Banning Flag Shirts At Schools Upheld By Ninth Circuit Court! Why Don't We Remove The Flag From All Buildings So That We Will Not Insult The World?

Ninth Circuit Upholds Ban on American Flag Shirts in a California High School

Today, the Ninth Circuit affirmed a decision by a lower federal court in San Francisco that upheld a school district’s ban on the wearing of American flag shirts on a California high school campus in 2010 during Cinco de Mayo (May 5th)—a Mexican holiday.

AFLC Co-Founder and Senior Counsel Robert Muise, who argued the case before the Ninth Circuit, commented:

“It is truly a sad day when government officials are permitted to ban the American flag on a public high school campus for any reason.  Here, school officials feared that our clients would offend ‘Mexican’ students if they wore their flag shirts to school on Cinco de Mayo, so they ordered the students to either remove their shirts or leave school in direct violation of their First Amendment rights.”

On May 5, 2010, school officials from Live Oak High School in the Morgan Hill Unified School District, California, prevented five students from wearing American flag t-shirts because the officials did not want to offend “Mexican” students on “their day.”  That day, some students at the school were celebrating the Mexican holiday known as Cinco de Mayo.  School officials approved the Cinco de Mayo celebration, which was co-sponsored by M.E.Ch.A, a school-sanctioned student group.  While school officials claimed that they were concerned about racial tension and potential threats of violence in light of an altercation that occurred between Mexican and American students on campus during a 2009 Cinco de Mayo celebration, the officials nonetheless approved the 2010 Mexican celebration, demonstrating that their fear of violence was nothing short of a pretext.

Moreover, despite banning the American flag, school officials permitted the Mexican students participating in the Cinco de Mayo celebration to wear clothing that had the colors of the Mexican flag.  The Ninth Circuit held that this was permissible because school officials were not concerned about any of the American students engaging in violence against the Mexican-flag wearing students.  The Ninth Circuit stated, “As the district court noted, the students offered no evidence ‘demonstrating that students wearing the colors of the Mexican flag were targeted for violence.’  The students offered no evidence that students at a similar risk of danger were treated differently, and therefore no evidence of impermissible viewpoint discrimination.”

The students wearing the American flag shirts had been on campus for over 3 hours when they were approached by an assistant principal and ordered to turn their shirts inside out.  When the students refused to disrespect the American flag, the school official directed them to the principal’s office where they were lectured on the importance of Cinco de Mayo and given the option of either removing their shirts or leaving school.  The students refused to remove the shirts, so they left school and then filed this civil rights lawsuit.

AFLC Senior Counsel David Yerushalmi commented:

“These students and their parents should be commended for standing up and exercising their rights under the First Amendment.  Our rights will only have meaning if we are willing to fight for them.  That is what the American Freedom Law Center is doing every day, but it also takes courageous citizens, such as our clients in this case, to join us in the fight.”

During the discovery phase of the lawsuit, the evidence overwhelmingly showed that school officials intentionally restricted the students’ speech on May 5, 2010, because they believed that the pro-America message conveyed by the students’ patriotic clothing would offend some Mexican students since it was Cinco de Mayo—“their day,” as one school official testified.  School officials enforced the clothing restriction even though they had no objective evidence that the students were causing any disruption—let alone a material and substantial one—to the operation of the school by wearing the American flag shirts.

Despite this uncontested evidence, the lower federal court ruled in favor of the school district, stating, “Upon review, the Court finds that based on these undisputed facts, the school officials reasonably forecast that Plaintiffs’ clothing could cause a substantial disruption with school activities, and therefore did not violate [the First Amendment].”  The Ninth Circuit affirmed this ruling.

AFLC intends to file a petition for full court review, which must be filed within 14 days.

