States brief ~ Florida judge dismisses school districts’ funding suit

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States brief ~ Florida judge dismisses school districts’ funding suit

June 10, 2005 05:52:00 pm

[JURIST] In Friday's report on law in the states, Circuit Judge P. Kevin Davey of Florida's 11th Judicial District [official website] today dismissed a lawsuit filed by five of Florida's larger school boards over changes in the way the state's education budget is divided. The lawsuit was originally filed by the Miami-Dade school district and was later joined by Broward, Palm Beach, Monroe and Volusia counties. The districts argued that the new formula adopted by the legislature in 2004, which gives more money to districts with a higher cost of living, was "arbitrary, capricious, non-uniform, and discriminatory." After listening to testimony and arguments for two and a half days, Judge Davey found that the districts had not made their case and dismissed the lawsuit. Together, the five districts have lost over 250 million dollars that they would have received had the formula not changed. AP has more.

In other state legal news …

The US Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals Friday upheld Georgia's payday lending law [text]. The law, passed last year by the legislature and largely supported by military commanders, outlawed short-term, high-interest loans that were largely targeted to military personnel. Eleven companies sued to prevent enforcement of the law, claiming it denied financial protection to military personnel and the poor who need to borrow against future paychecks. Read the opinion [PDF]. AP has more.
The Court of Appeals of New York [official website] has upheld the state's "three strikes" law for violent felons. In People v. Rivera [opinion], handed down Thursday, the court rejected the argument that the sentencing proceedings under the law violate a 2000 Supreme Court case. The law allows judges to give longer sentences if the judge finds that "extended incarceration and lifetime supervision will best serve the public interest" based on the "history and character of the defendant and the nature and circumstances of his criminal conduct." Rivera's attorney plans to file an appeal to the United States Supreme Court this summer. AP has more.
The Virginia Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of the state's Sexually Violent Predator Act. The act allows authorities to keep "sexually violent predators" confined in mental hospitals after their prison term expires if the state can show that the offenders have difficulties controlling their behavior and are likely to commit another sex crime. In its opinion [text], the court found Thursday that the Act satisfied the constitutional criteria recently laid out by the Supreme Court. AP has more.

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail

On April 16, 1963, an incarcerated Martin Luther King, Jr. (arrested for demonstrating in defiance of a court order) wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail in response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama.

Part of the letter read: We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. Read the full text of the Letter.