Latest news with #UCBerkeleySchoolofLaw
Yahoo
30-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
100 days in, California is suing Trump at almost double the pace of his first term
This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters. In its first hundred days, through a series of executive orders, the Trump administration has reimagined this country's social contract with its citizens. The administration pledges more opportunities and fewer guarantees, less forgiveness and more consequences. Its 139 executive orders issued since Jan. 20 form an outline of American life as imagined by its most conservative residents, concentrating power in a unitary executive who can force changes as transformative as the New Deal. The deluge means California, usually the state suing to advance a progressive agenda, now finds itself fighting in court to preserve the status quo – playing defense, not offense. Instead of arguing for higher vehicle emissions standards or broadening the definition of a waterway, the state has filed or joined 16 lawsuits against the Trump administration since Jan. 20 on issues ranging from preserving birthright citizenship to restoring billions of dollars in health and medical grants. That effort continued on Tuesday with a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration's extensive cuts to AmeriCorps. 'We've had plenty of instances of California needing to play defense, going back to the Reagan administration,' said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law. 'I think what's different from the first term is qualitatively, how much of a disregard they have for the Constitution and the law.' Attorney General Rob Bonta, who took office in 2021, said the difference between the first and second Trump administrations has been the speed and pure number of executive orders filed early in his tenure. 'The comparison with Trump 1.0 shows that it is high volume, high speed (this time),' Bonta said. 'We've brought a lawsuit more than once a week in the first hundred days, and during Trump 1.0 there were about 120 lawsuits over four years. 'We're gonna hit around 100 at this rate in two years, so it's almost double the pace.' States and organizations challenging Trump in his first term won close to 70% of their legal battles, albeit a number of them were abandoned when Trump left office in 2021. That encompassed 123 lawsuits over four years, at a cost of about $10 million per year. This time around, state legislators set aside $50 million to cover the state's legal bills. Bonta said he expects the pace of the lawsuits to continue. 'Any time and every time the Trump administration breaks the law, we will take them to court,' Bonta said. 'It's very not normal and also not acceptable that we have an administration that so blatantly, brazenly, frequently and consistently breaks the law.' The verbs used in the executive orders promise to 'unleash,' 'restore' and 'reform' various elements of American life, from oil and gas rights to dominion over the ocean. One order targets 'the Obama-Biden war on showers.' But the most far-reaching executive orders are the ones in California's sights, including tariffs, birthright citizenship and voting rights. Those at the forefront of conservative legal theory find the executive orders to be a vindication of a textualist, originalist read of the Constitution and an end to the 'administrative state' in which regulators and bureaucrats are politically and legally insulated from the decisions they make. One of the earliest defenses of the Trump administration's legal strategy was delivered by Catholic University of America law professor J. Joel Alicea at the conservative Heritage Foundation's Edwin Meese III Originalism Lecture in March. 'Over the last three months, we have seen President Trump directly challenge the delegation of power by Congress to administrative agencies and the insulation of power from presidential supervision,' Alicea said. 'Contrary to the press's depiction of such actions, they are hopeful developments for the rule of law.' The stakes are high, Alicea said, and the opportunity for constitutional originalists is now, after more than a century of progressivism. 'It required two progressive presidents of extraordinary determination and political skill — Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt — to create the administrative state and impose a progressive constitutional and political theory on our structure of government,' Alicea said. 'It stands to reason that it will require another president of extraordinary determination and political skill to undo what his predecessors accomplished.' The presidential administration California is fighting is not the one the state's lawyers first faced off with in 2017. This time, the Trump administration came better prepared, worked faster and had a more concrete vision for a legal framework, Chemerinsky said. 'I think that they were so much better prepared,' Chemerinsky said. 'And they really had the flood-the-zone mentality.' The difference between the first and second Trump administration's legal strategy is the 2025 version's contempt for due process and the rule of law, Chemerinsky said. 'He didn't try to end birthright citizenship in his first term,' Chemerinsky said. 'He didn't try to put people in a prison in El Salvador in his first term, he didn't claim the ability to refuse to spend money appropriated by federal statute in his first term, he didn't claim that he could fire anyone in the executive branch, even if there's a statute limiting it. 'He's taking executive power so much further than the first term, than any president ever has.' In its lawsuit against the Trump administration over its order that voters provide proof of citizenship, California's attorneys alleged that the executive order interferes with the state's right to govern itself and usurps Congress's power to legislate. 