Two days after the City of New Haven, Connecticut agreed to issue identification cards to all city residents regardless of their citizenship or documentation, federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducted early morning raids of New Haven homes that resulted in the arrests of 32 undocumented residents. ICE denies accusations made by city officials that it intended the raids to send a retaliatory message about its disapproval of the city's issuance of identity cards to undocumented workers. Whatever motivated the raids, it was clear to an immigration judge who presided over the deportation hearings of four arrestees that ICE agents "flagrantly violated" their Fourth Amendment rights by entering the homes without a warrant, without probable cause, and without consent.

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The Supreme Court today rejected a challenge to the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy.

In 1993, President Bill Clinton established the policy as a compromise after strong resistance from the military and Congress toward allowing gays to serve openly in the armed forces.

...During last year's campaign, President Barack Obama indicated he supported the eventual repeal of the policy, but he has made no specific move to do so since taking office in January. Meanwhile, the White House has said it won't stop gays and lesbians from being dismissed from the military.

The Obama Administration sided with the military in this case: [More...]

Update: Here's the opinion (pdf. How Appealing has uploaded it here.

Update: "A divided California Supreme Court today let stand Proposition 8, continuing marriage discrimination in California. The Court refused to undo the 18,000 marriages that same-sex couples celebrated in 2008, so that those couples remain married even while other California couples are, for now, barred from joining in marriage." [More...]

Justice Anton Scalia announced a decision from the bench today:

The high court, in a 5-4 ruling, overturned the 1986 Michigan v. Jackson ruling, which said police may not initiate questioning of a defendant who has a lawyer or has asked for one unless the attorney is present.

The Michigan ruling applied even to defendants who agree to talk to the authorities without their lawyers.

Justice John Paul Stevens dissented, and read his dissent from the bench: [More...]

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals today ruled the White House does not have to turn over millions of e-mail records from the Bush Administration. Its reasoning:

The White House Office of Administration is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act.

For once, Megan's Law has accomplished something positive in the area of civil liberties for sex offenders. The New Jersey Supreme Court has thrown out two muncipal ordinances restricting where sex offenders can live. The opinion is available here (pdf). Shorter version: Megan's Law trumps the local ordinances.

Under Megan's Law, convicted sex offenders may only live in a residence approved by a parole officer, and must notify authorities when they change addresses and employment. The law forbids anyone from using an offender's criminal record to deny housing.

Both New Jersey towns have ordinances that prohibit sex offenders convicted of offenses against minors from living within 2,500 feet of schools, parks, playgrounds and day care centers.

118 other NJ towns have similar laws, and I presume those are invalid as well. [More...]

The practice of charging undocumented workers with identity theft for using a fictitious social security number to obtain work -- or, more commonly, threatening the charge to induce pleas to less serious crimes that lead to quick deportations -- will screech to a halt after yesterday's unanimous Supreme Court ruling that making up a number, without knowing whether the number has been assigned to a real person, is not identity theft.

The decision (pdf) makes the Justice Department's coercive tactics against undocumented workers even more shameful. As TalkLeft observed here, the Justice Department (with a federal court's blessing) cranked out assembly line justice in Iowa following the arrest of hundreds of undocumented workers at an Agriprocessors meatpacking plant. The workers were told to accept a five month sentence or face prosecution for identity theft, and were required to make that decision without having an adequate opportunity to consult with counsel or to explore their options. It is now clear that the workers were coerced with a meaningless threat.

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Janet Jackson's n*pple, exposed for 9/16 of a second during the 2004 Superbowl halftime show, is still in the news. And the FCC is 2-for-2 in the Supreme Court this term.

Last week, the Supreme Court decided that the FCC did not act arbitrarily when it revised its "indecency" policy in 2004. The Court upheld the FCC's decision to sanction the fleeting and singular utterance of a naughty word, even one blurted unexpectedly during a live broadcast.

Today the Court vacated a Third Circuit decision that overturned the FCC's $550,000 fine against CBS for broadcasting a glimpse of Janet Jackson's nipple. The one sentence order does not decide whether the Third Circuit's decision was right or wrong, but invites the lower court to reconsider its decision in light of last week's ruling. [more ...]

Today, the Supreme Court rejected Sal Magluta's petition for cert to review his 195 year sentence. His crime: non-violent money laundering of $730,000.

As I wrote here the day Sal Magluta was resentenced to 195 years in prison, his original case (along with his then co-defendant Willy Falcon) was the most fascinating one I recall from the 70's-90's years of legal cases involving Miami and "cocaine cowboys." Like many criminal defense attorneys around the country, I followed as many details of the trials and appeals as I could. It had dozens of twists and turns and was the subject of many lectures and discussions at defense lawyer seminars for years afterward.

It wasn't just famous as a drug dealing case.
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Mumia Abu-Jamal, on death row in PA for 25 years, will not get a new trial. The Supreme Court rejected his petition today.

The petition was based on the exclusion of African-Americans from his jury. Last year, the Third Circuit refused to reinstate his death sentence.

But the epic struggle over the fate of Abu-Jamal, who has become an international symbol in the debate about the death penalty, is not over. The nation's high court is still weighing the state's petition to have his death sentence reinstated.

The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed the conviction of a man convicted of violating food-labeling laws and wire fraud for allegedly relabeling bottles of salad dressing. (Opinion here (pdf)).

The appeals court found the evidence at trial insufficient but in addition, called out AUSA Juliet Sorensen by name for improper conduct during the trial.

It's not unusual for judges to be critical of prosecutorial tactics. But Posner's rebuke is drawing attention because he identified the prosecutor by name and called for sanctions.

"The government's appellate lawyer told us that the prosecutor's superior would give her a talking-to," Posner wrote in the opinion that was joined by two other judges on the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. "We are not impressed by the suggestion."

Here are a couple of Ms. Sorensen's egregious statements to the jury. [More...]

It's unanimous: Pleasant Grove City, Utah is not required to display a monument in a city park donated by "a tiny religious sect" -- even though the park displays a monument to the Ten Commandments, a religious symbol endorsed by a much larger religious sect. Despite the skepticism expressed in this post about Pleasant Grove's apparent endorsement of one religious viewpoint to the exclusion of others, the Supreme Court analyzed the case under the Free Speech Clause rather than the Establishment Clause (that's how the case was argued to the Court) and concluded that the case was about Pleasant Grove's right to express itself by selecting which monuments to display in a public park.

“The Free Speech Clause restricts government regulation of private speech,” Justice Alito noted. “It does not regulate government speech.”

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