ACORN and Obama

A tip of the hat to my colleague, Chad Everson, Grizzly Groundswell and Get Clued (blog)for posting an official court document that shows Barack Obama as one of the attorneys representing ACORN in the 1990s in a decision involving "Motor-Voter registration in Illinois.

In recent days, there has been a lot of publicity (at least by Fox News and talk radio-the mainstream media is trying to downplay it) about the activities of ACORN and their association with Barack Obama in his days as a "community organizer".

Read this official court document from the US Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit from 1996:


"75 F.3d 304

ASSOCIATION OF COMMUNITY ORGANIZATIONS FOR REFORM NOW
(ACORN), et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees,v.
ILLINOIS STATE BOARD OF ELECTIONS, et al., Defendants-Appellants.

No. 95-3456.

United States Court of Appeals,
Seventh Circuit.

Submitted Nov. 16, 1995.
Decided Jan. 26, 1996.

Judson H. Miner, Jeffrey I. Cummings, Barack H. Obama, Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland, Chicago, IL, for Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, Equip for Equality, Incorporated, Jacqueline Andrade, Gwendolyn Coleman, Chinetha Dixon, and Joey L. Wooden.

Thomas R. Meites, Joan H. Burger, Lynn S. Frackman, Paul W. Mollica, Meites, Frackman, Mulder & Burger, Chicago, IL, for League of Women Voters of Illinois, Catherine A. Calder, and Rene D. Luna.

Maria G. Valdez, Mexican American Legal Defense & Education Fund, Chicago, IL, Arthur Aram Baer, Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, Inc., New York City, for League of United Latin American Citizens.

Michele M. Fox, Office of the United States Attorney, Civil Division, Appellate Section, Chicago, IL, Steven H. Rosenbaum, Samuel R. Bagenstos, Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, Appellate Section, Washington, DC, Tricia A. Tingle, Barry H. Weinberg, Elizabeth Johnson, United States Department of Justice, Washington, DC, for U.S.

James R. Carroll, Roger Flahaven, Office of the Attorney General, Chicago, IL, Daniel N. Malato, Cara L. Smith, Office of the Attorney General, Civil Appeals Division, Chicago, IL, for defendants-appellants.

Before POSNER, Chief Judge, and EASTERBROOK and KANNE, Circuit Judges.

POSNER, Chief Judge.

1
The plaintiffs have moved to dismiss the defendants' appeal from an order of the district court on the ground that it is not an appealable order. The motion raises questions concerning federal appellate jurisdiction in the context of a major constitutional litigation. The plaintiffs had brought suit to enforce the federal "motor voter" law (National Voter Registration Act of 1993, 42 U.S.C. §§ 1973gg et seq.) against the governor and other officials of the State of Illinois, which had refused to comply with the law on the ground that it was unconstitutional. We upheld the constitutionality of the law and affirmed so much of the district court's injunction as commanded the defendants to obey it. Association of Community Organizations for Reform v. Edgar, 56 F.3d 791 (7th Cir.1995). That was last June. The district judge then scheduled monthly status hearings to monitor the defendants' compliance with the injunction. The state board of elections submitted a plan of compliance to which the plaintiffs raised three objections at the August status hearing. The judge directed the parties to brief these objections and after they did so he issued a "memorandum opinion and order" on September 6 addressing the issues. The first two objections were to regulations that the board of elections had promulgated concerning verification of the addresses of new registrants and challenged-voter forms; the third was to the plans' failure to provide for oral assistance in Spanish to prospective registrants. The judge held the regulations "invalid" as inconsistent with the motor-voter law, and with regard to the issue of oral assistance he directed the defendants "to come prepared to [address the issue] at the next status hearing." He did not, however, issue any order that purported to enjoin the regulations.

