dickens novel, people struggling to pay overdue fines and fees associated with court costs for even the simplest traffic infractions are being thrown in jail across the United States.

Critics are calling the practice the new "debtors' prison" -- referring to the jails that flourished in the U.S. and Western Europe over 150 years ago. Before the time of bankruptcy laws and social safety nets, poor folks and ruined business owners were locked up until their debts were paid off.

Reforms eventually outlawed the practice. But groups like the Brennan Center for Justice and the American Civil Liberties Union say it's been reborn in local courts which may not be aware it's against the law to send indigent people to jail over unpaid fines and fees -- or they just haven't been called on it until now.

Advocates are trying to convince courts that aside from the legal questions surrounding the practice, it is disproportionately jailing poor people and doesn't even boost government revenues -- in fact, governments lose money in the process.

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More and more, courts are dragging people in for fines and fees that have ballooned due to interest imposed on the initial sums. Some owe money to the public defender's office for the representation they received during their time in court. Others incur hundreds of dollars in fees while they're incarcerated -- for everything from toilet paper to the beds inmates sleep on.

And here it is,,,

Many jurisdictions have taken to hiring private collection/probation companies to go after debtors, giving them the authority to revoke probation and incarcerate if they can't pay. Research into the practice has found that private companies impose their own additional surcharges. Some 15 private companies have emerged to run these services in the South, including the popular Judicial Correction Services (JCS).

What ever happened to community service?

"If the defendant doesn't pay, law-abiding taxpayers must pay these costs."

Local courts reviving 'debtors' prison' for overdue fines, fees | Fox News