American Flags Verboten In California School--It Might Upset The Poor Illegal Immigrants

Court: School OK to Ban Flag Shirts on Cinco de Mayo

Friday, 28 Feb 2014 06:59 AM

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A Northern California high school's decision to order students wearing American flag T-shirts to turn the garments inside out during a celebration of the holiday Cinco de Mayo was appropriate, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the school officials' concerns of racial violence outweighed students' freedom of expression rights. Administrators feared the American-flag shirts would enflame the passions of Latino students celebrating the Mexican holiday. Live Oak High School, in the San Jose suburb of Morgan Hill, had a history of problems between white and Latino students on that day.
The unanimous three-judge panel said past problems gave school officials sufficient and justifiable reasons for their actions. The court said schools have wide latitude in curbing certain civil rights to ensure campus safety.
"Our role is not to second-guess the decision to have a Cinco de Mayo celebration or the precautions put in place to avoid violence," Judge M. Margaret McKeown wrote for the panel. The past events "made it reasonable for school officials to proceed as though the threat of a potentially violent disturbance was real," she wrote.

The case garnered national attention as many expressed outrage that students were barred from wearing patriotic clothing. The Ann Arbor, Mich.-based American Freedom Law Center, a politically conservative legal aid foundation, and other similar organizations took up the students' case and sued the high school and the school district.
William Becker, one of the lawyers representing the students, said he plans to ask a special 11-judge panel of the appeals court to rehear the case. Becker said he would appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court if he loses again.
"The 9th Circuit upheld the rights of Mexican students celebrating a holiday of another country over U.S. student proudly supporting this country," Becker said.
Cinco de Mayo marks the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862, when Mexican troops defeated a French army of Napoleon III, then considered the mightiest military in the world. It is considered a bigger holiday in the U.S., celebrating Mexican heritage with parades and revelry in many major cities.
© Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Concealed Carry Wins One In California!

Michael Walsh writes about the California court that uphold the right to concealed carry!

The Blue Steel Right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness

February 17th, 2014 - 2:37 pm

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What God carries, any way He wants to

Every American should rejoice over last week’s stunning 2-1 Second Amendment decision in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which invalidated San Diego’s unconstitutionally restrictive infringements regarding the right to bear arms. The irony will be lost on no one, especially on the Left. Per the Los Angeles Times:

In a significant victory for gun owners, a divided federal appeals court Thursday struck down California rules that permit counties to restrict as they see fit the right to carry a concealed weapon in public.

The 2-1 ruling by a U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel would overturn restrictions on carrying concealed handguns, primarily affecting California’s most populated regions, including Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego and San Francisco.

The majority said the restrictions violate the 2nd Amendment’s guarantee of the right to bear arms because they deny law-abiding citizens the ability to carry weapons in public unless they show they need the protection for specific reasons.

“We are not holding that the Second Amendment requires the states to permit concealed carry,” Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain, a Reagan appointee, wrote for the panel. “But the Second Amendment does require that the states permit some form of carry for self-defense outside the home.”

Whoa! What?

You can read the court’s decision here. And you should, because this one is headed to the U.S. Supreme Court, where (in a rare departure for the 9th Circuit) it is unlikely to be reversed. The final constitutional victory over the Suicide Cult of the Left may be at hand, and the explicit promise of the Declaration of Independence settled once and for all.

Quoting liberally from the Supreme Court’s landmark Heller and McDonald decisions, the circuit court essentially said that while the state may regulate the manner in which handguns may be carried for personal protection, it may not do so by making it practically impossible for law-abiding citizens to afford themselves the protections — both constitutional and physical — of the Second Amendment.

We are well aware that, in the judgment of many governments, the safest sort of firearm-carrying regime is one which restricts the privilege to law enforcement with only narrow exceptions. Nonetheless, “the enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table. . . . Undoubtedly some think that the Second Amendment is outmoded in a society where our standing army is the pride of our Nation, where well-trained police forces provide personal security, and where gun violence is a serious problem. That is perhaps debatable, but what is not debatable is that it is not the role of this Court [or ours] to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct.” Id. at 636. Nor may we relegate the bearing of arms to a “second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees that we have held to be incorporated into the Due Process Clause.” (McDonald, 130 S. Ct. at 3044.)

