AP GOV’T- Sieckert 2012
Name: _____________________________________ Sect: ______________________ Assign# ________
Federalism Today
As you read take high quality and detailed notes that might help you draw examples for FRQs.
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Federalism/Federal System- (created in the US, 1789) defined it is the philosophy that describes the
governmental system created by the Framers; system of government where the national government and
state governments derive all authority from the people. Federalism is important because it offered the
federal government an effective means to run the nation as a whole, rather than have it function as
individual states that sometimes came together, which happened under the Articles of Confederation.
Today the state and federal governments clash over many things. Theoretically, any powers that
are not expressly given to the federal government by the Constitution are reserved for the states by
the 10th amendment. However, according to the Supremacy Clause the Constitution, US Treaties
and laws pursuant to the Constitution are the “supreme laws of the land”. This sometimes causes
gray areas in the law, questions arise about sovereignty and in those cases we often see battles
arise between the two governing bodies. Some hot button issues include:
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Gun Control
Medicinal Marijuana
Gay Marriage
Immigration
Voter Rights
Abortion
Directions
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As a group, read through the resources . You can get this task done however you wish, but you must:
Answer the following questions for each issue
o What is the conflict between the feds and the states?
o What is each group’s interest in this? Why?
o How would you as a group rule? Why?
This part WILL BE GRADED: for each issue, how would YOU rule and why? Use evidence, should be a paragraph
Federalism Jigsaw Note Taking Guide
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Directions- Take group notes here: as a reminder your questions are: As a group, read through the resources . You
can get this task done however you wish, but you must:
Answer the following questions for EACH issue
o What is the conflict between the feds and the states?
o What is each group’s interest in this? Why?
o How would you as a group rule? Why?
This part WILL BE GRADED: for each issue, how would YOU rule and why? Use evidence (this should be about a paragraph,
I will collect these on Monday)
Medicinal Marijuana
Gay Marriage
Immigration
Gun Control
Voter Rights/ID Laws
Abortion
Issue 1: Medical Marijuana
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Directions- Take group notes here: as a reminder your questions are: As a group, read through the resources . You
can get this task done however you wish, but you must:
Answer the following questions for EACH issue
o What is the conflict between the feds and the states?
o What is each group’s interest in this? Why?
o How would you as a group rule? Why?
o Hint: YOU SHOULD BE USING THE CONSTITUTION
This part WILL BE GRADED: for each issue, how would YOU rule and why? Use evidence (this should be about a paragraph,
I will collect these on Monday)
Resource 1)
These States Are Most Likely To Legalize Pot Next
The Huffington Post | By Nick Wing Posted: 08/30/2013 9:47 am EDT | Updated: 08/31/2013 10:54 am
EDT
Attorney General Eric Holder gave a green light on Thursday to two states whose efforts to legalize marijuana
had been locked in by legal uncertainty for more than nine months. With that announcement, Colorado and
Washington -- both of which passed pro-pot initiatives at the polls last November -- can now proceed with
establishing a framework for the taxation and regulation of legal weed for adults.
The administration's decision holds clear and immediate implications for the two states, both of which had
been hesitant to act too quickly over concerns that the government might decide to enforce federal law, which
still considers marijuana an illegal substance.
But the move also, and perhaps more importantly, throws open the gates for other states to pursue similar pot
legalization efforts, so long as they include "strong and effective regulatory and enforcement systems." Experts
on both sides of the issue have already said they expect to see movement come quickly.
A similar pattern held for medical marijuana. The movement made steady progress up until 2009, when the
Obama administration announced it would allow states to implement medical pot laws without federal
interference. That promise turned out to be heavily footnoted, but the pledge itself ushered in a flood of ballot
and legislative activity that burst the medical marijuana dam over the next four years. Thursday's
announcement can be expected to do the same.
Public support for legal pot has surged in recent years at both state and national levels, with a majority of U.S.
voters now in favor. This suggests that legalization would be most viable in states that allow citizen ballot
initiatives. State lawmakers could also potentially take the reins on legalizing cannabis as the issue becomes
more mainstream, however, like they did in New Jersey in 2010 with the passage of a bill approving medical
marijuana.
Political dynamics are at play, too. Democratic strategists hoping to goose youth- and liberal-voter turnout in
2014 are incentivized to put pot on the ballot, though weed advocates themselves are better off running
campaigns during presidential years, when the electorate doesn't skew as elderly as it does during midterms.
Below, the states that are most likely to take the next steps toward legalizing marijuana:
Alaska
Marijuana reformers in Alaska have been hard at work trying to make their state the next to legalize pot. In
June, a ballot measure to tax and regulate pot and legalize it for adult recreational use was certified. Organizers
must now collect at least 30,169 valid signatures of registered Alaska voters by December 2013, which would
ensure that the initiative receives a vote in the primary election on Aug. 19, 2014.
Pot has already been decriminalized and legalized for medical use in Alaska. A survey of Alaska voters taken
earlier this year by Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling found that 54 percent supported legalizing
marijuana.
Arizona
In June, marijuana legalization proponents began a campaign to gather the 259,213 signatures they'll need in
order to get the issue on the 2014 ballot. The language of the proposed measure is rather expansive, and also
includes a system of state taxation and regulation.
Marijuana was legalized in the state for medical use in 2010 by ballot initiative. A poll taken earlier this year
found that 56 percent of Arizonans supported legalizing some amount of cannabis.
California
A statewide initiative to legalize marijuana failed in California in 2010, but reformers are hoping to find
success in 2014 and beyond. Earlier this month, organizers filed the California Hemp Act 2014, a measure that
would legalize cannabis both in its standard and non-psychoactive forms. Beginning Oct. 1, the campaign will
have 150 days to gather 750,000 valid signatures from California voters in order to get the issue on the 2014
ballot.
Marijuana has already been decriminalized and legalized for medical use in California. A poll taken earlier this
year found that 54 percent of Californians support legalizing pot.
Nevada
Marijuana advocates in Nevada have yet to mount a large-scale effort to get legalization on the ballot in an
upcoming election, as most organizers in the state see 2016 as their best chance for a push. The liberal bent of
the state makes it a popular target for reformers, however, and it's not yet clear whether Thursday's DOJ
decision could increase desire for more immediate action.
Nevada has legalized medical marijuana, and earlier this year the state passed a measure establishing a
dispensary system to help increase access for sick citizens. According to a recent poll, 56 percent of Nevadans
would favor legalizing cannabis for recreational use if the money raised went to fund education.
Oregon
Medical marijuana legalization advocates in Oregon have already announced plans to campaign for an
initiative to be placed on the ballot in 2014. An earlier legalization effort, which was poorly coordinated and
widely mocked inside the state, failed in 2012. Organizers believe there is plenty of room for improvement.
Oregon has already decriminalized marijuana and legalized it for medical use. According to a poll taken in
May, 57 percent of likely voters in Oregon support a proposal to tax, regulate and legalize marijuana for
recreational use.
Maine
The Marijuana Policy Project, a pro-pot advocacy group, has announced Maine as one of its top targets for
legalization in upcoming election cycles. An initiative circulating through the state Legislature fell painfully
short in a state House vote earlier this year, but MPP has announced plans to help coordinate a grassroots
campaign to get a legalization measure on the ballot in 2016.
Marijuana has been decriminalized and approved for medical use in Maine. According to a PPP poll released
this week, 48 percent of registered voters in Maine believe pot should be legal for recreational use.
Massachusetts
The deep-blue New England state is being eyed as a prime opportunity for legalization, with marijuana reform
advocates pointing to high margins of support for previous pro-pot initiatives. No official campaign for a ballot
initiative has been launched yet, though many predict it is only a matter of time.
Massachusetts has decriminalized marijuana and just last November passed a ballot measure legalizing it for
medical use. A February PPP poll found that 58 percent of the state's residents would be in favor of legalizing,
taxing and regulating cannabis.
Montana
Montana has had a checkered history with marijuana laws. Voters passed an initiative legalizing cannabis for
medical use in 2004, but opponents have since taken various steps to amend the measure or repeal it all
together. Reform advocates remain hopeful that voters will support full legalization. They wasted no time
following the 2012 election, filing a ballot question in hopes of putting the issue before voters in 2014.
There are no recent statewide surveys to gauge current support for pot legalization, though previous polls have
showed a majority of Montana voters supporting the decriminalizing of marijuana.
Rhode Island
Marijuana advocates have high hopes that Rhode Island will be one of the first in the next round of states to
legalize. This could come through a ballot initiative, but Rob Kampia, the executive director of MPP, recently
said the issue could be ripe for state lawmakers to take on. While there's not yet a high-profile campaign to get
legalization on an upcoming ballot, the state Legislature did consider a bill on the matter last session. While
lawmakers debated the legislation and invited witnesses to testify on its merits, they never held a vote.
Rhode Island recently decriminalized marijuana and passed legalized medical marijuana around 2007. A PPP
poll taken in January found that 52 percent of voters in the state support legalizing pot for recreational use.
Vermont
Vermont has made strides to scale back marijuana prohibition over the past year, with a successful measure to
decriminalize and a separate bill to establish a system of dispensaries for the state's medical cannabis patients.
Observers see the state's strong support for the recent reelection of Gov. Peter Shumlin (D), an advocate for
marijuana reform, as a sign that voters could get behind a ballot initiative to legalize. There is no large-scale
effort toward this end yet, but a legalization bill was introduced in the state Legislature last session. It didn't
receive a vote.
Polls have consistently shown Vermonters to be supportive of efforts to scale back prohibition on marijuana.
Eric Holder Says DOJ Will Let Washington, Colorado Marijuana Laws Go Into Effect
Posted: 08/29/2013 1:30 pm EDT | Updated: 08/30/2013 11:00 am EDT
WASHINGTON -- The United States government took a historic step back from its long-running drug war on
Thursday, when Attorney General Eric Holder informed the governors of Washington and Colorado that the
Department of Justice would allow the states to create a regime that would regulate and implement the ballot
initiatives that legalized the use of marijuana for adults.
A Justice Department official said that Holder told the governors in a joint phone call early Thursday afternoon
that the department would take a "trust but verify approach" to the state laws. DOJ is reserving its right to file a
preemption lawsuit at a later date, since the states' regulation of marijuana is illegal under the Controlled
Substances Act.
Deputy Attorney General James Cole also issued a three-and-a-half page memo to U.S. attorneys across the
country. "The Department's guidance in this memorandum rests on its expectation that states and local
governments that have enacted laws authorizing marijuana-related conduct will implement strong and effective
regulatory and enforcement systems that will address the threat those state laws could pose to public safety,
public health and other law enforcement interests," it reads. "A system adequate to that task must not only
contain robust controls and procedures on paper; it must also be effective in practice."
The memo also outlines eight priorities for federal prosecutors enforcing marijuana laws. According to the
guidance, DOJ will still prosecute individuals or entities to prevent:
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the distribution of marijuana to minors;
revenue from the sale of marijuana from going to criminal enterprises, gangs and cartels;
the diversion of marijuana from states where it is legal under state law in some form to other states;
state-authorized marijuana activity from being used as a cover or pretext for the trafficking of other illegal
drugs or other illegal activity;
violence and the use of firearms in the cultivation and distribution of marijuana
drugged driving and the exacerbation of other adverse public health consequences associated with marijuana
use;
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growing of marijuana on public lands and the attendant public safety and environmental dangers posed by
marijuana production on public lands;
preventing marijuana possession or use on federal property.
The eight high-priority areas leave prosecutors bent on targeting marijuana businesses with a fair amount of
leeway, especially the exception for "adverse public health consequences." And prosecutors have shown a
willingness to aggressively interpret DOJ guidance in the past, as the many medical marijuana dispensary
owners now behind bars can attest.
U.S. Attorneys will individually be responsible for interpreting the guidelines and how they apply to a case
they intend to prosecute. A Justice Department official said, for example, that a U.S Attorney could go after
marijuana distributors who used cartoon characters in their marketing because that could be interpreted as
attempting to distribute marijuana to minors.
