Happy Monday!
We're suffering through the dog days of summer. But at least we just had some big legal orders to keep things interesting.
First, Trump is in the news again (does he ever leave?) but this time it's about a civil lawsuit. He had sued CNN for defamation, claiming that CNN defamed him by comparing him to Hitler and the Nazi regime. On Friday, Judge Singhal dismissed his complaint.
The Court explained that the fatal flaw was that the complained of statements were opinions, not factually false statements. Comparing a Trump quote to a quote from Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels may be "bad rhetoric," the Court wrote, but it's "not defamation when it does not include false statements of fact." This is the second big order from Judge Singhal on the First Amendment, having previously granted summary judgment to CNN in Alan Dershowitz's defamation lawsuit against the company.
The opinion is a good and quick (11 pages) read. You can find it below.
Second, Judge Moore rejected the City of Miami's recent gerrymandering efforts, holding that its various redistricting plans were unconstitutional. The Court had previously enjoined the City's 2022 redistricting plan, adopting Magistrate Judge Louis's finding that "race predominated in the drawing of each of the five commission districts." The City then went back to the drawing board, proposing a "Remedial Plan" to the Court. But Judge Moore ruled that circumstantial evidence supported a finding that race motivated the Remedial Plan as well. The Court ultimately adopted a redistricting plan proposed by the Plaintiff, noting that the City hadn't even bothered to challenge the Plaintiff's proposal, instead "proffer[ing] a variety of grievances about potential political outcomes that would result from its implementation."Judge Moore Order by John Byrne on Scribd
4 comments:
John/David, you should do a quick follow-up post on the Judicial Intern Academy or link to the article written by Shannon Mau and Leat Perez in the Federal Lawyer, since you all had a post advertising for it earlier this year.
http://sdfla.blogspot.com/2023/03/guest-post-by-presidents-of-the-palm.html
https://www.fedbar.org/blog/magazine/digital-supp-1-2023/
Thirsty
Judge Singhal gets the law on this subject right, but his orders (see Dershowitz summary judgment order too) are deeply political. This order shows it in two ways: 1) trumpeting (no pun intended) his dissatisfaction with the Supreme Court precedent that Trump is being foiled by; and 2) taking completely unnecessary positions on the opinions that he is ruling on. He could just say, without commentary, "these statements are opinion. Whether or not the Plaintiff, or anyone else, might find the opinion repugnant is not legally relevant. Binding law requires that I dismiss this case." Instead, he goes out of his way to call CNN's positions "odious and repugnant" and to trash (especially in the Dershowitz opinion) Supreme Court precedent.
The judge appears to be openly campaigning for Supreme Court appointment if Trump is re-elected.
You clearly don’t know how politics works if you think those opinions in are “campaigning for Supreme Court appointment”. Just reading the articles out there and the commentary, it’s pretty clear the public and many lawyers don’t know what the courts do. To follow a law but also say it’s not a good law and the reasons why isn’t a bad thing. And it’s repugnant for CNN reporters or ANY reporters to keep using Nazi and Hitler. Their own reporters even said so. An Order without recognizing that basically says those comparisons are no big deal. They are. But they are not defamation. Good Order.
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