2011 in Review: The Courage of our Clients

From Sara Rose in Pittsburgh:

The Mort family, with Isabella

As I reflect on the past year as an ACLU-PA staff attorney, foremost in my mind are the clients I represented. Sometimes, we focus more on the civil liberties we defend than the individuals who are affected - and while we say “the Constitution is our client,” it's the people we represent who illustrate why the Constitution is so important. It takes courage and perseverance to stand up for your rights. Their will and determination protect those rights for all of us. 

Steve Conway, a devoted father of three, became our client after Fayette County Children and Youth Services arbitrarily cut off his contact with his children. No one ever accused Steve of abusing or neglecting any of his children - CYS arbitrarily decided his legally consensual relationship with a younger woman constituted child abuse. He spent two years away from his children, including one with no contact whatsoever - no phone calls, not even e-mails. A federal judge ruled in his favor just before Thanksgiving 2010 - a few days after Steve was killed in a car crash.

Debra and Robert Conway, Steve's Parents, have continued the lawsuit on behalf of Steve’s estate. That was not an easy decision. They were forced to relive one of the most painful events in the life of their family – the government-enforced separation of their son from his children – and testify about those events during a four-day jury trial. Debra and Robert felt it was that important to stand up for their son’s rights, and to ensure that the heartache they endured at the hands of Fayette County CYS would not happen to another family.

Liz Mort and Alex Rodriguez were also separated from their child – this time in Lawrence County, by CYS and by Jameson Hospital in New Castle. Just three days after their daughter, Isabella, was born, two caseworkers arrived with two police officers to take her away. Liz had failed a drug test, administered by the hospital without her knowledge while she was in labor.

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Sexting, and What It Means to be a Girl

(Cross-posted with the ACLU's Blog of Rights)

On January 15, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit heard arguments in Miller, et al. v. Skumanick, a child pornography case that, oddly, involves no child pornography. The case goes back to 2006, when two girls aged 12 were photographed by another friend on her digital camera. The two girls were depicted from the waist up, wearing bras. In a separate situation, our third client was photographed as she emerged from the shower, with a towel wrapped around her waist and the upper body exposed. Neither of the photos depicted genitalia or any sexual activity or context. In 2008 the girls' school district learned that these and other photos were circulating, confiscated several students' cell phones, and turned the photos in question over to the Wyoming County district attorney, George Skumanick, Jr.

Skumanick sent a letter to the girls and their parents, offering an ultimatum. They could attend a five-week re-education program of his own design, which included topics like "what it means to be a girl in today's society" and "non-traditional societal and job roles." They would also be placed on probation, subjected to random drug testing, and required to write essays explaining how their actions were wrong. If the girls refused the program, the letter explained, the girls would be charged with felony child pornography, a charge that carries a possible 10-year prison sentence.

Nineteen families received these letters. Sixteen consented to re-education. Three decided their girls would benefit more from a lesson in constitutional law than from Skumanick's views on "what it means to be a girl in today's society,” and called the ACLU of Pennsylvania. In March 2009, a federal judge granted a temporary restraining order preventing Mr. Skumanick and the Wyoming County, Pa., district attorney's office from going ahead with any prosecution. Now it falls to the Court of Appeals to decide whether the DA's office (Skumanick lost his bid for re-election in November) can proceed with prosecution.

This case has branded as the "Sexting Case," and headlines ask questions like "Sexting: Child porn or child's play?" But this case has nothing to do with sex, and nothing to do with pornography. This is a case of a government official using the law to force his personal morals on others. Last February, Skumanick told a group of students and parents that he had the authority to prosecute a girl for being photographed in a bikini on a beach, because the photo was "provocative." In their brief to the 3rd Circuit, the DA's office asserts their opinion that no person could exchange such photographs for any other reason except sexual gratification. Their attorney reasserted this right before the court, stating that a minor's transmission of any photograph of herself containing any nudity is never protected under the First Amendment.

Even if the photographs in question could be construed as pornographic, Skumanick lacked any evidence that the girls had transmitted the photos. His only basis for probable cause, in the words of their attorney, was "the presence of [those] photographs on the cell phones of [their] classmates." It was this lack of probable cause that led to the initial restraining order.

Interestingly, none of the classmates who distributed the photos received letters from Skumanick. Only the girls who appeared in the photos were threatened with child porn charges. If the DA did in fact regard these photos as pornographic, why not file distribution charges against the boys? A clue may be found in their argument before the 3rd Circuit. In narrating the case, their attorney explained how, after the girls were photographed, "high school boys did as high school boys will do, and traded the photos among themselves."

Ultimately, that's what this case comes down to: one man's view on how a young woman should conduct herself. The boys who traded the photos bear no responsibility and require no re-education. Instead the girls are threatened with felony charges and life-long registration as sex offenders. To apply such a penalty, designed to protect minors against exploitation, is a grotesque misapplication - and that's once again assuming that the photographs in question could possibly be construed as pornographic. In reality, there was no way such charges would ever stick, and the DA's office had to know this. The child porn charges were merely a threat, to force the parents to subject their children to Skumanick’s moral view of the world, where any and all child nudity is illegal and bras and bikinis are pornographic.

