The case arose when a Texas mother was handcuffed, arrested and jailed because her two children were not wearing their seat belts. Even though the offense called for only a $50 fine, a police officer in Lago Vista placed her under arrest and hauled her off to jail, while a neighbor took care of the children. Of course, no one mentions the issue of the effects on the children of witnessing their mother being arrested. The Supreme Court upheld the arrest and basically set a nationwide precedent that makes it possible for people to be arrested for such offenses as jaywalking, a broken taillight, or just being outside late at night. The Atwater case had been brought as a violation of the "constitutional" rights allegedly protected by Amendment 4 to the Constitution of 1787, which is against unreasonable searches and seizures. This was so narrowly interpreted, that the Court only applied it to people in their homes; once a person leaves their home, they are subject to arrest for any violation of law, regardless of how insignificant it might be.

The Supreme Court has been expanding police powers for some time now. In recent years, the Court has allowed police the freedom to stop motorists for the most minor traffic offenses, and once stopped, police can now search the vehicle without a search warrant. Critics charge the Court with turning traffic stops into drug searches, which has only enabled increases in police abuse of the civilian population, including the controversial but widely substantiated "racial profiling" stops, by which police target non-white minorities for traffic stops. Justice Souter, who sided with the majority against the civil rights of motorists, nevertheless criticized the policeman who arrested Gail Atwater, because he exercised "extremely poor judgment" by arresting the mother and taking her to jail. Yet Souter voted with the majority, because they were unwilling to rein in the "traditional" authority of the police to arrest anyone who commits a crime of any kind in their presence. Of course, this reference to the so-called traditional authority of police is a direct indicator of the fact that the republic of the United States is a police state that is literally dominated by local, county, state and national police agencies. It completely undermines the idea that people have rights which were not given to them by the police state, but which they inherited as a nation as a birthright. Rights such as freedom from arbitrary arrest, the right to due process of law, and especially the ancient rights to receive justice, mercy and peace as benefits of a properly constituted government.

The ACLU's legal director, Steven R. Shapiro, called the ruling "disappointing and disturbing. It is inherently unreasonable for the police to put you in jail for an offense that would not send you to jail after you were convicted." The jails and prisons of the police state are already full of inmates who committed political crimes, and now the crunch will be on to arrest anyone who challenges any policeman's judgment, even in the most polite terminology.

SCALING BACK THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT OF 1964

On Tuesday, April 24th, 2001, the Supreme Court made it harder to enforce the nation's civil rights laws, and has put into doubt established principles that have enabled the country to have some level of civil peace since the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1964, including the rights of women. The new ruling states that schools and colleges that have discriminatory policies against non-white minorities, may not be sued by the individuals whose policies discriminate against them.

Agencies that receive federal funding can still be sued for discrimination against individuals due to their race or national origin. However, they can no longer sue on the grounds that their rules or policies have an unduly harsh impact on minorities. Republicans predict that this will end many lawsuits now pending in the courts, however, it has the same effect as disallowing legitimate complaints from being heard. The most important right any human being has is not in the Bill of Rights, but in the common law, which provides that if someone or an institution causes an individual damages, they are entitled to recourse through the justice system. By disallowing legitimate complaints from being heard in the courts, it is the equivalent of undermining the most significant civil rights Americans have ever had.

Tuesday's ruling also threw into doubt the future effectiveness of Title IX, the federal law that prohibits discrimination based on gender. The 1972 law forced most schools to increase their budgets for female athletics, and is famous for revolutionizing women's sports. The basic issues brought before the Supreme Court were do civil rights laws apply narrowly to intentional discrimination or more broadly to all policies that have a discriminatory effect on non-white minorities; and who can enforce these laws, federal officials or individuals bringing lawsuits. Since the mid-1960s, civil rights laws have been broadly interpreted to cover discrimination, and have been enforced through private lawsuits brought by the actual individuals who were discriminated against. The Supreme Court's decision came down squarely on the side of narrowly applying the anti-discrimination laws to deliberate racial discrimination; but even when the lynchings of black people had reached epidemic proportions, the criminals who carried out these acts of violence rarely admitted that what motivated them was simply total racism. Now, today, after decades of change making racial discrimination illegal, the majority of racists are smart enough not to mention that racism is what drove their decisions to discriminate against non-white minorities, which means that the ugly head of racial discrimination has been given a green light to rise again by the highest court in the United States.