But the official stressed that the guidance was not optional, and that prosecutors would no longer be allowed to
use the sheer volume of sales or the for-profit status of an operation as triggers for prosecution, though these
factors could still affect their prosecutorial decisions.
The Obama administration has struggled with the legalization of medical marijuana in several states. Justice
Department Officials had instructed federal prosecutors across the country not to focus federal resources on
individuals who were complying with state laws regarding the use of medical marijuana. But the U.S. attorneys
in several states that had legalized medical marijuana rebelled, and what was known as the Ogden memo faced
stiff resistance from career prosecutors.
"That's just not what they do,” one former Justice official told HuffPost. “They prosecute people."
As a result of the internal pushback at DOJ, a new memo was issued by Deputy Attorney General James Cole
in 2011 that gave U.S. attorneys more cover to go after medical marijuana distributors. Federal prosecutors
began threatening local government officials with prosecution if they went forward with legislation regulating
medical cannabis.
After recreational marijuana initiatives passed in Washington and Colorado in November, President Barack
Obama said the federal government had “bigger fish to fry” and would not make going after marijuana users a
priority.
Holder said back in December that the federal response to the passage of the state ballot measures would be
coming “relatively soon.”
Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson told HuffPost his office was preparing for the “worst-case
scenario” of a federal lawsuit against the law.
UPDATE: 6:15 p.m. -- Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy (D-Vt.), who'd been pressing Holder
to make a decision and respect the will of the states' voters, applauded the move, saying in a statement that "the
Justice Department should focus on countering and prosecuting violent crime, while respecting the will of the
states whose people have voted to legalize small amounts of marijuana for personal and medical use." He had
previously scheduled a hearing on the issue for Sept. 10.
At issue will be whether the U.S. Attorneys will obey the directive. John Walsh, the lead prosecutor for the
District of Colorado, has previously ignored guidance from Justice higher-ups and targeted medical marijuana
dispensaries that were not accused of breaking any state laws. His reaction Thursday to Holder's announcement
might not give Colorado business owners much confidence that he intends to modify his approach, and it
remains to be seen whether Main Justice can rein in its prosecutors and is capable of implementing the
guidance it put forward Thursday.
"Of particular concern to the U.S. Attorney’s Office are cases involving marijuana trafficking directly or
indirectly to children and young people; trafficking that involves violence or other federal criminal activity;
trafficking conducted or financed by street gangs and drug cartels; cultivation of marijuana on Colorado’s
extensive state and federal public lands; and trafficking across state and international lines," Walsh said. "In
addition, because the Department of Justice’s guidance emphasizes the central importance of strong and
effective state marijuana regulatory systems, the U.S. Attorney’s Office will continue to focus on whether
Colorado’s system, when it is implemented, has the resources and tools necessary to protect those key federal
public safety interests. To accomplish these goals, we look forward to closely working with our federal, state
and local partners."
Congressional Research Service’s Medical Marijuana Report
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by Allen St. Pierre, NORML Executive Director April 13, 2010
Summary written by lobbyist group of the Congress’ non-partisan research group.
The Congressional Research Service (CRS), part of the Library of Congress, has a mandate to research and
publish non-partisan, up-to-date and relevant information for members of Congress and their staff to help
them craft legislation.
The most recent CRS white paper on medical cannabis in the United States is, in fishing parlance, a
‘keeper’. Released for public consumption on April 2, 2010, it is a well researched, scholarly and
important document for reformers to download and keep close at hand as a very well presented primer
on the history and current domestic legal status of medical cannabis. Of particular help are the many
numerous citations and footnotes for greater reference and depth of understanding.
Very often, and rightly so, taxpayers–notably cannabis consumers–are frustrated at how state and
federal governments spend tax dollars arresting, prosecuting, incarcerating; interdicting, eradicating and
propagandizing in support of cannabis prohibition. But, this most recent CRS report (like many
previous reports from them on cannabis and drug policy) is an invaluable report to add to one’s ‘reform
library’ that you and I can feel good paying for.
These CRS reports are exclusively researched and published for Congress, and all members and their
staff have access to the reports in advance of the general public accessing the documents, so there is
little excuse for members of Congress and their staff to be the slightest bit ignorant or misinformed
about the current legal status of medical cannabis, the rapid pace of reforms at the state level and the
inherent public support medical access to cannabis enjoys.
- See more at: http://blog.norml.org/2010/04/13/congressional-research-services-medical-marijuanareport/#sthash.olTQ7edl.dpuf
From the National Conference of State Legislatures
Updated August 2013
In 1996, California voters passed Proposition 215, making the Golden State the first in the union to allow for
the medical use of marijuana. Since then, 18 more states, and the District of Columbia have enacted similar
laws, for a total of 19 states and the District of Columbia with public medical marijuana programs.**
Medical Uses of Marijuana
In response to California's Prop 215, the Institute of Medicine issued a report that examined potential
therapeutic uses for marijuana. The report found that:
"Scientific data indicate the potential therapeutic value of cannabinoid drugs, primarily THC, for pain relief,
control of nausea and vomiting, and appetite stimulation; smoked marijuana, however, is a crude THC delivery
system that also delivers harmful substances. The psychological effects of cannabinoids, such as anxiety
reduction, sedation, and euphoria can influence their potential therapeutic value. Those effects are potentially
undesirable for certain patients and situations and beneficial for others. In addition, psychological effects can
complicate the interpretation of other aspects of the drug's effect."
Further studies have found that marijuana is effective in relieving some of the symptoms of HIV/AIDS, cancer,
glaucoma, and multiple sclerosis.1
State Vs Federal Perspective
At the federal level, marijuana remains classified as a Schedule I substance under the Controlled Substances
Act, where Schedule I substances are considered to have a high potential for dependency and no accepted
medical use, making distribution of marijuana a federal offense. In October of 2009, the Obama
Administration sent a memo to federal prosecutors encouraging them not to prosecute people who distribute
marijuana for medical purposes in accordance with state law.
Arizona and the District of Columbia voters passed initiatives to allow for medical use, only to have them
overturned. In 1998, voters in the District of Columbia passed Initiative 59. However, Congress blocked the
initiative from becoming law. In 2009, Congress reversed its previous decision, allowing the initiative to
become law. The D.C. Council then put Initiative 59 on hold temporarily and unanimously approved
modifications to the law. Once the mayor signs the bill, Congress will have 30 legislative days to review it.
Before passing Proposition 203 in 2010, Arizona voters originally passed a ballot initiative in 1996. However,
the initiative stated that doctors would be allowed to write a "prescription" for marijuana. Since marijuana is
still a Schedule I substance, federal law prohibits its prescription, making the initiative invalid. Medical
marijuana "prescriptions" are more often called "recommendations" or "referrals" because of the federal
prescription prohibition.
States with medical marijuana laws generally have some form of patient registry, which may provide
some protection against arrest for possession up to a certain amount of marijuana for personal medicinal use.
The primary exception is Maryland, whose statute simply allows for medical purposes as a defense against
arrest and prosecution of marijuana possession, but does not provide a means for patients to actually obtain the
drug. As of April, 2011, people in Maryland with a debiliating medical condition cannot be prosecuted for nonpublic use or possession of one ounce or less of marijuana.
Some of the most common policy questions regarding medical marijuana include how to regulate its
recommendation, dispensing, and registration of approved patients. Some states and localities
without dispensary regulation are experiencing a boom in new businesses, in hopes of being approved before
presumably stricter regulations are made. Medical marijuana growers or dispensaries are often called
"caregivers" and may be limited to a certain number of plants or products per patient. This issue may also be
regulated on a local level, in addition to any state regulation.
Issue 2) Gay Marriage
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

Directions- Take group notes here: as a reminder your questions are: As a group, read through the resources . You
can get this task done however you wish, but you must:
Answer the following questions for EACH issue
o What is the conflict between the feds and the states?
o What is each group’s interest in this? Why?
o How would you as a group rule? Why?
This part WILL BE GRADED: for each issue, how would YOU rule and why? Use evidence (this should be about a paragraph,
I will collect these on Monday)
Resource 1)
Supreme Court Bolsters Gay Marriage With Two Major Rulings
Jed Jacobsohn/Reuters
Liptak Sizes Up Court’s Marriage Ruling: The Times’s Adam Liptak takes a look at how the Supreme
Court’s decision to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act unfolded.
By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: June 26, 2013 1246 Comments
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WASHINGTON — In a pair of major victories for the gay rights movement, the Supreme Court on
Wednesday ruled that married same-sex couples were entitled to federal benefits and, by declining to decide a
case from California, effectively allowed same-sex marriages there.
Respond to the Justices
What is your reaction to the Supreme Court's ruling that struck down the Defense of Marriage Act? Review a
selection of key statements from justices on both sides of United States v. Windsor and share your perspective.
Stephen Crowley/The New York Times
People celebrated outside the Supreme Court on Wednesday after it struck down the Defense of Marriage Act.
More Photos »
Enlarge This Image
Christopher Gregory/The New York Times
Two of the plaintiffs in the Proposition 8 case, Jeffrey Zarrillo, center foreground, and Paul Katami, center
right, with one of their lawyers, David Boies, far right, outside the Supreme Court. More Photos »
Enlarge This Image
Christopher Gregory/The New York Times
Sandra Stier, center left, and Kristin Perry, center right, plaintiffs in the California case, spoke to reporters after
the decisions by the Supreme Court were announced in Washington on Wednesday. More Photos »
Enlarge This Image
Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times
Wendy Kennedy, left, embraced her spouse, Deborah Spell, at the Stonewall Inn in New York after the
Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act. More Photos »
Enlarge This Image
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
A couple celebrated at City Hall in San Francisco on Wednesday after hearing that the Supreme Court had
struck down the Defense of Marriage Act. More Photos »
Readers’ Comments
Readers shared their thoughts on this article.
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Read All Comments (1246) »
The rulings leave in place laws banning same-sex marriage around the nation, and the court declined to say
whether there was a constitutional right to such unions. But in clearing the way for same-sex marriage in
California, the nation’s most populous state, the court effectively increased to 13 the number of states that
allow it.
The decisions will only intensify the fast-moving debate over same-sex marriage, and the clash in the Supreme
Court reflected the one around the nation. In the hushed courtroom Wednesday morning, Justice Anthony M.
Kennedy announced the majority opinion striking down the federal law in a stately tone that indicated he was
delivering a civil rights landmark. After he finished, he sat stonily, looking straight ahead, while Justice
Antonin Scalia unleashed a cutting dissent.
The vote in the case striking down the federal Defense of Marriage Act was 5 to 4, and Justice Kennedy was
joined by the four members of the court’s liberal wing. The ruling will immediately extend many benefits to
couples married in the states that allow such unions, and it will allow the Obama administration to broaden
other benefits through executive actions.
The case concerning California’s ban on same-sex marriage, enacted in a ballot initiative known as Proposition
8, was decided on technical grounds, with the majority saying that it was not properly before the court.
Because officials in California had declined to appeal a trial court’s decision against them, and because the
proponents of the ban were not entitled to step into the state’s shoes to appeal the decision, the court said, it
was powerless to issue a decision. That left in place a trial court victory for two same-sex couples who had
sought to marry.
The vote in the California case was also 5 to 4, but with a different and very unusual alignment of justices.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote the majority opinion, and he was joined by Justice Scalia and Justices
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer and Elena Kagan. The four dissenters — Justice Kennedy and
Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Sonia Sotomayor — said they would have decided whether
Proposition 8 was constitutional. But they did not say how they would have voted.
The case on the federal law was the more important one from a legal perspective, setting the terms for
challenges to state bans on same-sex marriage. Justice Kennedy’s reasoning, as Justice Scalia noted at length in
dissent, could just as easily have applied to state laws as to the federal one.
