Court Victory in California!
California Appeals Court Upholds Injunctions Against Corporate Board Quotas
Exposed: Biden Administration Flights to Multiple Cities to Drop Off Alien Children
Judicial Watch Sues Air Force Academy for Critical Race Theory Records
Hackers Tied to China’s Government Steal $20 Million in COVID Relief Funds
Merry Christmas!
California Appeals Court Upholds Injunctions Against Corporate Board Quotas
This is an important victory for Judicial Watch, as well as taxpayers and stockholders.
The California Court of Appeal has upheld two injunctions against California quota requirements for corporate boards.
Earlier this year, two California trial courts had found (here and here) state quota mandates for sex, race, ethnicity, and LGBT status unconstitutional. On December 1, 2022, the California Court of Appeal denied (here and here) two separate emergency requests by the California Secretary of State to lift the injunctions.
The California courts again have upheld the core American value of equal protection under the law. Our taxpayer clients are heroes for standing up for civil rights against the Left’s pernicious efforts to undo anti-discrimination protections. Our legal team has helped protect the civil rights of every American with these successful lawsuits.
Here’s the background.
We filed a gender quota lawsuit in Los Angeles County Superior Court in 2019 on behalf of three California taxpayers. The lawsuit challenged a 2018 law, Senate Bill 826 (SB 826), which mandated that every publicly held corporation headquartered in California have at least one director “who self-identifies her gender as a woman” on its board of directors. We successfully argued that the quota for women on corporate boards violates the Equal Protection Clause of the California Constitution. In May 2022, after a 28-day trial, the Superior Court delivered its verdict finding that “S.B. 826’s goal was to achieve general equity or parity; its goal was not to boost California’s economy, not to improve opportunities for women in the workplace nor not to protect California taxpayers, public employees, pensions and retirees.”
In 2020, we filed a separate taxpayer lawsuit challenging Assembly Bill 979 (AB 979), which Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law on September 30, 2020. The bill mandated boards of directors of California-based, publicly held domestic or foreign corporations to satisfy racial, ethnicity, sexual preference and transgender status quotas.
Our lawsuit successfully asked the Superior Court to declare the diversity quota scheme unconstitutional under California’s equal protection guarantee and to permanently enjoin its enforcement. On April 1, 2022, the Superior Court issued a ruling and opinion striking down AB 979’s diversity quotas and granting a permanent injunction in favor of our taxpayer clients enjoining the state from implementing the statute.
Exposed: Biden Administration Flights to Multiple Cities to Drop Off Alien Children
The Biden administration is delivering unaccompanied alien children around the country like packages.
We received 16 pages of records from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) detailing the nighttime transportation of unaccompanied alien children (UAC) by air from Texas to Tennessee, as well as two other flights making multiple stops across the country.
The Administration for Children and Families, a division of HHS, produced the records in response to an October 2022 lawsuit filed after HHS failed to respond to a May 20, 2021, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (No. 1:22-cv-03044)) asking for:
- All documents related to the preparation and logistics involved in the transportation of Unaccompanied Alien Children (UACs) to and from Chattanooga’s Wilson Air Center on May 14, 2021.
- All ACF officials’ internal email communications related to the transportation of UACs to and from Chattanooga’s Wilson Air Center on May 14, 2021.
The records include a May 15 email from a person whose name is redacted to an unnamed person at MVM Inc’s Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) Transport DFW (Dallas Fort Worth) Command Center detailing charter flights
One flight travelling from SAN-OKC-CHA-EWR [San Diego, Oklahoma City, Chattanooga, Newark airports] via “Swift Air,” which was operating a Boeing 737 with “148 seats” [likely the number of passengers]. It indicates that there would be two buses at the San Diego Convention Center, two buses in Oklahoma City, two buses in Chattanooga, and two buses at Newark.
A second flight, from MFE-ELP-EWR [McAllen, El Paso, Newark] also via “Swift Air,” and a 737, with 150 seats, notes: “Pecos [TX] will be bused to ELP [El Paso] to catch charter flight. 1 bus will report 0800. 2 buses to report at 0800 at Delphi EIS [Delphi Emergency Intake Site]
The records also include a May 13, 2021, email thread from a redacted person at MVM Inc. to [email protected][likely Response Force 1] and others regarding an Administration for Children and Families’ (ACF) Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) transport of minors from Kay Baily Hutchison Convention Center in Dallas on Friday, May 14, 2021, before dawn, at 3 a.m.
RF1 Badging then replies, “Please be advised that the following UCs [Unaccompanied Children] … does not match in our system.” He then proceeds to list the details of nine children.
