stephb-sp2-blog

[stephb-sp2-blog]

Even if you’re legal, we’ll kick you out

So there’s this great conversation happening right now in our country that revolves around a perceived dichotomy of immigrant value versus the value of safety for citizens. I mean, in my opinion, why can’t we have both? ...but maybe that’s a conversation for another day.

What I’m really here to talk about is Juan Esquivel-Quintana. Let me tell you about him. Somewhere around 1999 Juan came to California from Mexico when he was 12 years old as a lawful permanent resident. (Hint: there’s a reason I used italics there, let’s keep that in mind.) Let’s fast forward about 8 years. Juan is now 20 and has this girlfriend. She’s 16. Juan and his girlfriend have sex. Now, according to California law, Juan just raped his girlfriend because legally she isn’t competent enough to consent to such a thing.... because in California the age of consent is 18 and the grace gap is 3 years. This means if two people are dating and sexually active and one is 17 years and 11 months old and the other is 21 years and 1 month old, that’s statutory rape. California is one of only a few states with this *stupid* rule.

By the time this whole mess is figured out, Juan is about 22. Juan goes to jail for 90 days and is on probation for a couple years. Juan gets out and is like ‘cya, suckas, had enough of this state,’ and moves to Michigan.

Juan gets to Michigan, I suspect with the hopes of a new start, and next thing he knows, the Department of Homeland Security is knocking on his door. ‘Hey Mr. Quintana, I know you just moved to Michigan and think you’re done with this whole thing, but actually, your conviction means that you assaulted a minor and that’s an aggravated felony and that means we can deport you under the Immigration and Nationality Act.’

Long story short, Juan went through a ton of court proceedings, and court after court after court, just to be told that he can’t stay here because having sex with his girlfriend was an aggravated felony. Note that not every judge was necessarily happy with the decisions they had to make. That being said, they didn’t feel there was really anything they could do about it. So now Juan has been deported back to Mexico. All of these court decisions that Juan received regarding his deportation is because of a policy that was set forth by Obama that prioritized the deportation of violent and drug-related immigrant offenses. That’s how all of this happened in the first place.

The Supreme Court heard the case and decided it was as ridiculous as it sounds. In most states the age for sexual consent is 16 and the grace gap is 4 years, not 3. Judges thought this was a more reasonable standard and thought that one, California was too stringent, two, this was by no means an ‘aggravated felony’. The court took a vote and unanimously decided (8 judges at the time) to reverse the decision. Juan has since been deported and is currently back in Mexico, but this decision means that he can come back if he wants to.

So what does this mean for immigrants? The unsettling part about this case is that Juan was a legal permanent resident. He wasn’t even an illegal immigrant, which tends to be the focus of American’s disdain for migrants. Had this decision not been reversed, it would have put many, many more people at risk of being deported who should honestly never face that risk. The good thing about this decisions is that it’s sets a precedent for how the Court can respond to executive orders surrounding immigration. This was an instance of the Court putting it’s foot down and saying, “we won’t let executive directions interfere with what we see as legal and constitutional.” This is great news for some immigrants. It means that just because ICE may say they need to get out, the Court or precedent may keep them here.

On the flip side, for some it still doesn’t matter. In looking into this case I found several incidences of illegal immigrants who work hard and have actually worked with the government on federal agricultural endeavors, but because of some old misdemeanor charges, they’re being ripped away from their families. This doesn’t make much sense to me, considering that our biggest issue with this population is that they are ‘lazy and don’t work hard enough’. These are people who are working their tails off and even making COUNTRY-WIDE CONTRIBUTIONS TO OUR FARMING METHODS and we don’t care about their family stability. Just because they have a DUI charge from 20 years ago? Clearly, we need some policy reform surrounding immigration in our country, and clearly that’s a bigger conversation than what this blog post can cover. But, come on. Let’s really think about what we’re trying to accomplish here, and let’s really think about the lives of the people we’re haphazardly ripping apart.

[stephb-sp2-blog]

I‘ll keep you my jury little secret.