“The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and
injure those whom the state, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity,” Justice
Kennedy wrote. “By seeking to displace this protection and treating those persons as living in marriages less
respected than others, the federal statute is in violation of the Fifth Amendment.”
He said the law was motivated by a desire to harm gay and lesbian couples and their families, demeaning the
“moral and sexual choices” of such couples and humiliating “tens of thousands of children now being raised by
same-sex couples.”
The constitutional basis for striking down the law was not entirely clear, as it had elements of federalism, equal
protection and due process. Justice Kennedy said the law’s basic flaw was in its “deprivation of the liberty of
the person protected by the Fifth Amendment.”
He added that the ruling applied only to marriages from states that allowed gay and lesbian couples to wed.
Dissenting from the bench, Justice Scalia said that that declaration took “real cheek.”
“By formally declaring anyone opposed to same-sex marriage an enemy of human decency,” Justice Scalia
said, “the majority arms well every challenger to a state law restricting marriage to its traditional definition.”
Exactly 10 years ago, Justice Scalia issued a similar dissent in Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down laws
making gay sex a crime. He predicted that the ruling would lead to the legal recognition of same-sex marriage,
and he turned out to be right.
The court’s four more conservative justices — Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia, Thomas and Alito —
issued three dissents between them in the case on the federal law. They differed in some of their rationales and
predictions, but all agreed that the law, which passed with bipartisan support and which President Bill Clinton
signed, was constitutional.
Chief Justice Roberts said that he “would not tar the political branches with the brush of bigotry,” and that
“interests in uniformity and stability amply justified Congress’s decision” in 1996, which, “at that point, had
been adopted by every state in our nation, and every nation in the world.”
Justice Scalia wrote that the majority had simplified a complex question that should be decided democratically
and not by judges.
“In the majority’s telling, this story is black-and-white: Hate your neighbor or come along with us,” he wrote.
“The truth is more complicated.”
The decision will raise a series of major questions for the Obama administration about how to overhaul federal
programs involving marriage. Justice Scalia noted some of the difficult problems created by the decision in the
case, United States v. Windsor, No. 12-307. “Imagine a pair of women who marry in Albany and then move to
Alabama,” he wrote. May they file a joint federal income tax return? Does the answer turn on where they were
married or where they live?
The case before the justices concerned two New York City women, Edith Windsor and Thea Clara Spyer, who
married in 2007 in Canada. Ms. Spyer died in 2009, and Ms. Windsor inherited her property. The federal law
did not allow the Internal Revenue Service to treat Ms. Windsor as a surviving spouse, and she faced a tax bill
of about $360,000, which a spouse in an opposite-sex marriage would not have had to pay. Ms. Windsor sued,
and last year the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York, struck down the federal
law.
The Obama administration continued to enforce the federal law, but it urged the justices to strike it down as
unconstitutional, prompting House Republicans to step in to defend it. The justices differed on whether the
case’s odd procedural posture deprived the court of jurisdiction, much as the machinations in the Proposition 8
case had.
Justice Kennedy said that the federal government retained a stake in the case, and that the lawyers for House
Republicans had made “a sharp adversarial presentation of the issues.” Because the “rights and privileges of
hundreds of thousands of persons” were at stake, Justice Kennedy wrote, it was urgent that the court act.
In the California case, Chief Justice Roberts said that the failure of state officials to appeal the trial court
decision against them was the end of the matter. Proponents of Proposition 8 had suffered only a “generalized
grievance” when the ballot initiative they had sponsored was struck down, the chief justice wrote, and they
were not entitled to represent the state’s interests on appeal. The ruling in the case, Hollingsworth v. Perry, No.
12-144, erased the appeals court’s decision striking down Proposition 8.
As a formal matter, the decision sent the case back to the appeals court, the United States Court of Appeals for
the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, “with instructions to dismiss the appeal for lack of jurisdiction.” That
means the trial court’s decision stands.
Lawyers for the two sides had different interpretations of the legal consequences of the Supreme Court’s
ruling. Supporters of Proposition 8 said it remained the law in California because the trial court’s decision
applied only to the two couples who had challenged the law. The lawyers who filed the challenge to
Proposition 8, Theodore B. Olson and David Boies, said the trial court decision was binding in all of
California.
As a practical matter, Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, instructed officials to start issuing marriage licenses to
same-sex couples as soon as the Ninth Circuit acts.
If California becomes the 13th state to allow same-sex marriage, about 30 percent of Americans will live in
jurisdictions where it is legal. Until last year, when four states voted in favor of same-sex marriage at the ballot
box, it had failed — or bans on it had succeeded — every time it had appeared on a statewide initiative.
Resource 2)
Federal judge: Ohio officials must OK 2nd gay marriage
Most States still ban gay marriage
At least thirty-five states have adopted prohibitions of same-sex marriage; However, not all bans are the same.
Source: Source: National Conference of State Legislatures
Alejandro Gonzalez
Julie Zimmerman, The Cincinnati Enquirer 6:53 p.m. EDT September 3, 2013
Ohio has a constitutional amendment prohibiting same-sex marriage.
(Photo: Jeff Chiu, AP)
Story Highlights
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The U.S. Supreme Court issued 2 rulings in favor of same-sex marriage June 26
A federal judge in Ohio ruled July 22 that 2 men's out-of-state marriage is legal in Ohio
Surviving spouse of another gay couple asked for legal status Tuesday
SHARECONNECT 73 TWEETCOMMENTEMAILMORE
CINCINNATI — For the second time this summer, a federal judge has ordered the state of Ohio and local
officials to recognize the marriage of two men who went out of state to wed.
The order issued Tuesday involves a man from the Cincinnati suburb of Wyoming, Ohio, who died last month.
The ruling allows his husband to be listed as his surviving spouse on his death certificate even though Ohio
does not recognize same-sex marriages.
U.S. District Judge Timothy Black issued the temporary restraining order the day before William Herbert Ives
is to be cremated. Ives and David Michener, who had been a couple for 18 years and were raising three
children together, married July 22 in Delaware.
Ives died unexpectedly Aug. 27 of natural causes.
Black ruled that Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine and other state officials cannot enforce Ohio's voterapproved constitutional ban on same-sex marriages. He also ruled that Cincinnati officials cannot accept a
death certificate for Ives unless it records his status as married and lists Michener as his surviving spouse.
Michener's "husband has died and he urgently needs to bring closure to the family in a manner that respects
their marriage and the wishes of the decedent to be cremated," the lawsuit said.
The court also will allow Michener to join a lawsuit filed in federal court in July by another couple, John
Arthur and James Obergefell of Cincinnati, who married July 11 in Maryland. The June U.S. Supreme Court
decision granting federal recognition to same-sex marriages prompted them to marry.
Arthur is dying of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and their lawsuit asks that they be listed as spouses on Arthur's
death certificate, as Arthur's condition continues to deteriorate.
Black issued a temporary restraining order in July requiring the state to list them as spouses in the event of
Arthur's death. The order has been extended through the end of 2013.
Michener's lawsuit was filed by Alphonse Gerhardstein, the same lawyer representing Arthur and Obergefell.
The lawsuit argues that although same-sex marriages are not legal in Ohio, the state recognizes other marriages
that it does not allow to take place in the state, such as marriages between first cousins or minors.
Resource 3) APNewsBreak: Judge sides with Ohio gay couple
By AMANDA LEE MYERS, Associated Press
CINCINNATI (AP) — A recently deceased gay Ohio man must be listed on his death certificate as married
and his husband must be listed as his spouse despite Ohio's gay marriage ban, a federal judge ordered Tuesday.
Judge Timothy Black's order came just hours after attorneys asked him to rule quickly so that William Herbert
Ives, 54, is listed as married on his death certificate before being cremated on Wednesday.
"On this record, there is insufficient evidence of a legitimate state interest to justify this singling out of samesex married couples given the severe and irreparable harm it imposes on David Michener," Black wrote,
pointing out that the request was made "to bring closure to the family in a manner that respects their marriage."
Michener and William Herbert Ives, 54, had been together for 18 years and have three adopted children. They
married in Delaware on July 22, but Ives died unexpectedly a week ago.
Black is the same judge who issued an order last month preventing state officials from enforcing their ban on
gay marriage against another Cincinnati couple as one of them nears death.
That order prevents officials from recording John Arthur, who's dying of Lou Gehrig's disease, as single on his
death certificate and not listing his husband, James Obergefell, as his spouse. The pair married in Maryland
in July.
The couple sued to have their out-of-state marriage recognized in Ohio before Arthur's death so they can be
listed as spouses on his death certificate and be buried next to each other in a cemetery that only allows
descendants and spouses in family plots.
Black ruled that Arthur and Obergefell deserve to be treated with dignity and that Ohio law historically has
recognized out-of-state marriages as valid as long as they were legal where they took place, citing marriages
between cousins and involving minors.
"How then can Ohio, especially given the historical status of Ohio law, single out same-sex marriages as ones
it will not recognize?" Black wrote. "The short answer is that Ohio cannot."
Arthur and Obergefell, both 47, say they've been in love for more than 20 years and "very much want the
world to officially remember and record their union as a married couple," according to their lawsuit.
Michener is joining that lawsuit, which the three men hope will "set a precedent that will lead to relief for other
same-sex couples," the lawsuit says.
Their attorney, Al Gerhardstein, has said that he plans to seek other benefits for his clients and other gay
couples in Ohio, such as the ability to file joint tax returns.
Gov. John Kasich's spokesman, Robert Nichols, said the office doesn't comment on pending litigation, "except
to say that the governor believes marriage is between a man and a woman."
Attorney General Mike DeWine's spokesman, Dan Tierney, did not return a request for comment Tuesday but
said in July that DeWine's office will defend the right of Ohioans to define marriage and that the U.S. Supreme
Court has recently emphasized that it is a definition that traditionally lies with states.
"Ohio's voters are entitled to the choice they have made on this fundamental issue," he said.
Ohio banned gay marriage in 2004 with 62 percent of the vote
Illinois Gay Marriage Push Looks To Unions, Immigrants
By SOPHIA TAREEN 08/30/13 05:20 PM ET EDT
In this Wednesday, Aug. 14, 2013 photo, Randy Hannig, center, of Equality Illinois, hands out shirts supporting gay
marriage and explains how people can help support the cause during the Illinois State Fair in Springfield, Ill. After their
campaign to legalize gay marriage fizzled in Illinois this year, advocates set aside their disappointment and gave their
campaign a serious makeover. (AP Photo/Seth Perlman)
CHICAGO -- After their efforts to legalize gay marriage fizzled in Illinois this year, advocates gave their
campaign a serious makeover: They called on unions, focused longer-term and recalibrated their message by
using personal stories instead of civil rights comparisons.
It's a formula picked up from their fellow activists who made Chicago an influential player in the push for
immigrant rights.
Proponents will try again this fall to push gay marriage legislation through the Illinois Legislature, where they
fell a few votes short in a Democrat-dominated state that's been surprisingly resistant. But this time, they're
focusing less on lobbying lawmakers and more on priming the environment to make it easier for skittish
legislators to cast favorable votes – taking cues from a movement that brought nearly 500,000 protesters to
Chicago streets a few years ago and helped advance "Dream Act" goals this year.
"The immigration advocates, they really know how to get it done," said Jim Bennett, a director for Lambda
Legal, a gay rights group that's part of the Illinois Unites for Marriage campaign. "We have a lot to learn from
them."
While social justice movements often borrow tactics from one another, experts agree the overlap in Illinois
stands out among the 13 states that have embraced gay marriage – particularly in the union connections and
emphasizing the development of young, long-term leaders.
At the heart of the renewed push is John Kohlhepp, a lobbyist for Illinois' biggest state employee union. He
was hired to lead a coalition that since June has grown from three organizations to roughly 50, including other
unions, and raised roughly one-quarter of the campaign's $2 million.
On the campaign trail, Kohlhepp's energy ripples out to the nearly 20 field organizers who have been
distributing leaflets at events this summer, including the State Fair and Chicago's Bud Billiken Parade, the
largest African-American parade nationwide. Kohlhepp's cellphone rings constantly with contacts through the
American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 31, from which he has taken a leave.
