On September 23, 2020, the American Civil Liberties Union of Idaho and accompanying civil rights parties filed Doe v. Wasden, a complaint for injunctive and declaratory relief before the U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho. The plaintiff, an Idaho resident using the pseudonym John Doe, moved for a judgment to declare Idaho Code § 18-6605 facially unconstitutional. The state law in question, infamously labeled as Idaho’s Crime Against Nature statute, criminalizes consensual oral and anal sex. Doe’s conviction is a blatant violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause and patently disregards the Supreme Court’s 2003 ruling in Lawrence v. Texas.
Read More
At the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, posters at protests and rallies across the United States read “End qualified immunity.” Whether it be the growing public demands to shift into an abolitionist framework or the more centrist voices calling for reform from within the existing justice system, many Americans have called into question the mid-twentieth century doctrine that effectively shields public officials from civil suit. Likewise, across the Atlantic, Spaniards have for decades attempted to hold ex-Francoist police officers accountable for thousands of documented instances of torture and enforced disappearance under the fascist regime, with little success on account of national amnesty law.
Read More