Not before they decide on Chicago's asinine gun ban I hope.
John Roberts, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, is seriously considering stepping down from the nation’s highest court for personal reasons, RadarOnline.com has learned exclusively.
Update: RadarOnline.com has obtained new information that Justice Roberts will NOT resign. The justice will be staying on the bench.
Hedgepeth v. Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, 386 F.3d 1148,[10] involved a 12-year-old girl who was, according to the Washington Post, asked if she had any drugs in her possession, searched for drugs, taken into custody, handcuffed, driven to police headquarters, booked, and fingerprinted after she violated a publicly advertised zero tolerance "no eating" policy in a Washington Metro station by eating a single french fry. She sued; the D.C. Circuit unanimously affirmed the district court's dismissal of the case, which was predicated on the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, and which alleged that an adult would have only received a citation for the same offense, while children must be detained until parents are notified.
"No one is very happy about the events that led to this litigation," Roberts wrote, and noted that the policies under which the girl was apprehended had since been changed. Because age discrimination is evaluated using a rational basis test, however, only weak state interests were required to justify the policy, and the panel concluded they were present. "Because parents and guardians play an essential role in that rehabilitative process, it is reasonable for the District to seek to ensure their participation, and the method chosen — detention until the parent is notified and retrieves the child — certainly does that, in a way issuing a citation might not." The court concluded that the policy and detention were constitutional, noting that "the question before us... is not whether these policies were a bad idea, but whether they violated the Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution," language reminiscent of Justice Potter Stewart's dissent in Griswold v. Connecticut. "We are not asked in this case to say whether we think this law is unwise, or even asinine," Stewart had written; "[w]e are asked to hold that it violates the United States Constitution. And that, I cannot do."
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