A seasoned lobbyist, he marks time by counting the days to Oct. 22, when legislators return to Springfield.
His involvement shows the strongest link yet between unions and the gay marriage campaign, according to
Mary Bernstein, a University of Connecticut sociology professor who tracks social movements. That
relationship resonates in labor-friendly Illinois, where immigrant-rights activists and unions made early links
that are now hard to separate.
Unions, for example, helped Illinois become the first state to challenge the federal e-Verify immigrant worker
identification system, and workers' groups have pushed for fair immigrant wages.
Bernstein said the Illinois collaborations appear to be an "innovation."
Nationally, the two movements have picked up ideas from one another before. Students without legal
immigration status have "come out" in public ceremonies – Chicago was among the first to hold such events –
and some immigrant activists say they look up to the late Harvey Milk, California's first openly gay elected
politician and a renowned organizer.
The push for gay marriage in Illinois started in earnest after lawmakers approved civil unions in 2011. But
after it passed the Senate, House sponsors ultimately declined to call a vote on the same-sex marriage bill
before legislators adjourned in May.
Proponents believed they were just a few votes shy, and intense lobbying efforts to find support for the bill
were focused on moderate Republicans and black Democrats.
But since then, the American Civil Liberties Union has hired former state Republican Party Chairman Pat
Brady, a gay-marriage supporter, to help lobby Republicans. And organizers hope to capitalize on a recent U.S.
Supreme Court decision that invalidated parts of the Defense of Marriage Act and polls showing more public
support.
"There's really a different story to tell to my colleagues," said Rep. Greg Harris, the main House sponsor.
However, the campaign still faces significant obstacles: Illinois conservatives and some religious leaders are
equally strong in their opposition.
Bishop Lance Davis, of New Zion Covenant Church in the Chicago suburb of Dolton, said his coalition of
black churches intends to continue fighting same-sex marriage legislation out of a belief that marriage is
between man and a woman. Several of the mega churches the coalition represents are key in voter registration
drives and host politicians before Election Day.
Davis said he believes the Supreme Court's decision, along with activists trying to bring same-sex marriage, is
"a redefinition of the institution of marriage."
But other churches have supported the cause, and activists hired an openly gay minister to reach out to more
congregations
When the push for gay marriage began in Illinois, advocates likened it to the historic struggle for civil rights.
That resonated with young people but irked others, particularly blacks. Davis was one of the most vocal critics.
This time around, the advocates are putting their focus on family and commitment issues. They are
encouraging same-sex couples to relay personal experiences, which was also part of the successful gaymarriage campaigns in Connecticut and Minnesota this year.
"The movement has learned what kind of messaging has resonance for people," Bernstein said. "The civil
rights discourse has been divisive for a long time ... Everyone understands love and commitment."
That includes taking another cue from the immigrant rights movement. In 2006, when Congress considered a
bill that would have made being an illegal immigrant a felony, massive crowds took to the Chicago's streets to
protest. Activists told their personal stories of hardship and argued that deportations pull apart families.
"What this will take (to win the gay marriage battle) is folks telling their stories," said Keron Blair, who directs
campaign field organizers.
Ultimately, organizers say, the overarching mission is to inspire leaders who will push for future gay rights
issues – just as a new crop of young activists with roots in Chicago are doing both at home and in Washington
D.C.
"If we left behind leaders like that, I'd be ecstatic," said Kohlhepp, the union lobbyist now heading the samesex marriage coalition. He said accomplishing that goal would be "an imprint of the campaign."
Issue 3- Immigration
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

Directions- Take group notes here: as a reminder your questions are: As a group, read through the resources . You
can get this task done however you wish, but you must:
Answer the following questions for EACH issue
o What is the conflict between the feds and the states?
o What is each group’s interest in this? Why?
o How would you as a group rule? Why?
This part WILL BE GRADED: for each issue, how would YOU rule and why? Use evidence (this should be about a paragraph,
I will collect these on Monday)
Resource 1) California Dream Act Signed By Jerry Brown: Second Bill Passes
On Saturday, Governor Jerry Brown signed AB 131, the second bill of the two-part California Dream Act,
allowing undocumented immigrant students to apply for state-funded financial aid for college.
In July, Brown signed AB 130, making funding from private sources available to undocumented students. With
Saturday's signing of AB 131, the California Dream Act passed in its entirety, granting undocumented students
access to public and private funding for college.
"Going to college is a dream that promises intellectual excitement and creative thinking," said Brown in a press
release. "The Dream Act benefits us all by giving top students a chance to improve their lives and the lives of
all of us."
According to the California Department of Finance, about 2,500 students will qualify for Cal Grants as a result
of the bill, at a cost of $14.5 million. This amount will make up 1 percent of the annual $1.4 billion budget of
the Cal Grant program.
Resource 2) Supreme Court upholds key part of Arizona law for now, strikes down other provisions
By Robert Barnes, Published: June 25, 2012
The Supreme Court on Monday struck down several key parts of Arizona’s tough law on illegal immigrants,
but it left standing a controversial provision requiring police to check the immigration status of people they
detain and suspect to be in the country illegally. The 5 to 3 decision upholding the “show me your papers”
provision came with a warning that the courts would be watching its implementation. Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer
(R) declared victory and said police could enforce the law without resorting to profiling based on ethnicity.
But the ruling, which reinforced the federal government’s primacy in immigration policy, also vindicated the
Obama administration’s decision to challenge the Arizona law almost from the moment it was passed. The
justices will rule Thursday on the constitutionality of President Obama’s most important priority before the
court: the health-care law, his signature domestic achievement. It will be the final day of a term that has been
dominated by questions about the power of the federal government.
The immigration decision comes as the issue has taken a central spot in the nation’s political conversation and
domestic agenda, even as the numbers of illegal immigrants coming to this country have fallen. It is likely to
be just one in a series of court decisions about the role states may play in combating illegal immigration; five
states have adopted laws similar to Arizona’s, and others are waiting in the wings. Obama recently ignited
new controversy by announcing that many immigrants under age 30 who were brought to this country illegally
by their parents would not be deported. In an unusual moment Monday, a dissenting Justice Antonin Scalia
mentioned Obama’s policy as he spoke from the bench to criticize the majority’s decision.
In oral arguments on the Arizona law, the justices had seemed skeptical of the administration’s vision of the
subordinate role states must play in immigration matters. But Justice Anthony M. Kennedy spelled out states’
limited role, even as he acknowledged criticism that the failure of Congress and the executive branch to form a
comprehensive immigration strategy has led to severe hardships.
“Arizona may have understandable frustrations with the problems caused by illegal immigration while that
process continues,” he wrote, “but the state may not pursue policies that undermine federal law.”
The court threw out three such provisions in the Arizona law. It said the state cannot make it a misdemeanor
for immigrants to not carry registration documents; criminalize the act of an illegal immigrant seeking
employment; or authorize state officers to arrest someone on the belief that the person has committed an
offense that makes him deportable.
Resource 3) Texas town's ban on renting to illegal immigrants goes to court
By Molly Hennessy-Fiske This post has been corrected, as indicated below.
September 19, 2012, 11:39 a.m.
In this file photo from November 2006, former Marine Sgt. Salvadaor Parada, right, speaks to protesters during
a rally outside City Hall in Farmers Branch, Texas. A federal appeals court will review Farmers Branch's
ordinance, which allows the city building inspector to evict any illegal immigrant renters. (Rex C. Curry /
Associated Press / November 13, 2006)
HOUSTON -- A panel of federal appeals court judges is expected to hear arguments Wednesday concerning a
Dallas suburb's ordinance banning illegal immigrant renters.
The suburb of Farmers Branch, population 28,000, was sued four years ago after officials passed an ordinance
allowing the city building inspector to screen renters based on their immigration status, according to city
spokesman Tom Bryson. Voters had already approved a similar ordinance by referendum the year before, 68%
in favor in an election with 45% turnout, Bryson told the Los Angeles Times.
Because of legal challenges, the city has never been allowed to enforce the ordinance, which replaced an
earlier 2006 version. The newer ordinance would require renters to buy a $5 city license, fill out an application
disclosing their immigration status and allow the city's building inspector to check it. Illegal immigrants would
be denied permits, and landlords who rented to them would be fined or could lose their renters' license.
Two years ago, a federal district judge ruled against the city, a ruling that was upheld in March by a threejudge panel of the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals based in New Orleans. Attorneys for the city requested a
hearing before the full circuit court after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Arizona's new immigration law, SB
1070, in June.
On Wednesday, the case is scheduled to be considered by the full circuit court in New Orleans, a panel that
includes 10 judges appointed by Republican presidents, five appointed by Democrats. The panel is considered
one of the nation's most conservative, and its decision to hear the Farmers Branch case is rare — fewer than
5% of petitions for a full court hearing are granted.
The court directed both sides before arguments Wednesday to consider the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling on SB
1070, portions of which take effect this week. That ruling upheld Arizona's "show me your papers"
requirement, which gives law enforcement officials the authority to check a person's immigration status if they
suspect the individual is an illegal immigrant.
Farmers Branch has spent nearly $5.8 million on legal bills related to the case, and has mounted an online legal
defense fund that has raised more than $250,000 for immigration-related lawsuits, Bryson said. City attorneys
have argued that the ordinance is substantially different from Arizona's law and that the Supreme Court has not
barred municipalities from limiting illegal immigrant renters. Farmers Branch attorney Michael Jung did not
return calls Wednesday.
Attorneys for landlords and renters who sued the town argue that the ordinance overreaches, addressing federal
matters, a position supported by immigrant advocates.
“The position of the ACLU of Texas and other advocates is that that is interfering with the enforcement of
immigration laws, which is the exclusive province of the federal government,” said Rebecca Robertson, legal
and policy director for the ACLU of Texas based in Houston. That organization submitted a brief in support of
the plaintiffs in the Farmers Branch case.
“It’s not up to states and municipalities to come up with some patchwork system for dealing with
immigration,” Robertson said.
Lawyers challenging the ordinance will note that the U.S. Supreme Court “struck down almost every provision
of SB 1070,” she said. "That case just reinforces the argument we had already made that Farmers Branch is not
free to come up with its own enforcement scheme” for immigration.
Robertson told The Times that the Farmers Branch case is one of many local legal battles about immigration in which SB
1070 is playing a role.
“Courts across the country are beginning to wrestle with what is this new Supreme Court precedent and how
do we reconcile that with these various decisions,” she said.
She cited an August 20 ruling by the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals based in Atlanta that found Alabama’s
prohibition on renting to illegal immigrants was preempted by federal law.
"We argued that the 5th Circuit should reach precisely the same conclusion about Farmers Branch’s
ordinance," she said.
[For the record: Sept. 19, 1:06 p.m.: A previous version of this post incorrectly said the ordinance would
allow the city building inspector to evict renters based on their immigration status. The ordinance would allow
the city building inspector to screen, not evict, renters based on their immigration status.]
Issue 4- Gun Control
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

Directions- Take group notes here: as a reminder your questions are: As a group, read through the resources . You
can get this task done however you wish, but you must:
Answer the following questions for EACH issue
o What is the conflict between the feds and the states?
o What is each group’s interest in this? Why?
o How would you as a group rule? Why?
This part WILL BE GRADED: for each issue, how would YOU rule and why? Use evidence (this should be about a paragraph,
I will collect these on Monday)
Resource 1) Clergy call for statewide gun registration By Lolly Bowean Tribune reporter September 7, 2012
The Rev. Ira Acree, left, listens to the names of people killed by gun violence in Chicago in August, as part of
a gun-control news conference Friday. (Keri Wiginton, Chicago Tribune / September 7, 2012)
In an attempt to call attention to the city’s increasing violence, a coalition of Chicago clergy announced an effort Friday
to gather 100,000 signatures on a petition to support legislation that would require gun owners statewide to register
their weapons. The citywide petition drive, starting this weekend and continuing until the state legislature reconvenes
in November, seeks to send a message to elected officials that the owners of assault weapons should have to register
the devices, said the Rev. Ira J. Acree, who helped organize the movement.
