As reported earlier, Tucson Unified School District students Maya Arce, Korina Lopez and Nicolas Dominguez, as well as their attorneys, were down at the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco today making a case against A.R.S § 15-112, the law that pretty much made the Mexican American studies program illegal.
One of the minds in the students’ defense team, Anjana Malhotra, who is formerly a clinical teaching fellow at the Korematsu Center and is now an associate professor at SUNY Buffalo Law School, said, in summary, that they did well.
“They were concerned that the law was enforced regardless of the positive effects on students,” she said during a phone call a few hours after leaving the courtroom. The law got rid of MAS classes, “which accelerated students’ achievement, and officials who enforced the law knew that it had positive results. Also, there is a disproportionate impact on a minority Mexican American community, the law creates this disproportionate impact, how can that not be evidence of discriminatory intent?”
From an email Malhotra wrote to me in the evening:
In defending the Arizona ethnic studies ban passed for the purpose and effect of exclusively targeting and eliminating the highly successful TUSD’s Mexican American Studies classes, Arziona made three major points in the Ninth Circuit argument today that undercut its argument that the law and its actions were unconstitutional.
First, Arizona repeatedly argued that the substantial academic achievement Mexican American students gained from taking MAS classes was “irrelevant” to the facial and as-applied equal protection claims. To the contrary, and as the Judges correctly raised in questioning Arizona, the fact that the Arizona Legislature and Huppenthal exclusively eliminated classes that benefited Mexican Americans, and thus burdening Mexican Americans exclusively, is evidence of intentional discrimination supporting the argument that the statute and its enforcement violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Second, Arizona argued that a Chinese American History class would violate the statute, regardless of content – demonstrating the impermissible and sweeping overbreadth, vagueness and equal protection problems with the law. This proposition gave the Court and the audience pause—and demonstrates how the statute gives the state unlimited power to enforce the law (and did) in an arbitrary and discriminatory manner violating the Supreme Court’s test for facial and as-applied vagueness. Further, given Tom Horne’s and legislators’ express insistence that ARS 15-112’s use of the term “ethnic group” did not include to white or European ethnic groups such as Greeks and Romans, Arizona’s contention that it would ban Chinese American History, just as Mexican American classes regardless of content, establishes that the statute and enforcement is in direct violation of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by discriminating on the basis of race.
A huge question at the hearing was, if one portion of the law is invalidated, does that mean the entire thing is thrown out?
Malhotra said that if, for instance, the portion of the law banning classes for particular ethnic groups is found to be overbroad, then the entire law would be invalidated—the law doesn’t have a clause stipulating that if one portion is invalidated, the rest of the law still survives. So, the team doesn’t have to prove that ALL guidelines of the law are unconstitutional, but at least one of them is.
“Equal protection claims are hard because you have to show intentional discrimination, but it works well here because you have to show a law or government action was taken to single out a particular group, and that is exactly what this statute did,” Malhotra said.
So, good news? We won’t know for a while. In the mean time, TUSD still has to deal with the state saying its teachers are not implementing the culturally relevant curriculum in a Superintendent of Public Instruction Diane Douglas kind of way. If that’s not fixed, the district faces more budget cuts.
This article appears in Jan 8-14, 2015.
I do not want to get overconfident. Too many times courts have found the opposite to what were sensible arguments.
Does the curriculum include some troubling facts about the greatest people on planet earth? Like how Mexico leads the world in child sex crimes, that the legal age of consent is 12, that rape and sexual molestation of children, even family members, is common and accepted? Fine cultural realities to bring to our country, heh?
Or maybe that 70% of the girls and women that cross our border illegally lured by the opportunity to clean the Grijalva’s toilets are molested and raped on their journey.
Or how about the extreme and rampant racism by the light skin Mexicans against the Mestizo’s. Just ask H.T. Sanchez.
But don’t worry, as we have seen by the older woman that was killed in Tucson by an illegal in a car, no American lives are worth more than the opportunity for liberals to have a permanent second class of citizens for their domestic chores, pleasures and political exploitation.
Close TUSD.
