Blast from the Pat: Heffernan v. Patterson: The Decision

My first blog post for this class was on the case of a New Jersey police officer who had been demoted after his boss thought he had been showing support for a local campaign that his boss didn't support. Since this is one of my last posts, I thought it would be appropriate to go back and take a look at where the case was today.

As the case made it's way through the court system, it finally reached the US Supreme Court, which released it's ruling earlier this week. The Court found that Heffernan's First Amendment rights had been violated, and that his demotion had been unconstitutional. When Heffernan had presented his case to the lower courts, he had lost the suit. This is because the prior courts had said that picking up a sign for his mother wasn't a use of his First Amendment rights; therefore, there's no way they could have been violated. However, the Supreme Court's 6-2 decision obviously contradicted that of prior rulings. However, the dissenting opinion written by Justice Thomas and Justice Scalia reinforced the prior rulings, saying “Demoting a dutiful son who aids his elderly, bedridden mother may be callous, but it is not unconstitutional,”. Nevertheless, Justice Breyer, a member of the majority opinion wrote that “The upshot is that a discharge or demotion based upon an employer’s belief that the employee has engaged in protected activity can cause the same kind, and degree, of constitutional harm whether that belief does or does not rest upon a factual mistake,”, pretty much, even if Heffernan wasn't expressing his First Amendment rights, his demotion had been based on the assumption that he was, making the action unconstitutional.

All in all, this case was kind of ridiculous, but not as ridiculous as Donald Trumps hair (among other things). I mean really. Look at it.

Brown v. Board of Education: Moot Court

The United States Supreme Court case of Brown v. Board of Education was a monumental case in American history for citizens of this country. In todays class, two teams presented their cases on behalf of Brown and on behalf of the Topeka Board of Education, reenacting this historical case in todays 2016 classroom.

The first arguments were presented by the side or Brown. The team presented five arguments mainly focused on legal grounds, siting the 1875 Civil Rights Act, the Fourteenth Amendment, more specifically the Equal Protection Clause present in the Fourteenth Amendment, and two of the four prior court cases that dealt with the same subject, these cases were Briggs v. Elliott and Gebhart v. Belton.

Ms. Ouayoro presents her arguments for team Board of Education

The second team presented arguments that supported the prior ruling of Plessy v. Ferguson which established to idea of "separate but equal". Instead of focusing on legal arguments, the team representing the Board of Education focused more on moral and ethical views of the situation. They argued for the safety of African-American students, which might be more intently persecuted by groups such as the Ku Klux Klan or by the white population of the newly integrated schools. The team also argued that instead of achieving integration as soon as possible, the government should "go slow" and focus on improving the conditions of black schools so that they may be up to par with the white schools. The team stated in their reasoning that if black students were integrated into white schools they would fall behind due to their prior education being less intellectual than the education received
by white students.  They also argued a "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mentality, saying that the educational system is fine how it is. The one legal argument presented by the Board of Education team pertained to the Equal Protection Clause, claiming that equal protection is only applicable to people as a whole, individuals will never truly be equal, that is the circumstance of life.

In all, both teams presented well thought out arguments. However, due to this being a court case, emotion and opinion based arguments fall to legal facts, resulting in the win going to the team representing Brown.

Challkin' It Up: Freedom of Speech on Campus

Chalk may wash away with a little water, but messages written in this temporary substance have a tendency to linger around a bit longer. Earlier this week students at Emory University in Atlanta awoke to a campus covered in chalk graffiti promoting the presidential candidate Donald J. Trump. This expressive action seemed to create a major stir on the campus among supports and non supports alike; this spark seemed to stem from one issue, freedom of speech.

Examples of Pro-Trump graffiti on Emory's campus.

When some students decided to take to the streets and protest in response to the plaster of a Pro-Trump message about the southern campus, they received some pretty underserved backlash. Besides social media outlets such as twitter, the protestors were also called out by some well known news organizations (cough Fox News cough). These responses to the protestors called them out for being just another bunch of college kids crying about how everyone needs to keep it PC (that's politically correct if you're not familiar with the lingo). Here's where these protest haters messed up though: the protestors weren't protesting the Trump chalk drawings all over this southern campus, they were displaying their disapproval of the message behind the candidate promoted. They in no way were using their freedom of speech to attempt to stomp out those with disagreeing views First Amendment rights. Instead the protestors were out there with the goal to unite people in opposition to what the Trump campaign stands for. Pretty much, they were using their freedom of speech to do exactly what it was intended to, disagree with others.

This campaign season has been one of major confrontations and clashes between members of different political parties, along with disagreements between members of the same party who simply support different candidates. It's important for citizens in this country to always respect others political views, even if they don't align with their own. Our O.G. President G. Washington once said that political parties would "likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.” Don't let political labels and different views divide this great country, don't let George down.