Richard Samp, counsel for the right-wing Washington Legal Foundation, called the ruling "a huge win. It will wipe out hundreds of lawsuits in the fields of education and the environment." He added that while the Court did not strike down the federal regulations that forbid state policies that have discriminatory effect on minorities, the "the opinion offers a clear invitation to challenge the regulations in the future." The ruling leaves it unclear as to whether there remains any legal way to stop discriminatory policies.

Furthermore, the ruling rejected the private rights of individuals who suffered damages as a result of discrimination, from bringing lawsuits that have been the most successful in disputes over biased policies. The case decided Tuesday had been brought by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which had sued Alabama for adopting an English-only policy for residents seeking drivers' licenses. A federal judge in Alabama, and the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, agreed that the English-only policy had a discriminatory effect, especially on Latinos. Alabama's attorney general appealed on the basis of states' rights grounds, and prevailed. Ironically, the current Supreme Court has enabled the revival of states' rights doctrines that have caused so much conflict in the United States, that in the end they actually were an essential cause of the Civil War. Now, state employees cannot sue for overtime pay, and employees of public agencies cannot sue in the event that their just civil rights are not respected by state governments, because the Supreme Court saw fit to revive the doctrines of the sovereignty of the states, which is completely contrary to the idea of one nation under one set of laws, a government of law. However, when the issue of medical marijuana came before the high court, after being approved by democratic elections in at least half-a-dozen states, were denied the protection of state sovereignty.

It reflects on the Courts low opinion of democratic process, not only on the issue of the right of a state to legalize marijuana for the chronically ill, but in a much larger context, the Supreme Court showed its contempt for democratic electoral processes when it stepped into the General Election of 2000, and disallowed a recounting of the Florida ballots, which effectively installed a president who actually lost the popular vote in the United States. The ruling also deals a severe blow to the environmental justice movement. Some states and municipalities have been sued for locating incinerators and garbage dumps in neighborhoods that are predominantly inhabited by non-white minorities. Lawyers acting on behalf of these communities have sued state and city agencies on the grounds that their actions have had an unfair and unequal effect on the health and safety of minorities. The American Civil Liberties Union accused the Supreme Court of crippling the enforcement of civil rights. Also, by closing down the right of aggrieved individuals to seek private redress through lawsuits, and only empowering federal officials to enforce the civil rights laws, it puts the civil rights laws in jeopardy. Especially when men like George W. Bush, and Attorney General Ashcroft, are the individuals who would have to do the enforcing.

The police state has expanded its powers under the auspices of the Supreme Court, proving that there is not one branch of the republic's government that actually represents the people of the United States. The genuine danger this poses to average Americans may not be realized immediately, but there can be no doubt this puts more power in the hands of tyrants than has been invested in any undemocratic regime since Nazi Germany. This may sound extreme, because any time any regime is compared to Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy, it seems a far reach; but when these two fascist powers took control of their respective countries, they broke down the protections of individuals the same way, piecemeal, one law, one ruling, at a time. It's a slippery slope, and we're now on it. Is the police state worth it? Is the loss of the civil rights of Americans a positive development? Conservatives may not like the ACLU, but they seem to forget that institutions like the ACLU are not only acting to protect the interests of liberals and moderates, but are concerned with the general rights of Americans, including conservatives, and are actually only trying to sound the alarm about the deterioration of a system of government that has always had a racist foundation, since its inception in 1791. The time is coming upon us when we Americans will have to choose between the continuation of a system of government that has completely failed to represent the American national interest, and the restoration of traditional constitutional government that by its very nature evolved out of restraints imposed upon it by the people, for over a thousand years.

SOURCE: Excerpted from two articles in the Los Angeles Times, Orange County Edition, Wednesday, April 25, 2001. The source articles for information used in this WFI article derived from "Supreme Court Scales Back Part of '64 Civil Rights Act," by David G. Savage; and "Justices Back Arrest for Not Using Seat Belt," by David G. Savage and Josh Meyer. This information is provided as a public service for the national interest of the American people.