I think most of us would agree that discrimination is still seen as sometimes ok in our culture depending on who you talk to. So where does the law draw this line. Where does the government put it’s foot down and say here is where you can and can’t say those things. Well, that’s clearly a bigger conversation for another day… but this conversation was held in SCOTUS, specifically in regards to jury deliberations. The big question was, “can a juror convict a defendant based on race or ethnicity?

This question was posed by the case of Pena-Rodriguez v. Colorado. Pena-Rodriguez was accused of assaulting two teenage girls. So a jury was convened, and a trial was held. The jury hears the trial, goes to deliberation, and decides Pena-Rodriguez is guilty. Plot twist: afterwards, 2 jurors submitted affidavits (essentially just a statement) saying that the third juror pushed for conviction because “He’s a Mexican and Mexican men believe they can do whatever they want with women.” Same juror also said that Pena-Rodriguez’s alibi clearly couldn’t be trusted because he was “an illegal.”

How did the Colorado Supreme Court respond?

‘Sorry, dude. Our hands are tied.’

This has actually also happened in Pennsylvania recently, as well. In 2012, there was a case in PA where a black man was accused of killing three white women. During deliberations, one juror noted the race of the defendant and the race of the victims, and on that basis alone, the defendant was probably guilty. The juror went on to say the defendant deserved to “fry, get the chair, or be hung.” This case stopped at the PA Supreme Court where they shrugged their shoulders like Colorado did.

Colorado and PA both have a no-impeachment rule. This basically means that absolutely nothing in jury deliberations has any weight, other than what their final verdict is. The only rule is that they can’t be influenced by outside sources (mainly the media). I think in theory this is a great rule. This means that jurors are totally protected from anyone and anything who would otherwise pass judgment on how they reached a decision. We want our jurors to be free of outside pressures to make a clear, informed decision. Will they have biases? Yes. They are humans. However, those biases can also be good. For instance, let’s say someone is on trial for killing a police officer and the defendant pleas self-defense because they were experiencing police violence. Perhaps someone on the jury has also experienced injustice by a police officer and they can deeply sympathize with what they defendant may have gone through. On the other hand, maybe someone on the jury is a spouse of a police officer and they have a very different perspective on the matter. And yes, I do realize this is an extreme example… both jurors likely would have been kicked out during the selection process. At the end of the day, though, there are a lot of pros to having protections for jury deliberation.

Protection also means that all the jurors could sit around for 6 hours talking about their best cooking tips and at the end of those 6 hours flip a coin for their verdict and no one would even know. This rule also means that a juror can mouth off about how horrible all Mexicans are so that the rest of the jury thinks it’s a good idea to lock them away.

Thankfully, SCOTUS put their foot down. On March 6, an opinion came out in favor of Pena-Rodriguez. Justice Kennedy wrote, “A constitutional rule that racial bias in the justice system must be addressed—including, in some instances, after the verdict has been entered—is necessary to prevent a systemic loss of confidence in jury verdicts." This means that juries still get to keep their privacies and protections, but it totally derails anyone who is making verdicts based on racial identity.

I don’t know about you but I would call this a MAJOR WIN. Who knows how many times verdicts have been made out of racial biases? Even think about 40+ years ago when juries blatantly did this and no one saw an issue with it. Though it’s frustrating that it’s taken this long, and seems like a total no-brainer to me, it’s a huge step in the right direction. DEFENDANTS CAN LEGALLY NO LONGER BE CONVICTED BY JURY BASED ON RACE.

While I recognize this takes away some ‘freedom’ from the jury deliberations, it’s a ‘freedom’ that needed to be removed…. If you call using racist slurs freedom… This gives further protection to racial minorities in a country where racial justice seems to be moving backwards, and to that I say

[stephb-sp2-blog]

Is Jesus on the playground?

Ahh, the age old argument of separation of church and state. What does it mean? Where does it come from? How do we draw the flexible, fluid, noodle-like, invisible line?

First of all, fun fact: the term “separation of church and state” never actually shows up in the Constitution. The first amendment basically just says the government can’t establish a church because the founders were tired of the Catholic church historically calling all the shots in politics. It also says that the government cannot prohibit the free exercise of religion. With that said, people interpret the first amendment in very different ways that have a lot of different implications.