'It bears emphasizing: the President has no power to do any of this,' the lawsuit asserts. 'Neither the Constitution nor Congress has authorized the President to impose documentary proof of citizenship requirements or to modify State mail-ballot procedures.' Much of the fight over that order and the others challenged by California will take place under the shadow of a U.S. Supreme Court that has consistently voted 6-3 to uphold elements of the Trump agenda. 'I think that the (Supreme Court) ultimately is gonna rule in favor of Trump's ability to fire members of agencies,' Chemerinsky said. 'I think that there's others that Trump has done, like end birthright citizenship, put people in prison in El Salvador, where I don't think he's likely to succeed.' Chemerinsky said he's not sure where the Supreme Court could or would draw a line in the sand. 'I would've thought the line would be taking people, putting them in El Salvador and claiming that no court could provide release,' Chemerinsky said. 'I still think that's going to be the red line, but I don't think it's gonna be unanimous.' This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: California versus Trump administration
Los Angeles Times
22-03-2025
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
L.A. City Council seeks crackdown on the N-word and C-word at meetings
For the last decade, the Los Angeles City Council chamber has been center stage for some of the meanest, most offensive messages delivered in an open government forum. A few speakers routinely hurl racial slurs, antisemitic phrases or other forms of verbal abuse at council members. They have attacked officials' looks, their weight, their clothes, their sexual orientation and their gender, curdling the proceedings on a regular basis. On Friday, seven council members took a first step toward pushing back on such language, signing a proposal to prohibit just two of the words. Under their proposal, initiated by Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, audience members could be removed from meetings — or banned from attending future ones — for repeatedly uttering the racial slur known as the N-word or the sexist vulgarity known as the C-word. Harris-Dawson, who is Black, said the frequent use of those words during public comment has put a chill on civic participation, discouraging people from coming to the council's meetings, which take place three times a week. At times, the use of racist words has led to disruptions between audience members, he said. Harris-Dawson said his colleagues may add more prohibited words to the proposal as it is debated over the coming weeks. But he said those two words in particular 'have no political value' — and are meant only to insult a person's immutable characteristics. 'It is language that, anywhere outside this building where there aren't four armed guards, would get you hurt if you said these things in public,' he said in an interview. The city has tried, at times, to put a stop to offensive behavior, only to lose in court. In 2014, for example, the city paid $215,000 to settle a free-speech lawsuit filed by a Black man who was ejected from a public meeting for wearing a Ku Klux Klan hood and a T-shirt featuring the N-word. Courts have been unwilling to allow local governments to restrict constitutionally protected speech during their meetings, said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law and a constitutional law expert. The two words in the council proposal, while deeply offensive, are protected by the 1st Amendment, he said. 'That said, a court might very well be willing to uphold a very narrow ban on these offensive words,' Chemerinsky said in an email. Other experts were more dubious. Eugene Volokh, professor of law emeritus at UCLA School of Law, voiced doubts that the proposal would survive a constitutional challenge. LMU Loyola Law School professor Aaron H. Caplan, who specializes in the 1st Amendment, reached a similar conclusion. 'I can feel some sympathy for the City Council,' Caplan said. 'But I feel like it would be pretty easy for a court to say, 'You cannot just have a list of a couple of prohibited words when there's lots and lots of other words that are just as offensive.' Then it becomes discrimination against certain viewpoints.' Since becoming council president, Harris-Dawson has made clear that he intends to rein in what he described as bad behavior at meetings. In December, he told an audience at the Los Angeles Current Affairs Forum that such efforts would help move the city out of its 'Gotham city phase' — a reference to the lawless metropolis in the Batman comics and movies. Harris-Dawson's proposal would allow the council to issue a warning the first time an offending word is used at a council or committee meeting. If an audience member keeps saying the word, they could be removed from that meeting and possibly subsequent meetings, depending on the number of offenses. Over the last decade, only a few people have regularly used hate speech during public meetings. The most consistent offender is Armando Herman, who is barred from coming within 100 yards of the Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration, where the county Board of Supervisors meets each week. A judge issued that order, which lasts until 2026, after four female supervisors said they received emails from Herman expressing interest in engaging in a sexual act. Herman denied sending the emails. Herman is known for spouting hateful words not just in the council's ornate chamber but at smaller committee meetings. On Tuesday, he used them in a tiny conference room at a meeting of the Executive Employee Relations Committee, which oversees labor negotiations and is made up of Mayor Karen Bass, Harris-Dawson and three other council members. Seated across the table from Bass, who is Black, Herman used the N-word while criticizing spending on homelessness. Another speaker, while railing against Bass for being in Ghana when the Palisades fire erupted, pulled out an oversized dildo and used a vulgar word for the female anatomy. Herman responded to Harris-Dawson's proposal, first reported by the Westside Current, by delivering a fusillade of anti-Black phrases, including multiple N-words, during his remarks to the council. 