Racine and the ACLU

Here's news from the 16 January online issue of the Racine Journal Times that well illustrates how constitutional rights and public policy making can harmonize:

[City dismisses all rave charges]: BY JEFF WILFORD, Jan. 17, 2003 Faced with a threatened class action civil rights lawsuit, the city has agreed to dismiss all 442 citations issued at a dance party in early November.

The city will also refund the money of people who pleaded guilty or no contest and paid fines, and will dismiss those citations as well, Assistant City Attorney Scott Lewis said in Municipal Court Thursday.

...

The tickets given at the party originally carried a $968 fine for each person. The city knocked that down to $100 to entice people into pleaded guilty or no contest, thus avoiding the need to conduct hundreds of municipal trials.

When that didn't work, the city reduced the citation to disorderly conduct. When that didn't work, the city offered to expunge the original citation, and its drug references, from people's records forever.

Even so, few people accepted the deals. The majority of people cited chose to fight it out in court.

The city and the ACLU started negotiating a settlement in mid-December, and had most of the pieces in place by the beginning of January, Diaz said. They finalized the deal Thursday morning, then took it to the judge.

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And Some Good News

Howard Bashman [How Appealing] writes:

Ninth Circuit holds that compliance with NAFTA's requirements does not justify violating federal environmental law...

[Ninth Circuit]:Although we agree with the importance of the United States' compliance with its treaty obligations with its southern neighbor, Mexico, such compliance cannot come at the cost of violating United States law. Because we conclude that the Department of Transportation acted without regard to well-established United States environmental laws, we grant the petitions.

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