The Macias Decision
9th Circuit Federal Court of Appeals
July 20th, 2000
by Marie De
Santis, Women's
Justice Center
Women Have
a Constitutional Right to Nondiscriminatory Police Services! This
landmark decision is now binding law in all states and jurisdictions
of the U.S. 9th Judicial District; Alaska, Arizona, California,
Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Guam, and
the Northern Mariana Isles.
In a groundbreaking
unanimous decision on July 20th, the 9th Circuit Federal Court
of Appeals ruled that women have a constitutional right to nondiscriminatory
police services. The ruling overturns the district court's 1999
dismissal of Macias v. Sheriff Mark Ihde, and in the most clearly
stated decision of its kind to date, establishes that women have
a constitutional 14th amendment right to hold police legally accountable
for their response to violence against women. Even if the Macias
case were to lose back in the district court, this overarching
decision laid down by the second highest court in the land will
remain law.
Throughout
history and right into the present day, many in law enforcement
have regularly dumped, ignored, and simply not wanted to deal
seriously with cases of rape and domestic violence. And women
have never had legal right nor remedy to hold law enforcement
accountable.
When pressed
to answer for their disregard of one or many cases, police have
been able to answer assuredly that they have officer discretion
to handle these cases as they wish. And the highest courts of
the land have agreed. No wonder the violence against women rages
on!
Maria Teresa
Macias was shot to death by her estranged husband Avelino in the
town of Sonoma on April 15, 1996. For more than a year prior to
her murder, María Teresa had repeatedly sought help from
the Sonoma County Sheriff's Dept. regarding her husband's years
of violence against herself and her three children. In just the
last three months of her life, after having obtained a restraining
order, María Teresa called the Sheriff's Department for
help on at least fourteen occasions. Calls and written reports
to law enforcement detailed Avelino's continued stalking, rape,
false imprisonment, threats to kill, and harassment, as well as
his decade of physical and sexual violence against María
Teresa and her children.
The $15
million federal civil rights lawsuit, filed October 9, 1996, alleges
that the Sheriff's Department discriminated against Teresa as
a woman, as a Latina, and as a victim of violence against women.
The suit further alleges that the Sheriff's Department denied
her constitutional right to equal protection of the law by failing
to take reports, by ignoring evidence, discouraging her from calling,
and more. In addition, deputies never arrested Avelino despite
ample authority and their own written policy to do so.
Since 1868,
the fourteenth amendment to the constitution has promised equal
protection of the laws to all persons. By common sense and by
all that's right, this amendment should have protected women.
But throughout history, women have been all but excluded from
it's coverage. Since 1868, as women have tried to establish their
equal rights to vote, to work, or to justice, from the amendment's
promising words, the supreme court has again, and again into the
present, ruled from the dark-age legacy of their `separate sphere
ideology' for women.
"By divine
ordination," as the Supreme Court first stated this damning
doctrine of women as other than person, "women are ‘properly
placed in a class by herself."' And so over time, the more
women appealed to the 14th amendment for equal rights, the more
the Supreme Court said "No, you're different," and the
deeper the Court has driven the wedge of women's inequality into
the heart of American law.
It's only
in the last couple decades that women have begun to reverse some
of the damages, and this mostly in the areas of labor and education
rights. In the areas of law enforcement, however, the highest
courts, as the Supreme Court did twice in 1989, have in fact solidified
law enforcement's discretion to deny justice to women with impunity.
Now, after
a century and a half, at least in the 9th U.S. Judicial District,
the Macias decision rules. Women now have constitutional remedy
to hold police legally accountable when justice and protection
are systematically denied. The language of this new ruling is
unflinching. It rings so clearly with what is right as to be virtually
unassailable.
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