“Our sons and daughters are dying and being gunned down,” said Acree, who is pastor of Greater St. John Bible Church
in Austin, a community that has been hit hard by gun violence. “Rifles, AK-47’s and machine guns should not be in the
hands of ordinary citizens. Nobody needs an assault weapon that was made for the military.” Chicago residents
already register their firearms since the city allowed handgun ownership for the first time in decades in 2010 after the
U.S. Supreme Court struck down the city’s handgun ban.
The petition drive was intended to draw attention to the problem of violence and shootings in Chicago, said Father
Michael Pfleger of St. Sabina Church in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood.
“We want to engage and empower members of our congregations to now get involved to combat this violence that is
plaguing the city,” he said. “A lot of times people feel like they don’t know what to do. They feel almost paralyzed.
“We’re not saying take guns away from people. We’re saying make them responsible. Title them like a car. Treat guns
the same way we treat cars.”
House Bill 5831 would, among other things, prohibit anyone from carrying or possessing a handgun that is not
registered.
But the legislation, introduced in February, faces a tough road in Springfield, where gun control issues often result in
geographic differences of opinion. Downstate lawmakers tend to oppose stricter gun regulations, city lawmakers
support them and suburban lawmakers split. The Chicago Clergy Coalition is made up of almost 130 ministers of all
faiths from throughout the city.
On Friday, about 35 of them gathered at St. James Cathedral to announce the petition effort. Homicides in the city
have increased by 32 percent through Aug. 26, the city’s most recent figures show. At the press conference, the Rev.
Kevin Bruursema of New Life Community Church in Lincoln Park criticized Mayor Rahm Emanuel for recent comments
he made about gang violence. But the group of ministers fell short of condemning the mayor and called him an ally in
their battle.
“When the city is bleeding, it’s the whole city, not just one part,” Bruursema said. “He said it’s gangs against gangs. We
can do a lot better than that. When a son is gunned down in Pilsen, Little Village or Englewood, it’s a loss for the entire
city.”
Resource 2- Justices to Consider Whether State Gun Laws Violate Second Amendment
By Robert Barnes Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, October 1, 2009
The Supreme Court set up a historic decision on gun control Wednesday, saying it will rule on whether
restrictive state and local laws violate the Second Amendment right to gun ownership that it recognized last
year.
The landmark 2008 decision to strike down the District of Columbia's ban on handgun possession was the first
time the court had said the amendment grants an individual right to own a gun for self-defense. But the 5 to 4
opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller did not address the question of whether the Second Amendment
extends beyond the federal government and federal enclaves such as Washington.
Most court observers say they think that the five justices who recognized the individual right will also find that
the Second Amendment applies to state and local governments, a move that could spark challenges of state and
local laws governing gun registration, how and when the weapons can be carried, and storage requirements.
The court will hear a challenge of handgun laws in Chicago and the neighboring village of Oak Park, Ill. It was
filed by Alexandria lawyer Alan Gura, who successfully argued the Heller case. He said the Chicago ban is
"identical" to the one found unconstitutional in the District.
The announcement came as the court prepared for its new term, which will officially begin on Monday.
Justices sifted through more than 2,000 petitions accumulated through the summer and selected 10 to hear.
Resource 3) Gun-control, gun-rights groups ready for renewed debate after Colorado
shooting
July 20, 2012|By Michael Martinez, CNN
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The extreme carnage at the Colorado movie theater, now one of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history,
reopens the nation's passionate debate about gun control -- or gun rights -- and both sides were readying for
renewed legislative efforts in the aftermath of Friday's shooting.
"We're going to see the gun control side talk about how more gun control is needed in wake of this horrible
shooting," said John Velleco, director of federal affairs for of Gun Owners of America.
He added that gun-control advocates should acknowledge that "more gun control could actually make
situations worse by making it harder for law-abiding folks to own and carry guns, which means for lunatics
that there are more unarmed, potential victims."
Meanwhile, the Brady Campaign, the nation's largest citizens' lobby to prevent gun violence, pledged
aggressive action.
"Today we are meeting with activists across this country as we continue to call on the American people to add
their voice for change through our petition against arming dangerous people," President Dan Gross said in a
statement Friday.
Shootings cast pall over 'Dark Knight Rises' blockbuster weekend
"We are insistent that our elected leaders take action to prevent future tragedies. Political cowardice is not an
excuse for evasion and inaction on this life-and-death issue," Gross said.
Gun-control advocates admit that any reform faces a difficult path in a sharply divided Congress -- on top of a
presidential election year.
"I would hope we would see something in the Senate," Ladd Everitt, a spokesman for the Coalition to Stop
Gun Violence, said about gun-control measures emerging from the Democrat-led chamber.
But the Republican-controlled House is a different story, he said.
"We don't live in a fantasy world and we understand that in the House it's a much tougher lift. The House has
moved to far to the right that it's essentially a subsidiary of the NRA," or the National Rifle Association, he
told CNN.
In Aurora, the agonized seek answers through faith
Velleco of Gun Owners of America said he has yet to see any new legislative proposals from gun-control
advocates -- who he described as "kind of like vultures to take advantage of a situation to further an agenda
that doesn't get traction and that people don't support."
National Gun Debate Hits Close to Home in Colorado Recall Vote
By JACK HEALY
Published: September 2, 2013
COLORADO SPRINGS — Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York and the billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad have each
donated hundreds of thousands of dollars. The National Rifle Association is buying political advertisements. New York’s
junior senator sent a fund-raising e-mail. And the election has attracted news coverage from as far away as Sweden.
Enlarge This Image
Matthew Staver for The New York Times
State Senator John Morse canvassed in Colorado Springs, going door to door to make the case that he should
not be voted out of office in a Sept. 10 recall election for supporting strict gun laws.
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Matthew Staver for The New York Times
State Senator Angela Giron is also facing a recall; one of her fliers, below left, was left at a home in Pueblo
West, Colo.
All this over a homegrown campaign to oust two Democratic state senators who provided crucial support for a
package of strict new state gun control laws. As the recall elections — the first of their kind in Colorado’s
history — draw closer, the race has swelled from a local scuffle into a proxy battle in the nation’s wrenching
fight over gun control.
Over all, both sides have dedicated about $2 million to the campaigns, most of it in support of the two senators:
John Morse, the president of the Colorado Senate, and Angela Giron, who represents the Southern Colorado
city of Pueblo. That might not seem large compared with the multimillion-dollar governors’ races that can be
commonplace across the country these days. But the money and the attention have transformed an off-year
campaign that started with homemade signs and volunteers collecting signatures in grocery store parking lots.
Voters say they are being bombarded with telephone calls and pamphlets, radio and television commercials.
Each day seems to bring a new procedural battle: over the language on the recall ballot, how the vote will be
conducted or which candidates will appear as possible replacements. Mr. Morse, who represents Colorado
Springs, and Ms. Giron each have one Republican challenger on the ballot.
Mr. Bloomberg, who has bankrolled other gun-control supporters across the country, recently contributed
$350,000 to fight the recall efforts. Mr. Broad gave $250,000. Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand, Democrat of New
York, has stepped in on behalf of Ms. Giron, in particular, enlisting support through her Off the Sidelines
political action committee.
Mr. Bloomberg “has said he is going to support officials across the country who are willing to stand up to the
N.R.A. and Washington gun lobby to support sane gun laws that will keep guns out of the hands of criminals,”
Marc La Vorgna, a spokesman for the mayor, said in an e-mail. “These two senators did that.”
The N.R.A. has also jumped into the Sept. 10 race, contributing nearly $109,000 for mailings and radio, cable
and online ads, according to campaign finance records.
The influx of money has allowed each side to claim that its opponents are being manipulated by outside
interests. One advertisement by the Rocky Mountain Gun Owners said Mr. Morse was taking “marching
orders” from the “billionaire playboy” Mr. Bloomberg. A fund-raising e-mail from Senator Gillibrand called
the election “a wrongful recall by the N.R.A.”
Colorado’s vote is being watched closely around the nation as a litmus test of how voters respond to new gun
measures in a swing state with an ingrained culture of hunting, sport shooting and gun ownership.
“There’s symbolic importance to both sides,” said Eric Sondermann, a political analyst in Denver. “If they’re
recalled, it would be interpreted as a rejection of the gun control agenda, a rejection of what Colorado passed.
If these two prevail, then maybe that’s one more nick in the armor of the N.R.A. and the gun advocates.”
To Democrats, the recall offers a chance to defend what they have called sensible and moderate gun
regulations: specifically, requiring background checks on private gun sales and limiting ammunition magazines
to 15 rounds. To firearms advocates, the vote is a way to demonstrate the political consequences of supporting
gun control.
“The peasants have grabbed ahold of their pitchforks and torches,” said Dudley Brown, the executive director
of Rocky Mountain Gun Owners.
The passions on display in the recall effort also represent a widening rift in the state’s identity, some analysts
say, between the Colorado of F-150s, hunting trips and rural towns, and the Colorado of Subarus, ski passes
and downtown lofts.
This year, with Democrats’ controlling the legislature and governor’s mansion, they not only passed new gun
control laws, but also laws allowing people living in the country illegally to pay in-state tuition, creating new
green-energy requirements for rural electric cooperatives and approving civil unions for same-sex couples.
In Northern Colorado, some counties are so frustrated with the state’s trajectory that they will vote this fall on
whether to secede and form their own state.
“A decision needs to be made in this state,” said Jon Caldara, the president of the Independence Institute, a
libertarian research group in Colorado. “Are we going to be an urban-centric state where urbanites choose what
happens, or will this be a state like Colorado has traditionally been, where we have the liberty and freedom for
different communities to do different things?”
Still a Quinnipiac University poll last month found that while a majority of Colorado voters opposed the
package of new gun laws, they also disliked the recall. The survey of 1,184 registered Colorado voters found
that, by double-digit margins, they thought neither Ms. Giron nor Mr. Morse should be removed. By a nearly
30-point margin, those surveyed opposed the idea of the recall, saying disappointed voters should wait until the
next regular election.
“Recall elections are left for someone who’s done something criminal or unethical,” said Jackie HainesBobbitt, a retired teacher in Colorado Springs, who calls herself a “hard-core Democrat.” “This is a huge waste
of money. That’s not how the system works.”
The poll did not specifically survey the two recall districts in Colorado Springs and Pueblo. In those two, the
outcome of the races is anyone’s guess.
Ms. Giron’s district leans Democratic. Mr. Morse’s is more evenly divided, making him more vulnerable.
With the outcome likely to be decided by a few thousand people in each Senate district, the campaigns are
trying to reach every voter they can, making phone calls and going door to door. Both sides are optimistic, but
say the result is likely to hinge on who can turn out more supporters.
“We have a very good chance of winning this recall,” said Tamra Farah, coordinator of the campaign to recall
Mr. Morse.
Each afternoon, Mr. Morse sets out with a clipboard, ballot applications and pamphlets, to ring doorbells here
in Colorado Springs and make the case why he should not be voted out of office. He guessed he had knocked
on 1,200 to 1,500 doors in total.
“This is what does it,” he said. “Yeah, there are TV commercials and mail pieces. But nothing takes the place
of showing up at someone’s door and having a conversation.”
Mr. Morse threaded his way through a neighborhood where he once attended Divine Redeemer Catholic
School, delivering a pitch about the recall and gun control with the well-worn familiarity of a touring stage
actor.
“Hi,” he said, as another door opened. “I’m State Senator John Morse.”
His roster of addresses consisted of supporters and undecided voters, so he got mostly hugs and handshakes.