We’ve been waiting for common-sense language like that for a long time, so thank you Judge O’Scannlain (and good on you for using your Irish name instead of your Anglo name; I may start doing the same thing myself in these pages soon). Which is to say: it doesn’t matter a fig what “issues” the Left raises to deny the right to self-protection to ordinary Americans — the plain language of the Constitution says otherwise, and until the Left is prepared to mount a full-frontal assault on the Second Amendment in the form of a repeal campaign, they should shut up. Because, as this decision makes clear, what is not permissible is their usual tactic of trying to bleed to death anything in the law they don’t like.

Which is precisely the issue here. As any gun owner in San Francisco, Los Angeles or San Diego counties knows, it is practically impossible to get a concealed-carry permit from the local sheriffs unless you’re a celebrity, a buddy or a major donor to their campaigns. And since open carry is banned, that leaves an honest citizen with no way to protect himself effectively if assaulted, carjacked, mugged, raped or otherwise subjected to mayhem here in the glorious, vibrantly multicultural mosaic that is the state of California. What the court effectively said to the state is: choose. You can prohibit either open carry or concealed carry, but not both.

Note the excellent grip and trigger discipline, by the way. Back to the LAT:

Senior Deputy San Diego County Counsel James Chapin, who represented San Diego in the case, called the lawsuit that led to Thursday’s decision an “end run” against the state’s new ban on openly carrying guns in public.

“What they really want to do is strike down California’s open carry ban,” Chapin said. “That’s really what this is about…”

The ruling affects only California and Hawaii among 9th Circuit states because the others have rules that favor the granting of permits to carry guns in public, according to Eugene Volokh, a professor of constitutional law at UCLA.

“California’s rules are essentially unconstitutional because the rule is, your right to carry a gun is at the mercy of the sheriff,” Volokh said.

But there’s an even larger issue at play here, which is why this decision is so important. (Even if the entire Ninth Circuit en banc reverses the three-judge panel, it’s still likely to wind up in the Supreme Court, which has already made its pro-Second Amendment sympathies plain.) And that has to do with the right of any person to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — not under armed guard or police protection, but on his or her own, as autonomous individuals acting according to their lawful desires.

The modern Left’s entire program is one of constant harassment against the citizenry — ban it! outlaw it! prevent it! “Don’t” is their favorite word, “thou shalt not” their favorite phrase; for an irreligious bunch of little devils, they’re positively Biblical in their proscriptions. The lie is that their mandates are for your own and the collective good. The truth is they want the populace docile, weak and helpless. And nothing says Not Helpless like a firearm.

The Left’s retort to this is typical — that an armed society will become a lawless society, one in which the mere possession of an inanimate object will cause the bearer to suddenly violate every moral fiber of his being and turn into a homicidal, shoot-first maniac. That it happens so rarely in a country of 310 million people is not at all amazing to anybody who knows what kind of people gun owners tend to be. Indeed, once you eliminate suicides and gang-bangers, the so-called epidemic of “gun violence” turns out to be not much at all.

Pretty please?

As John Lott and others have demonstrated over and over, more guns = less crime. The vast majority of states understand this, including some defiantly “progressive” ones. If you really want to stump your lefty buddies, ask them which state scores highest in its adherence to the Second Amendment. A state in which you can carry a gun openly or concealed, with no permit necessary. A state whose own constitution contains this guarantee of personal liberty:

That the people have a right to bear arms for the defense of themselves and the State – and as standing armies in time of peace are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be kept up; and that the military should be kept under strict subordination to and governed by the civil power.

That’s right: Vermont. And who’s afraid of Vermont?

Contrary to the usual Leftist sneer, having a gun doesn’t make you a man, but knowing how to handle one should the need arise makes you an American.

