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Reconstruction-era civil rights law used to fight hate groups in court discussed by CSUSB professor
Courthouse News
Feb. 21, 2020
Brian Levin, director for the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino, was interviewed for an article a case in which five women were injured by Klansmen who when on a shooting spree in a black Chattanooga, Tenn., neighborhood in April 1980.
In the ensuing criminal trial, two Klansmen were acquitted and the third served a brief sentence. The New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights then brought a federal lawsuit against the Justice Knights of the Ku Klux Klan that became a landmark case on how to pursue justice against hate groups. The plaintiffs said the Klansmen violated the 1871 anti-Ku Klux Klan law passed when Ulysses S. Grant sat in the White House, which took aim at conspiracies intended to take away individuals’ civil rights.
Levin said the 1871 law is one of several legal strategies at the disposal of attorneys seeking justice for individuals injured by hate groups. Since the time of civil rights pioneer Dred Scott, attorneys could use tort law to make their case and there are state-level civil rights laws too.
But with the 1871 law, “The advantage of using it is that, first, you get into federal court,” Levin said. “You certainly have a different kind atmosphere in federal district court I would say. … It enables, for instance, a bit of a streamlined kind of case if there’s an interstate conspiracy.”
Read the complete article at “Forty years ago, they changed how hate groups are sued.”
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