2
The defendants argue that the order is a final decision and therefore appealable under 28 U.S.C. § 1291. One of the plaintiffs, the United States, agrees that the order is appealable but believes that it is appealable not as a final decision but as an order modifying an injunction. 28 U.S.C. § 1292(a)(1). The order in fact seems to fall between two stools. It is not final in any ordinary sense of the word, since compliance proceedings continue before the district court with regard to Spanish-language assistance and no doubt other issues as well. And it does not purport to modify the injunction. It interprets the injunction, but interpretations of injunctions as distinct from modifications of them are not appealable, provided they really are interpretive, and do not change the meaning of--that is, modify--the original injunction. Motorola, Inc. v. Computer Displays Int'l, Inc., 739 F.2d 1149, 1155 (7th Cir.1984); In re Ingram Towing Co., 59 F.3d 513, 516 (5th Cir.1995); Mikel v. Gourley, 951 F.2d 166, 168-69 (8th Cir.1991). Yet there is a felt need, reflected in the submission by the United States, for prompt definitive resolution of legal disputes arising in what may be a protracted postjudgment proceeding to bring Illinois into compliance with the motor-voter law.

3
The position of the United States is untenable. To modify an injunction is to change it. The injunction has not been changed. It commanded Illinois to comply with the motor-voter law; it still commands that. An injunction that merely commands compliance with a statute (in order to attach the sanction of contempt to continued noncompliance) is as vague as the statute, and invites interpretation. Whether a requirement of verifying a new voter's address violates the statute and consequently the injunction as well is an archetypal issue of interpretation and the resolution of it clarifies, it does not modify, the injunction. Cf. Major v. Orthopedic Equipment Co., 561 F.2d 1112 (4th Cir.1977). A misinterpretation would be a modification, because it would change the meaning of the original injunction. Wilder v. Bernstein, 49 F.3d 69, 72 (2d Cir.1995). But in a case such as this, where the injunction is vague (though not so vague as to be unenforceable by contempt proceedings and thus a nullity), supplementary rulings particularizing its requirements are unlikely to be challengeable as misinterpretations.

4
Had the judge couched his rulings as supplementary injunctions, they would be appealable even if they did no more than make explicit what had been implicit in the original, vague injunction. Injunctions are appealable under section 1292(a)(1) whether they are primary or supplementary. Eli Lilly & Co. v. Medtronic, Inc., 915 F.2d 670, 673 (Fed.Cir.1990). The statute makes no distinction.

5
The defendants' position on appealability, as opposed to that of the United States, depends on the uncertain meaning of "final decision" in postjudgment proceedings. The injunction that we modified and affirmed in our previous decision was a final judgment--so when are subsequent orders "final"? The simplest and most sensible approach, one that we have expressly endorsed, most recently in Resolution Trust Corp. v. Ruggiero, 994 F.2d 1221, 1224-25 (7th Cir.1993), is to treat the postjudgment proceeding as a free-standing litigation, in effect treating the final judgment as the first rather than the last order in the case. Our decision last June kicked off a postjudgment proceeding that will end, unless the parties reach an agreement, with a judicial order setting forth the steps that Illinois must take to comply with the injunction that it obey the motor-voter law. That order will be appealable as a final decision under section 1291; interim orders will be appealable only if they meet the criteria for the appealability of interlocutory orders. The order issued by the district judge in September is clearly one of the interlocutory orders. It is not appealable, because it does not fit into the pigeonhole for orders modifying injunctions or into any of the other pigeonholes for interlocutory appeals. See Major v. Orthopedic Equipment Co., supra, 561 F.2d at 1115.

6
We do not want to be besieged by successive appeals in injunctive proceedings. The position of the defendants, if accepted, would make virtually all postjudgment orders immediately appealable. If the board of elections wants to stick to its guns, it can refuse to submit a compliance plan that omits the regulations that the district judge believes invalid. Although an order to submit a plan of compliance, like a discovery order, is not an injunction, Mercer v. Magnant, 40 F.3d 893, 896 (7th Cir.1994), the refusal to obey such an order might be punishable as a contempt, and if so the refuser could then obtain appellate review of the order by appealing from the judge's imposition of a sanction for contempt. Cobbledick v. United States, 309 U.S. 323, 328, 60 S.Ct. 540, 542-43, 84 L.Ed. 783 (1940); In re Establishment Inspection of Skil Corp., 846 F.2d 1127, 1129 (7th Cir.1988). Were there any doubt about the mandatory character of the judge's order, he could embody it in a mandatory injunction, which would be appealable without the interim steps of defiance and sanction. Such severe measures are unlikely here despite the judge's evident exasperation with what he regards as the state's foot-dragging. Comity has its claims. Far more likely would it be for the judge to devise his own plan of compliance and order the state to put it into effect. At that point there would be a final decision from which the state would be entitled to appeal.