But as he wandered down Dale Street, a gray-haired man hustled out of his backyard, trowel in hand, to
confront Mr. Morse. He accused Mr. Morse of jamming through the gun control laws and of silencing the
opposition during the emotional debate over gun control after the mass shootings in Aurora and in Newtown,
Conn.
After a few heated minutes, the man, who declined to give his name, walked back inside, past a bright green
lawn sign that read, “Recall Morse.”
Issue 5-Voter ID laws



Directions- Take group notes here: as a reminder your questions are: As a group, read through the resources . You
can get this task done however you wish, but you must:
Answer the following questions for EACH issue
o What is the conflict between the feds and the states?
o What is each group’s interest in this? Why?
o How would you as a group rule? Why?
This part WILL BE GRADED: for each issue, how would YOU rule and why? Use evidence (this should be about a paragraph,
I will collect these on Monday)
Resource 1)
We have come a long way since the 1960s. When the Voting Rights Act was passed, there were only 300
elected African-American officials in the United States; today there are more than 9,000, including 43
members of Congress. The 1993 National Voter Registration Act — also known as the Motor Voter Act —
made it easier to register to vote, while the 2002 Help America Vote Act responded to the irregularities of the
2000 presidential race with improved election standards.
Despite decades of progress, this year’s Republican-backed wave of voting restrictions has demonstrated that
the fundamental right to vote is still subject to partisan manipulation. The most common new requirement, that
citizens obtain and display unexpired government-issued photo identification before entering the voting booth,
was advanced in 35 states and passed by Republican legislatures in Alabama, Minnesota, Missouri and nine
other states — despite the fact that as many as 25 percent of African-Americans lack acceptable identification.
Having fought for voting rights as a student, I am especially troubled that these laws disproportionately affect
young voters. Students at state universities in Wisconsin cannot vote using their current IDs (because the new
law requires the cards to have signatures, which those do not). South Carolina prohibits the use of student IDs
altogether. Texas also rejects student IDs, but allows voting by those who have a license to carry a concealed
handgun. These schemes are clearly crafted to affect not just how we vote, but who votes.
Conservative proponents have argued for photo ID mandates by claiming that widespread voter impersonation
exists in America, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. While defending its photo ID law before the
Supreme Court, Indiana was unable to cite a single instance of actual voter impersonation at any point in its
history. Likewise, in Kansas, there were far more reports of U.F.O. sightings than allegations of voter fraud in
the past decade. These theories of systematic fraud are really unfounded fears being exploited to threaten the
franchise.
In Georgia, Florida, Ohio and other states, legislatures have significantly reduced opportunities to cast ballots
before Election Day — an option that was disproportionately used by African-American voters in 2008. In this
case the justification is often fiscal: Republicans in North Carolina attempted to eliminate early voting,
claiming it would save money. Fortunately, the effort failed after the State Election Board demonstrated that
cuts to early voting would actually be more expensive because new election precincts and additional voting
machines would be required to handle the surge of voters on Election Day.
Voters in other states weren’t so lucky. Florida has cut its early voting period by half, from 96 mandated hours
over 14 days to a minimum of 48 hours over just eight days, and has severely restricted voter registration
drives, prompting the venerable League of Women Voters to cease registering voters in the state altogether.
Again, this affects very specific types of voters: according to the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice,
African-Americans and Latinos were more than twice as likely as white voters to register through a voter
registration drive.
These restrictions purportedly apply to all citizens equally. In reality, we know that they will
disproportionately burden African Americans and other racial minorities, yet again. They are poll taxes by
another name.
The King Memorial reminds us that out of a mountain of despair we may hew a stone of hope. Forty-eight
years after the March on Washington, we must continue our work with hope that all citizens will have an
unfettered right to vote. Second-class citizenship is not citizenship at all.
We’ve come some distance and have made great progress, but Dr. King’s dream has not been realized in full.
New restraints on the right to vote do not merely slow us down. They turn us backward, setting us in the wrong
direction on a course where we have already traveled too far and sacrificed too much.
John Lewis, a Democrat, is a congressman from Georgia.
Correction: August 27, 2011
An earlier version of this article misstated a quotation engraved on the new Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial
in Washington. The quotation is "out of a mountain of despair we may hew a stone of hope," not "out of a
mountain of stone."
Resource 2) Judge Refuses To Block Pa. Voter ID Law; Appeal Headed To State Supreme Court
by Corey Dade
Demonstrators hold signs at an NAACPorganized rally on the steps of the
Pennsylvania Capitol to protest the
state's new voter identification law on
July 24 in Harrisburg, Pa.
Marc Levy/AP
A judge's decision Wednesday to uphold the new Pennsylvania voter identification law shifted attention to the
state's highest court, which could now determine if the requirement will be imposed on Election Day.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs had asked the judge to stop the law from taking effect as part of a constitutional
challenge. Their complaint claims the law would make it disproportionately harder for seniors, minorities and
others to vote in the Nov. 6 general election.
"Our concern is that you cannot wait until after Election Day to figure out that people lost their right to vote,"
says Judith Browne Dianis, co-director of the Advancement Project, which is the co-counsel for the plaintiffs.
"We wanted to make sure the voters of Pennsylvania were protected going into this election, and that their
right to vote wasn't encumbered by an unnecessary barrier."
Pennsylvania state court Judge Robert Simpson declined to rule on whether the law violates the state
constitution. But in refusing to grant an injunction against the law, the judge said the plaintiffs failed to prove
that voter disenfranchisement would be "immediate or inevitable."
Attorneys for the plaintiffs said they will immediately appeal to the state Supreme Court. The Associated Press
reports: "At the state Supreme Court, votes by four justices would be needed to overturn Simpson's ruling. The
high court is currently split between three Republicans and three Democrats following the recent suspension of
Justice Joan Orie Melvin, a Republican who is fighting criminal corruption charges." Simpson, a Republican,
said he was "convinced" the state "will fully educate the public" about the new requirement and enact the law
"in a nonpartisan, even-handed manner."
The judge also pushed back against plaintiffs' claims that they can't obtain a state photo ID, one of the cards
allowed under the law, because they lack the necessary documents such as a birth certificate. He cited in his
ruling the state's plans to issue a special photo ID for those voters:
"Moreover, considering the believable testimony about the pending DOS photo IDs for voting, and the
enhanced availability of birth confirmation through the Department of Health for those born in Pennsylvania, I
am not convinced any qualified elector need be disenfranchised. ... Further ... based on the availability of
absentee voting, provisional ballots, and opportunities for judicial relief for those with special hardships, I am
not convinced any of the individual Petitioners or other witnesses will not have their votes counted in the
general election."
Attorneys for the plaintiffs say that as many as 1 million voters lack the forms of photo identification accepted
under the law. The judge rejected the figure as critics' "attempts to inflate the numbers." He said he believed
state officials' estimate of between 1 percent and 9 percent of registered voters — or 82,723 to 744,507 people,
based on state voter data. Separately, the Justice Department is investigating whether minority voters are
disproportionately represented among those who lack proper ID under the new law.
In November, voters in 30 states will have to present some form of identification at the polls. Ten of the states
will require photo identification, including the presidential battlegrounds of Florida, Michigan, Virginia
(pending federal approval) and now possibly Pennsylvania. Legal battles over state voter ID laws and other
election restrictions has sparked a national debate over voting rights and the potential impact these measures
could have on voter turnout.
Proponents of the Republican-led initiatives say they will prevent voter fraud and shore up the election system.
Nine of the 11 states that passed photo ID laws since 2010 have Republican governors. A new study of more
than 2,000 election-fraud cases since 2000 found that in-person voter impersonation, which ID laws are
intended to prevent, "is virtually nonexistent." Opponents, mainly Democrats and voting and civil rights
groups, say the measures are intended to suppress turnout among minorities and young people, who tend to
vote for Democratic candidates.
President Obama's re-election bid is pushing for strong turnouts of young and minority voters, whom plaintiffs
in the cases say are among the likeliest to not have acceptable IDs. The Obama administration, through the
Justice Department, has used the Voting Rights Act to block some of the initiatives, including voter ID laws in
Texas and South Carolina. With just 12 weeks before Election Day, photo ID laws in these other states remain
in limbo:
Mississippi: A voter-approved constitutional amendment is under Department of Justice review. Mississippi is
one of several states, including New Hampshire, South Carolina, Virginia and Texas, with a history of voter
discrimination that must obtain federal approval to change election procedures.
New Hampshire: The measure is under Justice Department review after the state legislature overrode the
governor's veto of the voter ID bill. Voters would be able to show a variety of identification forms, but several
of the options will be eliminated in September 2013.
South Carolina: A trial before a three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court in Washington is scheduled to
begin Aug. 27. The Justice Department twice blocked the law. If it is struck down, a separate law would
require voters to show a non-photo ID on Election Day.
Texas: The U.S. District Court in Washington is expected to rule by Aug. 31. If Texas loses, an existing law
will require a non-photo ID at the polls.
Virginia: A version more liberal than most others, by allowing a wide range of picture IDs, is under Justice
Department review. In a move apparently to pre-empt legal claims of voter suppression, the governor has
ordered the state to send new registration cards to every active voter.
Wisconsin: The state is appealing a state judge's decision striking down the law in March as a violation of the
Wisconsin Constitution. Two separate challenges have been filed in federal court in Milwaukee.
Is the Justice Department right to sue over Texas' voter ID law? >
Voter ID Laws Keep Our Elections Secure
By Hans A. Von Spakovsky
, Senior Legal Fellow at the Heritage Foundation
September 3, 2013
About Hans A. Von Spakovsky:
Hans von Spakovsky is a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation.
The Justice Department has no basis for suing Texas under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) over its
voter ID law. And it presents no evidence to support its claim under Section 3 that Texas should be placed
under federal supervision for any additional changes in its voting laws for the foreseeable future.
Requiring voters to prove that they are who they say they are when they show up to vote is overwhelmingly
supported by the American people no matter what their racial, ethnic or political background. Moreover, it has
been upheld as constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court, in an opinion written by former Justice John Paul
Stevens, a liberal stalwart.
States such as Georgia and Indiana have had voter ID laws similar to the Texas law in place for years. The
turnout of black and Hispanic voters in their local, state and federal elections was not affected by the ID
requirement, disproving the claims of critics that ID requirements suppress anyone's vote.
[See a collection of political cartoons.]
That's not surprising. The vast majority of Americans have photo ID. Only a small percentage of registered
Texans don't already have a state-issued driver's license or state ID. And the Texas law stipulates that — as is
the case in every other state with a voter ID requirement — the state will provide a free photo ID to anyone
who doesn't already have on.
People in this country need a photo ID for everyday activities — from filling a prescription to cashing checks.
You need to present ID to buy a beer or cigarettes; check into a hospital or hotel; apply for public assistance;
get a marriage license; buy a gun; hop an airplane … even just to enter the building that houses the U.S.
Department of Justice.
Is it really too much to ask for ID when it comes to exercising something as important as the right to vote?
Don't we deserve to have fair and secure elections that are not stolen by fraudulent votes? Voter ID is not the
only step needed to improve the integrity of our election process, but it is a basic step that is neither
discriminatory nor unconstitutional. It is just common sense.
Texas' Voter ID Laws Are Plain and Simple Discrimination
7
14
By Natasha M. Korgaonkar
, Assistant Counsel of the Political Participation Group at the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund
September 3, 2013
About Natasha M. Korgaonkar:
Natasha M. Korgaonkar is assistant counsel of the political participation group at the NAACP's Legal Defense
Fund.
Last month, the Department of Justice sued Texas over the state's discriminatory and punishing voter ID law,
SB 14. The same law was blocked by a federal court last summer, which determined that a "law that forces
poorer citizens to choose between their wages and their franchise unquestionably denies or abridges their right
to vote."
In a state and country where voters of color are significantly more likely to live in poverty than white voters,
the impermissible choice that Texas has imposed on voters discriminates on the basis of class and race both. In
the wake of Supreme Court's decision earlier this summer in Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder, which
immobilized a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, the Department of Justice's lawsuit represents the next
phase in pushing back against measures that are intended to make it harder for people of color to vote, and less
likely that our votes will count when we do.
