Settlement pending in Pride Center v. ISU lawsuit
A 'resolution in principle' has been reached in the Pride Center of Terre Haute's lawsuit against Indiana State University regarding Pride Fest.
The ACLU of Indiana filed the suit Feb. 11 in U.S. District Court on behalf of the Pride Center.
The lawsuit asserted that ISU was violating the First Amendment rights of the Pride Center, and it asked the court to order ISU to allow the Pride Center to hold Pride Fest 2025 on campus in August of this year, similar to past years.
The lawsuit alleges that ISU, without the The Pride Center's knowledge, secured an agreement from the city of Terre Haute to hold Pride Fest at Fairbanks Park, a city park off campus, in 2025.
The Pride Center, a nonprofit organization serving LGBTQ+ individuals in and around Vigo County, held Pride Fest on the ISU campus in both 2023 and 2024.
A March 24 court filing stated that 'a resolution in principle has been reached' between the parties. A telephone status conference is scheduled for Friday, but it will be vacated if the parties notify the court of a final resolution of the matter.
ACLU of Indiana had no additional comment Wednesday. The Tribune-Star has sought comment from the university.
The festival was sponsored each year by ISU, according to an ACLU news release earlier this year. It was staged in the Quad, an open area on the ISU campus designated for 'expressive activity' by both ISU policies and Indiana law.
The complaint alleges that ISU's refusing to allow Pride Fest 2025 to be held on ISU property again is a violation of the university's own policies and the Constitution.
In the suit, the Pride Center alleges that an on-campus site is essential to the purpose of the festival as a way to demonstrate to new students that ISU is a welcoming campus.
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More than 30 arrested at immigration protest in Spokane sparked by arrest of 2 immigrants
Jun. 12—Immigration protests erupted in Spokane on Wednesday, sparking a massive police response and 30 arrests. Mayor Lisa Brown issued a 9:30 p.m. curfew for perhaps 1,000 protestors who flooded Riverfront Park and surrounding downtown streets. It's the first such measure since the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests in the wake of George Floyd's murder. The curfew and police presence had the desired effect as most of the crowd dispersed. By 11 p.m. about 20 protesters remained. "We want everybody to be safe and we thought this was the best path forward in order to achieve that," Brown said. "I made the decision that the safest course of action was by Spokane Police, not ICE, to try to safely disperse the crowd." She made the call in response to hundreds of demonstrators who blocked federal immigration enforcement agents in Spokane on Wednesday evening from leaving a downtown immigration office reportedly with refugees who were detained at court hearings earlier in the day. Spokane Police Chief Kevin Hall said at a late-night news conference that while it appeared that officers deployed tear gas, it was actually smoke grenades. He also said Spokane police officers used pepper balls but did not fire rubber bullets. He said about 185 city officers responded to both incidents. Hall said that he not heard that any other law enforcement agency used rubber bullets. "Certainly there were peaceful folks demonstrating and utilizing their First Amendment rights, and there were also people in the crowd who were committing crimes," Hall said. The protest is arguably the most extreme local showing of resistance, among others in Los Angeles and across the country, to President Donald Trump's sweeping immigration crackdowns since he took office for the second time in January. The day of unrest began on Cataldo Avenue after former City Council President Ben Stuckart sent a social media post at about 1 p.m. asking "that if you care at all about these illegal detainers you meet me at 411 West Cataldo by 2 p.m. I am going to set in front of the bus. Feel free to join me .... "The Latino community needs the rest of our community. Not tonight, not Saturday but right now!!!!" Stuckart was responding to the arrest of 21-year-old Cesar Alexander Alvarez Perez, who is seeking asylum from Venezuela, and Joswar Slater Rodriguez Torres, a Colombian national also in his early twenties. Stuckart said he officially became the Venezuelan's legal guardian three weeks ago, and arrived with him and the man from Colombia for a scheduled "check-in" appointment at the Spokane facility this morning. The two were in the United States on work visas and had full-time employment at the Walmart in Airway Heights until Friday, when their "work permits were revoked," he said. Both young men are hard workers who have been diligent about following the legal process and building better lives, Stuckart said. "You can't help spend time with them and not understand just what great young men they are," Stuckart said. "They've done everything right, and they're escaping horrible situations, and then