7
The United States points out, sensibly as it seems to us, that the dispute over appealability would have been avoided had the district judge, instead of issuing "orders" invalidating state regulations, simply directed the state to submit a compliance plan and then rejected it as noncomplying in various particulars. There would be no basis for arguing that the rejection was an appealable order. But this is, from a practical standpoint, what the judge did; and the fact that he used inapt words ought not convert an unappealable ruling into an appealable order.

The appeal is therefore

8
DISMISSED."


You will note near the top that Barack Obama is listed as one of the attorneys representing ACORN.

What might you ask is "motor-voter"? This is a provision (which has been attempted in several states) to enable those who register at their local DMVs to be registered as voters simultaneously. We have been fighting this battle in California for several years. What it amounts to is an easy way for illegal aliens to become registered to vote-simply by having a drivers license. And make no mistake, illegal aliens in California do vote.

Let me tell you how it has been working in California, where immigration activists and Democrats in Sacramento have been pushing for legislation that would allow illegal aliens to get drivers licenses. The argument they use is that this will make the roads safer since they must pass the required tests.

You don't have to be a trigonometry major to make the connections. First, make it easier for illegal aliens to get drivers licenses. Then link licenses to voter registrations. I think you can finish the paragraph for me.

So, is this the sceme Obama was involved in in Illinois in conjunction with ACORN in the 1990s?

Today, a top Obama spokesman admitted his (Obama) legal connection in this case, but denied that Obama ever trained ACORN and downplayed his overall connections to the group. Really?

It is interesting that Obama would want to conceal his work as an ACORN trainer. There are a myriad of reports that Obama was, indeed, a trainer for ACORN offials. What exactly, Mr Obama, did you train them to do? Reports are that you trained them in protest methods. ACORN's protest methods consisted of storming into banks and the offices of bank managers demanding that they increase their loans to lower-income folks. Other protests consisted of storming into city council meetings in Chicago to press their demands.

Did you train them to do that, Mr Obama?

Did you teach them how to register phony voters?

As I write, ACORN's office in Las Vegas has just been raided by Nevada state authorities for voter registration fraud. Numerous other states are investigating or have already prosecuted ACORN for this same offense. It has now been reported that ACORN has registered the entire Dallas Cowboys starting line-up. (Is Pac-Man Jones even eligible to vote based on all his arrests? I am sure that my Pittsburgh Steelers have not been registered by ACORN. (Certainly, none of them would ever vote for Obama.)

Seriously though, it is believed that ACORN has registered some 1.7 million "voters". How many of these are fraudulent? God only knows.

What is Obama's role in all this?

We also know that while sitting on the Woods Foundation with his pal Bill Ayres, Obama steered a lot of money to ACORN.

It is time that the mainstream media picked up on this-for no other reason that this election could possibly be decided by massive voter fraud in many states. To date, they are downplaying it, ignoring it, or refuting it. Why?

Do you need to ask? It is because they want Obama elected.

So, it is up to John McCain and Sarah Palin to say it loud and clear and demand answers. It is easy for the msm to ignore my words or Sean Hannity's words, but when McCain makes the charge, they have to pay attention.

This should also be a legitimate issue in the final debate, and if the moderator won't bring it up, the candidate must-not for his own political fortunes-but for the good of the country.

I greatly fear we are heading into a fraudulent election. Our country can survive four or eight years of Obama. We cannot survive the destruction of our democratic electoral process.