Picking Up Some Dropped Threads

because SOMEBODY hasn't been paying attention

Because I’ve been distracted by the horror in Israel, I’ve missed a bunch of things that I’ve been meaning to track. So!

First

I’ve written several times about the Alliance of Los Angeles County parents and its First Amendment lawsuit against the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, which is led by one of the most ridiculous public officials in the country. The lawyer handling that lawsuit, Julie Hamill, keeps pushing, and was in court last week for four days of testimony from public health officials on their decision to close comments to their social media posts — preventing the public from publicly offering questions and criticism.

I missed the trial — lazy Chris Bray! bad Chris Bray! — but the California Globe didn’t. Read Thomas Buckley’s well-reported story here, and note the headline. Closing public comments to prevent misinformation, Ferrer destroyed her own framing in court:

“I think misinformation to me and misinformation to you would – it’s completely possible that they would be two separate things,” Ferrer said on the opening day of testimony in the Alliance of Los Angeles County Parents freedom of speech lawsuit against her department.

See also this extremely useful discussion from lawyer Laura Powell, using the trial transcript, on the topic of Ferrer’s hapless wandering through the concept of “misinformation.” A courtroom exchange:

Q. And you're aware that people were saying masks are not effective for adults or children, right?

A. That some people were saying that, yes.

Q. And would you consider that misinformation?

A. Incorrect information.

[….]

Q. And you consider anti-mask perspectives to be misinformation, correct?

A. No. I don't consider an anti-mask perspective to be misinformation.

Funny how the witness stand is sharpening Barbara Ferrer’s mind. You can support Hamill’s lawsuit here, if you appreciate someone delivering accountability to autocratic public health officials.

Second

I noted a few weeks ago that a lawyer for the Los Angeles Unified School District had faced an obviously hostile panel of judges from the 9th Circuit while defending that district’s morally and scientifically insane Covid-19 “vaccine” mandate for its employees.

Soon after, the school board voted to drop the mandate, with board president Jackie Goldberg nonetheless shrieking like the dimwitted lunatic she is that the mandate had been entirely proper and wonderfully effective.

Yes, this is an image from September 26, 2023

Watch here to see the lawyer Jennifer Kennedy rhetorically shotgun-blasting the school board over the mandate, shortly before they voted to kill it. I used rewind on this public comment. I lingered over it.

Now, here’s the shit sandwich:

The LAUSD ended hundreds of careers with a shameful policy that attacked the principle of informed consent and the medical autonomy of its employees, then refused reasonable demands to change the policy, then dragged litigants through a long and expensive cycle of legal conflict — and then, facing not just obvious defeat but the prospect of making case law over the topic of their horrible behavior, they dropped the policy and told the court to consider the whole argument moot. Whoops, can’t make case law, now.

This is why it’s so hard to sue governments into behaving reasonably. If they’re winning, they play out the game. If they’re losing, they flip the board and scatter the pieces.

As a personal aside, I once watched an LAUSD board meeting as they killed my daughter’s magnificent charter school and drove us out of the city, and I remember sharing the observation that the members of the board were considerably less smart than the average golden retriever. On second thought, revisiting the question, I was too generous.

Third

Having caused astonishing harm to California, Senator Scott Wiener is running for re-election.

It’s like finding out that Ebola wants a second chance. More about this later, after the anti-nausea meds kick in.

Finally

I wrote last week about the Pennsylvania lawyer and dad Chad Williams and his ongoing battle with his local school district over Covid-19 policy, and a new essay at The Federalist digs into that battle more deeply. It’s written by a guy named…Chad Williams. Well worth your time.