Last night, in a federal class action lawsuit filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and co-counsel, a settlement with Louisiana was finalized that will remove from the sex offender registry approximately 700 individuals who had been required to register solely because of a Crime Against Nature by Solicitation (CANS) conviction. Today’s settlement follows a ruling last year in a related case that found the CANS registration requirement unconstitutional. Despite that ruling, hundreds of people convicted of CANS remained on the registry. CCR filed a class action on their behalf, which led to today’s settlement.
“We are gratified that the state has agreed to vindicate the rights of hundreds of people who continued to be unconstitutionally registered as sex offenders,” said Center for Constitutional Rights Staff Attorney Alexis Agathocleous. “This registration requirement hasdisproportionately affected African American women and LGBT individuals who will now – finally – be able to begin to rebuild their lives.”
When charging someone for soliciting oral or anal sex for a fee, police and prosecutors in Louisiana have unfettered discretion in choosing whether to charge someone with prostitution or CANS. Until 2011, however, only a CANS conviction required sex offender registration. The court previously held application of the sex offender registration requirement to nine individuals unconstitutional because it imposed different consequences for a CANS conviction than a prostitution conviction for exactly the same conduct, without any rational basis.
“I am overjoyed. This is truly an historic moment. Justice has prevailed and dignity has been restored to the women and men who have been denied their basic human rights for so long. We celebrate this true collaboration of community, affected individuals, and the amazing lawyers that together made a difference,” said Deon Haywood, Executive Director of Women With A Vision, a community-based organization in New Orleans that has led advocacy efforts around this issue.
People affected by this law have been barred from homeless shelters, physically threatened, and refused residential substance abuse treatment because providers will not accept registered sex offenders at their facilities. As in the earlier case, all plaintiffs in this action proceeded anonymously for fear of retaliation.
“The lingering injustice, resulting from over 20 years of discriminatory enforcement of this law at police and prosecutors’ whims, will now finally come to an end,” said Andrea Ritchie, co-counsel to CCR in Doe v. Jindal and Doe v. Caldwell. “The State of Louisiana will now finally bring its conduct into compliance with the Constitution and the court’s prior rulings. This is an unqualified victory for Black women, poor women, and LGBTQ people who fought back against injustice and won.”
Plaintiffs are represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights, the law firm of Kairys, Rudovsky, Messing & Feinberg, LLP, police misconduct attorney Andrea J. Ritchie, and Loyola University New Orleans College of Law Stuart H. Smith Law Clinic & Center for Social Justice.
June 2013
6 posts
Victory! Sex Workers Removed From Louisiana Sex Offender Registry →
louisianajusticeinstitute.blogspot.com
“A drone is a perfect citizen. It follows orders. It produces. It does not waste. It does not take breaks, it does not gossip, and it does not unionize. A drone does not worry about the second-order effects of its actions. A drone will not whistleblow and a drone will not strike. A drone works, and works hard, and does nothing else. […] How do drones communicate? In certainties.”
— Asher Kohn, “A Drone is a Perfect Citizen,” The State (June 2013). (via runltw)
“Trans folks were not only attacked by mainstream gay rights groups but also in their own neighborhoods. In the West Village, a gentrified gay neighborhood, trans sex workers, who were mostly homeless and of color, were kicked out of the streets by white gay homeowners because they were “low-class, vulgar transvestites” not the usual entertaining drag queens. A real-estate-driven Quality of Life campaign led by the city continually pushed for the closure of clubs where trans folks hung out. Fighting for trans rights is thus a class issue. Rivera, who was homeless herself, saw the link and pushed STAR to organize a community space for homeless trans folks as well as fight for labor justice. They found a building for street gay kids, fed them and clothed them, while the government was cutting the healthcare, taking away food stamps, and putting more people with AIDS, youth, and women on the street. In Leslie Feinberg Interviews Sylvia Rivera, Rivera reiterates the importance of not only doing community work but also fighting against the government and the ruling class. STAR joined the mass demonstration with the Young Lords, a revolutionary Puerto Rican youth group, against police repression in 1970. STAR also built alliances with the Housing Works Transgender Working Group and the New York Direct Action Nextwork Labor Group to form picket lines at a club where a trans dancer was dismissed from work. Fighting for trans rights is a class issue–to resist the rich property owners who push trans folks out of their neighborhoods, to confront the managers that try to fire trans workers, and to fight back against the state that cuts back healthcare.”
—
Sylvia Rivera, transliberation, and class struggle.
(via janedoe225)
If only THIS was the emphasis during Pride parades…
(via rociology)
Turns out a trans woman killed Bin Laden →
salon.com
Salon celebrates the beginning of a multimillion dollar decade-and-a-half campaign to let all trans people kill people too so they can be just like the gays.
This makes me want to throw up, white trans imperialism is never ok.
That awkward moment where people in your community throw a dance party themed after a movie who’s main story-line centers around childhood abuse. Do you engage in a really potentially triggering conversation with the organisers about how these kind of things contribute to the belittlement and dismissal of CSA, and further isolate adult survivors, or do you just let it go?
janet mock diary: My Thoughts on TWoC CrowdFunding in Light of KOKUMO's & Ja'briel's Indiegogo Campaigns →
janetmock.tumblr.com
On the subject of crowdfunding…I have noticed that most campaigns don’t feature the intersections of race + trans womanhood.
It’s rare in fact that trans women of color (from low-income and/or rural backgrounds) ask the world for help.
My personal outlook is that most of my sisters are…
May 2013
15 posts
i thought LGBT was a sandwich
Lettuce, Glitter, Bacon, Tomato?
Best post on tumblr.
We’re a delicious community.
My fetishes include men giving me large sums of money and then never, ever talking to me again
<3
- Audience Member: How do you navigate gay white male spaces?
- Janet Mock: I don't.
“Most spaces identified as radical queer spaces, unless they are explicitly for people of color, generally lack any significant attention to or inclusion of struggles that are not specifically queer. In this context, unfortunately, those spaces are not radical alternatives to gay identity, but a continuation of the legitimization of white identity that exists in gay mainstream culture. This has led to deep-rooted forms of racism in alternative sites of resistance. Organizers of these spaces may give lip service to an anti-racist agenda, but in practice their actions maintain the status quo. I have tried over and over again to be a part of these radical spaces, but unless they are specifically for people of color, I am generally the only brown face in the bunch.”
—Priyank Jindal, from “Sites of Resistance or Sites of Racism?” in That’s Revolting!: Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation (via queerandpresentdanger)
It's called 'intersectional oppression', because it feels like your heart is being run over by traffic.
