THIS IS WHAT COURTS ARE UP AGAINST AND I THINK A LOT OF PEOPLE DON’T STOP TO THINK ABOUT THIS: ONE SIZE DOESN’T FIT ALL
This is an excerpt from a Court of Appeals decision explaining why they are not allowing an injunction against ICE to stand while the case is heard in the lower court. Plaintiffs need to understand how granular requests need to be, not to just throw entire events into a complaint and expect the courts to be able to issue ‘one size fits all’ order. (I’ve removed the citations in the excerpt for ease of reading, but they are intact in the screenshot.)
“We accessed and viewed the same videos the district court did. What they show is observers and protestors engaging in a wide range of conduct, some of it peaceful but much of it not. They also show federal agents responding in various ways. Even the named plaintiffs claims involve different conduct, by different officers, at different times, in different places, in response to different behavior. These differences mean that there are no questions of law or fact common to the class that would allow the court to decide all their claims in one stroke.”
The lesson here is that when you see that a court “lets it keep happening”, at least as often as not their hands were tied because the plaintiffs threw a mixed bag at them.
There’s another lesson here, quietly revealed in the Court’s comment: people are often peacefully protesting, but, as much as we may hate to admit it, often the people protesting are *not* being peaceful. Whether or not you agree with unpeaceful protest in this situation is *not* what this post is about, do NOT discuss this in comments – don’t make me shut commenting down on this important post.
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