BEST AND WORST OF 2007 - SAN DIEGO CIVIL LIBERTIES

ACLU List of Hope and Shame on the Voice of San Diego Blog

(The following piece originally appeared as two posts on Voice of San Diego's Cafe San Diego Blog in February 2008.)

BY Kevin Keenan, San Diego ACLU Executive Director

With the Oscars ceremony up in the air, it seems like a good time to review the Best and Worst of 2007 in Civil Liberties.

Civil liberties, of course, are those fundamental freedoms that the government must respect, as well as your right to be treated fairly and equally by the government. (More.)

Let’s start with the Best of 2007 and focus on local issues. (For national bests and worsts, see this great list.)

Here are the nominees for 2007 Most Hopeful Developments for Civil Liberties in the San Diego area.

City Council Marriage Vote/ Jerry Sanders’ Emotional Reversal: I wouldn’t call Mayor Sanders’ emotional about-face on equal marriage rights “courageous.” After all, he stood up for his own right to give away his daughter in marriage. But it was very, very important. To win fair, equal marriage for all, it will take many more changes of heart like Jerry Sanders’. The ACLU and allies have a marriage rights case pending before the California Supreme Court, but we may have to win this battle in people’s hearts rather than in the courtroom.

Ban on Escondido Anti-Landlord, Anti-Immigrant Ordinances: Local governments can’t go after landlords and immigrants the way Escondido did anymore, thanks to a new state law that landlords and the ACLU lobbied for.

Cleaning Up the Sheriff’s Department: After a series of fatal shootings, the Sheriff commissioned an extensive, external audit of its use of force policies and practices. The audit is leading to good things, and, significantly, the Sheriff agreed to bring back the outside auditors to report on how they are doing.

Reining in the Lawless County Supervisors: The County’s defiance of state laws on medical marijuana continues, but the first rulings in the litigation have been good for those favoring the rule of law, science, and medicine (over ideology). Further isolating our cowboy County Board, the City of San Diego has decided to file an amicus brief in support of adhering to state law.

Free Speech: It is startling just how much the government tries to take away free speech, and how much erosion of free speech would go unchecked but for local vigilance. Here are a few examples with happy endings from 2007.
Fashion Valley Mall: This one started with striking Union-Tribune workers at and ended with a great California Supreme Court decision affirming that shopping malls are modern public squares that must honor the freedom of speech.
UCSD Speech Code: UCSD tried to zone out and water down free speech , but, the ACLU weighed in and students took action. The school seems to be reversing course.
Holding Signs in Poway: Trying to stamp out the scourge of sign-spinning, Poway > drafted an ordinance that would have swept in just about anyone holding a sign on a sidewalk. ACLU reminded them of the First Amendment, and the council backed down…for now.

Did I leave anyone out, dear reader? The next category will be Worst of 2007, after these messages.

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In the category of 2007 Worst in Civil Liberties in the San Diego area, the nominees are as follows. (Again, national bests and worsts. Rest assured that President Bush is up for a Lifetime Achievement Award for damage to our constitutional freedoms).

Educational Inequality: As the most recent evidence of the achievement gap confirms, we have yet to meaningfully tackle the unequal access to educational opportunities in our community. This is a challenge—indeed, an abuse—that we ignore at our own peril. There are many parts of the solution: the ACLU’s victory in Williams v. California gives every public school student the right to adequate textbooks, facilities, and teachers; curriculum equality through equal access to A-G courses needs more attention; and our school systems need to do a better job of learning from great models out there, like BLCI, High Tech High , and PIQE, to name a few.

McGonigle Canyon: Emblematic of a documented spike in hate crimes against Latinos, the destruction of the property of homeless migrant workers in McGonigle Canyon ranks among the worst, local offenses of 2007. The crime remains unsolved, and the rhetoric gets more and more dehumanizing. The Minutemen’s burning in effigy of a Catholic priest is part of the same shameful discourse.

Poor People’s Privacy: The travesty was obvious to Stephen Colbert and the New York Times, but not this Supreme Court: Poor people should not lose their Fourth Amendment right to privacy in their homes just because they seek public benefits. San Diego County’s Project 100% requires those seeking public benefits to submit to unannounced searches of their homes by licensed law enforcement officers who rummage in drawers and check toothbrushes to see if the applicants have misstated the number of people in their home. We lost in court, but you could tell Bonnie Dumanis to end the program.

Police Secrecy: Sen. Gloria Romero tried to restore some public access to information about police officers who are disciplined for misconduct following a bad California Supreme Court Decision. But, her bill, SB1019, was met with a brazen threat from the police officer lobby who promised to go after the speaker’s term limits reform and “Ensure that it be understood that this will only be the beginning.” Legislators have a chance to rebuff their lacking profiles in courage this year.

Harassment and Abuse of Vulnerable Groups During the Wildfires: Mixed in with all the good we heard about, there is the untold story of how vulnerable groups—immigrants, the poor, the imprisoned, and others—were mistreated during the response to the awful wildfires of October: the unlawful detention by San Diego Police and deportation of a family at Qualcomm; kicking people out of Qualcomm based on misguided identity checks at Qualcomm; the harassment of Latino evacuees by Sheriff’s deputies at the Del Mar Fairgrounds; and dubious restrictions on freedom of the press, which made it harder to cover these abuses. Ahead of the next fire or disaster, the ACLU, Immigrant Rights Consortium, and Justice Overcoming Boundaries are using our documentation of what went wrong to build on what went right.