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Sharp v. Becerra - CA DOJ Being Sued (again)


Subdeacon Joe

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https://www.firearmspolicy.org/fed-judge-rules-against-cadoj-sharp?fbclid=IwAR31lTCelbsDKigtXrCynJyKHoLSUaH7ifoyTtkNsZWxoY7ko1v0irY2LtU

 

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SACRAMENTO, CA (June 27, 2019) — Today, plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit announced that Judge Morrison C. England, U.S. District Court Judge for the Eastern District of California, denied the defendants’ motion to dismiss the plaintiffs’ claims in Sharp, et al. v. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, et al., a case about people who were denied the ability to register their firearms, putting them in legal jeopardy, because of what was alleged as “systemic” problems within California DOJ, not the least of which was the DOJ’s non-functioning website that was plagued with problems, preventing many law-abiding gun owners from complying with the registration requirement. A copy of the court filing can be accessed at https://www.firearmspolicy.org/sharp.

“We are pleased that the judge recognized that our clients, and potentially many others, have a claim based on the DOJ’s systemic failures,” said lead counsel, George M. Lee. “We look forward to proving that the DOJ’s administrators were deliberately indifferent to the plight of law-abiding gun owners who were simply trying to comply with the law.” 

“There is a certain bureaucratic cruelty to this Catch-22 scheme that required ordinary citizens to comply with the law, but deprived them of the opportunity to do so,” Lee explained. “We will show that the DOJ’s indifference to this dilemma amounted to a deprivation of due process to fundamental liberty interests of gun owners.”

“This unjust California government-created problem must be stopped immediately,” said Second Amendment Foundation Founder and Executive Vice President, Alan Gottlieb. “Gun owners should not be put at risk due to state regulatory incompetence.”

As part of ongoing discovery, the plaintiffs received a document that shows one high-ranking DOJ official saying in response to a suggestion that the system’s failures might result in a lawsuit, “Not going to please everyone. " 

“Judge England’s ruling supports our theory that the DOJ’s many failures may indeed be violations of the right to due process under the Constitution,” commented FPC President Brandon Combs. “In fact, the facts may also support an inference of ‘deliberate indifference’ on the part of the DOJ. We look forward to the opportunity to show that the California DOJ not only fails miserably in doing their job, but actually acts against law-abiding California gun owners, possibly even out of animus.”

Attorney George M. Lee’s case update on Sharp v. Becerra can be viewed at https://www.firearmspolicy.org/sharp-update.

People who encountered similar issues should contact attorney George M. Lee of Seiler Epstein LLP or the FPC/FPF Legal Action Hotline at https://www.firearmspolicy.org/hotline or (855) 252-4510. 

 

 

the update from George Lee https://www.firearmspolicy.org/sharp-update

 

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We now know that the DOJ had estimated that perhaps as many as 250,000 gun owners, owning possibly as many as 1.5 million such firearms could have been expected to register them. That shows the popularity of this type of arm – common, constitutionally-protected semi-automatic firearms, including the nationally-popular AR-15 platform rifle.

At the same time, however, the DOJ was woefully unprepared, understaffed, and under-budgeted to deal with this crush of State-mandated registrations. And the DOJ knew it.

Many California gun owners, like our clients – who were simply trying to avoid serious criminal liability by complying with the law – were unable to register their firearms before the deadline.  Many were simply “timed out” by the DOJ’s Web application, or found the DOJ’s website completely inaccessible. Others who were able to access the website found that it was unable to process the four photographs that the DOJ had required, thus resulting in failures. (The requirement for photograms was the DOJ’s own made-up invention, by the way. It wasn’t required by statute.) Some others got as far as being able to prepare everything for submission, but when they clicked on the “submit” button, the system would crash, causing them to lose their work and have to start over (if the system then even allowed that).

Seven individuals throughout the state who experienced these types of problems joined our lawsuit and are named in the case. However, after the DOJ’s website disaster, including after the deadline passed, I personally spoke with many other gun owners who experienced similar problems. So these were not simply aberrations, nor were they “user errors” as the DOJ tried to suggest. This was a systematic failure on the DOJ’s part.

Some of our clients attempted to call the DOJ to explain that the website wasn’t functioning.  The DOJ’s standard response was to blame the gun owner for “waiting until the last minute” to attempt registration. This, despite the fact that the DOJ’s website ominously had a “countdown clock” literally ticking the last day, hour, minute and second that gun owners had to comply with the requirement. We now know from documents produced in discovery that this attitude of victim-blaming went to the highest levels of the DOJ.

The ruling by Judge England supports our theory that the DOJ’s failures to maintain a functioning website may rise to the level of a due process violation under the Constitution. In fact, these systemic failures, in addition to the countdown clock, supports an inference of “deliberate indifference” on the part of the DOJ.

In essence, they knew that gun owners wouldn’t be able to comply with the registration requirement under the law—and they simply didn’t care. 

For example: “Those who waited until the last day will just have to keep trying and if they are unable to register that is on them,” said one DOJ administrator. 

Another high-ranking DOJ official said in response to a suggestion that the failures might result in a lawsuit said, “Not going to please everyone.

We are looking forward to proceeding to the next phases of the case, where we will continue to uncover documents, and find witnesses who will demonstrate that the DOJ’s failure to create a functioning website violated basic principles of due process, fundamental fairness, and only served to make technical criminals out of people who were simply trying to comply with the law.

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