Also in this thread is an email from an individual at Culmen International stating that one of the minors is “not cleared to travel.”
The records include a list for a charter of 36 children from Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico and El Salvador. A handwritten note on the spreadsheet says: “Dallas to Tennessee Air Charter Flight 5/14/2021.” The record notes that the children are to be transported to these shelters: La Casa de Sidney, Lincoln Hall Boys’ Haven, Children’s Home of Kingston, Children’s Village Shelter, and Cayuga Center TFC. It indicates three of the minors are “reunifications.”
(Chattanooga’s unaccompanied migrant minor housing facility, La Casa de Sydney, was closed in 2021 after reports of runaways and sexual battery.)
An undated “Transfer of Custody” form indicates the transfer of six Guatemalan and Honduran children from “KBH” [likely Kay Baily Hutchison Convention Center in Dallas] to La Casa de Sidney.
These shocking documents that we forced out show the Biden administration effectively trafficking unaccompanied alien children, dropping them off in city after city like items for delivery. The Biden open borders crisis is resulting in the most massive child and human trafficking operation ever.
In a May 26, 2021, letter to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Tennessee Senators Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty, along with Tennessee Congressman Chuck Fleischmann, detailed their concerns regarding unaccompanied minors:
We write to seek information on the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) management of unaccompanied alien children (UAC) in federal custody and the facilities used to house them. We are particularly concerned about recent reports regarding the use of Chattanooga, Tennessee, as a central location for resettling UACs in the United States.
There are media reports that, within the last week, at least four planes carrying UACs landed at Wilson Air Center in Chattanooga, Tennessee, before swiftly boarding the children onto buses and transporting them to multiple cities across the southeastern United States for apparent resettlement, with zero transparency regarding what was happening. For months, reports have detailed how thousands of children are being housed in neglectful conditions at mass shelters operated by HHS under a veil of secrecy. We are deeply troubled by the lack of transparency and accountability regarding the conditions that HHS is subjecting these children to.
In September 2021, we revealed HHS documents that list 33 separate incidents of alleged sexual abuse in a one-month time period tied to unaccompanied alien children shelters.
Our investigation and lawsuits continue into the Biden invasion, and we will keep you apprised as events in this crisis warrant.
Judicial Watch Sues Air Force Academy for Critical Race Theory Records
Our military academies are infested with Marxist dogma, and we’re rooting it out.
Our latest action is a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) suit for United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) training material on critical race theory (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of Defense (No. 1:22-cv-03510)).
We sued in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after the Air Force Academy, a component of Department of Defense, failed to respond to an August 5, 2021, FOIA request for all PowerPoint presentations used for training and/or classroom instruction discussing critical race theory (CRT) and/or “white supremacy.” We also requested emails about this issue for Air Force Academy senior leadership.
This is the fourth lawsuit on the crisis at our military academies:
On September 23, 2022, we filed a FOIA lawsuit on behalf of Stand Together Against Racism and Radicalism in the Services, Inc. (STARRS) against the U.S. Department of Defense for Air Force Academy records regarding “systemic racism,” as well as records of critical race theory at the Academy.
In July 2022 we sued the U.S. Department of Defense for records related to the United States Naval Academy implementing critical race theory in the training of naval recruits.
In June, we received records revealing critical race theory instruction at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.One training slide contains a graphic titled “MODERN-DAY SLAVERY IN THE USA.” [Emphasis in original]
Marxist critical race theory and its racial division have no place at the Air Force Academy, which is training the next generations of Air Force leadership. And, per usual, the scandal is compounded by the cover-up of records about the propaganda program abusing Air Force cadets.
Hackers Tied to China’s Government Steal $20 Million in COVID Relief Funds
As Congress considers a staggering $1.7 trillion spending bill, it is wise to look at what happens to your tax dollars in the hands of careless bureaucrats. Consider COVID relief money. Combining insult to injury, China hackers have made off with a huge chunk of it, as our Corruption Chronicles blog reports.
Nearly a year after Judicial Watch launched an investigation into the theft of U.S. COVID relief funds by foreign hackers, the Secret Service confirms that cyber criminals connected to China’s government stole $20 million in benefits. This includes Small Business Administration (SBA) loans and unemployment insurance money in multiple states, according to a national news story that identifies the perpetrators as a APT41, a hacking group based in Chengdu. The report cites U.S. law enforcement officials and cybersecurity experts who believe the multi-million-dollar theft of government pandemic funds by the Chinese faction “may just be the tip of the iceberg.”