to have them come in for a checkup and be detained illegally is morally reprehensible." For the first few hours, most of the demonstration remained peaceful, aside from a masked person who covered the driver's side of the bus windshield with a layer of white spray paint about a half hour into the demonstration. More than a dozen protestors joined Stuckart despite warnings from a pair of uniformed federal agents who came out of the building to warn the crowd that obstructing their pathway could lead to arrests and charges. Protesters responded by parking their vehicles in front and behind the bus. "I don't want this bus to leave with my friends," Stuckart said. "And I told everybody I was down here, and if people wanted to join me, they could. It's not right. It's not morally right, what's happening." The Cataldo crowd included several prominent politicians, activists and community leaders, including Spokane County Democratic Party Chair Naida Spencer; state Rep. Timm Orsmby; Spokane City Council candidate Sarah Dixit; union advocate and a former Democratic candidate for local, state and federal offices Ted Cummings; Thrive International Director Mark Finney and Latinos en Spokane Director Jennyfer Mesa. While the protestors share a desire to see the young men let go, and frustrations with federal immigration enforcement, they disagreed as to how. Some were a silent presence, others carried signs and chanted, while others were more direct in showing their displeasure by shouting at the law enforcement officers. The disconnect became evident as barriers were formed in front of the gated parking lot using benches, cones and Lime scooters, taken down by others and then reformed in front of the line of Spokane police and Spokane County Sheriff's deputy cars next to the building. Mesa said both of the young men are clients of Latinos en Spokane. But her presence Wednesday was meant as a gesture for her friends, not just her clients. "They're good kids," she said, choking back tears. "They have been volunteering, they're doing the process and everything legally. I just don't understand why they're being detained." Stuckart said the federal employees in the ICE office would not allow him to accompanying Alvarez Perez during his appointment and they did not disclose why either young men were being detained. Stuckart estimated it took around seven minutes from when they went back for their appointment for federal officials to come out and inform him they were being detained. "And each of them has a stack of legal paperwork at least 2 inches thick, with all their asylum paperwork and their guardianship paperwork, and they clearly didn't look at it," Stuckart said. "They just said, 'We're detaining them.'" Stuckart said he started the legal guardianship process earlier this year after a call from Latinos en Spokane for local residents to assist local "vulnerable juveniles." He volunteers with the organization regularly and said he has greatly enjoyed getting to know Alvarez Perez, who's lived in Spokane for six months. Alvarez Perez came to Spokane by way of Miami, after walking through nine countries on his way from Venezuela and meeting Rodriguez Torres along the way. Stuckart said his main responsibility as a guardian is to provide mentorship. "He's not living with us, and I'm not in charge of his finances or anything," Stuckart said. The gathering grew to about 100 people at about 5 p.m., including about 15 blocking the bus. Stuckart was not in front of the bus at the time, but he remained at the protest. Among the protestors was Alicea Gonzalez, 27, who brought her 5-year-old son Javell and father, Adam Betancort, 46. She wore a Mexico T-shirt to the protest, and the pair brought flags, one of Mexico, the other half-Mexican, half-American. The latter flag is representative of Betancourt and his identity, he said while holding the flapping fabric towards passing cars on the corner of Cataldo Ave and Washington Street, right outside the ICE facility. "I'm American and I'm a Mexican," he said. Though they don't know either of the men detained by ICE, they're familiar with their story; Gonzalez's maternal grandmother crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in the 1950s, floating across the river in a car tire, she said. Betancort's parents are also immigrants from Mexico. "I appreciate that; I wouldn't have the life that I live without her," Gonzalez said. "So I'm just showing my support, letting people know that they have people out here that will stand behind them, and use their voices to speak up for them." Around 5:25 p.m., a group of roughly 150 protesters ran around the back of the building to obstruct three unmarked law enforcement vehicles from leaving a fenced-in parking area abutting the public parking area for Riverfront Park. Protesters shouted "Shame" repeatedly and about 10 of them linked arms in a line in front of the parking lot gate. A handful of agents, faces covered by ski masks and sunglasses, began to push the human chain of demonstrators, knocking their glasses