Is is possible to be prosecuted for lying about race on the US Census? Lying on a US Census is a federal crime. But according the US Census online docs about race: An individual’s response to the race question is based upon self-identification. The Census Bureau does not tell individuals which boxes to mark or what heritage to write in. ... The racial categories included in the census questionnaire generally reflect a social definition of race recognized in this country and not an attempt to define race biologically, anthropologically, or genetically. In addition, it is recognized that the categories of the race item include racial and national origin or sociocultural groups. People may choose to report more than one race to indicate their racial mixture, such as “American Indian” and “White.” People who identify their origin as Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish may be of any race. Which makes it sound as though everybody in the US can put in, say, Alaska Native, on the grounds that self-identifying is a choice, without lying or committing a crime. (Imagine the top TV show in the US was a revival of Nanook of the North, with a terrific charismatic cast, and which promoted "the eskimo way", (akin to the "the cowboy" way in singing cowboy westerns), which advocated that if you followed "the eskimo way", then you too were an eskimo. And alienated Americans resonate with this, as they have with so many fashions, fads and creeds, that that's what they wished themselves to really be.) Is it possible to (unlawfully) lie about one's race given the current US census race categories? In other words, has the 2018 govt. any power to prosecute for lying about race on a census? If there are no lies, what purpose is served by having such a definition? What's the value (who benefits) in making what used to be a fuzzy but more or less factual item about national and ethnic origins into a belief-based one, in effect making race into a religion. This is a spin-off of What are the political benefits and inversely disadvantages, if any, of individually self-identifying as “white” in the United States?.
Short Answer You can be prosecuted for lying about race on the census, but it takes some pretty specific and narrow conditions and isn't a concern for the vast majority of people. Long Answer There are two analytically distinct questions. The first is whether you can lie on the census about race. The answer is &quot;yes&quot;, you can lie on the census about race. You would do so by providing an answer that is insincere, which is to say, an answer that is not consistent with how you self-identify. If you believe yourself to be and identify as African-American, for example, but answer &quot;Alaska Native&quot; not because you identify as an Alaska Native, but because you want to screw with the census, then you have lied about race on the census. Similar issues of sincerity have been addressed by the U.S. Supreme Court in the context of the much higher stakes issue of conscientious objector status for someone seeking to avoid the draft. A 2014 law review article explores how courts test sincerity claims in practice. The second is whether you can be prosecuted about lying on the census. There is indeed a law that makes lying on a census form a crime. Refusing to answer either the short Census form or the longer American Community Survey form is a violation of federal law (Title 13, United States Code, Section 221). Refusing to answer is punishable by a fine of $100, while giving false answers carries a fine of up to $500. (As a practical matter, the Census says fines of up to $5,000 can be imposed under Title 18, Section 3571.) So, again, the answer is &quot;yes&quot; you can be prosecuted for lying on the census, but due to the obligation of the census to maintain confidentiality, knowing that a crime was committed or proving that you lied would be hard unless you did something to waive that right to confidentiality. Still, the person about whom the confidential information is maintained by the census can waive this confidentiality. 13 USC 9(a)(3). In practice, a prosecution for lying about race on the census would probably be most viable if, for example, you did a TV interview or posted a YouTube video in which you took video of yourself filling in the race item on your census form with an answer while stating that you didn't self-identify as this race but were just screwing with the government, and then showed yourself submitting that form. Thus, while the prohibition against lying on the census about race is virtually toothless, it does have enough teeth to make it possible to prosecuted someone who openly and publicly defies the requirement to be truthful on the census and admits to doing so, which can still have some utility in discouraging some kinds of open revolts calculated at undermining the integrity of the census. Also, even if you don't &quot;admit&quot; that you are insincere that isn't the end of the analysis. They can't dispute your self-identification with biological facts, but they can dispute that your answer is a sincere self-identification with either your own confession to the contrary or with circumstantial evidence that indicates you are lying (e.g. you fill out every other form before and after with a different answer and have a known animosity towards the census). If a jury believed beyond a reasonable doubt based upon circumstantial evidence that your answer was not sincere, it could find your testimony to be not credible and convict you anyway. If there are no lies, what purpose is served by having such a definition? The vast majority of people, facing no negative consequences for telling the truth, if they have cooperated enough to fill out the form at all, will try to fill it out consistently with the instructions. And, a significant share of all census responses are provided by government employees whose duty and