JURIST - Paper Chase: Friday, March 9, 2012

[JURIST] United Kingdom Prime Minister David Cameron [official profile; BBC profile] spoke on new plans to reform the nation's adoption process, basing it on speed rather than ethnicity. Currently, white children are three times more likely to be adopted than minority children because of the United Kingdom's standard of making an ethnic match. The country's current adoption law, the Adoption and Children Act 2002 [text] requires consideration of matching prospective adopted children with parents on religion, race, ethnicity, language and culture. Cameron and the UK government are proposing several changes to the adoption process in order to achieve quicker adoptions. Local authorities will soon be required to reduce delay rather than wait for a "perfect match." If an adoptive match is not found within three months, local authorities are required to place the child on the national adoption register. Cameron's reforms also detail procedural and legal changes to lower the threshold for children to be fostered by people approved for adoption. The proposal was welcomed by various organizations including the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) [advocacy website], but they also expressed concerns that if speed is the main key factor, it may lead to hasty decisions of adoption having only detrimental results to children. A more detailed version of the reform will be published next week by the Education Secretary Michael Gove [official website].

A similar reform was affirmed in Italy when the Court of Cassation [official website, in Italian] ruled [JURIST report] in June that couples seeking a child to adopt based on race or ethnicity should be not even allowed to apply for adoption. It held that such practice was against the Italian Constitution. The issue of who could adopt was a recent issue in the UK. The UK Charity Commission [official website] ruled in August [JURIST report] that Catholic social services agency Catholic Care [advocacy website] could not discriminate against gay couples seeking to adopt. This holding reversed a prior decision by the UK High Court in March which permitted [JURIST report] the agency to refuse considering same-sex couples as candidates for adoption.

[JURIST] International Criminal Court (ICC) [official website] chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo [official profile] expressed his support [BBC news report] on Thursday for a campaign by Invisible Children [advocacy website] to capture alleged Ugandan war criminal Joseph Kony [BBC profile; JURIST news archive]. However, Amnesty International (AI) [advocacy website] cautioned [press release] Friday that "[a]nyone joining the Kony 2012 campaign should insist that efforts to arrest Joseph Kony must respect human rights. It is also vital to make sure that any action ensures the protection of civilians in the surrounding areas." The Kony 2012 campaign initiative is a viral video by Invisible Children that calls for an international effort to arrest Kony, the leader of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) [BBC backgrounder], so he may be prosecuted by the ICC: Ocampo appears in the video and commended Invisible Children for energizing public support. AI has stressed that the arrest of Kony should be in respect to the international human rights. It further cautioned that any effort of an arrest might endanger civilians where LRA is present: "It is important to remember that many of LRA members were themselves victims of human rights violations including forcible recruitment. Forces pursuing the LRA must seek to arrest the suspects in accordance with international law."

The ICC issued an arrest warrant [text, PDF] against Kony in 2005 on 33 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity including murder, sexual enslavement, rape and abduction. In 2009, ICC stated that it is still seeking to arrest [JURIST report] Kony. He pleaded not guilty [JURIST report] to the allegations against him. Despite ICC's calling for global cooperation [JURIST report] after issuing the warrant to arrest Kony, he has remained at large.

[JURIST] A federal judge for the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York [official website] ruled [memorandum and order, PDF] Thursday that New York City may be liable for up to $128 million in backpay to minorities who took the New York Fire Department (NYFD) [official website] firefighter exam but were never hired. The award may ultimately be split among any minority applicants who took the screening test in 1999 or 2002 and were not accepted for a position immediately after being put on an eligibility list. Some firefighters, who were eventually hired from that list, may also be compensated, with the pay they did receive being factored out of their award. In the January 2010 ruling [JURIST report] pre-dating the award judgment, Judge Nicholas Garaufis "concluded that the undisputed statistical evidence Plaintiffs put forward showed that black and Hispanic candidates disproportionately failed Written Exams 7029 and 2043, were ranked disproportionately lower on the eligibility lists the exams created, and that the standard deviation analysis offered showed a very small likelihood that any of the disparities occurred by chance." The Center for Constitutional Rights, who represented black fraternal firefighter organization the Vulcan Society [advocacy websites] in the suit, praised the ruling [press release], stating that they are, "gratified that this case has finally forced the Fire Department and the City to reckon with the NYFD's decades-long legacy of discrimination and that it sends a strong message that access to the City's best jobs must be open to all." The US Department of Justice (DOJ) [official website], a party to the suit, also accused the NYFD of using discriminatory screening exams and was influential in the award ruling. The DOJ estimates that up to 2,200 applicants may be eligible for compensation.

In August, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit [official website] reinstated [JURIST report] a lawsuit filed by an African-American firefighter claiming the firefighter promotion exams used in the city of New Haven, Connecticut, are discriminatory. In 2003, the New Haven Civil Service Board (CSB) had refused to certify the results of the exam that made disproportionately more white applicants than minority applicants eligible for promotion. Applicants who qualified for promotions based on their test scores but were denied promotions filed a lawsuit against the city claiming disparate impact.

[JURIST] The Supreme Court of Mississippi [official website] ruled [opinion, PDF] 6-3 on Thursday that the pardons of nearly 200 people by Governor Haley Barbour (R-MS) were valid, despite a challenge by Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood [official websites]. Barbour pardoned 198 people before the end of his second term in office. Hood challenged these pardons, alleging that the governor's actions violated the requirements for clemency in the Mississippi Constitution [materials]. The court ruled that Barbour's pardons were lawful, reversing the lower court's decision, which granted Hood's request for a temporary restraining order.

After inititally granting clemency in January, Barbour made a statement justifying his actions [press release], including an explanation for the pardons of convicted murderers who had worked as trusties at the Governor's mansion. In 2008, President George W. Bush made several controversial pardons [JURIST report] before his time as President ended. In September of last year, the state of Georgia executed Troy Anthony Davis [advocacy website; JURIST news archive] after his eleventh-hour appeal for clemency was denied [JURIST report] by the US Supreme Court.