and handmade signs scattering on the ground. Protestors and officers shoved each other in a mass of yelling and chanting for about a minute before the agents retreated into their parking lot and the gate closed. Not long after the agents retreated back inside, a handful of protesters hauled Lime scooters and park benches as a barricade to block vehicles from leaving from the gate. Spokane Police officers arrived shortly before 6:30 p.m., followed by Spokane County sheriff's deputies. The local law enforcement response grew to dozens outside the building by about 6:45 p.m. The group then formed a sort of protective barrier for an exit on the Washington Street side of the building. They carried weapons to shoot less-lethal munitions, with what appeared to be tear gas canisters and large hip bags with unidentified materials inside. As the officers widened their perimeter to encompass much of the yard abutting the Washington Street side of the building, another group of deputies and officers began forcibly removing protestors from around the small bus. A Spokane Police Department officer spoke over the regional SWAT car speaker system at 7:13 p.m. and ordered everyone present to disperse. The officer gave the demonstrators five minutes to do so. Few left the scene when police warned at 7:22 p.m. that they would use force if the crowd did not leave. Stuckart, Spencer and at least a dozen others were arrested just after 7:30 p.m. Brown said she talked with Stuckart earlier in the day and it was clear he was prepared to get arrested in an attempt to prevent the bus from leaving. She also consulted with Washington Attorney General Nick Brown and connected Stuckart to Nick Brown. "Ben did inform me that members of his group intended to peacefully protest, and they intended to stay at the facility until they were arrested," she said at the conference. The mayor said she told Stuckart that Spokane police would comply with the Keep Washington Working Act, strive to keep the peace and "enforce Spokane laws." The Keep Washington Working Act restricts state and local law enforcement in Washington from assisting federal immigration enforcement. She said that arresting protesters blocking immigration detainees from being jailed is not a violation of the state law because protestors were violating other city laws, like blocking the public right-of-way. She said protesters were warned repeatedly if they were violating laws before arrests were made. "The vast majority were peaceful, expressing their viewpoints as they have every right to do and compliant with officers," Brown said. "There's serious concerns about federal policies. We want people to feel free to express those concerns and we want to keep everyone safe." Police began detaining the 15 or so demonstrators who enveloped an unmarked red van with two ICE officers in the front seat. The windows of the van were tinted, but protestors thought it may soon carry the two men ICE detained. Police warned the demonstrators if they didn't move, they'd be arrested for obstruction. The 15, including Stuckart, had prepared to be arrested, writing phone numbers up their arms and leaving belongings with other protesters. Some went willingly, quietly putting their own hands behind their back as officers led them one by one to a SWAT car parked nearby. One protestor resisted their detainment, wriggling and contorting themselves while yelling as multiple officers pinned them to the group and tied their hands and feet. Eventually, each person who enveloped the red van was detained. Someone deflated one of the van's tires and it was towed off hours later after police had dispersed the crowd in that area. A second, planned protest at Riverfront Park escalated hours after the Stuckart-led event and riot-clad officers began shooting tear gas and making arrests, with the two eventually merging. Harris Kahler, a 23-year-old protestor said he was standing in the front lines when officers pulled out paint guns and shot the ground in front of the line around 8:40 p.m. After that, smoke canisters were thrown and Kahler kicked one back in response. Kahler then went to grab another, turned around and believed he was shot in the lower back with a rubber bullet. "I'm in a lot of pain, but if I physically have to be here, I'll be the shield I got to be," Kahler said. In a telephone interview, City Council President Betsy Wilkerson said she acknowledged the right of everyone to protest. "If I wasn't somewhere else, I might be there myself to support our sisters and brothers," she said. "I'm just hoping for the best outcome, elevating the issue and getting people involved in the way they feel they best can, and that's a protest. "With that being said, we're not trying to throw more wood on this fire, to elevate it to more than a peaceful protest." Reached by phone, City Councilman Jonathan Bingle said he fully supports the right of every American to peacefully protest. "It's one of the rights that makes our country so great! But, the moment a protest turns into small