Wisconsin attorneys volunteer to help students facing expulsion

Expulsion or suspension from school, not surprisingly, does not bode well for academic success.  Students are much less likely to graduate when they miss significant time in school or have to change schools because they have been suspended or expelled. Incidents at school can have other serious and lasting consequences.  In Wisconsin, because 17-year-olds are considered adults when charged with criminal violations, high school students can face probation, jail, or prison, as well as all the adverse collateral consequences associated with a criminal record.  One serious consequence unique to students is that alleged misconduct in school can also result in a suspension or expulsion from school.

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Putting teeth in Heller’s promise for people with a conviction: Second Amendment litigation round-up

Author, Alan Gura, describes in this post recent efforts to persuade federal courts that people who have lost their firearms rights by virtue of a criminal conviction may be entitled to claim the protections of the Second Amendment.  Alan himself has spearheaded this litigation for the Second Amendment Foundation, following up his Supreme Court victories in D.C. v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago.   While successes have to date involved civil rights actions in behalf of people with dated non-violent convictions, these precedents may eventually find their way into felon-in-possession and related prosecutions. They also may portend, like the cases invalidating retroactive registration requirements, a greater willingness by courts to limit the scope of categorical collateral consequences that are considered unreasonable and unfair. Ed.

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Georgia becomes first state in South to ban the box

Goergia Governor Nathan Deal has signed an executive order making Georgia the first state in the South to ban the box in public employment.  As reported on the “Inside Politics” blog of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “Job seekers applying for work with the state of Georgia will no longer need to disclose prior criminal convictions on their initial applications.” The order provides that this new policy “will allow returning citizens an opportunity to explain their unique circumstances in person to a potential employer.”

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New York certificate scheme found inaccessible and ineffective

  The certificate system for restoring rights after conviction in New York no longer serves its intended purposes, according to an investigation by City Limits.  The problem is that Certificates of Relief from Disabilities (CRD) are supposed to be a means to rehabilitation for people sentenced to probation, but the judges authorized to issue them see them (in the words of one public defender) “as a gold star, as a thing you get after you’ve been rehabilitated.”  The Parole Board appears similarly

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Does discrimination based on criminal record make good business sense?

During the week of February 2, Professor James Jacobs posted a series of opinion pieces on The Volokh Conspiracy blog to promote his new book on criminal records.  The basic argument advanced in these pieces, which condense the final two chapters of the book, is that “criminal record based employment discrimination is neither immoral nor illegal.”  While I am not a lawyer, and leave it to my colleagues Sharon Dietrich and Adam Klein to speak to the legal arguments in Professor Jacobs’ pieces, I believe I can speak to the public policy implications (if not the morality) of his position.  That I myself have a criminal record, am now an employer, and have spent 13 years since exiting prison working on these policy issues, ought to be considered by anyone who reads what I have to say.

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