LC vs. the good ol' USA, Part 3

GCDN has done us a great favor today by uplinking the PDF of the recent day laborers' judgment, the PDF that I did not have access to when I wrote Part 1 and Part 2 of this post.  Having the corresponding filing information allowed me to search for this cleaner link to the judgment which should not be restricted by any commercial news media paywall.

As I noted before, I'm not an attorney and my comments on this matter are purely citizen-based and opinion-based.  But now that I get to read the judgment in its entirety, I find it to be even more damning and disturbing than I had initially realized.

If you wish to learn what really goes on in America and how America really works, don't read the news, don't read the history books, and don't listen to most of what is presented in educational settings.  Simply read Court judgments and see America through the remarkable lens that they hold aloft. 

The results are often shocking, as they are in this example.  League City was alleging that day laborers were posing a risk to public safety by interfering with traffic in the public roadways.  But the Court appears to have found that LCPD intentionally conspired to arrest day laborers on private property where they had the owner's permission to be physically present.  And they didn't just show up to arrest them - they deployed a pre-meditated set-up.  So said the Court in the paragraphs above, as I interpret it. 

I am not an attorney, but it is very difficult for me to imagine how League City could successfully appeal this decision with skeletons like this rattling fiercely in their collective closet.  I don't presume to understand the mind of the Court, but the inclusion of this passage looks like it could be a shot fired across League City's bow, as if to say "Yeah, we both know that you only got busted on the First Amendment portion of this deal, but we also both know that there's more going on here than anyone has fully fleshed out yet.  Watch yourselves." 

The judgment names certain other roadway-soliciting groups who were not targeted by the actions of LCPD, and in fact, my original intention for this Part 3 post was to spoof one of those other groups, just to overstate a point about enforcement selectivity which I personally find to be arbitrary at best and discriminatory at worst.

Uh-oh.  More solicitors on the hoof, and on FM 518 to boot. 

As Danny DeVito famously noted in The Big Kahuna, it doesn't matter whether you're selling industrial lubricants or salvation (or for that matter, day labor services) - selling is selling.  This is true regardless of whatever is alleged within that whacked-out (and unconstitutional) anti-solicitation passage in the Texas Transportation Code. 

But after reading the full judgment linked above, I've lost my appetite for a spoof.  This thing is so sobering that I no longer have the gumption to tell you just how much more acutely I've been injured by the group shown in the photo above, rather than by League City's day laborers (whose services I try my best not to personally engage, as I think I explained convincingly and quantitatively - ka-CHING! - in this post). 

Those other guys got an explicit hall pass, and explicitly for FM 518. 

Not only have the white-collared guys shown in the pic above solicited me from League City's rights-of-way, they have further encroached on my rights and my general sanity by repeatedly entering my private property without my permission.  I was going to demand that LCPD do something to "crack down" on this group which I find to be an affront to dignity, peace, and good order, not to mention traffic safety.

Of course, maybe I've got it all wrong.  This is quite possibly the only solicitation group in League City to repeatedly transit the notoriously-dangerous and congested Five Corners intersection on bicycles without getting themselves killed.  Maybe they really do have the inside track on God, because surely this otherwise-unexplainable survival is evidence that they have been granted His divine protection...?

OR perhaps their success is more a function of the fact that they tend to operate mechanized vehicles in pedestrian crosswalks against the lawful flow of traffic, as they are doing in this photo.  Maybe LCPD ought to crack down on them for that.   

Yeah, you can see that there was an hilarious spoof brewing in there somewhere.  But I've lost my appetite for a full blogging tour de force.  As I'm nursing my indigestion in the wake of the Jornaleros judgment, I guess we'll all wait to see whether League City is foolish enough to appeal this decision.


And foolish enough to waste even more of our taxpayer dollars on this case.  GCDN reported that they have so far spent $424,000 on it. Presumably the cost recoup award to which the day laborers are now entitled would be in addition to that figure. 

Perhaps this is the real reason why League City is now endeavoring to reduce its spending.  Maybe they need to divert some money to their legal bills. 

Sigh...