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Posted on 10/02/2024 9:29:01 PM PDT by george76
Kamala Harris would not be born for another six years when, in 1958, the Supreme Court of the United States issued one of the first of a series of decisions at the heart of the civil rights movement, the case of National Association for the Advancement of Colored People v. Alabama.
The NAACP, a New York nonprofit corporation, had taken the lead in fighting for the civil rights of black people in Alabama, specifically in support of its chapter in Montgomery, along with other local groups (Women’s Political Council) and leaders (the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ralph Abernathy), to end the Jim Crow segregation of public buses there.
In May 1956, a three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama ruled Alabama’s law and local ordinances requiring segregation of public transportation unconstitutional. In November, the Supreme Court summarily affirmed that holding, citing Brown v. Board of Education.
Stung by its defeat at the hands of the NAACP, which not only aided in the Montgomery bus boycott, but also provided legal counsel locally and in federal court to challenge racially segregated public transportation, Alabama targeted the NAACP.
Arguing the NAACP was “causing irreparable injury to the property and civil rights of the residents and citizens of the State of Alabama for which criminal prosecution and civil actions at law afford no adequate relief,” Alabama sought to bar the group from operating in Alabama or, failing that, to require the nonprofit to provide Alabama the “names and addresses of all its Alabama members.”
In a unanimous opinion by Justice John Marshall Harlan II, the Court held: “Effective advocacy of both public and private points of view, particularly controversial ones, is undeniably enhanced by group association [given] the close nexus between the freedoms of speech and assembly. [Moreover,] freedom to engage in association for the advancement of beliefs and ideas is an inseparable aspect of the ‘liberty’ assured by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which embraces freedom of speech.” Therefore, “compelled disclosure of [the NAACP’s] Alabama membership is likely to affect adversely [its] ability [and that of] its members to pursue their collective effort to foster beliefs which they admittedly have the right to advocate, in that it may induce members to withdraw from the [NAACP] and dissuade others from joining it because of fear of exposure of their beliefs shown through their associations and of the consequences of this exposure.”
Harris, who was attorney general of California before she moved up to the U.S. Senate, no doubt knows this history. After all, one tall tale from her personal narrative finds its origin in this era, to wit, her “Fweedom” cry from a stroller pushed by her parents during a civil rights march, albeit in Oakland, California. (Sadly, like much else by Harris, it’s an obvious theft from a 1965 interview with Dr. King about a little girl in Birmingham who cried “Fee-dom.”)
Notwithstanding NAACP v. Alabama, when California opened a war against nonprofit organizations that refused to provide lists of their major donors, Harris weighed in enthusiastically against them. Historically, California had long required that, when nonprofit groups filed their annual IRS-mandated Form 990s with the Golden State, they include Schedule B, which provides names and addresses of those who contribute $5,000 or more.
California was nearly alone in that decree; as a result, it was largely ignored. At the time, I led a nonprofit, public-interest law firm. Although I filed the entire Form 990, including Schedule B, with the IRS, I refused to do so with California. I learned later that many California nonprofit organizations, especially those involved in hot-button issues, sought to protect donors’ anonymity because of the constitutional issues involved, because of the Attorney General’s notoriously poor record of keeping those records confidential, and because the backlash against donors to 2008’s Proposition 8 traditional marriage constitutional amendment effort.
In 2010, the Attorney General’s Office “ramped up its efforts[,] sending thousands of deficiency letters to charities that had not complied with the Schedule B requirement.” In 2011, Kamala Harris became attorney general. In 2012 and 2013, her office sent deficiency letters to noncomplying nonprofit organizations and, when they refused to disclose their contributors’ identities, she “threatened to suspend their registrations and fine their directors and officers.”
Two nonprofit groups, Americans for Prosperity Foundation and the Thomas More Law Center, sued to keep their donor lists private. A California federal district court ruled in their favor, but Harris appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which reversed and remanded the rulings.
