"In 2014, James King was a law-abiding college student who was brutally beaten and choked unconscious by members of a joint state/federal police task force after they misidentified him as a suspect sought in connection with a non-violent petty crime. Ever since that day, the government has used every tool at its disposal to ensure those officers are not held accountable to the Constitution.
As IJ Attorney Patrick Jaicomo explained, “The Fourth Amendment prevents the government from undertaking unreasonable searches and seizures. Here, at every step of the way, the officers were unreasonable in searching and seizing James, including when they beat him. We filed this lawsuit in 2016. It’s now 2020 and the government still hasn’t even filed an answer addressing all the claims that we’ve raised. Instead, they’ve spent the past four years filing different motions with courts, arguing under technicalities why they shouldn’t be held accountable rather than explaining why what they did actually wasn’t wrong.”
One of those technicalities is called “qualified immunity,” a special legal protection the Supreme Court created in the 1980s to protect government officials. Under qualified immunity, officers can violate the Constitution unless previous court rulings have explicitly prohibited that exact action by the police—a standard that has become nearly impossible to meet."
Read more at the Institute For Justice
Effective December 1, 2019, applicants for employment in the City of Grand Rapids have more protections. In a newly enacted “Human Rights” chapter of the city code, Grand Rapids deems it unlawful for an employer to discriminate against a current or prospective employee with respect to hire; tenure; terms, conditions or privileges of employment; or any matter directly or indirectly related to employment, unless such act is based on a “bona fide occupational qualification.”
Read more at Lexology
The Read by Grade Three law was passed in 2016 to combat the low literacy rates.
Education leaders say Michigan is in a "literary crisis," with the state's third grade students testing on the lower end of the 50 states nationally during the M-STEP or National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP). The Read by Grade Three law was passed in 2016 to combat the low literacy rates.
Read more at wzzm13
Some states, including Georgia, have put similar programs in place, and the federal government is also working to improve resources for those in need of immediate mental health services.
Once installed, operators could connect callers with local care providers and resources, including up-to-date availability of psychiatric and substance abuse services.
Read more at mLive.com