Civil Servants Abusing Us

The Ninth Circuit of Appeals wants to spend a million dollars to go to a judicial conference. In a time when layoffs are prevalent, unemployment as high as they were in the depression and the threat of a debt crisis once again appearing, these demigods believe they should be treated to all the pleasures of a special class of citizen rather than ordinary jurists.  Oh yes, this group of judges gets overturned more than any other Circuit. Obviously, they do not learn much at these conferences!

Isn't it time that ALL "civil servants" come to understand that they work for us, are not special, and should be first in line to take cuts in salary, benefits and special perks. They are hogs, getting fat at the public trough. As the old saying goes "pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered."  It's time to eliminate most of their benefits, cut their pay and tell them to have their conference in their home town.  Times are tough for everyone!

Conservative Tom

REPORT: NINTH CIRCUIT TO TAKE LUXURY MAUI VACATION AT TAXPAYER EXPENSE

• Posted on May 20, 2012 at 3:57pm by  Erica Ritz

• )

Judges of San Francisco's Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (Photo: AP)

Breitbart’s Dan Riehl reported Sunday that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the federal district and bankruptcy courts in nine Western states and two Pacific island territories, and associated lawyers and court staff are due to gather at the luxurious Hyatt Regency Maui Resort and Spa between August 13 – 16, 2012 for an annual judicial conference to the tune of approximately one million taxpayer dollars.

Riehl explains:

From tennis courts to the caddy shack and luau experience, justice will be served in a manner many Americans never get to experience. Breitbart News has reviewed a letter from the offices of the Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee, Senator Jeff Sessions, and the offices of Senator Chuck Grassley, the Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, with several detailed questions they want answered by the Ninth District.

The letter cites the 2010 version of the Ninth Circuit’s annual judicial conference that cost taxpayers over $657,000 in travel costs alone, along with $860,000 in combined travel costs for the Ninth Circuit’s 2008 and 2009 annual conferences in Monterey, California and Sun Valley, Idaho, respectively.  It also provides evidence of the Ninth Circuit’s awareness of the Government’s budget challenges in the face of a still suffering Obama economy, going on to challenge why the Ninth Circuit seems determined to go on spending large amounts of money on plush conferences, when a more prudent approach could provide the same value for professional purposes. [Emphasis added]

Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (Photo: AP)

He continues:

The Ninth District is considered by many to be the most liberal of all U.S. Court Districts, with 64% of sitting judges having been appointed by Democrats–the highest of all the districts. Many also consider the district as having the highest rate of being overturned by the Supreme Court. Research by Breitbart News suggests other districts are making efforts to cut back, while the Ninth District appears to have maintained a Party on, dude!attitude when it comes to putting on its judicial conferences.

As in past years, the Ninth District seems content to leave taxpayers on the hook for whisking many judges and aligned judicial professionals off to an exclusive destination, so that they might also enjoy “yoga, surfing lessons, stand up paddle board lessons, Zumba (a Latin-inspired dance program), a tennis tournament, a day trip and tour of Upcountry Maui, a Gemini Catamaran snorkle trip, and an activity called ‘The Aloha Experience.’” [Emphasis added]

The website for the conference assures taxpayers that their funds are not being used for “recreational or sporting” activities, but what of everything else?  Round-trip airfare to Hawaii, luxury hotels, or (maybe) wine in a jacuzzi bathtub?

The GSA's Jeffrey Neely plead the fifth after a lavish Las Vegas 'training conference' cost taxpayer more than $800,000 (Photo: Google Plus)

The Eighth Circuit, meanwhile, is reportedly meeting in Kansas City for their conference, while the Seventh Circuit has teamed up with the District’s Bar Association to hold their event in Chicago.

Riehl summarizes:

They may not always get the law right, given what many view as the Ninth Circuit’s high rate of being overturned, but it appears as though they can do a mean “Zumba” and have some darned good tans, while not exactly starving themselves as many Americans continue to look for work in President Obama’s down economy.