perfidy

Subject? Supreme Court rulings. Found in today's news, a story about the several decisions just handed down by our benign judicial overlords. The first two cases on which they ruled are interesting, but not part of the current exercise.

The case in question, Brendlin v. California, is covered in a Washington Post story entitled "Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Car Passengers". The heart of the case?

The court decided that when police stop a vehicle, passengers are "seized" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment and -- like drivers -- can dispute the legality of a search.

The ruling overturned a California Supreme Court decision in the case of Bruce Edward Brendlin, who was arrested on parole violation and drug charges after a November 2001 traffic stop in Yuba City, Calif. Brendlin, who subsequently was sentenced to four years in prison, appealed his conviction on the grounds that the drug evidence should have been suppressed because the traffic stop amounted to "an unlawful seizure of his person," according to today's ruling.

Although the state acknowledged that police "had no adequate justification" to stop the car, in which Brendlin was a passenger in the front seat, it argued that he was not "seized" and thus could not challenge the government's action under the Fourth Amendment's search and seizure protections. Government lawyers also argued that Brendlin could not claim that the evidence against him was tainted by an unconstitutional stop, according to the ruling.

California, in this case, was clearly and deeply wrong, and it's good, if unsurprising, to find the Supremes coming down unanimously in Brendlin's favor.

So, what's wrong with the story, you might ask? Well, not so much the story as the storyline - The WaPo story didn't cover this angle, but in the Wall Street Journal version of the story (subscription), I found this nugget:

The American Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP backed Mr. Brendlin, arguing that a ruling in the state's favor would encourage police to conduct arbitrary traffic stops to target passengers, especially minorities, who lack the same rights as drivers.

Left unspoken is the irrelevant fact of Mr Brendlin's minority status, but I'll assume he's black. He could have been chartreuse without having any impact at all on this case, for all it would have mattered.

So Brendlin got the precisely correct result from the Court, for what I think hope are the right reasons, including the prima facie absurdity of California's position on the case. But the underlying theme, when the NAACP's and ACLU's involvement, their raison d'etre in this case, seems to indicate that absent some racial grievance, the alternative result would have occurred.

I have zero concern about the involvement of those two august organizations in providing Brendlin the legal and financial support in his battle, and good for them. Couching this as an issue that only or primarily resonates for minorities? That, I think, is a problem