Second Circuit rules for government in post-9/11 detention case News
Second Circuit rules for government in post-9/11 detention case

[JURIST] The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit [official website] ruled [decision; PDF] Friday that post-arrest detention is legal in cases where the detainees are reasonably detained. The case, Turkmen v. Ashcroft [CCR backgrounder], challenged the alleged racial profiling, arbitrary detention and abuse of Muslim, Arab, and South Asian men swept up after 9/11. This most recent ruling affirms that immigration law can be used as a pretext for detention, and that there is "no authority clearly establishing an equal protection right to be free of selective enforcement of the immigration laws based on national origin, race, or religion at the time of plaintiffs’ detentions." The Second Circuit did not dismiss claims of abuse against upper level officials, and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) [advocacy website] said in a press release that

we are still seeking justice. This ruling allows us the possibility of moving forward against high-level officials, and we will. This is an important case: immigration law cannot be used as a short-cut around the Fourth Amendment.

Even though the government admitted to no wrongdoing, it settled with five of the plaintiffs [JURIST report] for $1.26 million last month. In 2007, a district court judge granted the government's motion to dismiss [text, PDF] a number of the claims, but refused to dismiss the abuse claims. Also in 2007, the government criminally charged [JURIST report] several guards at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn official website], the location in which men were detained, with abusing prisoners.

THIS DAY @ LAW

White supremacists overthrow government in Wilmington, North Carolina

A group of white supremacists overthrew the government of Wilmington, North Carolina on November 10, 1898, killing at least dozens of Black people in the process. The city's Republican government resigned after the 500-2,000 strong white mob burned the offices of a Black-owned newspaper and terrorized black neighborhoods. The new state Democratic government passed laws in 1899 disenfranchising Black voters across North Carolina. Learn more about the 1898 Wilmington Coup.

Supreme Court limited free speech in wartime

On November 10, 1919, the US Supreme Court ruled in Abrams v. United States that the federal government could criminalize speech if it was of a type tending to bring about harmful results, in this case, resistance to the United States war effort. In a powerful dissenting opinion, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes countered that even during wartime, free speech could only be curtailed when there was clear and "present danger of immediate evil or an intent to bring it about."

Leonid Brezhnev dies

On November 10, 1982, Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev died of a heart attack. He had served as leader of the USSR from October 1964 until his death. Following his death, the Soviet Union cycled through three more leaders during the 1980s until Mikhail Gorbachev allowed the country to dissolve in 1991. Read an obituary of Leonid Brezhnev from the New York Times.