'Now that's protected speech,' he said, before chanting President Trump's name several times. Attorney Wayne Spindler, another frequent public commenter, called the proposal illegal. 'You tell me what to say, and I'll say it,' he shouted at council members. 'You tell me how to say it, and what to f— say. You tell me how to dress. You tell me how to walk. You tell me what language to listen to.' Police arrested Spindler in 2016 after he turned in a public comment card featuring a drawing of a Klansman holding a noose, a man hanging from a tree and the N-word to describe then-City Council President Herb Wesson, who is Black. Wesson obtained a restraining order against Spindler that same year, but the L.A. County district attorney's office declined to file charges, citing free speech concerns. The city's elected officials have won restraining orders against other public speakers. In 2023, a judge issued an order requiring that Donald Harlan, who often spoke at meetings, stay at least 100 yards away from Councilmember Bob Blumenfield, his home, his office and his car. That case stemmed from a meeting where Blumenfield, who is Jewish, ordered Harlan removed for yelling from the audience. After being told to leave, Harlan screamed: 'Bob, you're f— dead, you f— Jew! I'm going to f— kill all your f— Jewish f— people!' Council members have received a number of complaints about racist language in recent weeks. Jorge Nuño, who was appointed to the city's new Charter Reform Commission, sent a letter to the council saying he and his family had to listen to profanity and anti-Black slurs while in the room for his confirmation hearing. 'I felt bad for my parents,' Nuño told The Times. 'Because it was their first time at City Hall, and they're hearing all this stuff. It was pretty disturbing.' Nuño later resigned from the post for unrelated reasons. Rob Quan, an organizer with the group Unrig LA, said he understands how upsetting the language at council meetings can be. But he argued that the public has been discouraged from attending meetings not just because of hate speech, but because of other actions taken by Harris-Dawson that reduce opportunities to speak. Harris-Dawson recently ended phone-in public comment, forcing residents to drive downtown to address their elected officials during meetings. The council president regularly puts a time limit on the amount of public comment permitted, Quan said. Quan predicted the city would spend a lot of time and money defending Harris-Dawson's measure in court — even as the tiny contingent of foul-mouthed commenters finds new and more creative ways to torment the council. Harris-Dawson said he conferred with free speech experts before drafting his measure. For now, he is declining to say what other words might be added to the proposal. 'Attacking someone's personhood is not political speech. It's just an attack, that's all it is,' he said. 'We're going to try to get in all the terms.'
Yahoo
22-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Letters to the Editor: You'll really miss civil service protections when they're gone
To the editor: I support UC Berkeley School of Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky's position on protecting certain federal agency executives from arbitrary firings by the current president. However, I wish he would have been more direct in showing how giving such power to the president could nullify the important goals and functions of particular agencies. Chemerinsky pointed out that current law provides that department heads can be disciplined, which includes termination. But that must be done for cause — in other words, with actual reasons tied to the job rather than the whims of the president. Agencies that have already been affected by President Trump's unlawful removals include the National Labor Relations Board, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Federal Election Commission. Chemerinsky noted the Trump administration's position that "even civil service protections dating to 1883 are unconstitutional." For those who might not know what that means, it's simple: Civil service protections ensure that only qualified people are employed by government agencies. They must pass certain tests and a probationary period before being deemed qualified, permanent employees. And, even when permanent, they can be disciplined and terminated for cause. Civil service laws replaced the corrupt spoils system, where presidents used government jobs to reward their interests, friends and financial supporters. You can only imagine what that did to America and will do again if we go backward. This has already started, so watch out. Michael Harvey Miller, Pasadena The writer is a retired attorney... To the editor: Chemerinsky states that the "administration is relying on an extreme view of presidential power known as the unitary executive theory, which purports that Congress cannot regulate the operation of the executive branch of government in any way." Article I, Section 7 of the U.S. Constitution gives Congress the power to override a presidential veto. This seems to mean that Congress can "regulate" the executive branch. Larry Keffer, Mission Hills This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
