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William Otis's avatar

This is the best and clearest explanation of anti-discrimination law -- and its uses and abuses -- that I've seen in 50 years of being a lawyer. It also sheds light on how Trump, despite his very serious flaws, is doing things that desperately need doing.

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Doug Israel's avatar

I worked for NYC and NYS government my entire career. I am extremely familiar with these noxious consent decrees. The ones I dealt with were not usually in cases brought by the Justice Department but more likely the advocare "community" legal aid, the ACLU etc. There was literally nothing the City of NY could require of welfare recipients that was not challenged under section 1983 as a federal civil rights violation. I was involved in a case where an advocate challenged a NYS law that required that recipients be finger imaged as proof of identity. This lunatic lawyer claimed this was a violation of the Civil Rights Act. He brought a motion for a preliminary injunction. It was too much even for a liberal Federal Judge who reamed the guy out. This was in the 90s. Back then NYC and State of course defended against these absurd suits but sometimes ended up either settling or being subjected to judicial monitored consent decrees. Of course later in my career when Mayor Bloomberg was replaced by a communist called DeBlasio he literally hired the head of the Legal Aid advocacy team to be his Commissioner of the Department of Social Services. After that the City entered into decrees in every case just about. What a mess.

And of course during the extraordinarily radical Biden administration, the entire federal government became committed to and devoted to pursuing these leftist decrees. It made things much easier for the advocates. Its going to take a lot of disciplined work for all this damage to be undone.

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