> Stephanie heard someone loudly knocking on the front door of the cottage. The individual then went around the side of the house, past no-trespassing signs, entered the back yard, walked onto the back porch, and began “pounding” on the back door.
As someone who grew up in rural PA, this is a pretty straightforward way to get shot as a trespasser.
> Beyond his main vocation as a chimney business owner, Thomas often drove for Lyft and Uber. After the criminal citation was filed, he automatically lost both driving jobs—banned by both companies due to the legal violation.
For being found guilty (overturned on appeal) of fishing with more than 8 lines due to what is likely a vendetta on the part of the officer. A particularly succinct example of automated cruelty. But what can one do?
Unfortunately, you can be denied employment for all sorts of unfair and ridiculous reasons--or for no reason at all. Not too much can be done without changing the law. I remember filling out a job application some time ago where one of the questions was "Have you ever been charged with a crime?" Not "convicted of". It wasn't a mistake, either. There was a footnote that said "You must answer YES to this question even if the charge was dismissed or you were found not guilty in court."
That's shameful to do in the US, given our principles of justice.
Maybe it was negligent rather than intentional. For example, the company might've just been using some form they got from an outsourced service. Or a lawyer might've made the form for them, but using an obnoxius template (as templates tend to be, AFAICT).
So, when people are in this situation, they can try asking the company about it (a recruiter, HR contact, or the hiring manager). The company's response could be strong signal about the actual corporate culture you'd find if you joined.
(Personally, if I was a hiring manager, and didn't know that candidates had started seeing this form, I'd want to know, and I'd make sure the right people were looking at it. To see whether that was intended, is it legal, is it a message we want to send, etc.)
You could also try contacting a labor regulatory authority or state AG's office, to see whether it's even legal. And/or, contact a state lawmaker, and suggest that it seems unconstitutional. It might even be an arguable EEOC violation where you are (e.g., if some protected group there is more likely to have adverse interactions even when innocent).
Our principles of justice? You are aware that we use incarceration as a source of slave labor for the government and private companies, right? That even after folks have served their time, we severely restrict their rights for the rest of their lives?
I'm not trying to be an ass, but the US' principles of justice are universally fucked.
That sounds like you're talking about our practice of justice. It is, unquestionably, pretty fucked.
I would say that "our principles of justice," on the other hand, a) clearly include "innocent until proven guilty", which would preclude the above question from an employer, and b) pretty well condemn a lot of stuff in our practice of justice, as well, with prison labor high on the list.
Innocent until proven guilty is a great idea. I'll agree with that. But it's not really implemented anywhere. You're stuck in prison or effectively on parole until you're found not guilty (or the case is dropped), with no reparation. You can also be put in jail indefinitely by a judge with no process of appeal.
Which I guess you could call a problem with the practice, but that begs the question: if it's never practiced, is it really a principle? Or is it just propaganda?
Also, prison labor is built into our constitution, making it more than just a practice.
How about "our best ideals"? There's certainly huge, often tragic problems. I'm not disputing that. But there's also some really admirable ideas and activity also going on. I'm appealing to the good parts.
That's certainly a more defensible position. I don't necessarily agree with it, but that may just be because I repeatedly seen how getting snared by the US Justice system's web destroys lives.
IJ has a few similar cases: https://ij.org/issues/ijs-project-on-the-4th-amendment/open-...
The idea that state officials can trespass on your land and plant cameras (or steal yours) without even a suspicion of a crime is absurd, even if just for how much danger it puts the state employees in.
I imagine the state sees the land as their property, which private individuals don't, strictly speaking, own but merely hold infinite lease on (land tax = rent price, eminent domain = one-side lease termination with compensation, etc). This legal philosophy arguably makes some theoretical sense but has rather unpalatable practical consequences.
It's not a "legal philosophy" that's how states work (i.e. it is their land). The state always controls all the land within its borders. "Ownership" is a tradeoff: Individuals get to do what they want (for the most part) with the land and also get protection by the state against crimes/disasters (e.g. fire) that occur within that property while the state gets tax revenue.
If you 100% truly owned your own land you'd be the monarch of your own state.
In this legal case the state is policing their water/fish on behalf of all the other property owners in the area as well as anyone that would benefit from said water/fish (downstream impacts, as it were).
> It's not a "legal philosophy" that's how states work (i.e. it is their land). The state always controls all the land within its borders.
You're confusing ownership with control. Ownership grants but does not guarantee control [1].