purpose is to try to provide a correct answer. Also, most people comply with the laws even in the face of zero enforcement. For example, it has been more than 40 years since the last person was prosecuted for not filling out a census form, even though it is crime not to do so, in part, because most people try to obey the law. And, compliance with the burden of filling out a census form is quite high. What's the value (who benefits) in making what used to be a fuzzy but more or less factual item about national and ethnic origins into a belief-based one, in effect making race into a religion. Many countries (not the U.S.) have a religion question in their census as well, and this isn't problematic where it is done, or in surveys asking questions about religion, although being clear on definitions can be important (e.g. in the case of a religious v. ancestral or ethnic v. self-identified definition of who is a Jew). I strongly suspect that the differences in how people respond to the question arising from a national or ethnic origin definition, and a definition based upon self-identification, are negligible at the statistical level. A century or so from now, when census records are made public, it will be possible to confirm this definitively by examining how the same individual's race was reported on half a dozen or more successive census forms. In non-census contexts, this shift in the definition has not produced any statistically meaningful differences in how people respond. Also, if anything, the new definition based on self-identification may be more useful to researchers who are trying to examine socially coherent communities, and it makes the race data slightly more comparable to data, for example, on religion and on sexual orientation (from non-census sources).
Your silence can be used against you: this is known as an adoptive admission. It is an exception to the hearsay rule, and is based on the premise that if a person hears and understands an accusation against them (even framed very indirectly), and &quot;adopts&quot; the truth of the accusation by directly acting in a certain way or by failing to dispute the accusation, this can be introduced as a form of admitting to the accusation. For instance, B might say to A &quot;I laughed when you shot Smith in the foot&quot; and A might say &quot;That was pretty funny, right&quot;, that can be admitted and interpreted as a confession. The same goes for A saying nothing. What's crucial is that the accusation has to be made in the defendant's presence, they must hear and understand it, they must be able to deny the accusation and it would be natural to deny the accusation. There is a relationship between this and the Fifth Amendment, see Salinas v. Texas (and prior law), that &quot;To prevent the privilege against self-incrimination from shielding information not properly within its scope, a witness who “‘desires the protection of the privilege . . . must claim it’&quot;. During a non-custodial interview, defendant was asked asked if his shotgun “would match the shells recovered at the scene of the murder”, and he said nothing (and actually gave non-verbal indicators that the accusation was true). He did not invoke his right to silence, thus the court reasoned that &quot;Because he failed to do so, the prosecution’s use of his noncustodial silence did not violate the Fifth Amendment&quot;.
It is legal, unless the laws of that state say otherwise. Governments are allowed to charge different tuitions to residents vs. non-residents. They can also require proof of residence (not just your say-so). Being physically present in a state for a couple of years is not proof of being a resident. That doesn't mean that the interrogation that you are getting is allowed by law, but it's at least consistent with the general pattern of out of state tuition laws in the US. If you have contradictory elements of &quot;proof&quot; (voter registration in another state), they can demand more evidence. It really depends on what the state laws are, so you could name the state. Also, the full financial disclosure may in fact not be related to tuition rates but to financial aid, where they can demand all sorts of things by way of proof.
From the German lawyer association (&quot;Deutscher Anwaltverein&quot;) one can find the following (Google-translation): In the case of a purely preventive identity check, the officers are initially only allowed to determine the identity of the respondent. This means that you can ask for your name, date and place of birth, home address and nationality and have your ID shown - by the way, as a German citizen you don't have to always have your ID with you. &quot;You don't have to answer any questions beyond that,&quot; says lawyer Robert Hotstegs from the German Lawyers' Association (DAV). Of course, police officers often try to gather more information with emphatically casual questions. &quot;Well, where do we come from&quot; or: &quot;And where are we going now?&quot; Are typical examples. The police are not allowed to insist on an answer. Anyone who, as a respondent, is voluntarily too willing to provide information can harm themselves and possibly even give rise to concrete suspicions. So they are allowed to ask such things, but you don't need to answer everything. How to handle such situations, again according to the link above: “I recommend answering the survey as briefly and politely as possible. This has a de-escalating effect and helps to end the unpleasant situation as quickly as possible, ”says Attorney Hotstegs. However, you should always answer the questions about yourself. Because if the police cannot determine the identity of a person or only with great effort, they may take further measures to determine the identity. This includes taking it to the police station and, under certain circumstances, a search. Otherwise, these measures are not permitted without a specific reason.