Back in February Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the SBA as part of an ongoing investigation into the pervasive fraud associated with the government’s COVID-19 cash giveaway. Specifically, Judicial Watch requested memoranda, reports, email communications, investigative reports, and other communications or data concerning the following: COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) deposits originating from a foreign Internet Protocol (IP) address, account holders attempting to transfer funds to foreign accounts of any type and loans approved utilizing a fraudulent social security number. On February 23, the SBA acknowledged via electronic mail that it received Judicial Watch’s FOIA request and issued an official tracking number. So far no records have been provided to Judicial Watch and the SBA is in violation of the federal deadline—20 working days—to produce the information.
Most government agencies practice similar stonewalling tactics and Judicial Watch has repeatedly been forced to file lawsuits to compel the release of records. Our goal as a nonpartisan educational foundation is to promote transparency, accountability and integrity in government, politics, and the law. Pandemic relief has been a colossal multi-billion-dollar debacle rife with fraud and corruption. The problem is so bad that the Department of Justice (DOJ) created a COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Task Force to “enhance efforts to combat and prevent pandemic-related fraud.” The special unit has been quite busy prosecuting a multitude of scams, false statements, and money laundering related to pandemic relief. Earlier this year House Republicans issued a report documenting 500 days of massive waste, fraud, and abuse in the American Rescue Plan. It includes more than $783 million in stimulus checks for convicted prisoners including the Boston Marathon bomber, $40 million to expand libraries in Delaware, $2 million for a Florida golf course and $16 million for electric vehicle charging stations in Maine and $20 million to modernize the state’s fish hatcheries. The list goes on and on.
The SBA got on Judicial Watch’s radar because it has disbursed approximately $390 billion to nearly four million small businesses and nonprofits under its COVID-19 EIDL. The program provides up to $2 million in financial assistance to help small businesses recover from the economic impacts of the pandemic. Like many of the other COVID relief initiatives, the government made it way too easy to obtain cash and failed miserably to implement adequate vetting protocols. Officials cited in the recent news article confirm that other federal investigations of pandemic fraud also seem to point back to foreign state-affiliated hackers. The Secret Service admits there are over 1,000 ongoing investigations involving transnational and domestic criminals defrauding public benefits programs and Chinese hackers are key among them. As if it were not serious enough that Chinese hacks are stealing American taxpayer funds, one senior Justice Department official points out the cybercrimes also have serious national security implications.
Besides the SBA’s EIDL, the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, passed by Congress to provide over $2 trillion in “fast and direct economic aid” to Americans negatively impacted by the pandemic, also launched another fraud-infested initiative known as the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). In addition to the DOJ’s special task force, federal prosecutors across the nation have charged dozens of individuals with crimes associated with PPP scams. A recent example includes a father and son convicted of illegally obtaining $1.7 in loans. A federal jury in North Carolina convicted the men of money laundering and other offenses with the father sentenced to four years in prison and the son three years. This month the top federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia revealed that in 2022 her office has charged more than 50 defendants in 26 cases of fraud schemes connected to COVID relief that defrauded the government out of nearly $125 million.
Merry Christmas!
Throughout the year, Judicial Watch engages the government in court to expose its never-ending efforts to control us. These legal battles have at times been with the IRS and the Census Bureau, and they have revealed the government wielding power to stay in power.
None of this is new.
The story we celebrate on December 25th – the birth of Christ – occurred amid the ruthless imposition of government authority. In his desire to eliminate any pretender to the throne, Caesar Augustus mandated a census to identify anyone who might challenge him. A census was also a first step in taxing the people.
And so, despite Mary being in her ninth month of pregnancy, she and Joseph travelled to his home, Bethlehem, a week-long journey of perhaps 90 miles through treacherous landscape, and it was there that Jesus was born.
Herod, who ruled over Judea, had been given the title “King of the Jews” by Rome, so when the Wise Men from the East used that title for the Christ child they came to worship, Herod was inflamed. He demanded that the travelers reveal the location of Jesus, but they refused.
This infuriated him even more. It took little effort for him to order the national massacre of all boys under two years old. Warned of this in a dream, Joseph took Mary and Jesus to Egypt for safekeeping, and they didn’t return until Herod was dead.
But once again a despotic ruler would influence the Christmas story. When he heard that Herod’s son Archelaus, who had massacred thousands of Jews, had assumed control of Judea, Joseph resettled his family in Nazareth outside of Archelaus’ power.
These tempestuous events echo loudly in our time. We can take from them the realization that the kings of this earth have no power over the Truth, and, despite the tribulations of our age, we can genuinely be of good cheer.
All of us at Judicial Watch pause from our labors in this season to wish you a Merry Christmas!
Until next week,
TOP NEWS
