Sotomayor's Dissenting Opinions = Not Supreme Court material

May 27, 2009
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Consider Sotomayor’s Dissenting Opinions:

+ Kelsey v. County of Schoharie = requiring a newly admitted jail inmate to disrobe in front of a corrections officer = strip search violation of the Fourth Amendment (and any reasonably intelligent corrections officer should know this).

+ USA v. Juan Vincent Gomez Castrillon = money laundering conviction should be vacated = evidence didn’t amount to guilty beyond a reason doubt = defendant drove $500,000 to meeting with agent / defendant was lookout / defendant had $6,000 on him.

+ Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v. J.B. Hunt Transport, Inc. = Trucking Company shouldn’t have rejected job applicants on medication that might impair driving ability = truck driving is a broad class of jobs (this though the employer only saw applicants as unfit to perform a certain job for which they were seeking applicants).

+ Thomas Pappas v. Mayor and Commissioner of the Police Department of the City of New York = Police Officer kept receiving letters asking for contributions, so he anonymously returned racially bigoted materials = he was fired = majority opinion—“For a New York City police officer to disseminate leaflets that trumpet bigoted messages expressing hostility to Jews, ridiculing African Americans and attributing to them a criminal disposition to rape, robbery, and murder, tends to promote the view among New York citizenry that those are the opinions of New York’s police officers.… In the words of Justice Holmes,‘A policeman may have a constitutional right to [speak his mind], but he has no constitutional right to be a policeman.’”= dissent opinion—where an employee serves no supervisory role, the danger to an agency’s successful functioning is minimal = also the “statements” were made while off-duty = also anonymous nature—“… the Department should have swept the matter under the rug hoping no one would ever learn the facts; and if it chose instead to bring charges against Pappas, it has only itself to blame for the resulting harm to its reputation …”

+ S.H. Croll v. M.Y.Croll = married couple (US Citizens) residing in Hong Kong got divorced and the Hong Kong Court decreed that the child can not be taken from Hong Kong without both parents consent = mother took the child to US = majority decision—child cannot be returned to father in Hong Kong = Dissent Opinion—child can be returned to Hong Kong.

+ L.N. Koehler v. Bank of Bermuda = Burmuda should be recognized as an independent state—rather than a British Overseas Territory.

+ USA v. J. Gori = as officers listened in, a busted drug dealer called his source = when source was subsequently busted with kilo of cocaine = he told cops that someone in apartment 1M had given him the cocaine = cops went into the lobby pending further instructions = when pizza delivery man came to apartment = cops were afraid of being exposed = stood on either side of delivery guy = when door opened cops ordered everybody into the hall = suspect consented to search of apartment = busted for cocaine…= majority opinion—quotes Katz (389 US at 351)“A suspect in her open doorway becomes ‘as exposed to public view, speech, hearing, and touch as if she had been standing completely outside her home.”= dissent opinion—“’[t]he right of the people to be secure in their … houses …’”=“…the Fourth Amendment has drawn a fine line at the entrance to the house.”
 

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