Judge Kathy Williams was rightfully beside herself that the Florida AG instructed the police to defy her order. From the Miami Herald:
A Miami federal judge said Tuesday she was “surprised and shocked” when state Attorney General James Uthmeier first told police officers to obey her order not to arrest undocumented immigrants entering Florida but later said he “cannot prevent” them from making arrests under a new state law. U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams is considering whether to find Uthmeier in contempt of court. Williams said she would issue a preliminary injunction late Tuesday prohibiting all state law enforcement officials and police agencies from arresting undocumented immigrants who come into Florida. She also scheduled a critical hearing for late May that could lead to Uthmeier being held in contempt of court for flouting her prior restraining order in the immigration case.
Williams said the state attorney general’s directive telling police officers that they could make arrests “threw everything out of whack,” leaving her with no choice but to hold a show-cause hearing to allow Uthmeier to explain why she should not hold him in contempt of her order. The judge gave lawyers for the attorney general a brief break during Tuesday’s hearing to consult with him about withdrawing his advice to police officers to ignore her order, but they said Uthmeier was not retreating from his position. “What I am offended by is someone suggesting you don’t have to follow my order, that it’s not legitimate,” Williams said.
In other news, we need a better logo for the blog... check out this law firm's logo, which apparently a federal judge didn't like (from the NY Times):
A purple dragon dressed in a business suit seemed like a natural choice for a logo when Jacob A. Perrone, a lawyer in East Lansing, Mich., recently opened a new firm and named it Dragon Lawyers.
He noted that some lawyers liked to call themselves “bulldogs” and said the dragon symbolized “aggressive representation.”
But a federal magistrate judge, Ray Kent, was not impressed. He was so disgusted by the dragon that he struck a lawsuit filed by Mr. Perrone on behalf of an inmate who had accused jail officials in Clinton County, Mich., of being “deliberately indifferent” to her when she started vomiting last year.
In a brief order issued on Monday, Judge Kent noted that “each page of plaintiff’s complaint appears on an e-filing which is dominated by a large multicolored cartoon dragon dressed in a suit, presumably because she is represented by the law firm of ‘Dragon Lawyers PC © Award Winning Lawyers.’”