Instead these parents asserted their constitutional right to dictate the upbringing of their children; their right to say "we don't think this was wrong, and we're not forcing our children to put that in writing, and we're not forcing them to attend your re-education session," without fear of retribution from the DA's office. It is certainly important, in this era of Facebook and Twitter and text messaging, that children learn the consequences of sharing digital photographs of themselves, but as ACLU of Pennsylvania legal director Witold Walczak puts it, "prosecutors should not be using heavy artillery like child-pornography charges to teach that lesson."

The DA’s office argues that the federal court had no place issuing a restraining order, and that the proper procedure would have been to allow the prosecution to go forward and for the girls to mount a constitutional defense against the charges – but the prosecution itself was the threat. The agony of a felony prosecution, of hiring attorneys and mounting a defense, of the media attention surrounding the prosecution of a 16-year-old girl as a child pornographer were, in Walczak’s words, “the Sword of Damacles,” the threat of retribution if these parents refused to turn their children over to Skumanick.

The central question of this case was perhaps best framed by Judge Thomas L. Ambro during 3rd Circuit arguments: "Should we allow the state to force children, by threat of prosecution, to attend a session espousing the views of one particular government official on what it means to be a girl?"

Chris in Philly

NY Times: Gonzales' time is up

Calling him "The Failed Attorney General," the New York Times today called for the ouster of AG Alberto Gonzales, based largely on numerous civil rights and constitutional violations:

He has never stopped being consigliere to Mr. Bush's imperial presidency. If anyone, outside Mr. Bush's rapidly shrinking circle of enablers, still had doubts about that, the events of last week should have erased them.
...
The administration said that, as with many powers it has arrogated since the 9/11 attacks, this radical change was essential to fast and nimble antiterrorism efforts, and it promised to police the use of the letters carefully.

But like so many of the administration's promises, this one evaporated before the ink on those letters could dry. The F.B.I. director, Robert Mueller, admitted Friday that his agency had used the new powers improperly.
...
It was Mr. Gonzales, after all, who repeatedly defended Mr. Bush's decision to authorize warrantless eavesdropping on Americans' international calls and e-mail. He was an eager public champion of the absurd notion that as commander in chief during a time of war, Mr. Bush can ignore laws that he thinks get in his way.
...
The attorney general helped formulate and later defended the policies that repudiated the Geneva Conventions in the war against terror, and that sanctioned the use of kidnapping, secret detentions, abuse and torture. He has been central to the administration's assault on the courts, which he recently said had no right to judge national security policies, and on the constitutional separation of powers.

His Justice Department has abandoned its duties as guardian of election integrity and voting rights. It approved a Georgia photo-ID law that a federal judge later likened to a poll tax, a case in which Mr. Gonzales's political team overrode the objections of the department's professional staff.

The Justice Department has been shamefully indifferent to complaints of voter suppression aimed at minority voters. But it has managed to find the time to sue a group of black political leaders in Mississippi for discriminating against white voters.

No one should hold their breath that Gonzo is going anywhere anytime soon. But kudos to the Times for keeping the heat on an administration that continues to abuse our basic constitutional protections.

Here is national ACLU's response to the revelation about the PATRIOT Act.

Andy in Harrisburg

I hate to say we told you so, but....

And they all said we were paranoid. Of course the government would never misuse the excessive powers given to them under the PATRIOT Act. Only a bunch of anti-American pinko commies would even suggest such a thing.

Except that now the Justice Department’s own Office of the Inspector General (OIG) has more than just suggested such a thing - it flat out said in a report issued today that the FBI has misused the provision of the PATRIOT Act that allows the agency to demand sensitive personal information without judicial supervision.

According to the Washington Post, the OIG "found that FBI agents used national security letters without citing an authorized investigation, claimed 'exigent' circumstances that did not exist in demanding information and did not have adequate documentation to justify the issuance of letters."

This is the part where we get to say "I told you so" (but in a really nice way, of course). Check out the ACLU's 2003 report, Unpatriotic Acts: The FBI's Power to Rifle Through Your Records and Personal Belongings Without Telling You.

Ya know, maybe that whole "checks and balances" thing wasn't such a bad thing after all. Congress, you might want to look into it.

Sara in Philly

Here come the stormtroopers

This is going to set the conspiracy theorists on overdrive, with good reason.

A disturbing recent phenomenon in Washington is that laws that strike to the heart of American democracy have been passed in the dead of night. So it was with a provision quietly tucked into the enormous defense budget bill at the Bush administration's behest that makes it easier for a president to override local control of law enforcement and declare martial law.

Andy in H-burg