Tag Archives: Court

Accused New York bomber due in court to face charges

Suspected bomber Ahmad Khan Rahimi appears via video in a New Jersey state courtroom from his hospital bed, where he is recovering from gunshot wounds suffered during his arrest, in Elizabeth, New Jersey

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A man accused of injuring 30 people in September when he set off a homemade bomb on a crowded New York street, as well as planting other explosive devices around the region, is due in federal court on Thursday to face charges.

Ahmad Khan Rahimi, 28, is scheduled to appear in Manhattan federal court to be arraigned on the charges, including the use of a weapon of mass destruction, which could result in a mandatory life sentence.

Prosecutors have accused the Afghan-born U.S. citizen of setting off an explosion in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood on Sept. 17, which did not kill anyone but hurt 30 people.

The attack came hours after authorities say another pipe bomb planted by Rahimi went off along the course of a charity road race in New Jersey, though that detonation did not injure anyone.

Federal prosecutors also say Rahimi left another bomb in Chelsea that did not go off and several explosive devices in a bag at a train station in Elizabeth, New Jersey.

He was captured after a manhunt that ended with a shootout with police officers who discovered him sleeping in the doorway of a bar in Linden, New Jersey. The confrontation left him with severe injuries, delaying the filing of federal charges.

He has also been charged by federal and state prosecutors in New Jersey.

(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing by Scott Malone and Alistair Bell)

Tribunal overwhelmingly rejects Beijing’s South China Sea claims

anti-China protest group over South China Sea

By Anthony Deutsch and Ben Blanchard

AMSTERDAM/BEIJING (Reuters) – An arbitration court ruled on Tuesday that China has no historic title over the waters of the South China Sea and has breached the Philippines’ sovereign rights with its actions, infuriating Beijing which dismissed the case as a farce.

A defiant China, which boycotted the hearings at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, vowed again to ignore the ruling and said its armed forces would defend its sovereignty and maritime interests.

China’s state-run Xinhua news agency said shortly before the ruling was announced that a Chinese civilian aircraft had successfully tested two new airports in the disputed Spratly Islands.

And China’s Defence Ministry said a new guided missile destroyer was formally commissioned at a naval base on the southern island province of Hainan, which has responsibility for the South China Sea.

“This award represents a devastating legal blow to China’s jurisdictional claims in the South China Sea,” Ian Storey, of Singapore’s ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute, told Reuters.

“China will respond with fury, certainly in terms of rhetoric and possibly through more aggressive actions at sea.”

The United States, which China has accused of fuelling tensions and militarizing the region with patrols and exercises, urged parties to comply with the legally binding ruling and avoid provocations.

“The decision today by the Tribunal in the Philippines-China arbitration is an important contribution to the shared goal of a peaceful resolution to disputes in the South China Sea,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said in a statement.

U.S. officials have previously said they feared China may respond to the ruling by declaring an air defense identification zone in the South China Sea, as it did in the East China Sea in 2013, or by stepping up its building and fortification of artificial islands.

China claims most of the energy-rich waters through which about $5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes every year. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also have claims.

Finding for the Philippines on a number of issues, the panel said there was no legal basis for China to claim historic rights to resources within its so-called nine-dash line, which covers almost 90 percent of the South China Sea.

It said China had interfered with traditional Philippine fishing rights at Scarborough Shoal and had breached the Philippines’ sovereign rights by exploring for oil and gas near the Reed Bank.

None of China’s reefs and holdings in the Spratly Islands entitled it to a 200-mile exclusive economic zone, it added.

“2,000 YEARS OF HISTORY”

China’s Foreign Ministry rejected the ruling, saying its people had more than 2,000 years of history in the South China Sea, that its islands did have exclusive economic zones and that it had announced to the world its “dotted line” map in 1948.

“China’s territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests in the South China Sea shall under no circumstances be affected by those awards,” it said.

However, the ministry also repeated that China respected and upheld the freedom of navigation and overflight and that China was ready to keep resolving the disputes peacefully through talks with states directly concerned.

In a statement shortly before the ruling, China’s Defence Ministry said its armed forces would “firmly safeguard national sovereignty, security and maritime interests and rights, firmly uphold regional peace and stability, and deal with all kinds of threats and challenges”

The judges acknowledged China’s refusal to participate, but said they sought to take account of China’s position from its statements and diplomatic correspondence.

