Posted on 02/28/2006 9:29:57 PM PST by neverdem
Attacking what he called racial and ethnic segregation, the Phoenix district attorney filed a federal lawsuit yesterday against Arizona court programs set up to provide treatment for Spanish-speaking and Indian drunken-driving offenders.
Andrew P. Thomas, the Maricopa County attorney, whose office serves the fourth-most-populous county in the nation, said the "race-based courts" violated the Constitution and federal laws barring discrimination on the basis of race or ethnicity.
The programs are not technically courts. They are probation programs that steer people to therapy and other treatment in an effort to combat alcohol addiction, though a judge may impose jail or other sanctions for people who violate the terms.
Maricopa County has three such programs, a general D.U.I. court and others for Spanish speakers and Indians, which were established several years ago. The presiding judge, Barbara Rodriguez Mundell, has defended them as important to overcome participants' language and cultural difficulties.
Calls to Judge Mundell were referred to the courts' lawyer, Stan Claus, who declined to comment, citing a policy against speaking on pending litigation.
Experts said the Spanish and Indian courts are among the few such programs in the nation. The general D.U.I. court programs were established a decade ago and now number 86 nationwide, according to the National Drug Court Institute.
The challenge to them comes in the heated atmosphere of a state where immigration and Indian rights have been fiercely debated.
The Arizona Republic newspaper, in an editorial in January responding to Mr. Thomas's threats of a lawsuit, accused Mr. Thomas of merely seeking "attention-getting headlines."
But Mr. Thomas, a Republican, said he acted out of an obligation to uphold the Constitution. He said the Spanish-language and Indian courts had resulted in disparate treatment among offenders, with defendants in the special courts receiving lighter penalties for violating probation.
For example...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Unfair! Where's the separate court for left-handed, one-legged vegetarian albinos of Armenian descent who only speak Chinese! Come on, taxpayers - pony up or we call in the ACLU.
This is going to be fun. Thomas' wife is hispanic. Going to be hard to throw the traditional liberal barbs at him for bringing this suit.
The Left has been trying to get multicultralism established in our representative government and into our justice system.
Instead of state elected representatives, they want race based elected representatives. Instead of one set of laws and justice system, they want different sets of laws and different justice systems for different racial tribes.
No, to a liberal, that is just more evidence that he likes to **** hispanics.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.