Countries nominally control the territory within their borders. In this case, the state is also legally entitled to certain rights pertaining to the water. (Similar to how a homeowner is entitled to certain rights pertaining to their property.)
Neither the U.S. nor Pennsylvania purport to own freeheld private property. That means they aren't entitled to it. And aren't entitled to exercise unlimited control over it. If the answer is well it's only pieces of paper that delineate that divide, then sure, but it's only pieces of paper that delineate a state's border.
> If you 100% truly owned your own land you'd be the monarch of your own state
Again, control. In many monarchies, the monarch controls a legal entity that owns the lands of the state. Or is the legal represenative of a deity who is the legal owner.
It's not even ownership. Not when the government can take back your property for virtually any reason.
It's a bit of a sore spot for me, when the local city tried to condemn my parent's land for $30k - less than a quarter of what they paid for it back in the 70's.
> It's not even ownership. Not when the government can take back your property for virtually any reason
As you observed, ownership is never absolute. It's a social construct. Evertyhing from squatters' rights to condemnation by public officials to private foreclosure show that.
If the power isn't being widely abused, then updating the law to better respect private property rights shouldn't be a problem. The state may actually gain some small amount of goodwill from the electorate by agreeing with the plaintiff.
“In open court, out loud, Officer Moon said he wasn’t bound by no-trespassing signs, and said he had a mandate to go anywhere. He is wrong because private property is sacred. The Fourth Amendment and its protection from search and seizure is the only thing standing between us and tyranny.”
No Monetary Gain
According to 12 words of Pennsylvania state code, PFBC officials have authority to “enter upon any land or water in the performance of their duties.” The statue provides wide latitude for PFBC to enter onto any property without consent, probable cause, or warrant—with no limits on duration, frequency, or scope.
> According to 12 words of Pennsylvania state code, PFBC officials have authority to “enter upon any land or water in the performance of their duties.” The statue provides wide latitude for PFBC to enter onto any property without consent, probable cause, or warrant—with no limits on duration, frequency, or scope.
Say what? That is how you get shot in rural america, as you should...
A similar case in VA had the state official sneak in wearing camouflage and steal the person's property: https://ij.org/case/virginia-open-fields/
I really have to wonder how it would be ruled if he had ran out with a gun and shot at the thief.
The public figure conservation officer with the implied vendetta can be viewed on page 47/52 of this pdf https://www.fishandboat.com/About-Us/Angler-and-Boater/Legac... . It is a public document showing a public function where he received an award. The PDF is available on a government website and intentionally published for and accessible by the public.
I'm badly split on Institute for Justice, the nonprofit backing this suit.
On the one hand, they aggressively advocate for obvious constitutional rights cases like this one and have put a lot of effort into fighting legally-accepted-yet-fundamentally-nonsensical practices like civil forfeiture.
On the other, they also aggressively support school vouchers, which are mostly a scheme to drain money from public schools into private ones that can use broad excuses to keep out students that would cost more or lower their grade averages.
I think that few (no?) people oppose vouchers on the theory that private schools provide an inferior education to public schools. They oppose them because most proposals would not (a) require private schools to accept the voucher as full tuition and fees and (b) require private schools to educate everyone regardless of disability, belief, etc.
As currently posed, the voucher is a subsidy to already wealthy people who can afford to supplement the voucher with extra $$ to pay for their children’s education.
> I think that few (no?) people oppose vouchers on the theory that private schools provide an inferior education to public schools.
Frankly, I don't actually buy that all private schools are necessarily superior to public schools.
You're probably just thinking of elite private schools, of the type that rich people in NYC want to send their kids to, but there are plenty of other kinds of private schools out there.
The degree to which they have to meet any standards at all vary by jurisdiction.
Some are explicitly religious, and will not be teaching accurate history or biology because of that.
Some are based on experimental (to put it kindly) pedagogical theories that are not well-grounded in research or evidence (but have some wealthy people willing to buy into them).
Just because it costs more money to go to does not remotely guarantee that it will provide a better education.
Once you grow up around a bunch of home schooled kids that only learned a bit of the Bible you begin to realize that having a wide ranging education across a bunch of topics is important to create people that aren't total gibbering idiots.
There's a big risk in social development for those who are home schooled. Most developers I've met are severely lacking in social skills, so they're maybe not the best group to use as an example.