“The award is a complete and total victory for the Philippines … a victory for international law and international relations,” said Paul Reichler, lead lawyer for the Philippines.

Vietnam said it welcomed the ruling.

Taiwan, which maintains that the island it occupies, Itu Aba, is legally the only island among hundreds of reefs, shoals and atolls scattered across the seas, said it did not accept the ruling, which seriously impaired Taiwan’s territorial rights.

“This is the worst scenario,” Taiwan Foreign Minister David Tawei Lee told reporters, promising unspecified “action” from Taipei.

GROUND-BREAKING RULING

The ruling is significant as it is the first time that a legal challenge has been brought in the dispute, which covers some of the world’s most promising oil and gas fields and vital fishing grounds. [http://bit.ly/29AlvXc]

It reflects the shifting balance of power in the 3.5 million sq km sea, where China has been expanding its presence by building artificial islands and dispatching patrol boats that keep Philippine fishing vessels away.

The Philippines said it was studying the ruling.

“We call on all those concerned to exercise restraint and sobriety,” Foreign Affairs Secretary Perfecto Yasay told a news conference. “The Philippines strongly affirms its respect for this milestone decision as an important contribution to the ongoing efforts in addressing disputes in the South China Sea.”

Japan said the ruling was legally binding and final.

Oil prices jumped following the findings, with Brent crude futures <LCOc1> up almost 3 percent at $47.87 per barrel at 1130 GMT (7:30 a.m. ET).

The court has no power of enforcement, but a victory for the Philippines could spur Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei to file similar cases.

Ahead of the ruling, around 100 members of a Philippine nationalist group demonstrated outside the Chinese consulate in Manila, calling on Beijing to accept the decision and leave the Scarborough Shoal, a popular fishing zone off limits to Filipinos since 2012.

In China, social media users reacted with outrage at the ruling.

“It was ours in the past, is now and will remain so in the future,” wrote one user on microblogging site Weibo. “Those who encroach on our China’s territory will die no matter how far away they are.”

Spreading fast on social media in the Philippines was the use of the term “Chexit” – the public’s desire for Chinese vessels to leave the waters.

(Additional reporting by Enrico Dela Cruz and Martin Petty in Manila, Megha Rajagopalan in Beijing, Tim Kelly in Tokyo, John Walcott and David Brunnstrom in Washington, JR Wu in Taipei and Greg Torode in Hong Kong.; Editing by Lincoln Feast and Nick Macfie)

Fisherman tells Thai court~ beer tab led to years of slavery

By Alisa Tang

BANGKOK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – A fisherman from Myanmar described meeting a job broker while having a beer with a friend in the fishing port town of Kantang in southern Thailand.

While chatting with the broker, he passed out drunk, without paying for his beer. Four days later, the broker told him he owed her 2,000 baht ($50) for his unpaid beer and his four-day stay in her home, and would have to work to pay off his debt.

He ended up enslaved on a fishing boat, working five years without pay, he told a court in Thailand’s southern Trang province as the proceedings began last week in a human trafficking case against nine defendants.

The defendants include the broker, as well as the owner of Boonlarp Fishing Co. Ltd., whom prosecutors say is the chief of the trafficking ring.

“This case is important because before the police could only catch the small fish, but this is the first time they got the big fish,” said Papop Siamhan, a lawyer for the trafficking victims and project coordinator for the Human Rights and Development Foundation (HRDF) rights group.

The defendants have denied all charges, Papop said.

Thailand has come under fire after numerous reports uncovered slavery and human trafficking in its multibillion-dollar seafood industry.

The government recently amended its laws in an effort to combat human trafficking and slavery, ratcheting up penalties to life imprisonment and the death penalty in cases where their victims had died.

The Issara Institute, a Bangkok-based anti-trafficking organization, has been a key point of contact for these trafficked fishermen and said reports of abuses on fishing boats operating out of Kantang began as early as 2008.

Fishermen from Myanmar on boats run by Boonlarp began calling Issara Institute’s 24-hour hotline to complain of being exploited and physically abused in May 2015.