It is basically fraud, and there are two ways in which it could be illegal: it might be a crime, and you might get sued for doing it (you would not be fined or imprisoned, but you may have to compensate the hotel chain for their loss). Whether or not it is a crime depends on the jurisdiction. In Washington, there are very many laws against fraud such as RCW 9.38 (credit), RCW 9.45 (numerous things where a business defrauds others), RCW 9.60 (forgery) but none of them would apply to lying about a material fact to a business in order to get a discount. Texas likewise has a long section on criminal fraud. It is not clear from the wording whether a customer lying to a business (not involving forgery, vehicles, credit, or financial institutions) is covered. 32.42(b)(10) says A person commits an offense if in the course of business he intentionally, knowingly, recklessly, or with criminal negligence commits one or more of the following deceptive business practices... making a materially false or misleading statement of fact concerning the reason for, existence of, or amount of a price or price reduction The question of interpretation that this raises is whether a person who has said "I'm over 70" so that they can get a discount has made a statement "concerning the reason for a price reduction". The ordinary interpretation of "concerning the reason for" would be that it refers to explaining why or under what conditions a price reduction exists. For the moment, I am skeptical that this definition would include the case at hand, but that will require a search through case law and jury instructions. From the lawsuit angle, you would have knowingly made a false material statement in order to obtain a value, which is illegal, and they could sue you to recover the discount.
Hard to prove a negative, but the answer is no. Here's some support: https://martialarts.stackexchange.com/q/72 http://www.fightingarts.com/reading/article.php?id=460 explains possible origins of this myth: By Jonathan Maberry This is one of the oldest American martial arts legends, and there is absolutely no basis or reality in it. First off, there is no department or process within the U.S. government to regulate martial arts, which means there is no instrument in place to identify persons practicing fighting arts, and no governmental method by which practitioners can be evaluated. ... Actually there is not a country on earth where martial artists are required to register themselves as weapons, deadly or otherwise. This myth has its roots in two different aspects of mid-20th century history. In post-World War II Japan traditional martial arts were made illegal, and records were kept of those persons who were experienced practitioners of the arts. This was a bit of anti-Japanese backlash following the war and lasted only a few years. It has not been repeated, and it never spread beyond the borders of Japan. The other root is planted in the soil of the rich and often outrageous history of professional boxing. In the Joe Lewis era (the boxer, not the karate master), it was a common publicity stunt to have police on hand during a press conference to “register” the boxer as a deadly weapon. Understand, this was just a publicity stunt and carried no more legal weight than receiving the Key to the City actually means you can open any door with it and just walk in. In court cases involving violent confrontations, lawyers and judges may advise the jury to bear in mind a person’s martial arts, boxing, or military combat training when evaluating the facts of the case. For example, in the Matter of the Welfare of D.S.F., 416 N.W.2d 772 (Minn. App. 1988), the Minnesota Court of Appeals concluded that the defendant, who had "substantial experience in karate," was aware enough of the potential of his blows to deliberately break the plaintiff’s jaw. But that is a lot different from legally stating that the person in question is a registered or licensed “deadly weapon”.
Yes. This is legal. See, e.g. SPARF v.U.S. 156 U.S. 51 (1895); U.S. vs Moylan, 417 F 2d 1002, 1006 (4th Cir. 1969); U.S. v. Krzyske, 836 F.2d 1013 (6th Cir. 1988) (&quot;the jury asked the judge about jury nullification. The judge responded, &quot;There is no such thing as valid jury nullification.&quot; The jury convicted the defendant. On appeal, the majority and the dissent agreed that the trial judge's instruction was untrue, but the majority held that this false representation was not a reversible error.&quot;). Indeed, procedurally, the system is specifically designed to prevent courts from even considering such a question. See also, e.g. People v. Iannicelli, 2019 CO 80, § 2 (Colo. 2019) (holding no crime was committed) (&quot;Defendants Mark Iannicelli and Eric Brandt stood in the plaza square adjacent to the Lindsey-Flanigan Courthouse in Denver and asked people entering the courthouse whether they were reporting for jury duty. If any of these people answered affirmatively, then Iannicelli and Brandt would hand them one or more brochures discussing the concept of jury nullification, which the brochures defined as the process by which a jury in a criminal case acquits the defendant regardless of whether he or she has broken the law in question. As a result of this conduct, the People charged Iannicelli and Brandt with multiple counts of jury tampering&quot;) This is deeply entwined with the U.S. law interpretation of the Fifth Amendment Double Jeopardy Clause's protections, which prohibit a retrial or appeal following a judgment of acquittal, which have been incorporated by the U.S. Supreme Court as applicable in state courts as well.