Can we hold off on the “kick ass” rhetoric until the court issues a decision? As the article points out there are complex legal issue to be determined under the law. Let’s not break our arms slapping ourselves on the back until a decision is made by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
None of the comments posted above have anything to do with the issues being discussed before the Ninth Circuit Court. The law, which was created and nurtured to fruition by the discredited political ass clowns in state government (Russell Pearce, Tom Horne and John Huppenthal), was intended to end one specific program (MAS). No evidence has been presented to show that participation in MAS caused students to advocate or participate in the overthrow of the U.S. government or to result in resentment on the part of students attending those classes against a specific ethnic group. There is, however, evidence to show that MAS students benefit from attending those classes. Huppenthal shut MAS down because he, who never attended a day of public school as a student in grades 1-12 in Tucson, was on a mission from God to end “La Raza” (whatever that meant.)
What can we learn from the mistakes that France has now been punished for making?
Is the goal to make TUSD schools a “no go” zone?
I love this argument that it should be ok if the students showed progress.
Do radical Islamists show progress when indoctrinated?
Rat, those “no go zones” don’t actually exist. Not that Faux News ever issues corrections anywhere other than Twitter in the middle of the night on a Sunday.
What, again: Again, you make no point. All you have is an opinion that is backed up by no evidence whatsoever. That’s called faith-based logic. The other term for it is bullshit. So are your specious comments about Mexico.
Mike Anderson – then you’ll love this. You can always Google, it’s much better to be informed.
There are approximately 240,000 illegal immigrant sex offenders in the United States. This staggering statistic, rarely mentioned by the media, was revealed in a study by Deborah Schurman-Kauflin of the Violent Crimes Institute in Atlanta, Georgia. “It is clear,” she says, “that the U.S. public faces a dangerous threat from sex predators who cross the U.S. borders illegally.”
http://www.newswithviews.com/guest_opinion/guest105.htm
That study, cobarde who lacks the juevos to use a real name, is flawed. The reason that so-called “study” is not mentioned in the media, is that it is not valid. It is an extrapolation based on guess and conjecture. It is NOT accepted as legitimate by anyone other than right-wingnuts such as…well, YOU. Believe what you want to believe. I worked quite a few years in the criminal justice system here in southern AZ and your crazy assertions about Mexicans and their culture and Mexicans being more likely to be sexual predators are nativist garbage. There is no legitimate study. The study you cite is as crazy as the assertion made recently on Faux News and swallowed hook line and sinker by locos such as yourself, that Birmingham, UK is a Muslim city and non-Muslims are afraid to go there. You will believe what you want to believe, supported by pseudo-studies that someone pulls out of her ass. Your fantasies are fueled by crazy assertions that others make and that fit your own rather strange beliefs. Are you john Huppenthal, up to your old tricks, using “swaydonyms” again? It wouldn’t surprise me.
Oh, and I forgot to mention that the “Violent Crimes Institute” you cited with such authority is a one-person business run by Deborah Schurman-Kauflin, who is a psychic medium. That means she talks to….DEAD PEOPLE!!!! Just the kind of person we should all listen to and consider to be a real authority on violent crime. Maybe you can lobby for her to get a gig on Faux News talking about “no-go” zones and Muslim cities in the UK along with communicating with the dead. She’d fit right in.
Small Mexican town of Tenancingo is major source of sex trafficking pipeline to New York
The town of 10,000, about 80 miles from Mexico City, is Mexico’s undisputed cradle of sex trafficking, one end of a pipeline that leads directly to our city’s streets.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s New York field office arrested 32 sex traffickers last year; 26 of them were from Tenancingo.
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/small-town-tenancingo-mexico-city-source-new-york-sex-slaves-article-1.1088866
In Mexican villages, rape can be called a courting ritual
Mary Jordan Tuesday, July 2, 2002
http://www.ageofconsent.com/mexico.htm
The more you keep citing the bat-shit sources the more people will laugh at you. Any more psychic mediums you want to cite???
Why are ethnic studies only for Mexican-American students? Why do Mexican-Americans need this class to prop them up? What happens when the minority becomes the majority? I have no faith in the 9th circus court the most reversed and chastised court in the US.
@what again sez “rarely mentioned by the media, was revealed in a study by Deborah Schurman-Kauflin of the Violent Crimes Institute in Atlanta, Georgia.”
Yeah, let’s trust a study from an “institute” with no web presence and no record of it actually having existed beyond one person in her pajamas listening to Hannity.
http://blog.chron.com/bluebayou/2006/11/fa…