DES MOINES – The ACLU is fed up with what they call “racist pretextual traffic stops” where police use any reason to stop persons of color and then slap them with charges, and a key court case in Iowa could make these stops a thing of the past.
According to a bulletin from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sent this weekend:
This Tuesday, September 18 at 1:30 p.m., the Iowa Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a case that has the potential to dramatically reduce racial profiling in Iowa: State of Iowa v. Scottize Brown.
The case focuses on a key element of many racial profiling traffic stops: pretexual stops. A pretextual stop is one that police say they made for a legal reason — like a tail-light being out — but which is a actually pretext because in truth they made the stop simply because of a vague suspicion. Allowing police to make the stop based on a suspicion or hunch all too often allows for racial bias to drive decision-making. For example, police may cite a failure to use a turn signal, an equipment violation, or not coming to a full stop. But the real reason is what many people of color aptly call “driving while black or brown.”
Unfortunately, in 1996 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that this type of stop is not unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. That’s where the Brown challenge — being made under the Iowa Constitution, which has greater protections from unreasonable stops and seizures — comes into play.
Scottize Brown, a Black woman living in Waterloo, was stopped by a police officer under the pretext that one of her two license plate lamps was not working and because she drove through a yellow light that turned red. Neither action is illegal. Later, the officer testified that his actual reason for stopping her was that he was “curious about vehicle owner’s reported gang affiliation.” The owner wasn’t even Ms. Brown and that was not a legitimate or lawful reason for him to stop the car.
Ms. Brown is asking the Court to overturn a lower court decision convicting her of an OWI and driving with a suspended license because the evidence the conviction was based on resulted from an unlawful, pretextual stop. The ACLU of Iowa has partnered with the Iowa-Nebraska Conference of the NAACP, the League of United Latin American Citizens of Iowa, and 1000 Kids for Iowa to support Scottize Brown by filing an amicus brief in the case.
The ACLU says that on Thursday, you can watch the oral arguments, live-streamed on the Iowa Supreme Court YouTube channel or attend a brown bag watch party at the ACLU of Iowa offices in Des Moines, starting at 1 p.m. It will be a half-hour of discussion about Scottize Brown’s case, pretextual stops, and efforts to stop racial profiling, followed by watching the oral arguments together as a group.