Threats against the fishermen escalated, until on Oct. 14, 2015, one fishermen phoned the hotline and said a captain had threatened to behead him and throw his body overboard. He pleaded with the hotline operator: “I do not want to die young. Please help us!”, according to the Issara Institute.

Last October, Thai authorities from several agencies, working with the Issara Institute, went out to sea and rescued men from the Boonlarp boats.

Last Friday, the Kantang case kicked off the first of 42 court hearings scheduled over five months, but the plaintiffs’ lawyers filed a motion at the second hearing on Thursday to move the case to a court in Bangkok.

“We wanted to move the case because we are worried about the safety of the victims,” said Preeda Tongchumnum, another lawyer on the case, who works with the Solidarity Center, a U.S.-based worker rights organization.

“They have faced abuse by the broker and her husband, so they are scared, Even though they’re under the care of state authorities, if they come to Bangkok, they would feel safer,” she said.

Proceedings have been adjourned until July 26, when the Supreme Court’s decision on the motion to move the case will be read.

The defense lawyers on the case could not be reached for comment.

(Reporting by Alisa Tang, editing by Ros Russell. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s rights, corruption and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org to see more stories)

North Carolina officials sue U.S. Justice Department over transgender ‘bathroom law’

A sign protesting a recent North Carolina law restricting transgender bathroom access adorns the bathroom stalls at the 21C Museum Hotel in Durham, North Carolina

By Colleen Jenkins

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (Reuters) – North Carolina officials sued the U.S. Justice Department on Monday for challenging the state’s law on public restroom access, in the newest chapter of the fight over the rights of transgender Americans.

North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory, a Republican, and the state’s secretary of public safety accused the agency of “baseless and blatant overreach.”

In March, North Carolina became the first state in the country to require transgender people to use restrooms in public buildings and schools that match the sex on their birth certificate instead of one that matches their gender identity.

The Justice Department’s top civil rights lawyer, Vanita Gupta, sent letters to North Carolina officials last week, saying the law was a civil rights violation and the state could face a federal lawsuit if it did not stop enforcing it by Monday.

The North Carolina officials are now suing Gupta as well as U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch for their “radical reinterpretation” of federal civil rights law in federal district court in North Carolina.

“We’re taking the Obama admin to court. They’re bypassing Congress, attempting to rewrite law &amp; policies for the whole country, not just NC,” McCrory wrote on Twitter.

Justice Department officials declined to comment on Monday.

The so-called bathroom law has thrust North Carolina into the center of a national debate over equality, privacy and religious freedom in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year that legalized same-sex marriage.

Prominent entertainers canceled performances in the state in protest of the law, associations relocated conventions and companies halted projects that would create jobs in the state.

AMERICANS DIVIDED

Americans are divided over how public restrooms should be used by transgender people, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll, with 44 percent saying people should use them according to biological sex and 39 percent saying they should be used according to the gender with which they identify.

The Justice Department had previously declined to say whether it would take legal action if the state stands by the law, but last week’s letters suggested it was willing to do so, setting the stage for a potentially costly court battle.

North Carolina stands to lose $4.8 billion in funds, mainly educational grants, if it does not back down, according to an analysis by lawyers at the University of California, Los Angeles Law School.

McCrory said in a statement that he had filed the suit to ensure that North Carolina continues to receive federal funding until a court resolves the dispute.

He noted his office had sought additional time to respond to the Justice Department letters but said the request was refused “unless the state agreed to unrealistic terms.”

Officials at the University of North Carolina system, who also received a civil rights violation notification letter from the Justice Department last week, did not join the suit that McCrory filed on Monday. The university could not immediately be reached for comment.

The letters were “a statement that they clearly are ready to litigate” on behalf of transgender people in North Carolina, said Chai Feldblum, a commissioner at the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

The commission works with the Justice Department to investigate discrimination charges by public employees.

The Justice Department and McCrory squared off over the same issue last year in a case involving a similar bathroom rule at Virginia schools. The administration’s position was upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, the same court that would hear appeals in any future federal case over the North Carolina law.

The law is already being challenged in federal district court by critics including the American Civil Liberties Union.

(Writing by Julia Harte; Additional reporting by Julia Harte and Julia Edwards in Washington; Editing by Alistair Bell)

String of Prosecutions on Rikers Prison Employees

A car exits the Rikers Island Correctional facility in New York March 12, 2015. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

By Joseph Ax and Nate Raymond

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The guards, authorities say, wanted to send a message.