At the end of June, the Supreme Court came out with an opinion on the case of Trinity Lutheran Church v. Comer. Missouri had a grant opportunity for schools to receive state funds for recycled tires for their playground surfaces. Trinity Lutheran Church applied for this grant in order to resurface their playground for the daycare center. The state said they were rejected for the grant, not because their proposal was poorly written, but because they’re a religious institution and giving them the money would be a violation of separation of church and state.

The church was like, ‘hold up, you can’t do that. This is a matter of public/children’s safety, not religion.’

*enter Supreme Court*

So the Supreme Court ended up ruling in favor of the church, saying that they should receive the funds because it’s a playground issue, not a church issue. In this way, refusing them funds is religious discrimination. Justice Roberts made it clear in a footnote in the majority opinion that this case was about “express discrimination based on religious identity with respect to playground resurfacing” and that the court was not weighing in on “religious uses of funding or other forms of discrimination.” HOWEVER, Justice Gorsuch (the newest justice and first appointment by Trump) said he didn’t agree with this entirely. He saw this case as both a playground case, but also as a religious discrimination case. He says that religious discrimination shouldn’t be permitted on the playground or elsewhere.

Do I think the court made the right decision? Yes. I would strongly agree that this was, in fact, a playground case, not a religious case. The money was not going towards church staff compensation, or religious programming. I was going towards a safety and health issue for their daycare children. However, I am a bit weary about the potential future implications, especially based on Gorsuch’s opinion on the matter. There have been instances where the government has leaned too far in the opposite direction and actually favored churches over secular nonprofits.

During the George W. Bush administration, America finally started paying attention to the issue of child sex trafficking... and trafficking in general to include labor trafficking a bit... but mostly sexual... even though there are way more people who are trafficked for labor... I digress... Under the Bush administration, the Trafficked Victims Protection Act (TVPA) was passed. Yay!

...Except here’s how we handled the funding:

Yes, trafficking is a horrible problem.

Yes, we’re going to throw tons of money at it.

Yes, we’re going to give it all to faith-based organizations who don’t have the training or experience of working with victims and ignore all the secular agencies who have been working with trafficked victims and are beginning to understand best practices and therapies, because the faith-based organizations are really well-intentioned and care a whole lot about victims.

Oh! And we almost forgot, no Muslim, Jewish, or Buddhist organizations... essentially only Christians... yeah, just Christians. 

Oh, sorry! Almost forgot again... if you’re a recipient of this federal funding, you have to sign off on the Prostitution Pledge meaning you can’t provide any services to prostitutes, especially if it’s harm-reduction services, because that would be condoning prostitution. This includes sex education, condom distribution, any help of any kind really.

-Sincerely, Georgie B.

Don’t get me wrong, I think that recipients of this grant worked really hard to do the right thing and truly did have good intentions. They have had positive outcomes from their work over the years. But essentially, Bush just gave a full-ride Penn State football scholarship for a quarterback position to an all-star lacrosse defender. That lacrosse player is real good at defense... in a lacrosse game. And now he’s having his entire college bill footed, so that he can learn an entirely new sport in a really important position at a top-notch football school. Stakes are high. And they’re even higher when we go back to real life and realize that it’s not about throwing a ball around, it’s about child welfare and human rights. I can’t help but think how different the landscape of human trafficking may look if we had taken a more holistic, thought-out approach to how we had distributed that funding.

To get off of my tangent, the point is that government has in the past actually showed preference for the Christian church over other faith-based organizations and over nonreligious organizations. So what does this all mean? Could this be the beginning to another Bush-like misstep? Maybe. Maybe not. Where do we find the balance? Should private businesses be allowed to deny services to LGBT individuals? Should government be allowed to provide funding to church programming that targets social issues?

To be honest, I have no clue. As a social worker, I live in the gray for a majority of my waking hours. These questions don’t have easy answers (for me, anyways). But I’d love to hear your thoughts! Feel free to weigh in. :)