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COURTS✒ EDITORIALABSURDITY:
Fourth Circuit revisits South Carolina juvenile justice case
Filed 2h ago · Via Courthouse News · The Buffoon Desk
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Dissappointment
Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0
Photo: Bill Nye (?) · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons
The Fourth Circuit heard arguments on whether Disability Rights South Carolina, Justice 360 and the NAACP's state chapter have standing to sue over conditions at South Carolina's juvenile detention facilities, three years after the case was filed. A panel had earlier ruled 2-1 that the groups lacked standing, reasoning that detained youths themselves should bring the suit rather than advocacy organizations.
Judges pressed both sides on whether the groups' members meaningfully govern or fund the organizations, a test drawn from a Supreme Court apple-marketing case. Judge Roger Gregory pushed back sharply, noting the young people in custody are precisely the 'dispossessed' who can't be expected to sue on their own behalf, while the state argued a class action was always available and simply wasn't filed.
The full dispatch is available from the source below.
✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK
Three years arguing about who's allowed to walk through the courthouse door, and not one minute yet spent on whether kids in state custody are being properly cared for. A judge who represents the interests of people who can't fully govern a nonprofit board is not some clever workaround, it's the whole reason such a group exists. If the courts keep circling the entrance, the people inside the building never get their turn.