“Somebody’s leaving in an ambulance tonight,” Eliseo Perez, an assistant chief for security at New York’s Rikers Island jail complex, told inmates after a rash of attacks on guards, according to prosecutors.

Then he allegedly instructed five subordinates to take prisoner Jahmal Lightfoot into a room and kick his teeth in, an attack that left him with facial fractures.

The ongoing trial of nine correction officers for the alleged 2012 assault and a subsequent cover-up is the latest in a string of prosecutions targeting dozens of Rikers employees over the past four years.

More than 50 guards at the 10,000-inmate complex, one of the three largest in the United States by population, have faced criminal charges since 2012 for assault, falsifying reports and smuggling contraband, court documents and data from various city agencies show.

That is about double the rate of prosecution in the prior four years, as authorities crack down on what they say is a toxic atmosphere of violence and corruption.

“Rikers is a very troubled institution,” said Mark Peters, the commissioner of the city’s Department of Investigation, which leads most Rikers-related probes. “We are now seeing the result of systemic neglect.”

Rikers houses male, female and adolescent prisoners in 10 separate facilities, mostly inmates awaiting trial.

RIKERS UNDER MICROSCOPE

Mayor Bill de Blasio has made Rikers reform a priority since taking office in 2014.

Peters, whom de Blasio appointed two years ago, said he had devoted one investigative squad exclusively to Rikers and increased its staff from 20 to 30 members.

Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark, whose office prosecutes most Rikers-related cases, recently proposed a new prosecution bureau based at the complex itself.

The list of law enforcement officials whose attention has turned to Rikers also includes Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan.

Next month, federal prosecutors will put two guards on trial for the fatal beating of an inmate. Brian Coll, a correction officer, is accused of stomping Ronald Spear to death and enlisting two other guards to help him conceal the truth. One guard has already pleaded guilty to the cover-up.

Bharara’s office also threw the weight of the federal government behind a lawsuit brought on behalf of adolescent inmates by the New York Civil Liberties Union. The case led to a settlement mandating reforms overseen by a court-appointed monitor.

A two-year investigation by Bharara’s office found the correction department failed to discipline guards adequately for excessive force from 2011 to 2013, said Sara Shudofsky, the chief of the office’s civil division, in an interview.

In 2014, de Blasio also appointed Joseph Ponte to head the correction department. Since then, it has pursued internal investigations more aggressively, with 200 cases ending in disciplinary charges last year, up from 93 in 2013, according to department statistics.

The focus on guards has met stiff resistance from the correction officers union, which claims the effort hides the true causes of Rikers’ problems.

“It is clear from the department’s own statistics that inmates are attacking correction officers and other inmates at an alarming rate,” the union president, Norman Seabrook, said in a statement.

Seabrook also said visitors, not guards, are primarily responsible for smuggling contraband, citing the hundreds of visitors arrested in the last year for bringing illegal items into Rikers.

SMUGGLING SURGE

The Department of Investigation has also pursued broader reforms in response to the persistent problems, Peters said.

In 2014, an undercover investigator posing as a guard gained access to Rikers six times despite carrying heroin, marijuana and razor blades. Another department probe uncovered red flags among two-thirds of a class of new hires, such as prior felony convictions or known gang ties.

In response, the correction department has installed drug-sniffing dogs at Rikers’ entrances and increased its “applicant investigation unit” from 19 employees to 87, to screen potential recruits’ backgrounds and psychological fitness.

Both Peters and Ponte say their departments are now working more closely to address misconduct. That cooperation was on display this month, when a guard was caught on video assaulting an inmate who had thrown a cup of liquid in his direction.

Correction officials turned over the video to investigators immediately, and the guard was arrested within hours.

But the level of violence still troubles observers. The Lightfoot trial, which began in March, highlights the difficulties in curbing incidents by both inmates and officers.

Perez and his team were part of an elite unit assigned to reduce inmate attacks, but prosecutors say their solution was to turn to assault themselves.

Defense attorneys have argued at trial that the guards simply defended themselves when Lightfoot attacked them with a weapon. Prosecutors have said that assertion is false.

