N.J. BUDGET DEAL BRINGS AN END TO 3-DAY SHUTDOWN
Resolution prompts Gov. Christie to say he’ll return to the beach, now open
Landau, an appellate lawyer who won two such cases argued in April.
While the number of little-guy victories this term may have been unusual, they were not unique. For several years, the court has pushed back against what it sees as egregious overcriminalization — ranging from a jilted wife’s attempted assault prosecution under a chemical weapons treaty to a Florida fisherman’s conviction for tossing undersized grouper under a law targeting white-collar destruction of evidence.
What often binds these cases are great plaintiffs or a great set of facts.
So it was that 13-year-old Ehlena Fry won a unanimous decision against her school district in her quest to bring her service dog into class.
And while Lester Packingham, a convicted sex offender, might not engender sympathy, his conviction eight years later under a North Carolina law prohibiting him from using social-networking websites also produced a unanimous reversal. Packingham had posted “Praise be to GOD” on Facebook to celebrate the dismissal of a traffic ticket.
Several factors likely drove the court to hear appeals from little guys and rule in their favor:
Several cases raised claims under the Fourth Amendment, which protects citizens from unreasonable searches and seizures, or the First Amendment’s freedom of speech guarantee.
“This is a court that is solicitous of individual constitutional rights,” Landau said. “It’s pretty rare that they get a First Amendment claim that they don’t uphold.”
The 64 cases heard were selected by an eight-member court following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. The justices were hunting for disputes that would not produce 4-4 deadlocks.
“They were most solicitous to cases that looked like they’d be easy ones where the lower court was quite probably wrong,” said Jeffrey Fisher, a Stanford law professor who argued four cases during the term.
And then there is the justices’ sense of responsibility as the ultimate backstop for those treated wrongly by the legal system.
Said Jeffrey Green, national co-chair of the Amicus Committee of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers: “The Supreme Court does, to a certain extent, view itself as the last opportunity to achieve justice.”
New Jersey’s government shutdown ended Monday after a deal on a state budget, a rewrite of the rules for the state’s largest health insurer, and the national mocking of Gov. Chris Christie thanks to images of him lounging in a chair on a beach closed to the public amid the lockdown he ordered.
Christie signed the $34.7 billion budget early Tuesday.
Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto and Senate President Stephen Sweeney made the deal public in a news conference ahead of planned votes. That followed meetings with executives from Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield, the state’s largest insurance company whose fate is central to the budget standoff that prompted the state shutdown.
“At the end of the day, we have one hell of a budget we can be proud of,” Sweeney said after first apologizing for the disruption in state services caused by the shutdown. “We wish we didn’t have to do this, but it was part of getting a deal done.”
Sweeney said he expected most state operations to be ready for Tuesday morning, meaning the parks and beaches closed over the weekend would be available to the public for the July Fourth holiday.
“I’m saddened that it’s three days late, but I’ll sign the budget tonight,” Christie said at his own news conference to announce the deal.
The agreement with the Democratic leaders in the Legislature does not get what Christie had initially called for in February, notably a dedicated fund to stem the opioid addiction crisis, paid for from Horizon’s surplus account.
“That’s what I wish would have happened,” Christie said. “I gave in on one point, yeah, but I got a bill that reforms them significantly.”
And once the deal was done, Christie said he had plans. “I’ll go back to the beach,” he said.
Christie, who has record-low approval ratings, dismissed the criticism and ridicule that came after his beach photo. His family would always take precedence, Christie said.
“If they had flown that plane over that beach and I was sitting next to a 25-year-old blonde in that beach chair next to me, that’s a story,” he said. “I wasn’t . ... I was sitting next to my wife of 31 years.”
The bill would cap Horizon’s reserves and the excess be returned to ratepayers, not to a fund dedicated to drug treatment, as Christie originally proposed.