vandalism, threats, or lawlessness, it is no longer protected speech. It becomes a crime, and should be dealt with as such," Bingle said. "I am stunned by the position of some of our current and former elected officials in our city. Instead of standing for the rule of law and the officers who keep our streets safe, they seem more interested in scoring points or justifying bad behavior. That is not leadership." City Councilman Paul Dillon in an interview that he supported those who were willing to stand up for their beliefs. "No human being is illegal," he said. "This is a direct result of the escalation and fears the Trump administration inflicts on communities which create chaos." Reporters Elena Perry, Thomas Clouse, Emry Dinman and Corbin Vanderby contributed to this report. Elena Perry's work is funded in part by members of the Spokane community via the Community Journalism and Civic Engagement Fund. This story can be republished by other organizations for free under a Creative Commons license. For more information on this, please contact our newspaper's managing editor.
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The Supreme Court's Inconsistency Is Very Revealing
The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. One of the most vital components of the rule of law is a commitment to neutral, principled analysis in which standards are adhered to and similar cases lead to similar conclusions. Such neutrality lies at the core of the courts' promise to be 'bulwarks of a limited Constitution,' as Alexander Hamilton put it in 'Federalist No. 78.' That is why the Supreme Court's seeming abandonment of the neutrality principle is so distressing. The most recent example came in the Court's decision last month to allow President Donald Trump to fire members of two boards—the National Labor Relations Board and the Merit Systems Protection Board—whom Congress had attempted to protect against removal through legislative declarations of independence. In doing so, the Court carved out an arbitrary and unjustified exception to the logic it had otherwise adopted, demonstrating the capricious, politicized nature of its decision making. To understand the extent of the problems here, begin by considering one of those neutral principles that is, theoretically, to be applied without regard for result: the 'unitary executive' doctrine. According to this doctrine, the Constitution says that all officials who exercise executive power in the U.S. government are answerable to the president. It derives its force from both constitutional text and a view that unelected, independent agency bureaucrats are able to obstruct a president's power, and some recourse must be available. Consistent with that view, legal scholars and practitioners who adhere to this theory believe that a president should be able to remove any officer of the United States who exercises executive authority—with good reason or, in their view, without any reason at all (what we lawyers call 'removal without cause'). The debate over the limits on a president's removal authority is not an academic exercise about theoretical independence. To the contrary, it can have a very real, practical impact. The 19th-century lawyer and statesman Daniel Webster warned that unlimited removal power 'tends to turn the whole body of public officers into partisans, dependents, favorites, sycophants, and man-worshippers.' Or as Judge Joseph Story put it in his famous commentary on the Constitution, such a power 'may be made, in the hands of a bold and designing man of high ambition and feeble principles, into an instrument of the worst oppression and most vindictive vengeance.' The constitutional authority for independent agencies was first addressed nearly a century ago, in the New Deal era, when the Court carved out an area of executive activity that Congress could permissibly invest with some degree of independence. The oldest of these cases, Humphrey's Executor v. United States, allowed Congress to enact limits on the president's removal power for commissioners of the Federal Trade Commission—providing that they be removed only for 'good cause,' by which Congress meant some deliberate act of misfeasance. Notably, from a historical perspective, Congress imposed the limits (which the Court held were constitutional) in part to prevent President Franklin D. Roosevelt from firing holdovers from the previous Republican administration who were allegedly thwarting his more liberal policies. [Adam Serwer: Trump is tired of courts telling him he's breaking the law] The Court's Trump v. Wilcox decision last month, permitting Trump to remove the two senior board members, invoked the unitary-executive doctrine. Even though the National Labor Relations Board and the Merit Systems Protection Board are structurally indistinguishable from the FTC (at issue in Humphrey's Executor), the majority concluded that Trump may 'remove without cause executive officers who exercise power on his behalf.' And so 90 years of law meets its end. Many conservative legal scholars will