After bench trials in the two cases, the federal district court again ruled in favor of the nonprofits in April 2016 for one and in November 2016, for the other. Attorney General Harris appealed the former, but by mid-November, she had been elected to the Senate and, no doubt, was on her way there. She left the cases behind but her successor continued her arguments at the Ninth Circuit, which again ruled in favor of California’s demand for the donor records of nonprofit groups.
On July 1, 2021, in its last decision of the term, Chief Justice John Roberts announced the 6-3 holding of the Court reversing the ruling of the Ninth Circuit and reinstating the holdings of the federal district court barring California from collecting nonprofits’ Schedule Bs. Unsurprisingly, he quoted NAACP v. Alabama, writing, “It is hardly a novel perception that compelled disclosure of affiliation with groups engaged in advocacy may constitute as effective a restraint on freedom of association as [other] forms of governmental action.”
In short, the Supreme Court gave no more credence to California’s demand for the records of nonprofit groups than it had to similar demands made by Alabama over 60 years earlier.
Harris, who is now the Democrats’ nominee for the presidency, has made her antipathy toward the First Amendment clear. It is demonstrated in her demand to regulate free speech on the internet. Her hostility toward the Fifth Amendment is also clear in her willingness to confiscate patents or lawfully owned firearms. Her antipathy toward the right of privacy and the “sanctity of your locked home” is manifest, as is her antagonism for due process, demonstrated in the glee with which she learned she could execute the powers of her office (“swipe of my pen”). As California Attorney General, in her treatment of nonprofit groups akin to the NAACP, demonstrated her enmity toward one of the constitutional underpinnings of the Civil Rights Movement.
With her history in mind, we should respond skeptically to any attempted reassurance on her part or “fact-checking” by others, as the Supreme Court did to California’s guarantee of confidentiality regarding donors. It’s “not worth much” and “rings hollow.”
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UN Agenda 21 , 2030 , Great Reset, ( Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from the list.)
Her and sistah Tanya Chitcan too. A couple Jamaicans trying to grab control of the U.S. Government.
Her and sistah Tanya Chitcan too. A couple Jamaicans trying to grab control of the U.S. Government.
Kamala grew up in the wealthiest suburb in Canada. Not the kind of person that you want running things in the USA but here we are.
Sondland said, “No. I’ll tell you why. I’ve lived four years under the Biden-Harris policies, and I have to say those policies are not only becoming an existential threat to our country’s way of life but to our allies as well.”
Butt-Butt, I just saw a commercial on the TV saying that kommei-law grew up in a middle class neighborhood, worked at mc donalds and some more stuff that I missed because I was so taken aback that kommie-law had worked at a mc donalds and letting that soak into My mind.
*
I don’t understand ... SHE, not Trump, is a threat — a SERIOUS threat — to “democracy”. (She’s actually a serious threat to freedom.) Why is TRUMP the perpetual target of the evildoers?
I wish I could remember which party it was that passed all those “Jim Crow” laws.
I really did see it !!!😵💫
simply because they are evildoers
She should put her suction super powers to use for the flooding.
The People’s Front of Judea?
/quietly going mad therefore Monty Python
You blame the other person of something you are guilty of and throw the suspicion on that person. If that person says "No, you are", then they look like a child trying to cover their misdeeds up.
Why is TRUMP the perpetual target of the evildoers?
So that President Trump looks bad. Doesn't matter if the accusation is factual or not, just throw it out there repeatedly and people start believing it. People hear it enough times and start to think there is something to the accusations.
"He's a threat", "he's worse than Hitler and Mussolini combined", "he needs to be taken out". This is what the attempted assassins heard.
Only people they hate more than the Romans are the f’ing Judean Peoples Front and the Judean Popular Peoples Front. Splitters!
The Democrat Party has been at war with our constitution for years. It needs to be utterly destroyed.
LOL!!!
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