Texas, like many states, passed SB 14 for the ostensible reason of combating in-person voter fraud, which
Hillary Rodham Clinton recently called a "phantom epidemic." But Texas has not been able to identify a single
instance of in-person voter fraud. Texas has said that the law is not intended to discriminate against Black and
Latino voters, whose communities represent 90 percent of the state's population grown in the past decade, and
yet the state's legislature refused to accept any of the amendments offered that would have mitigated any of SB
14's burdens that disproportionately affect voters of color — amendments that, for example, would have
created a way for poor voters to get free identification, or would have accepted student IDs.
[See a collection of political cartoons on the Republican Party.]
A single comparison of the accepted and not accepted forms of photo ID makes the priorities of the law clear:
SB 14 will allow voters to present a concealed handgun license at the polls, but not a student ID from any of
Texas's public universities.
In addition to challenging the discriminatory ID law itself, the DoJ lawsuit also seeks to bail Texas in to a
preclearance structure similar to the one that was lost in the Shelby County decision. Texas's longstanding
history of crafting discriminatory voting laws and schemes extends far past the voter ID law at issue now; in
fact, Texas boasts the inglorious accolade of being the only state for which federal authorities have challenged
at least one of its statewide redistricting plans after every decennial census since 1970.
As recently as last year, a federal court concluded that the state had drawn up its various redistricting plans
with the intent to suppress the growing political power of African-American and Latino districts. A provision
of the Voting Rights Act asserted in the DOJ's case can bring back to Texas the preclearance defense lost in
June's Shelby County decision.
As the summer of our voting discontent draws to a close, it should serve as a powerful message that the first
major voting lawsuit filed by the DOJ since the Shelby County decision goes directly to a state with one of the
most well-documented histories of racial discrimination in voting, and seeks to use the full power of the
remaining provisions of the Voting Rights Act both to invalidate SB 14 and to bring Texas back under federal
review.
Issue 6-Abortion Rights



Directions- Take group notes here: as a reminder your questions are: As a group, read through the resources . You
can get this task done however you wish, but you must:
Answer the following questions for EACH issue
o What is the conflict between the feds and the states?
o What is each group’s interest in this? Why?
o How would you as a group rule? Why?
This part WILL BE GRADED: for each issue, how would YOU rule and why? Use evidence (this should be about a paragraph,
I will collect these on Monday)
Resource 1) Federal court upholds Arizona’s late-term abortion law
Posted by Sarah Kliff on July 30, 2012
A federal court in Arizona has upheld the state’s ban on abortions after 20 weeks, allowing it to come into
effect on August 1. The ruling has already set off further legal challenges that are likely to center on one
question: Where does the line get drawn between an abortion restriction and an all-out ban?
Ever since Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court has allowed states to ban abortions after the fetus is viable –
usually thought to be around 23 or 24 weeks – as long as such restrictions have an exception for the health or
life of the mother. The Supreme Court has not allowed bans prior to that point in pregnancy.
The American Civil Liberties Union had challenged the Arizona law as unconstitutionally limiting women’s
access to abortions prior to the fetus’ viability.
In the ruling today, Judge James Teilborg does not dispute that viability standard. He recognizes that previability bans are not constitutional. But he concludes that Arizona’s law is not a ban at all. Because it makes
certain exceptions for abortions “to avert a pregnant woman’s death or avoid a serious risk of substantial and
irreversible impairment of a major bodily function.”
“Accordingly, [the law] does not purport to ban all abortions past 20 weeks gestational age,” Teilborg
concludes. “Further, the statue allows for abortions up to and including 20 weeks gestational age. As such, [it]
is not a ban on previability abortions.”
That interpretation, ACLU attorney Alexa Kolbi-Molinas argues, ignores the standing case law on abortion
rights. She points to a passage of Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a 1996 lawsuit on abortion rights, where the
Supreme Court specifically took on the issue of exceptions to previability abortion bans. They found that
states could pass certain restrictions on previability abortions; they could create waiting periods, for example,
or require patients’ to read certain medical materials.
what they could not do was prohibit previability abortions “regardless of whether exceptions are made for
particular circumstances.”
“It doesn’t dispute the Supreme Court on the viability standard,” says Kolbi-Molinas. “It acknowledges it
exists. He says its not a ban because there are some exceptions. That completely ignores Casey.”
Seven states have passed laws in the past two years that ban abortions at or around 20 weeks, usually on the
basis that the fetus could feel pain (the research on this is disputed). While many states already ban late-term
abortion, they tend to do so later in the pregnancy, often around 24 weeks, thought to be after viability. These
new bans move that restriction up significantly earlier.
Arizona’s law was the first of these laws to be challenged in court. And, as of a few hours ago, it’s the first that
a federal court has upheld.
The American Civil Liberties Union plans to appeal this decision to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. It will
also request an emergency stay of the regulation, to bar it from coming into effect later this week
Resource 2) Court Paves Way For Texas Planned Parenthood Cuts by Wade Goodwyn August 27, 2012
David Kent/MCT/Landov
Abortion-rights opponents outside a Planned
Parenthood of North Texas event in Fort Worth in
February. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has
ruled that Texas can defund Planned Parenthood
clinics because the organization provides abortions.
Officials in Texas say they will cut off state funding
to Planned Parenthood following a federal court
ruling last week. The decision by a panel of the 5th
U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals says the state can
defund the health clinics because Planned
Parenthood is associated with abortion. Planned
Parenthood warned that the cuts threaten access to
health care for more than 50,000 poor women. But
many Texas officials cheered the decision, which
could reverberate to other states targeting the
organization.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry and the Republican-led Legislature have been locked in an ongoing battle with Planned
Parenthood over state funding for years. None of the Planned Parenthood clinics that perform abortions
receives any state or federal taxpayer dollars. But Republicans also want to discontinue public funds to clinics
that provide preventive health services to the poor.
With the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision, that path is now clear. "The ruling affirms that the Texas
Women's Health Program has no obligation to fund organizations that promote abortion, including Planned
Parenthood," says Lucy Nashed, a spokeswoman for the governor. "This decision is a win for Texas women,
first and foremost. It's a win for our rule of law and for our state's priority to protect life," Nashed says.
Maneuvering Around Constitutionality Issues
The 5th Circuit's decision is a reversal of a lower court's temporary injunction that stopped Texas from
defunding Planned Parenthood on the grounds that the state's action was likely to be ruled unconstitutional. In
the past, federal courts have ruled that states can't defund Planned Parenthood clinics just because they affiliate
with abortion providers, on the grounds that it violates Planned Parenthood's right to free speech and free
association, as well as federal regulations. To get around this obstacle, Perry decided to forgo federal funding,
even though the federal government pays 90 percent of the cost, approximately $35 million, of the Texas
Women's Health Program.
That approach seems to have opened the door for the 5th Circuit's decision. "The court is very clear that the
Texas policy is constitutional, to the extent that it limits funding to Planned Parenthood in both its affiliates
and non-abortion-providing entities," says Stefanie Lindquist, a law professor at the University of Texas.
Lindquist says the 5th Circuit decision focused not on Planned Parenthood's First Amendment rights but on
those of the state of Texas. While 95 percent of Planned Parenthood's money goes to provide health care
services to tens of thousands of low-income women, the organization is also the state's largest provider of
abortions. The appeals court focused on that, ruling that the name "Planned Parenthood" equates with
abortion. So, the court reasoned, if Texas doesn't want to fund an organization it believes is promoting
abortion, it doesn't have to.
Lindquist says the decision is a real blow to Planned Parenthood. "It will provide other states who are
interested in limiting abortion funding — or funding for abortion-related organizations ... with a road map,
especially if they choose to forgo federal dollars." Just how many states would be willing to follow in Texas'
footsteps by forgoing federal funding for their women's health programs is an open question.
For Planned Parenthood, Risky Options
As for Planned Parenthood in Texas, Lindquist says the organization can appeal. But with the current makeup
of the U.S. Supreme Court, she says, doing so would be a gamble. The organization could also consider
changing the name of the clinics that provide services to women, Lindquist says. "Planned Parenthood doesn't
want to do that, I presume," she says. "But it is about the identifying mark of Planned Parenthood — and that
that mark is associated, I assume, in the mind of Texas regulators and legislators, with the provision of elected
abortions." But a name change might not offer any guarantee to the organization, either. Texas is likely to
decide it won't fund any clinic that is willing to refer a woman seeking an abortion, no matter what that clinic is
called. And the court could well uphold that decision, too.
"Of course we're disappointed," says Helene Krasnoff, Planned Parenthood's lead counsel. "The case has never
been about Planned Parenthood, though. It's been about the tens of thousands of low-income Texas women
who rely on our health services for preventive health services like cancer screenings, birth control, well-woman
exams. And we're going to evaluate every possible legal option to protect their health."
In the wake of the 5th Circuit's ruling, it's unclear where those tens of thousands of low-income Texas women
might go. Planned Parenthood does have legal options, but none that are particularly attractive.
Issue 7: Education



Directions- Take group notes here: as a reminder your questions are: As a group, read through the resources . You
can get this task done however you wish, but you must:
Answer the following questions for EACH issue
o What is the conflict between the feds and the states?
o What is each group’s interest in this? Why?
o How would you as a group rule? Why?
This part WILL BE GRADED: for each issue, how would YOU rule and why? Use evidence (this should be about a paragraph,
I will collect these on Monday)
Race to the Top Embraces Federalism
August 27, 2010
Education Policy
Guest Post
By Sonja Ralston, a judicial law clerk to the Hon. Guido Calabresi of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second
Circuit. Ralston taught bilingual first grade prior to law school, and has published several scholarly papers on
education law.
On Tuesday, the federal Department of Education announced the winners of the final round of its Race to the
Top program. Nine states and the District of Columbia join Delaware and Tennessee, which won the first
round in April. All told, forty-six states and the District of Columbia competed for a share of the $4 billion in
prize money to implement comprehensive education reform plans, making it the largest state-based
"competitive, discretionary grant" - in short, prize - in national history.
Though prizes
are not an
entirely new
means of
governing (in
1714, Parliament
established the
Longitude Prize
to develop
accurate
measures of
longitude on the
open water and
awarded
£100,000 over
fifty years), the
Obama
administration
has newly
emphasized
competitive
grants. But even
among the
administration's
prize programs,
Race to the Top
is special: unlike
the Longitude
Prize or the
Department of
Energy's prizes
for energyefficient light
bulbs and better batteries, the goal is to spur policy rather than technological innovation. Therefore, it invites
states rather than individuals, companies, universities, or cities to compete.
Race to the Top represents a new approach to federalism: one that strikes a better state/federal balance in
substantive policymaking than traditional spending programs while simultaneously doing more to leverage the
impact of federal dollars.
In terms of the balance of policymaking, Race to the Top puts more power in the hands of states than other
federal education programs. Overall, the federal government provides around 10 percent of K-12 public
education spending each year, but that funding is overwhelmingly concentrated in two areas: aid to highpoverty school districts under Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and aid to
school districts for the education of students with disabilities under the Individuals with Disabilities Education
Act (IDEA). In each of these block grant programs, Congress, not the states, decides how the money will be
spent. For example, IDEA sets very specific standards for what counts as a disability, how students with
disabilities must be accommodated in schools, and what procedures schools must follow.
In contrast, Race to the Top gives states greater discretion over how to spend the funds. Fifty percent of any
Race to the Top award can be distributed as the state sees fit, within guidelines that are so loose that a state
could comply by spending the money on essentially any education program. Additionally, the 500-point rubric
for awarding Race to the Top grants has dozens of subcategories, allowing states to pick what reform issues to
focus on. As a result, each state's application proposes a different approach to improving education. Race to the
Top thus gives real meaning to the cliché, "laboratories of democracy."