approve of this conclusion. Other commentators will think that it too casually discards nearly a century of precedent. But whatever one may think of the underlying principle, both groups could and should hope for its unbiased application. If this is the new rule, then it should apply to all executive agencies. The specter of that possibility is why one of the strongest arguments against the unitary-executive principle has always been that if it were neutrally applied, it would necessarily allow the president plenary authority over every officer currently considered independent—including, most relevantly, the members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and the Federal Open Market Committee. Because the Fed's core task of setting monetary policy is an executive act (for it surely is not legislative), the Fed, in theory, ought to be subject to presidential control. Such a result would be so disruptive that it is unthinkable. The independence of the Federal Reserve is considered a cornerstone of global economic stability. Multiple times in the past few months, the mere suggestion that Trump might fire the chair, Jerome Powell, has sent the markets into a tailspin. That is not because Powell himself is so beloved (though he has proved a very steady leader), but because markets cannot tolerate the uncertainty and disruption that his dismissal would portend. Critics have long made a simple counterargument: The unitary-executive doctrine cannot be valid, because it leads to unacceptable results. No principled way of distinguishing the NLRB and the MSPB (as well as a host of other independent agencies) from the Federal Reserve exists. If the loss of independence at the Fed is unthinkable, it can only be because the unitary executive is itself unthinkable. [Quinta Jurecic: What recourse does the Supreme Court actually have?] In an ideal legal world, this sort of argument would be persuasive. For the current Supreme Court, rejecting it required nothing more than inventing a new standard. In a single sentence, the Court tossed off the argument for equivalence, saying, 'The Federal Reserve is a uniquely structured, quasi-private entity that follows in the distinct historical tradition of the First and Second Banks of the United States.' This is a remarkably weak argument. Neither of the original banks was a significant executive actor. They were not, for example, authorized to set monetary policy, as is now the Fed's job. And, disturbingly for those who value judicial precision, the authority the Court cited said no such thing. It is almost as if the citation was made up by a hallucinating artificial intelligence. So the historical analogy breaks down on the merits. It also requires answering this question: How old is old enough? One is left to wonder why the historical tradition of the first two banks (respectively, 240 and 190 years old) is sufficient, but the NLRB's history (it is now 90 years old) and, presumably, the FTC's age (now 110) are not. There is, sadly, only one plausible conclusion: The Court wanted to endorse the unitary-executive theory, but it created an exception for the Federal Reserve because the implications of its reasoning were too severe to tolerate. Call it the 'our theory can't create market catastrophe, so we will arbitrarily carve out the markets' principle, which is no principle at all. It's just artificial line drawing to avoid the consequences of one's own logic. This is not the only recent instance of the Court ruling by ipse dixit—making law based on unsupported dogmatic assertion rather than judgment. The capricious rejection of principle in the service of conservative political desires has become a habit with this Court. [Adam Serwer: The Supreme Court's 'selective proceduralism' would suffocate the Constitution] Consider, as another example, the Supreme Court's decision overturning 50 years of precedent in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. The decision rested on the Court's conclusion that the Constitution contains no substantive text protecting a woman's right to an abortion, and that such unenumerated rights should not be recognized if they are not 'deeply rooted in the Nation's history.' Again, one may agree with that principle (and with the Court's history regarding abortion rights), or one may not. But either way, one would expect that the Court would apply the principle neutrally. And if one thinks that the text of the Constitution has no protection for abortion, then, as Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in his concurring opinion, all of the jurisprudential developments that protect sexual intimacy are wrong. In his view, not just abortion but also contraception and same-sex marriage are constitutionally unprotected. Fair enough, and at least Thomas has the virtue of intellectual consistency. But the implications of his views were so severe that at least one member of the Court felt the need to disavow them. Justice Brett Kavanaugh's concurrence assured the nation that the rule Dobbs created was unique