Yes and No. The Federal U.S. Government as well as each individual state and territory claim Soverign Immunity to a limited degree. In the case of Federal Government, they claim Soverign Immunity to a near limitless degree (more on this in a moment), while States and Territories claim &quot;State Soverign Immunity&quot; which grants them immunity with respect to all soverign powers granted under the U.S. Constitution. To clarify, each U.S. State is seperately soverign in all matters not explicitly allocated to the Federal Government by the U.S. Constitution and all constitutionally written laws. Where the Constitution does not in writing claim a power for the federal government nor reserver a power for the state government, the power is assumed to be state government. So a State can claim immunity for a police situation but not a law it makes regarding immigration or foriegn policy, since that is the exclusive wheelhouse of the Feds. Per the 11th amendment, states can only be sued in state court by citizens of the state, while non-state citizens wishing to sue a state must sue in the Federal Court (Which for the purposes of the trial may adopt the defendant State's laws and regulations for the purposes of questions of fact and law brought up in the suit). All U.S. States and the Federal Goverment additionally wave Soverign Immunity under specific conditions outlined in laws. In the case of the Federal Government, the laws governing when this immunity is waived are governed by the Federal Torts Claims Act (1946) and the Tucker Act (1887). The FTCA covers intentional torts by the Federal Government, while the Tucker Act typically covers matters related to contractual obligations or monitary interactions with the federal government. Things that may be sued for include but are not limited too: Intentional Torts committed by Government Agents in their Official Capacity (i.e. When the FBI violates your rights or maliciously investigates you). Contractual disputes where the Government is a party to the Contract, either in written or implied terms. Constitutional Claims (i.e. The Government may have violated the Constitution. These tend to be for non-monitary relief such as mandemuses, though the 5th Amendment's Taking Clause can be invoked of the government took property and does not justly compensate.). Individual Agencies of the Government when the monitary claim is not drawn from the U.S. Treasury (the agencies own allocated budget is used to pay). Refund for taxes paid In all cases, a Judge will determin if the Government, under the laws, can be sued. If in the example of a government employee being sued, the Justice Department will first make a determination if the employee was acting as an agent of the government when they committed the tortious act, and then will declare themselves Respondent Superior through the agency of employement. From there, the case becomes a suit against the Federal Government and FTCA immunity waiver is determined by a Judge. For example, lets say you (Mr. Rapt) sue Special Agent Jimmy Jones of an intentional tort that he committed in the course of his duty as an FBI agent. The DOJ will first declare that they are Respondent Superior in the case of Rapt v. Jones, thus turning the case to Rapt v. United States Government, Department of Justice, Federal Beura of Investigations, and Jones (Rapt v. United States, et. al.). From here, the Judge who gets the case then determins if the U.S. Government under FTCA can be sued by Rapt, based on Rapt's citizenship status (usually permanent legal residents are covered as citizens for this point, but I can say for certain in this particular law), ripeness (the suit must be filed within 2 years of the incident or first knowledge), and immunity waiver under FTCA. In the case of the State Government, they should have similar laws, but I'm not going to identify all 50 individual laws here. Additionally, the 11th Amendment permits U.S. Congress to waive a State's immunity to suit in certain cases (mostly comes up with the Due Process Clause in the 14th Amendment.). As a fun point, in all cases where a government appears as a defendant in a suit, it is automatically a Bench Trial, as the government usually include a waiver of their right as defendant to a jury trial. The thinking here is that, as a country that was founded by rebelling against the government, a jury of 12 of the government's citizens aren't going to give them any slack at trial, where as a judge (who they pay) is much more likely. TL;DR: Both questions are yes. The immunity is waived under federal law for certain cases, but it is a judge who will make the ruling if the specific case meets the aformentioned waived immunity.