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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   16800 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 21, 2026

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Courts have been making the definition of seizure or detention very expansive. I know of a couple cases in my home state of Washington.

In State v Sum they ruled that an officer waking a man sleeping in a vehicle, asking for identification, and saying he was investigating a stolen vehicle, constituted seizure. They vacated Sum's conviction for giving a false name subsequent to the seizure. They also added a racial component to the law's hypothetical reasonable observer, "an objective observer is aware that implicit, institutional, and unconscious biases."

The Washington State Supreme Court ruled in State v Meredith, relying on the racial dimension introduced by Sum, that officers asking for proof of payment from someone on a bus constituted a seizure, and that the officers lacked cause for the seizure. The decision vacated his conviction for giving a false name subsequent to the seizure. The lead opinion stated that fare enforcement has a “known, racially disproportionate impact” and later said its holding served “to mitigate the known, racially disproportionate impact of such fare enforcement practices."

In both of these cases the stakes were low. Meredith had already served the 58 day sentence that was vacated. The details of Sum's sentence aren't available, but it was also already served. Both were misdemeanors.

In both cases advocacy orgs like the ACLU pursued the cases on behalf of the defendants. Funnily enough the region's transit orgs filed amici briefs in favor of Meredith.

In both cases we had men who were already making net negative contributions to society, and who had their stupidity amplified by well funded organizations to make it even more difficult to rein in the behaviors of men like themselves. The defendants don't even have to show up for the apellate court hearings. I had ChatGPT try to find evidence that they did attend, and it was unable to find any.

Sum

As set forth in this court’s precedent, the seizure inquiry is an objective test in which the allegedly seized person has the burden to show that a seizure occurred. To aid courts in the application of this test, we now clarify that a person is seized for purposes of article I section 7 [of the state constitution] if, based on the totality of the circumstances, an objective observer could conclude that the person was not free to leave, to refuse a request, or to otherwise terminate the encounter due to law enforcement’s display of authority or use of physical force. For purposes of this analysis, an objective observer is aware that implicit, institutional, and unconscious biases, in addition to purposeful discrimination, have resulted in disproportionate police contacts, investigative seizures, and uses of force against Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BIPOC) in Washington. Finally, in accordance with our precedent, if the person shows there was a seizure, then the burden shifts to the State to prove that the seizure was lawfully justified by a warrant or an applicable exception to the warrant requirement.

Based on the totality of the circumstances presented in this case, we hold that petitioner Palla Sum was seized when a sheriff’s deputy requested Sum’s identification while implying that Sum was under investigation for car theft. As the State properly concedes, at that time, the deputy did not have a warrant, reasonable suspicion, or any other lawful authority to seize Sum. As a result, Sum was unlawfully seized, and the false name and birth date he gave to the deputy must be suppressed. We therefore reverse the Court of Appeals and remand to the trial court for further proceedings.

Meredith

Finally, we consider whether the disturbance of Meredith’s private affairs in this case exceeded what was “reasonably necessary to further substantial governmental interests”. To make this determination, we consider “‘reasonableness…’ along with history, precedent, and common sense”. As a matter of both reasonableness and common sense, unless mass transit is offered for free, transit operators must be able to charge and collect fares from passengers. Therefore, as history and this court have long recognized, passengers using mass transit must pay their fares or they “may be ejected”. We do not question that premise.

However, in this case, Meredith was asked for proof of payment by law enforcement officers, who then identified and arrested him using resources that no civilian conducting fare enforcement could have accessed. Although we are not asked to opine on the constitutionality of these later actions, they could not have occurred without the initial seizure.

Moreover, as detailed above, the risk of such escalation would be acutely felt by reasonable transit passengers, who are more likely to be members of “historically marginalized groups”, including Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color. Members of such groups are already known to be “‘disproportionate victims’” of “police encounters without reasonable suspicion”. If allowed to continue, the high level of intrusion that occurred here would only exacerbate these disparities. The State has not shown such an outcome is reasonably necessary to further the governmental interest in fare enforcement on public transit.

To be fair, it appears that this ruling forbids only fare enforcement by police officers, not fare enforcement by transit employees who are backed up by police officers if they find a noncompliant passenger.

Yet, “[o]n this particular day [the officers] didn’t have any [transit employees] to work for [them,] so [the police officers] worked as a team of two deputies riding the bus fully outfitted in [their] patrol uniforms and then one deputy in a chase car in case [they] dealt with anybody.”

The Washington State Supreme Court is very blackpilling. They essentially rule like kings, vetoing citizens initiatives, and rubber stamping acts of the state government which are obviously against any clear reading of the state constitution.