Under Race to the Top, states, not the federal government, set policy even when uniformity is important, as it
is for learning standards. Under the Race to the Top rubric, a state received up to 40 points for joining "a
consortium of States that . . . develop[s] and adopt[s] a common set of K-12 standards." The federal
Department of Education did not write the standards; it didn't even establish the group that wrote the standards.
The National Governors' Association took the lead, starting last summer, and published the Common Core
Standards this June, which forty-eight states (and the District of Columbia) helped develop and thirty-five (and
the District) have already adopted.
Prizes also have the potential to leverage federal dollars. Consider the now-familiar Ansari X Prize. It awarded
$10 million to the company that first produced a private manned spacecraft, whereas competitors spent over
$100 million. The $4 billion the federal government is spending on Race to the Top is only around 25 percent
of what it spends every year on Title I. Yet unlike other small programs, which are pilot projects only
implemented in a small percentage of schools or districts, the process of merely applying for Race to the Top
led to changes in the laws of nearly every state, from lifting caps on the number of charter schools to
eliminating data firewalls.
Race to the Top gives the federal government more bang for its buck than most education spending. Unlike, for
example, Title I (a block grant program the Department of Education administers according to a congressional
formula), Race to the Top is a discretionary - and therefore flexible - funding program. Funds are awarded by
the agency, not by Congress, so there's no push for pork, the program need not spend a proportionate amount in
every state, and it is not the kind of block-grant pre-requisite that might lead to contentious congressional votes
- like when attempts to add national standards to annual ESEA funding were repeatedly defeated.
Finally, Race to the Top is special because its competitors are states - and only states. This focus on states in
the first two rounds has policy benefits: making the states the competitors is the most direct way to prod states
to change course on alternative school structures like charters or autonomous schools, teacher tenure, and
standards. But it also embraces a larger virtue: federalism. By giving the states real choices about how to
accomplish federal policy priorities rather than just making them administrative go-betweens that cut checks
and write reports, Race to the Top reaffirms states' status as sovereigns with authority over - and responsibility
for - their citizens' welfare.
At a moment when the public is increasingly concerned about reasserting state authority (including by calling
for the repeal of the Seventeenth Amendment), less radical ways to give states greater autonomy deserve
attention. The so-far success of Race to the Top shows that prizes can spur policy innovation, especially in
fields in which it is easier to agree on ideal outcomes (like having all children learn) than on how to reach those
goals.
In Race to the Top, the Dirty Work Is Left to Those on the Bottom
By MICHAEL WINERIP
Published: January 22, 2012
Even if you think the Obama administration’s signature education program, Race to the Top, will not help a
single child in America learn more, you have to admire its bureaucratic magnificence.
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Drew Angerer/Associated Press
In 2010, Education Secretary Arne Duncan visited Albany in his Race to the Top bus.
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First, it has had a major effect — reaching into most public schools in America — while costing the Obama
administration next to nothing.
The Education Department will spend about $5 billion on the program, and even if you’re thinking, hey, I
could use $5 billion, consider this: New York won the largest federal grant, $700 million over the next four
years. In that time, roughly $230 billion will be spent on public education in the state. By adding just one-third
of one percent to state coffers, the feds get to implement their version of education reform.
That includes rating teachers and principals by their students’ scores on state tests; using those ratings to
dismiss teachers with low scores and to pay bonuses to high scorers; and reducing local control of education.
Second, the secretary of education, Arne Duncan, and his education scientists do not have to do the dirty work.
For teachers in subject areas and grades that do not have state tests (music, art, technology, kindergarten
through third grade) or do not have enough state tests to measure growth (every high school subject), it is the
state’s responsibility to create a system of alternative ratings.
In New York, that will have to cover 79 percent of all teachers, a total of 175,000 people. The only state tests
for assessing teachers are for English and math, from fourth grade to eighth.
Third, federal officials don’t wind up looking like dictators telling states how to do their jobs. They’re happy to
let state officials work out the details.
In New York, state officials have also decided not to be dictatorial. They’re happy to let the state’s 700 school
districts figure out, individually, how to assess those 175,000 teachers.
Fourth, while President Harry S. Truman said the buck stops here, costing himself a lot of extra time and
effort, President Obama can say the buck stops way down there, cutting his workload.
Of course, a buck whizzing downward has to land somewhere, and in this case it sits on the desk of Paul R.
Infante, the director of fine and applied arts for the Commack School District on Long Island.
Mr. Infante is trying to figure out how to develop a test or an assessment system to rate band teachers.
Several weeks ago the state sent out a guide. The band teacher could listen to every child play at the start of the
year and assign a score from 1 to 4.
“At the end of the year,” the state guide says, “the teacher re-evaluates their students.” (Someone needs to
evaluate the state’s grammar.)
The teacher again grades students from 1 to 4, and the sum of the progress they have made during the year
determines the teacher’s rating.
Mr. Infante sees many problems. There is such a variety of ability, he said, that setting a fair baseline at the
start of the year would mean assigning children a wide range of music pieces to perform. Just to find the
appropriate pieces, he said, the band teacher would have to listen to each child play. A child could be terrible at
sight reading but have a nice sound. So in fairness, the teacher would have to spend a few weeks helping 100
children prepare pieces just so they could be tested for their initial rating.
“It would take so much time away from instruction to focus on the assessment,” Mr. Infante said.
A lot could be riding on this: tenure, a bonus, the band teacher’s job. Or, if a teacher challenges the assessment,
a lawsuit. So Mr. Infante would want to assess the accuracy of the ratings a teacher gave, to make sure they
were not artificially low at the start of the year or artificially high at the end.
To do that in an objective way, he would want to use an outside evaluator. On Long Island, retired
superintendents who are running seminars on the new evaluation system are being paid $945 a day. “We can’t
afford that,” Mr. Infante said.
Joel Ratner is a past president of the New York State Council of Administrators of Music Education and the
music coordinator for the Brentwood district on Long Island, which has 16,000 students and 46 music teachers.
He’s been traveling to Albany monthly to take part in a state task force that is supposed to be shaping the
evaluation process. He says state officials have little interest in getting feedback from the teachers, principals
and superintendents on the panel.
He also says he can’t tell whether the state will be rigorous in its oversight, or do just enough to satisfy federal
regulations. He feels certain about one thing: “A considerable amount of time will be spent creating a
significant amount of mandated paperwork.”
In an e-mail responding to questions, state officials predicted that many music educators would welcome the
new system.
“In these very challenging fiscal times, districts are under intense pressure to cut funding for subjects not
usually considered to be ‘core academic subjects,’ ” wrote a spokesman for the state education commissioner,
John B. King Jr. “Measuring student learning in these disciplines is something many educators want to be able
to do to demonstrate more transparently the contributions they make to their students’ learning.”
Mr. Ratner says putting on a first-rate band concert would be a better way to demonstrate a program’s
effectiveness.
I found it impossible to tell from an interview with Dr. King how aggressively the state would oversee the
district’s alternative assessments, which go into effect in 2012-13.
He said state officials would take disciplinary action if they found that a district was giving teachers high
ratings but students were performing poorly by other state measures.
But he also said the State Education Department’s budget had been reduced 40 percent in the past few years,
staffing was thin and the ultimate responsibility for monitoring would be left to principals, superintendents and
school boards. The main state role, he said, will be to “provide guidance and models.”
Throughout the Race to the Top process, state officials have behaved erratically.
In May 2010, the teachers’ union and department officials, including Dr. King, agreed that student scores on
state tests would account for 20 percent of a teacher’s evaluation.
In August 2010, Mr. Duncan visited the state union’s headquarters in his Race to the Top bus (he really has
one) and told union and department officials that New York had won a grant “because of your collective
leadership, your act of courage.”
In May 2011, with no warning, Dr. King and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo rammed a measure through the Board
of Regents making state tests worth up to 40 percent of teacher evaluations.
In August, a state judge ruled that they couldn’t do that.
For the last month now, as federal officials have pressed for a resolution, the governor and the commissioner
have been berating the union. Like children who change the rules in the middle of the game, they appear to be
counting on a lot of screaming to distract the crowd.
“It’s not about the adults, it’s about the children,” Mr. Cuomo keeps saying. “The children come first.”
POSTSCRIPT New Jersey has rejected an application to open Tikun Olam Hebrew Charter High School in
the Highland Park area. In a column this month I described how federal officials had awarded the sponsors a
$600,000 grant — with the condition of state approval — despite several misrepresentations on federal and
state applications. A list of charter schools whose applications were approved can be found at the New Jersey
Department of Education Web site.
Diane Ravitch
Historian, NYU professor
Obama's Race to the Top Will Not Improve Education
Posted: 08/ 1/10 01:27 PM ET
President Obama spoke to the National Urban League this week and defended his "Race to the Top" program,
which has become increasingly controversial. Mr. Obama insisted that it was the most important thing he had
done in office, and that critics were merely clinging to the status quo.
Mr. Obama was unfazed by the scathing critique of the Race by the nation's leading civil rights organizations,
who insisted that access to federal funding should be based on need, not competition.
The program contains these key elements: Teachers will be evaluated in relation to their students' test scores.
Schools that continue to get low test scores will be closed or turned into charter schools or handed over to
private management. In low-performing schools, principals will be fired, and all or half of the staff will be
fired. States are encouraged to create many more privately managed charter schools.
All of these elements are problematic. Evaluating teachers in relation to student test scores will have many
adverse consequences. It will make the current standardized tests of basic skills more important than ever, and
even more time and resources will be devoted to raising scores on these tests. The curriculum will be narrowed
even more than under George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind, because of the link between wages and scores.
There will be even less time available for the arts, science, history, civics, foreign language, even physical
education. Teachers will teach to the test. There will be more cheating, more gaming the system.
Furthermore, charter schools on average do not get better results than regular public schools, yet Obama and
Duncan are pushing them hard. Duncan acknowledges that there are many mediocre or bad charter schools, but
chooses to believe that in the future, the new charters will only be high performing ones. Right.
The President should re-examine his reliance on standardized testing to identify the best teachers and schools
and the worst teachers and schools. The tests are simply not adequate to their expectations.
The latest example of how test results can be doctored is the New York state testing scandal, which broke open
this week. The pass rates on the state tests had soared year after year, to the point where they became
ridiculous to all but the credulous The whole house of cards came crashing down this week after the state
raised the proficiency bar from the low point to which it had sunk. In 2009, 86.4% of the state's students were
"proficient" in math, but the number in 2010 plummeted to 61%. In 2009, 77.4% were "proficient" in reading,
but now it is only 53.2%.
The latest test scores were especially startling for New York City, where Mayor Michael Bloomberg staked his
reputation on their meteoric rise. He was re-elected because of the supposedly historic increase in test scores
and used them to win renewal of mayoral control. But now, the city's pass rate in reading for grades 3-8 fell
from 68.8% to 42.4%, and the proficiency rate in math sunk from an incredible 81.8% to a dismal 54%.
When the mayor ran for office, he said that mayoral control would mean accountability. If things went wrong,
the public would know whom to blame.
But now that the truth about score inflation is out, Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein steadfastly insist
that the gains recorded on their watch did not go up in smoke, that progress was real, and they have reiterated
this message through their intermediaries in the tabloids. In other words, they are using every possible
rationalization and excuse to avoid accountability for the collapse of their "historic gains."
Meanwhile Secretary Duncan travels the country urging districts to adopt mayoral control, so they can emulate
New York City. He carefully avoids mentioning Cleveland, which has had mayoral control for years and
remains one of the lowest performing districts in the nation. Nor does he mention that Detroit had mayoral
control and ended it. And it is hard to imagine that anyone would think of Chicago, which has been controlled
by Mayor Richard Daley for many years, would serve as a national model.
President Obama and Secretary Duncan need to stop and think. They are heading in the wrong direction. On
their present course, they will end up demoralizing teachers, closing schools that are struggling to improve,
dismantling the teaching profession, destabilizing communities, and harming public education.