In my personal experience, I haven't met a single home school adult who was well-adjusted. I have met some who became well-adjusted after working a demanding enough job (I used to work in a kitchen). I don't think software engineering is nearly demanding enough for that kind of development.
I'm willing to accept that the 90% of what they do that's things I really really agree with comes with some things I don't like as much. They're willing to take on cases like https://ij.org/case/florida-cultivated-meat-ban/ too.
I'm not a fan of vouchers in general, especially if they allow public funds to go to religious institutions, but educational choice (as IJ terms it) is a tricky area. A lot of times these programs allow people to move between public schools or get additional funds for alternative programs that better suit their children's needs.
Do you live in Chicago? I do, and grew up here. My mom taught in CPS, and we were all sent to Catholic school. Not because the schools were better (in fact: my mom often remarked on how much lower the teacher quality was in the parochial schools, because the comp was substantially lower), but because we were Catholic, and if you don't go to Catholic K-8, you have to go to CCD. This is an extremely normal Chicago story, and not necessarily the indictment of the system you think it is.
Gates-Davis also lives on the far south side, which has structural school quality problems that aren't reasonable to pin on CTU.
I don't like CTU. I'm generally not a fan of teachers unions in major metros (most major metro teachers are in fact surprisingly well compensated). But I'm a little tired of this dunk; it's not a good one.
All that does is abandon the kids who don't get that money to a poor education.
No; the very very obvious "good thing" here would be to fix the Chicago public school system, whatever that entails. (And yes, I know that's guaranteed to be politically and logistically more difficult than just diverting more taxpayer money to private schools, but it's still the right thing to do.)
Why shouldn't finds go to religious institutions? I lived in a western country that allows public funding for religious schools, which I attended while growing up. The schools are still fulfilling a public need of educating students. Is it because they are religious?
It's quite simple, really: The government shouldn't be giving money to religious institutions because that would be, "respecting an establishment of religion".
You could argue that the 1st Amendment only applies to laws written by Congress and not the whims of state governments but the Supreme Court has ruled in the past that it does extend downwards like that.
Then again, the Supreme Court also ruled that if a state does decide to subsidize private education it can't discriminate based on religion VS non-religion (Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue).
The bigger argument: By allowing a state to fund religious institutions (educational or not) you're basically granting the state great power over religious institutions (as well as taking non-sectarian money and giving it to sectarian causes). A governor or powerful congressman/regulator could demand all sorts of concessions from religious institutions or their funding could be withheld or reduced. In other words, it gives the government direct (and/or indirect) influence over the religion itself.
Seems to be stretching the separation of church and state.
As long as the schools meet certification and minimum curriculum, I dont see how it is different than the city buying concrete from a religious vendor.
It seems like an obvious example of separation of church and state. The state shouldn't be funding the indoctrination of people into a particular church.
> I dont see how it is different than the city buying concrete from a religious vendor.
It is not expected that the religious vendor will try to teach religion to every person who uses the structure built by the concrete the government pays for in your example.
In communities near me, recent expansions of school vouchers has been a game changer. Public schools are struggling and private schools give students a much better education. Public schools were failing well before private school vouchers existed.
Are the private schools forced to take any students? Or can they cherry pick just the best students? Do they reject anyone that needs an IEP? Public schools are legally obligated to provide an education to anyone, no matter how much trouble they cause. If these private schools take public coin, they should be required to follow the same laws.
When an airplane loses compression they instruct you to put your own mask on before you assist with other peoples'.
School should be the same way. Education should not be lowest-common-denominator. My kids should not have less opportunity because other kids have greater challenges.
It's the same tax dollars. It's paying for kids to go to school. That's a public good. You want society to do this.
Why should your tax dollars only go to schools controlled by the state? Do you care that public schools in the US typically have worse outcomes and have to spend more per child to get there?
So you're saying you don't want parents to have the choice to send their children to better performing schools and provide better opportunities for their children?
Or are you saying that should only be a privilege of the rich?
Having gone to both public and private schools, while I had horrible experiences with both, at least there was teaching going on in my private schools.
My public school experience was horrific, even in NYC's so-called "gifted" schools. My brother's kid only went to NYC public schools and her experiences were so much worse. My public school tried to have me put on psychiatric medication without a diagnosis from a qualified professional and my niece's public school spent two years trying to gaslight her that she was not gay but trans (as well as a whole bunch targeted harassment from her teachers for being vocally politically conservative).
Neither of those things have anything to do with what the schools' mandate should be: education.