The state is controlled by an interlocking grid of far left institutions. Merely replacing one won't help. The whole rat's nest has to be slowly unwound which would take decades. Change is essentially impossible.

I get the sense that this is how it must be in Europe, even more so with the supranational EU and European courts that exist far removed from any democratic control.

Democracy is essentially dead in a lot of places.

Democracy works.

Washington residents voted for this.

Washington residents have voted for a lot of things, and then the WA supreme court overturns them arbitrarily, whilst letting their favored laws stand. My favorite recent example is their ruling that a capital gains tax is not an income tax under the state constitution. This is despite the state itself directly reporting said revue in their own accounting as an income tax.

Democracy only works in an area where consent of the governed is equally geographically distributed.

In Washington, it is not.

They also voted for 35 dollar car tabs.

And the Supreme Court that overturned them. And they never punish those Supreme Court justices. The last justice to lose a reelection bid was Richard B Sanders in 2010, and he was replaced by Charlie Wiggins. Sanders was conservative, Wiggins a liberal. Wiggins was on the majority opinion in the court's 9-0 decision that held that the death penalty was unconstitutional becuase of disparate racial impact.

The voters don't punish overturning initiatives, so the Court is free to reason to achieve its desired outcomes.

the court's 9–0 decision that held that the death penalty was unconstitutional becuase of disparate racial impact

Link

The decision does not appear to be based on disparate impact. Rather, the justices relied on a report finding, with p-values of 4.8–11.1 percent, that race was a factor in the application of the death penalty. (In a footnote, they declined to use the common p-value of 5 percent as a "mechanical bright-line rule".)

Have you voted in Washington state? The elections are basically like

Judge A: Leftist with a AAAA rating from the Bar Association. Certificate of honor from good girl club.

Judge B: Leftist with a AAAA rating from the Bar Association. Certificate of honor from good girl club.

They are not running on the issues like legislative candidates because of the fiction that they are merely interpreting the rules and not making them. It's a farce. Sure, change isn't impossible, but it would take a decades long march through the institutions to get there.

While the elections are nominally non-partisan, I just open the candidate's website and usually can quickly discern their party alignment. If the front page doesn't make it clear from language about equity or law and order, it's easy enough to find out who's endorsed them.

I don't recall ever lacking a conservative option, but until about 2018 I would have voted for the liberals.

There are non-leftists on the ballot for judges for a few seats every election and every time they get absolutely destroyed. Seems like a strong signal from the voters what they want.

They voted for $35 car tabs to get sent to judges, and they voted for those judges to nuke it.

I wonder what the voters really wanted. It's so mysterious.

Yeah, I'm aware that voters are retarded and will vote for a balanced budget, tax cuts, and to give every old and black person a free Cadillac. All at the same time.

Nevertheless, I don't think the voters of Washington should be allowed to vote for kings to rule over them unless they know explicitly that's what they are voting for. These justices run on platforms like "I have a highly qualified rating from the bar association" not "I'm basically Mao in a robe".

It's a farce when the kings will allow the vote to count sometimes, but not other times, depending on whether the kings like it. Feels like Calvinball, largely because it is.

You're familiar with the term "manipulation of procedural outcomes", I presume?

It’s not news that I believe the Cathedral is evil. And since it’s 2008, you’d expect evil to have not only a name, but a blog. And sure enough it does. Evil’s name is Timothy Burke, he is a professor of history (specializing in southern Africa) at Swarthmore, and his blog is Easily Distracted.

The great thing about Professor Burke is that he appears to have a conscience. Almost every post in his blog can be understood as a kind of rhetorical struggle to repress some inner pang of doubt. He is the Good German par excellence. When people of this mindset found themselves in the Third Reich, they were “moderate Nazis.” In Czechoslovakia or Poland they “worked within the system.” Professor Burke is nowhere near being a dissident, but there is a dissident inside him. He doesn’t like it, not at all. He stabs it with his steely knives. He can check out any time. But he can never leave. His position is a high one, and not easy to get.

The entire blog is characterized—indeed it could serve as a type specimen for—the quality that Nabokov called poshlost. Simply an embarrassment of riches. I am saddened by the fact that, as a new parent, I cannot devour the whole thing. But as a case study, I have selected this. The whole post is a treat, but I am especially tickled by the line:

I am drawn to procedural liberalism because I live in worlds that are highly procedural and my skills and training are adapted to manipulating procedural outcomes.

“Manipulating procedural outcomes.” My entire post—maybe even my entire blog—reduced to three words. If you want to know how you are governed, this is it: you are governed by manipulating procedural outcomes. It’s perfect. It belongs on someone’s tomb.

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