“They decided they were going to set the tone that night,” Assistant District Attorney Pishoy Yacoub said at the start of the trial.

(Editing by Scott Malone and Diane Craft)

U.S. Top Court appears unlikely to revive immigrants plan

mmigration activists holding American flag rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court in

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama’s bid to save his plan to spare millions of immigrants in the country illegally from deportation and give them work permits ran into trouble on Monday at the U.S. Supreme Court in a case testing the limits of presidential power.

The court, with four conservative justices and four liberals, seemed divided along ideological lines during 90 minutes of arguments in the case brought by 26 states led by Texas that sued to block Obama’s unilateral 2014 executive action that bypassed Congress.

Liberal justices voiced support for Obama’s action. The conservatives sounded skeptical. A 4-4 decision would be a grim defeat for Obama because it would uphold lower court rulings that threw out his action last year and doom his quest to revamp a U.S. immigration policy he calls broken.

More than a thousand people in favor of Obama’s action staged a raucous demonstration outside the white marble courthouse on a sunny spring day, with cheery mariachi music from a red-and-black clad band filling the air. A smaller group of Obama critics staged their own rally.

In order to win, Obama would need the support of one of the court’s conservatives, most likely Chief Justice John Roberts or Anthony Kennedy. But they both at times hit the Obama administration’s lawyer, U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, with tough questions.

Kennedy expressed concern that Obama had exceeded its authority by having the executive branch set immigration policy rather than carry out laws passed by Congress.

“It’s as if the president is setting the policy and the Congress is executing it. That’s just upside down,” Kennedy said.

A ruling is due by the end of June.

Obama’s plan was tailored to let roughly 4 million people – those who have lived illegally in the United States at least since 2010, have no criminal record and have children who are U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents – get into a program that shields them from deportation and supplies work permits.

Obama said the program, called Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA), was aimed at preventing families from being torn apart.

The case comes during a heated presidential campaign in which the status of the roughly 11 million immigrants in the United States illegally, most of them from Mexico and other Latin American nations, has been a central theme. Immigration is also a global concern, with Europe now struggling with a flood of immigrants fleeing violence in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere.

The Republican-governed states that filed suit asserted that the Democratic president overstepped his authority provided in the Constitution while his administration said he merely provided guidance on how to enforce deportation laws.

A 4-4 ruling is possible because there are only eight justices following February’s death of conservative Antonin Scalia.

POSSIBLE COMPROMISE

One possible compromise outcome would be that the court could uphold Obama’s plan in part while leaving some legal questions unresolved, including whether the government can provide work permits to eligible applicants.

Obama would also win if the justices decide the states had no legitimate grounds to sue. Texas said it had “standing” to sue because it would be hurt by the additional costs it would incur by providing driver’s licenses to those given legal status.

Liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted the “basic problem” that the government lacks the resources to deport everyone in the country illegally, meaning it must set priorities.

“There are these people who are here to stay, no matter what,” Ginsburg said.

Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor criticized Texas’ argument about the economic harm caused by Obama’s action, saying millions of immigrants “are here in the shadows” and will affect the economy “whether we want (them) to or not.”

Verrilli said the federal government has regularly launched programs aimed at giving large groups of immigrants temporary legal status as part of its role establishing enforcement priorities due to limited resources.

Asked by Roberts if the government has the power to allow all immigrants who are in the country illegally to stay, Verrilli said: “Definitely not.”

Shortly before the plan was to take effect, a federal judge in Texas blocked it after the states filed suit. The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that decision in November.

Obama’s executive action arose from frustration within the White House and the immigrant community about a lack of action in politically polarized Washington to address the status of people living in the United States illegally.

He took the action after House of Representatives Republicans killed bipartisan legislation, called the biggest overhaul of U.S. immigration laws in decades and providing a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, that was passed by the Senate in 2013.

Obama, stifled by Republican lawmakers on many of his major legislative initiatives, has drawn Republican ire with his use of executive action to get around Congress on immigration policy and other matters including gun control and healthcare.

(Additional reporting by Clarece Polke and Robert Iafolla)

Oklahoma Court Denies State’s Appeal on Ten Commandments Monument

The Oklahoma state Supreme Court has refused to hear the state’s appeal of their decision to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the state’s capitol grounds.

