Home » About » Newsletters » May 1998
Legal Updates
School Prayer
The ACLU filed a class action lawsuit in Jacksonville on May 15 on behalf of students and parents seeking to prevent religious exercises during high school graduation ceremonies in June in Duval County. The exercises include prayers by selected "student chaplains", and reflect practices that have been found to violate the Establishment Clause when challenged elsewhere in the U.S. by the ACLU. A previous lawsuit with similar claims was brought in by the ACLU in Jacksonville in 1994, but was vacated, without a decision on its merits, by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in 1997 after all students who had brought the earlier suit graduated. Our skilled and tenacious cooperating attorneys are William Sheppard and D. Gray Thomas, of. in Jacksonville, who brought the earlier suit.
Students' First Amendment Rights
The Greater Miami ACLU Chapter is providing legal representation for seven of nine high school students known as the "Killian Nine" (see picture) who were arrested and jailed(!) and falsely accused of racist "hate crimes" after they distributed an underground newspaper at school, entitled "The First Amendment," that disparaged the school's principal. Criminal charges were dropped, as were expulsion proceedings against the students, but each student was suspended and transferred to a new school. A civil rights lawsuit by the ACLU on behalf of the students and their parents is expected to be filed this summer. Attorneys representing the students have included Benjamin Waxman, Val Jonas, and Elizabeth Morgan in Miami.
Illegal Arrests of Hispanic Day Laborers
A federal district court certified an ACLU case as a class action lawsuit that is brought on behalf of 400 day laborers arrested and jailed in Miami on the ground they were seeking temporary employment. That's not a misprint a 1993 Dade County ordinance makes it "unlawful" to loiter for the purpose of seeking temporary employment of less than thirty days. 100% of the documented arrests under the ordinance have been of Hispanic males. Pending claims allege the arrests violated the First and Fourth Amendments and reflected intentional race discrimination. Cooperating attorneys include ACLU of Florida legal director Andy Kayton, Rosemary Furman, and Dione Carroll in Miami.
First Amendment Rights of Public Officials
A federal district court on May 12 dismissed as moot the First Amendment claims of a Dade County advisory board member, Peggi McKinley, that were brought by the ACLU. McKinley was terminated as a member of the Dade County Film, Print and Broadcasting Advisory Board last September after the Miami Herald quoted her questioning the adverse economic impact on the entertainment industry of a Dade County Commission resolution that prohibits the county from doing business with individuals or companies doing business with Cuba. McKinley's efforts to be reinstated became moot when the Dade County Commissioner who appointed her, Bruce Kaplan, pleaded guilty to felony charges in April. He had to resign from office, and all of his appointments ended as a matter of law concurrent with the end of his term. An appeal is being considered.