22-02-2025
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
Letters to the Editor: You'll really miss civil service protections when they're gone
To the editor: I support UC Berkeley School of Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky's position on protecting certain federal agency executives from arbitrary firings by the current president. However, I wish he would have been more direct in showing how giving such power to the president could nullify the important goals and functions of particular agencies. Chemerinsky pointed out that current law provides that department heads can be disciplined, which includes termination. But that must be done for cause — in other words, with actual reasons tied to the job rather than the whims of the president. Agencies that have already been affected by President Trump's unlawful removals include the National Labor Relations Board, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Federal Election Commission. Chemerinsky noted the Trump administration's position that 'even civil service protections dating to 1883 are unconstitutional.' For those who might not know what that means, it's simple: Civil service protections ensure that only qualified people are employed by government agencies. They must pass certain tests and a probationary period before being deemed qualified, permanent employees. And, even when permanent, they can be disciplined and terminated for cause. Civil service laws replaced the corrupt spoils system, where presidents used government jobs to reward their interests, friends and financial supporters. You can only imagine what that did to America and will do again if we go backward. This has already started, so watch out. Michael Harvey Miller, Pasadena The writer is a retired attorney... To the editor: Chemerinsky states that the 'administration is relying on an extreme view of presidential power known as the unitary executive theory, which purports that Congress cannot regulate the operation of the executive branch of government in any way.' Article I, Section 7 of the U.S. Constitution gives Congress the power to override a presidential veto. This seems to mean that Congress can 'regulate' the executive branch. Larry Keffer, Mission Hills
Yahoo
15-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Letters to the Editor: Resist tyranny. Believe what you know to be true about Trump and the law
To the editor: I am not a young man and have voted in many presidential elections, sometimes Republican and sometimes Democrat. I've witnessed the far extremes of both parties lose, and I truly believe that most Americans are middle-of-the-roaders like me. ("Signposts on the road to authoritarian rule," Opinion, Feb. 10) That said, I have great anxiety that our democracy is under threat. A president cannot just declare part of a constitutional amendment invalid. Enacted legislation cannot just be ignored. Immigration policy and budget deficits are major issues that have developed over years; they cannot be fixed in a few weeks by firing government workers or deporting people at will. The Jan. 6, 2021, attack was reality. People currently serving in Congress were trapped inside the U.S. Capitol that day. More than 1,500 people were convicted by a jury of their peers or pleaded guilty in connection with the attack. And now we are to believe that no one did anything wrong. I cannot accept that an attack on Congress is somehow OK. It has been suggested that the Republicans in power fear retribution from President Trump. But we are a democracy, and while they may have won the election, they were not given unlimited power. I'm at a loss to understand why Republicans today cannot remember Abraham Lincoln's words extolling "government of the people, by the people, for the people" — and not just the people who agree with Trump. Walt Oliver, Santa Paula .. To the editor: Does UC Berkeley School of Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky believe that democracy in the United States will end during the next four years? Trump was elected to slow down or halt the excesses of the previous administration, not to install authoritarian rule. If he goes too far, the people will resist and vote in someone with whom Chemerinsky agrees. Robert S. Rodgers, Culver City .. To the editor: Oh, America, what have you done? You've elected a malignant narcissist to be your president, and you're well on your way to losing your democracy. In 1933, it took the newly installed Chancellor of Germany Adolf Hitler 53 days to transform that country's democracy into a dictatorship. Too many people believe it can't happen here. In Europe they didn't believe it could happen there either. Then it did. My parents saw the horror in Nazi-occupied Holland. Our Constitution can't enforce itself. People of good character must uphold it in the face of leaders who ignore it, demand loyalty to themselves, give illegal orders and fire watchdogs. Here are some rules for resisting tyranny: Do not obey in advance, defend institutions, and be ready to say "no" to illegal orders. See the work of scholars Timothy Snyder and Ruth Ben-Ghiat, and read the journalism of Masha Gessen. Matty Park, Ventura .. To the editor: I appreciate Chemerinsky's clear itemization of Trump's shredding of the U.S. Constitution, but I believe he was too polite. Citizens must awaken to our peril. Trump's violation of the law has slid or will slide us into despotism. All media must maintain reporting of the attacks on the Constitution as their primary duty. Reports on the inside pages of newspapers are not sufficient. Lloyd A. Dent, Northridge This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