The ruling to reject the appeal had the same 7-2 vote as the initial decision that claimed the monument was unconstitutional.

 

The lawsuit against the monument was brought in 2013 by the American Civil LIberties Union of Oklahoma.

Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin was bold in her opposition to the court’s ruling.

“The Ten Commandments monument was built to recognize and honor the historical significance of the Commandments in our state’s and nation’s systems of laws,” Fallin said in a statement. “The monument was built and maintained with private dollars. It is virtually identical to a monument on the grounds of the Texas State Capitol which the United States Supreme Court ruled to be permissible. It is a privately funded tribute to historical events, not a taxpayer funded endorsement of any religion, as some have alleged.”

Life Sentence Urged In Peanut Salmonella Case

The head of a peanut processing company that was convicted of conspiracy related to a salmonella poisoning outbreak is facing an unprecedented sentence of life in prison.

Stewart Parnell, the former owner of Peanut Corporation of America, was found guilty in September in 71 counts related to covering up salmonella contamination of the company’s products.

Nine people died and 700 were sickened in the 2008-2009 outbreak.

U.S. federal prosecutors filed a brief calling for the life sentence to be issued, saying the crimes committed by Parnell fall under the federal guidelines for a life sentence.

If accepted by the judge, it would be the first time someone has been sentenced to life in prison for food-safety violations.

“It was an extraordinary verdict that could result in an extraordinary amount of time in jail for a food crime,” Bill Marler, a Seattle lawyer who represents victims of food-borne illnesses, including some in the Peanut Corp. case, told the Wall Street Journal.

“A lot of them are quite relieved,” Marler told USA TODAY. “These are people whose family members died from eating peanut butter, so you can understand where they may not have much sympathy for Mr. Parnell.”

Parnell’s lawyers say the recommendation is extreme.

“The truth of the matter is Stewart Parnell ate that peanut butter; he fed it to his children and fed it to his grandchildren,” Hodges told USA TODAY. “He never intended to harm anyone.”

Colorado Theater Shooter Guilty Of Murder

A Colorado jury has found James Holmes guilty of murder in the deaths of 12 people at an Aurora, Colorado theater.

In addition to the 12 people killed, 70 others were injured in the attack on the opening night of the movie “The Dark Knight Rises.”  Holmes had entered the theater in black body armor with his hair colored red in an apparent reference to the Joker, Batman’s arch-nemesis.

The jury rejected the claims of Holmes’ defense team that he has been overtaken by his schizophrenia and that he had no control over his actions that night.

However, prosecutors showed a very detailed plan for the attack that included the booby-trapping of his apartment with explosive devices in an apparently attempt to take out law enforcement after his assault on the theater.  The prosecutors claim the plans showed that while Holmes may indeed be mentally ill, he was fully aware of his actions the night of the attack.

Holmes showed no response as the jury found him guilty on all 165 charges against him.

The jury will now take a week off before coming back to determine if Holmes will spend life in prison or be sentenced to the death penalty.

Court Rules School Violated Rights Of Student Preacher

A federal judge delivered a major victory for the religious freedom of students when he ordered a Washington school to erase the suspension records of a student who preached at school.

Cascade High School senior Michael Leal had been suspended by the school three times last October saying that his handing out of Gospel literature and preaching violated school policy.  The school told him that if he continued his actions he would be expelled for causing a “disruption” on campus.

The Pacific Justice Institute stepped in after the third suspension to defend Leal’s rights.  Now, a federal judge says the school was wrong.

“Plaintiff’s suspensions on October 2, 9, and 31, 2014, are vacated. Defendant shall remove the Notices of Disciplinary Action or Short Term Suspension dated October 2, 9, and 31, 2014, from his record,” US District Court Judge Thomas Zilly wrote in his decision and awarded Leal $1 as nominal damage.

The judge also declared the school’s policy against non-student written handouts unconstitutional.

“Defendant is hereby enjoined from enforcing the requirement that materials be ‘written and/or produced by students.’ That language is severed from the Policy and Procedure of the Everett Public Schools,” the court ordered.

The school now has a “free speech zone” where students can express views.

“Everyone needs to hear the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. It’s absolutely necessary,” Leal said.  He is scheduled to graduate on June 10th.