Two big cases are set to shake up the college admission process.  The first involves the so-called “clout list” at the University of Illinois, which gave hundreds of well-connected students an edge in the admissions process. The story of the “clout list” broke 2 years ago and was a huge scandal, but the Unviersity is still dealing with litigation stemming from the case.  The Chicago Tribune is requesting further data under the Freedom of Information Act (such as the admitted students’ GPAs and ACT scores) but the school is arguing they cannot release these records because the Federal Privacy Laws prohibit it from releasing personal information about students. Media Groups are arguing that the university is abusing FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) because it is not trying to protect admissions records, but trying to prevent investigation into its own wrongdoing. Basically the case comes down to privacy laws versus freedom of information laws, and according to the media advocates, the right of the public to know about this type of corruption far outweighs any privacy rights that might be invoked by persons on the “clout list” who side stepped the merit-based application process. As the case moves through the court system, judges have been ruling against the University and finding that details of the “clout list” should be divulged, putting the University in danger of losing federal financing for violating FERPA.

In addition, The Supreme Court is expected to take on the case of Abigail Fisher, a white student who claims she was denied admission to the University of Texas because of her race. Should the justices hear the case, it could mean a new ruling on the “meaning of diversity”, an overruling of the Grutter v. Bollinger decision, and the end of affirmative action at public schools. In the 2003 Grutter v. Bollinger case the court ruled that public universities are allowed to consider race in admissions decisions if their reason for considering race is the “pursuit of diversity”. However, the makeup of the court has changed since 2003, and it is possible that the case will now be overturned. Should this happen, the case will have repercussions beyond its impact on college admissions (where the proportion of minority students at public institutions would be expected to drop), it might also begin to unravel societal commitment to diversity in private hiring.

Testimony by Steve Anderson, a former undercover officer, revealed the extent of corruption in the New York City Narcotics units.  About 3 years ago, a scandal erupted when it was discovered that officers in Brooklyn were not vouchering (creating an official invoice and properly tracking) all the drugs they seized as evidence. At the time, the officers claimed that the officers were using the “off the book” drugs as rewards for those who provided information, a kind of “noble corruption”, which helped them do their jobs. However, after Anderson’s testimony, it appears that what these untracked drugs were actually used for was nothing that could, in any way, be termed “noble”: they were planted on people when narcotics officers needed to meet their arrest quotas.

As an example, Mr. Anderson cites a time when he bought cocaine from a DJ at a club as part of a buy-and-bust operation, but then gave some of the drugs to a fellow officer who had not met his quotas. The second officer then planted the drugs on two people at the club that had nothing to with the sale; a practice of “attaching bodies” to drugs.

As a result of the scandals, prosecutors in Brooklyn and Queens had to dismiss about 400 criminal cases that were tainted by the involvement of officers named in the scandal. In many of the cases people were able to walk away despite damning evidence, because evidence could no longer be trusted. Lawyers have filed claims for wrongful incarceration on the behalf of those arrested by these officers, and the city is settling the cases for about $1,000 an hour of imprisonment.

Prosecutors who are working on the trials of corrupt officers say that there is a conspiracy in the Police Department to cover up procedural and ethical violations by routinely falsifying records and keeping stashes of narcotics. And if Anderson’s testimony is to be believed, the corruption was indeed wide spread and pervasive, involving everyone from “ supervisors or undercovers [to] investigators”.

An article in the New York Times raises the question of how organized a group has to be before its members can be tried on conspiracy charges.  The article focuses on the case of Jaquan Layne, who is being tried on second-degree conspiracy charges, along with 4 others who are being tried on first-degree conspiracy charges (for which they could potentially receive life in prison). The question that makes this case complicated, is not whether the defendants were selling drugs or being violent (because recordings of their phone conversations show that they certainly were), but whether their organization was structured enough to be considered a “gang”.

Mr. Rothman, the defense lawyer, argues that the group was not a structured drug trafficking operation, but was rather just a few friends” from the block”, and their phone conversations were not conspiracies, but were rather just boastful hot air. On the other hand, prosecutors argue that the a gang is any structured criminal organization, and the group that was led by Layne fits that description as it was a violent, drug-trafficking enterprise that defended what it defined as its “turf”.

The district attorney’s office is interested on prosecuting the men on conspiracy charges rather than just drug dealing or gun possession charges because, although conspiracy charges are difficult to prove, they allow prosecutors to bring down multiple defendants at once and wipe out entire pockets of crime.  To prove the conspiracy charges, the DA’s office must prove that the defendants agreed to commit a crime and took steps to do so. Prosecutors are planning to use recorded conversations between the defendants to show the extent to which their operation was premeditated and structured.

The Supreme Court is struggling to reach a decision in the case of Hosanna-Tabor Church v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which centers on a teacher at a church-run school who claims she was fired because she pursued an employment discrimination claim against the school based on her disability.

The issue here is whether the laws forbidding employment discrimination fully apply to religious groups, and to what extent the government can interfere with religious groups to redress discrimination. For example, women are not allowed to serve as priests in the Roman Catholic Church, can the government declare this illegal and force a change? The Justices were having a difficult time coming up with a solution that would both limit government interference in the operations of religious organizations and protect employees from discrimination. The justices rejected the claim that there was no difference between an employment discrimination case that involves a church and one that involves a labor union, implying the free exercise clause and establishment clauses of the First Amendment (“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”) did not apply.

The lawyer representing the church that runs the school argued that the Supreme Court ought to recognize the “ministerial exception” which forbids the government from interfering in the relationship between religious groups and employees who preform religious duties. However, the Justices were uncomfortable with this approach as well, deeming it too broad in its scope (so that it would affect sexual abuse reporting at religious organizations etc), and problematic in its definition of which employees would be considered “ministers”.

Another option for the Court, suggested by Justice Breyer, was to ignore the First Ammendment issues altogether and limiting the defense to a line from the Americans with Disabilities Act, which allows religious organizations to require that “all employees conform to the religious tenets” of the organization. However the plaintiff’s lawyers contend that this defense does not apply in this case