Results tagged “first amendment” from Don't Tase Me, Bro!

Despite the fact that a jury found Ward Churchill's firing from the Univ. of Colorado was unjust and politically motivated Judge Larry Naves finds the university Board of Regents, due to its "quasi-judicial immunity" from accountability, need not reinstate nor reimburse him.

Inside Higher Ed reports

The University of Colorado won just about everything it wanted, and Ward Churchill lost just about everything he wanted, in a ruling Tuesday by a state judge in Colorado.

Judge Larry J. Naves ruled that the University of Colorado Board of Regents had "quasi-judicial immunity" when it voted to fire Churchill from his tenured position teaching ethnic studies, after faculty panels found that he had committed multiple instances of research misconduct. Naves vacated an April ruling by a jury in the case that found that Churchill had been inappropriately fired. Based on that ruling, Naves could have ordered Churchill reinstated or ordered Colorado to pay him -- issues that would have been moot given that Naves vacated the jury's decision. But Naves went on and said that, even based on the jury's findings, Churchill was not entitled to his job back, or to any money
Thanks to Jonathan Turley

I'm all confused. I thought we sent the troops to Iraq to defend our rights, like the right to free speech. I think we should bring them back to defend us from Senator Jim DeMint, who is bravely defending the budget from three Berkeley activists who chained themselves to the downtown Berkeley Marine recruiting office. From the San Francisco Chronicle:

DeMint began drafting legislation Friday to cut $2.1 million in federal funding to Berkeley in a current congressional budget bill and transfer the money to the Marine Corps. The funding would include $750,000 for prospective ferry service, $87,000 for the Berkeley Unified School District nutrition education fund and $243,000 for the Chez Panisse Foundation, which promotes nutritional awareness in school lunch programs.

There is no right to speech, if they can punish your community for exercising it.

The Times-Picayune has some bad news for the people of New Orleans:

U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval's much-anticipated decision follows a mid-August hearing on whether a 1928 federal law immunizing the Corps from being sued over its flood control projects would shortstop the homeowners' class action lawsuit accusing the Corps of negligently designing the floodwalls...

In his 46-page ruling, however, Duval made it clear that the law requires him to dismiss the cases, but that he is not unaware of the hardship caused by that the Corps' actions ...

"Millions of dollars were squandered in building a levee system with respect to these outfall canals which were known to be inadequate by the Corps' own calculations... It is hopefully within the citizens of the United States power to address the failures of our laws and agencies,'' Duval said. "If not, it is certain that another tragedy such as this will occur again.''

Uh, Judge? I was sort of under the impression that's what the court was for...