It only being a privilege of the rich is precisely the problem with school vouchers. Vouchers don't let poor students go to good private schools; they let good private schools charge more because the state is subsidizing part of the tuition.
I grew up certified poor (rent control, foodstamps, hand me down clothes, donation program christmas gifts, the works) and was able to attend elite private schools because of programs like this.
Grew up with plenty of other poor kids going to those schools too.
> Or are you saying that should only be a privilege of the rich?
No: I don't think anyone should have the option of private schools.
Yes, I think public education should be mandatory in the US. That way, when there are problems with the public school system in a given area, rather than just pulling their own children—and money—out, the rich people would be personally incentivized to find ways to make it better for everyone.
One of the things that I am most thankful for as am American is that we're not living in an authoritarian hellhole where the state-offered solution is the only solution.
As a kid my option was to be forcibly medicated by some random tyrant bureaucrat or not be allowed to attend school. I had no disorder or diagnosis that required this. Luckily I was able to escape to private school.
More importantly, children are not one-size-fits-all in terms of learning requirements or ability, but public schools only provide one-size-fits-all opportunity.
> public schools only provide one-size-fits-all opportunity
This isn't true - there's many specialty public schools. Schools for the deaf, schools for the blind, schools for those with severe learning disabilities.
The core issue with private education is it gives richer people an incentive to screw over public schools, which is exactly what we're seeing. They're greedy, it's not just enough for them to have private schools. They also have to siphon money from public schools, which hurts poorer Americans.
In theory, private schools could be fine. But when we give millions of public dollars to private schools, we have a huge problem.
both "illegal search on private lands" and "illegal control by private groups over public lands" are going on in the continental US West.. what is said in public does not always match what is done each day.
I'm torn on this one: Should law enforcement need a warrant to search your property? Certainly. Seems obvious, right? Except this is a "conservation officer" who has been granted certain rights (by the state of PA) to:
Enter upon any land or water in the performance of their duties.
If they couldn't move between properties along shorelines they'd have a hell of a time doing their actual job. Any criminal could fish illegally on private property then flee when a they see a conservation officer approaching in a boat. They'd never catch anyone who fishes along a shore.
This lawsuit seems like a nuclear weapon being thrown at an overly zealous individual who possibly has some sort of personal vendetta against the property owner.
> right to be secure in their homes, papers, and effects
It also explicitly lays out "unreasonable" as the qualifier. Personally... I don't think he has much of a case to challenge the state wording.
So while I strongly support the 4th amendment, I don't really agree with the guy here. It sounds a lot like he's pissed off the officer by fishing illegally.
My bigger takeaway is that Uber and Lyft are able to automatically dismiss him from a position without consequence for a completely unrelated offense. Even if I think he's completely guilty (and to be clear - I don't) I'm hard pressed to consider "wildlife & game license violation" worthy of impacting a job that involves driving other folks around.
The exterior of a property (i.e. the land it sits on) is distinctly different from the interior. The 4th Amendment requires warrants to search the following:
persons, houses, papers, and effects,
The land a house sits on is not, "persons, houses, papers, and effects". If it were that would not only prevent conservation officers from doing their jobs but also U.S. Customs and Border Protection would not be able to patrol the border since people and companies own pretty much every square inch at the edges of our country.
> In Hester v. United States,1 the Court held that the Fourth Amendment did not protect “open fields” and that, therefore, police searches in such areas as pastures, wooded areas, *open water*, and vacant lots need not comply with the requirements of warrants and probable cause.
I also want to point out something very important regarding this case in particular: Curtilage is generally known to be the area between a front door and the street however if your property backs up to open water--and you have a back door--that area between the water and the back door also counts as curtilage.
Except he never actually entered the home... He knocked and then left.
Also - despite the repeated attempts at implying it in the article, I really don't suspect the guy is there to creep on an elderly cancer patient in her bathroom.
It sounds a lot like he's on land, which is not protected by the 4th, and he's there well within his scope of authority as granted by the state.
No trespassing signs only apply to someone there without permission. He explicitly has permission from the state. And trespassing is very clearly not "search".
What an objection. My state, until recently, gave officers the on-paper ability to arrest and charge anyone guilty of adultery with a misdemeanor. I doubt you would have appreciated the investigation or enforcement of that statute - or many others still on the books.
As someone who grew up in rural PA, this is a pretty straightforward way to get shot as a trespasser.