The Wrongologist

What’s
Wrong Today:

Last
Thursday, William Martini, a US District Judge, ruled that the New York Police
Department’s (NYPD) surveillance
of Muslim Americans in New Jersey was a lawful effort to prevent terrorism,
not a civil-rights violation.

In a decision
in federal court in Newark, NJ, Judge Martini dismissed a lawsuit brought in
2012 by eight Muslims who alleged that the NYPD’s
surveillance program was unconstitutional because it focused on religion,
national origin and race. Their suit accused the department of spying on
ordinary people at mosques, restaurants and schools in New Jersey since 2002.

Martini
said he was not convinced the plaintiffs were targeted
solely because of their religion:

But
as Samuel Bagenstos, a law professor at the University of Michigan and former
official in the civil rights division of the Justice Department, told MSNBC’s Adam Serwer, that’s not the way it works:

The ruling
also singled out the Associated Press, which sparked the lawsuit with a series of stories
based on confidential NYPD documents showing how the department sought to
infiltrate and surveil at least 20 mosques, 14 restaurants, 11 retail stores,
two grade schools, and two Muslim student associations in New Jersey. The
NYPD’s spying on daily life in Muslim communities in the region – with no
probable cause, and nothing to show for it – was exposed in a Pulitzer-Prize winning series by the AP.

The Judge’s
logic is that the reporters for AP, Adam Goldman and Matt Apuzzo, were
responsible for any injuries to the Muslim community by providing them proof of
the spying targeted at them. Here is a quote from Judge Martin’s opinion: (emphasis
by the Wrongologist)

The
most impressive thing that jumps out in the opinion is Judge Martini asserting,
not once but twice, that AP had published or released “without authorization”. Is it naive to think that a US
District Court judge would have heard of the First Amendment to the US
Constitution?

It appears
that Judge Martini actually hit a weird kind of trifecta: In one decision, he gets the 1st,
4th and 14th Amendments wrong, and maybe sets a record of some kind by getting
the 1st Amendment wrong three times. That would be Freedom of Religion,
Freedom of Association and Freedom of the Press.

OK, think
about it. By Judge Martini’s reasoning, you live on a farm, and you notice a
poacher on your neighbor’s farm. When you reveal this information to your neighbor,
he then sues the poacher for damages. The poacher’s defense is that you are responsible
for the damages since you disclosed the poaching that resulted in the lawsuit
against the poacher.

And to Judge Martini, this makes sense. Martini is a one-term Republican congressman from New
Jersey. He was appointed to the federal bench by George W. Bush in 2002.
Previous critiques of his judicial conduct have been unusually blunt and
public, including repeated rebukes at the appellate level and the local US
attorney’s describing him in court filings as “misguided” and “irrational.”

In other
words, this fool, who was appointed by another fool who was appointed by the US
Supreme Court, has again acted like a fool. Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised.

Omar
Sacirbey of the Religion News Service quotes
Hina Shamsi of the American Civil Liberty Union, about this case:

But the NYPD
wasn’t hunting for Muslim terrorists in places where the 9/11 terrorists were
known to hang out, like cheap hotels, gyms, and cybercafes. Rather, the NYPD
was hunting terrorists in schools in Newark, including one that taught Muslim girls
in fifth to twelfth grades, and another teaching first through fourth graders.

The NYPD
was hunting terrorists in a girl’s school. Was the 9/11 plan hatched in a girl’s
school?

Sadly, the nature of the republic for which we stand is changing. This court’s decision gives
legal sanction to the targeted discrimination of a minority, in this case Muslims, anywhere and
everywhere in this country, without limitation, for no other reason than their
religion.