to the abortion context. Trust me, he told us, gay marriage is not at risk. But that assurance is no more than another instance of making up the rules to suit the situation. If, as Dobbs says, the test is whether a practice is 'deeply rooted in the Nation's history,' then gay marriage is, if anything, on far thinner ice than abortion, and contraception is not too far behind. [Stephen I. Vladeck: What the courts can still do to constrain Trump] Again, if the impartial application of a new rule of law seems to have unacceptable results, the proper answer is to jettison the new rule as untenable, not to adopt it and then artificially carve out an exception. The promise of unbiased application of the law is why, even if you don't believe he meant it, Chief Justice John Roberts's famous characterization of judges as umpires calling 'balls and strikes' was so powerful. Americans don't expect perfection in judges' application of that principle. But the rule of law is, at bottom, a promise to minimize variations when possible. To be sure, the mitigation of harms is welcomed—I certainly don't want Trump to have the power to fire the Fed chair. But the intellectual dishonesty necessary to reach this result is stunning. Were the justices truly committed to calling balls and strikes, they would recognize that the horrific consequences of their reasoning suggest fault in that reasoning. It's all a bit reminiscent of Bang the Drum Slowly, a Robert De Niro and Michael Moriarty movie in which the pair play together on a baseball team. They welcome rookies by hazing them in a number of ways, one of which is to introduce them to the card game TEGWAR—'the exciting game without any rules.' The pair make up the rules as they go along, reinforcing each other's absurdities ('I just got a double krankle') and confounding the uncomprehending rookies. As a delightful vignette, TEGWAR is a comedic moment in a somber character study. When TEGWAR becomes the analytical methodology for the Supreme Court, it is a tragedy—for the rule of law and for the nation. Article originally published at The Atlantic
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The FBI raided the wrong house. The Supreme Court says the family is allowed to sue
A family whose home was mistakenly raided in the middle of the night by the FBI eight years ago will be permitted to continue their damages lawsuit after the Supreme Court on Thursday sent their case back to a federal appeals court for additional review. The outcome represents a technical win for the family, which had been barred by lower courts from suing the government over the incident. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the opinion for a unanimous court. Curtrina Martin, her partner and her then-7-year-old son were startled awake in 2017 when a six-agent SWAT team – believing that they were targeting the home of a gang member – smashed her front door with a battering ram, detonated a flash-bang grenade and rushed into their suburban Atlanta home. At some point after Martin was dragged from the closet where she was hiding and held at gunpoint, agents realized they had the wrong house. The federal government is generally immune from lawsuits, but Congress carved out an exception for some situations involving negligent or wrongful acts of government employees. That law was amended in 1974, following a series of other high-profile raids at the wrong house, to expand the ability of Americans to sue federal law enforcement agents. But the Atlanta-based 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the government, holding that the Constitution's Supremacy Clause barred tort claims against the federal government in circumstances where an official's actions had 'some nexus with furthering a federal policy' and could 'reasonably be characterized' as within the range of federal law. The Institute for Justice, a libertarian public interest law group that represented the Martin family, argued that outcome would completely undermine the intent of Congress. Lawmakers strengthened the Federal Tort Claims Act following a pair of high-profile wrong-house raids in Collinsville, Illinois, in the early 1970s. During arguments before the Supreme Court in April, the FBI's handling of the Martin raid drew particular scorn from Justice Gorsuch, a conservative and sometimes-skeptic of federal government power. 'You might look at the address of the house before you knock down the door,' an incredulous Gorsuch pressed the lawyer representing the Justice Department. 'How about making sure you're on the right street? I mean, just the right street? Checking the street sign? Is that, you know, asking too much?' The Justice Department argued in part that it should not be liable because federal law bars tort suits when a federal employee is exercising discretion in carrying out their work. In this case, the government argued, the agents had to exercise discretion in how they confirmed they were at the correct house. This story is breaking and has been updated with additional details.
