This article was previously published under the title, JUDGES WILL OFTEN TELL THEM TO STOP, SO ASK!, on Claims and Issues Blog on Tuesday, July 6, 2021. Reprinted here with permission.
(Gridview_imagefull/Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services)
Recently some courts have ruled against equal laws. It seems to me that these rulings depend more on the fact that the people who sued (to get taxpayer money paid to them instead of that money being paid to other people) asked the judges to tell the defendants to stop, instead of asking for damages. I have said this before.
In these cases, judges have issued TROs or Temporary Restraining Orders and Preliminary Injunctions stopping the Secretary of Agriculture from applying ARPA or American Recovery Plan Act eligibility requirements that gave preference to Black farmers over White farmers, at least at first, in Faust v. Vilsack, ___ F. Supp. 3d ___, No. 21-C-548, 2021 WL 2409729, at *5 (E.D. Wis. June 10, 2021), or stopping the Small Business Administration from considering applications for federal monies for 21 days from a restaurant revitilization fund provided under ARPA unless during those 21 days the applications were processed without regard to whether the applicants were White males, in Greer's Ranch Cafe v. Guzman, ___ F. Supp. 3d ___, No. 4:21-cv-00651-O, 2021 WL 2092995 (N.D. Tex. May 18, 2021).
More judges are ruling like this and so I say it again: These rulings depend less on the lawyers involved in them and more on the fact that the plaintiffs in these cases, meaning the people who filed the lawsuits, asked the judges to tell the defendants to stop instead of asking for damages.
A federal judge in Florida told the State to stop when the judge issued a preliminary injunction stopping the State from imposing fines and limits on people who petition to put proposed State constitutional amendments on the ballot.
This ruling came right after another federal judge in Florida stopped the State from imposing penalties under a new Florida law that would require social media companies to let politicians say whatever they want to say on their websites. The new Florida law would have allowed Florida to impose penalties up to a Quarter of a Million Dollars. A day.
Courts in Maryland are telling the State to stop withholding unemployment benefits from unemployed people during a pandemic. These lawsuits have been heard at all three levels of courts in Maryland, from the trial court to the intermediate appellate court to the State's highest Court.
Comfortable people did not file these lawsuits. The people who filed them include individuals, and they include groups that did not exist before such as "the Unemployed Workers Union" and "the Baltimore-based Peoples Power Assembly." Significantly, the plaintiffs apparently did not include political parties or established civil rights organizations or other entrenched interests. These lawsuits were brought by people in Maryland who are affected by the Maryland Governor's attempted order to force them to take jobs, any jobs.
The Maryland trial judge was the first judge in these Maryland cases to hold that the State must stop what they were trying to do. The trial judge issued a "temporary restraining order," effectively another name for a preliminary injunction. One of the trial judge's reasons is instructive. It should be followed in other States where governors are trying to block unemployment benefits and so force unemployed workers to take any job that the governors' campaign contributors condescend to give them.
The Maryland trial judge ruled in part because the State governor "appeared to lack the authority to end the federal program early. He added that the plaintiffs' stories of economic hardship reminded him that 'the impact of the pandemic has been cruelly uneven.'" Katherine Shaver, Court Rejects Hogan Request to Block Order Preventing End of Enhanced Federal Unemployment Benefits, WASHINGTON POST, online Monday, July 5, 2021 (emphasis added).
State governors may lack the authority to end the federal program early.
Ending the federal program early may violate equal protection of the laws.
These concepts are not limited to the pen of a trial judge in Maryland. They apply in every State. State Constitutions are based on them. The Federal Constitution guarantees equal protection of the laws in all the States.
Judges will tell them to stop. So ask judges to tell them to stop.
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