evolution

Yesterday, I pointed to a couple of pieces about the “french-fry case,” and how it will be sure to dog the Supreme Court Justice nominee John Roberts. I didn’t comment further, because I’m not a lawyer and, well, you all (most of you, anyway) can read.

Here’s the gist of this case, as I understand it: The city of Washington has a ordinance — no food of any kind on the subway. Seems like a reasonable rule — maybe the city’s tired of paying people to pick up trash.

A 12-year-old girl brings French fries into the station, eats one in the sight of a police officer, and is handcuffed and driven to the police station. That seems unreasonable (no — that is unreasonable), and were I the girl’s father, I might want to sue the city.

The girl’s mother does exactly that, on the girl’s behalf. Their lawyer makes their case on grounds that the Washington police violated the girl’s Fourth (“unreasonable searches and seizures”) and Fifth (“due process”) Amendment rights. I’m not sure how the Fourth Amendment comes into play here (maybe someone can help me out on that), but the argument on Fifth Amendment grounds was that at the time, DC law at the time on litter in the subway was essentially “adults are cited, juveniles are arrested.”

Enter Judge John Roberts. He, writing for a unanimous three-judge panel, ruled that the police did not violate the girls Fourth or Fifth Amendment rights. Why he ruled this way on Fourth Amendment grounds seems clear — the fries were in plain sight. The People for the American Way, which stridently opposes Roberts’ nomination to the Supreme Court, describes the reason for the panel’s ruling on Fifth Amendment grounds thusly:

In rejecting the equal protection claim, Roberts held that the law requiring harsher treatment of juveniles was rationally related to “the legitimate goal of promoting parental awareness and involvement with children who commit delinquent acts.”

Fine — many cities have curfew laws for juveniles; my hometown passed one while I was in high school. I have no problem there. My point in all of this is that the question before Judge Roberts and his panel was not whether this policy was a bad idea or not, but whether or not the policy violated the girl’s Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights — and they ruled unanimously that it didn’t. The court doesn’t get to decide law based on their opinion of the policy’s wisdom, and they didn’t. Even the People for the American Way in their brief opposing Roberts (which I’ve linked above) do not mount a serious case that he decided wrongly.

So, what’s the big deal?

Now turn on your cable TV and get a mental picture of all the hairdos blabbering away. Reading all of the above, and keeping that picture in mind, what charge do you think might be levelled at Roberts by someone who hadn’t bothered to read all of that?

You guessed it — “he supports the arrest and detainment of 12-year-old girls!!!!!!!”

Here’s what Roberts actually wrote in his opinion.

No one is very happy about the events that led to this litigation. A twelve-year-old girl was arrested, searched, and handcuffed. Her shoelaces were removed, and she was transported in the windowless rear compartment of a police vehicle to a juvenile processing center, where she was booked, fingerprinted, and detained until released to her mother some three hours later — all for eating a single french fry in a Metrorail station. The child was frightened, embarrassed, and crying throughout the ordeal. The district court described the policies that led to her arrest as “foolish,” and indeed the policies were changed after those responsible endured the sort of publicity reserved for adults who make young girls cry. The question before us, however, is not whether these policies were a bad idea, but whether they violated the Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution. Like the district court, we conclude that they did not, and accordingly we affirm.

I think it’s pretty clear that Roberts, along with most of the rest of the country, thinks it’s silly to arrest a 12-year old for such a petty thing, especially when a simple “Hey kid, could you throw that away?” from the cop might have sufficed. You’ll be pleased to know that as a result of the negative publicity from this case, the law was changed — which, after all, is the way it’s supposed to work, as Roberts wrote.

The district court had and we too may have thoughts on the wisdom of this policy choice — it is far from clear that the gains in certainty of notification are worth the youthful trauma and tears — but it is not our place to second-guess such legislative judgments.

Anyway, as I wrote yesterday’s post, I felt it would be a matter of time before someone made the distortion which I’ve just described. It turns out that period of time is about 24 hours. I mean, I’m a lowly mathematician — why couldn’t someone as smart as a journalist do all that reading?

More here.

UPDATE: Law bloggers (there aren’t any of THOSE, right?) are especially invited to comment.

UPDATE: I was just kidding before. I’m sure each and every one of you is quite literate. We’re cool, right?

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 21st, 2005 at 23:59 and is filed under politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.