Is 18 USC &#167;911 (false claim to US citizenship) still considered constitutional? This statute reads: Whoever falsely and willfully represents himself to be a citizen of the United States shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both. There is no restriction on whom or for what purpose the misrepresentation is made. For example, the following situation might occur: an American is considering whether to buy a house, so they talk to their prospective neighbours to ascertain the character of the neighbourhood. One of them claims to have born in Kansas and lived in the US for their entire life. After the American moves in, they discover that their neighbour lied and was an alien all along. The alien is convicted under 18 USC §911. The federal courts upheld a conviction under the predecessor of this statute in United States v. Achtner, 144 F.2d 49 (1944) and upheld the constitutionality of the same statute in United States v. Tandaric, 152 F.2d 3 (1945). However, in the decades since WWII, the Supreme Court has greatly expanded the scope of First Amendment free speech protections, so one might wonder whether the conviction in the hypothetical situation described above would still be held constitutional.
There is, of course, no way to tell how the Court would deal with such a case today. This is not a frequently litigated issue, with lots of case law. I note that in the case you link to, the court limited the statute to false claims made "with a fraudulent purpose". This normally means that the claimant is attempting to secure an improper financial or materiel advantage. In the United States v. Tandaric case, the person convicted had falsely claimed to be a US Citizen on an employment application for a company which did not hire non-citizens, and so gained a job through this false statement. He could have been convicted of ordinary Fraud. The court has not been as protective of Fraud under the First Amendment as it has been of speech generally, or even of false but non-fraudulent speech. I am not at all sure if the court would overturn this law in a similar case today. Edit: In the United States v. Achtner case, the court wrote: But we agree with the District Court that the representation of citizenship must still be made to a person having some right to inquire or adequate reason for ascertaining a defendant's citizenship; it is not to be assumed that so severe a penalty is intended for words spoken as a mere boast or jest or to stop the prying of some busybody, ... This seems to dispose of the example in the question of a neighbor who is merly inquiring as to the character of the area, or perhaps from simple curiosity, and a false speaker who seems to get no direct benefit or advantage from the falsehood. Both linked cases involved false statements made to employers or potential employees, during wartime at that, with the false speaker's employment apparently at stake.
Yes, one has a right to privacy in such a case This right is clearly established, and so an officer or other government official or employee who listened in or authorized another to listen in could be personally sued under 42 US Code § 1983 often kn own simply as &quot;section 1983). That law provides: Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress, except that in any action brought against a judicial officer for an act or omission taken in such officer’s judicial capacity, injunctive relief shall not be granted unless a declaratory decree was violated or declaratory relief was unavailable. For the purposes of this section, any Act of Congress applicable exclusively to the District of Columbia shall be considered to be a statute of the District of Columbia. The current version of section 1983 dates to 1979, but its hiostory goes much further back. This law derives from the Enforcement Act of 1871 also known as the Ku Klux Klan Act, Third Enforcement Act, Third Ku Klux Klan Act, Civil Rights Act of 1871, or the Force Act of 1871. According to the Wikipedia article about it: The act was the last of three Enforcement Acts passed by the United States Congress from 1870 to 1871 during the Reconstruction Era to combat attacks upon the suffrage rights of African Americans. The statute has been subject to only minor changes since then, but has been the subject of voluminous interpretation by courts. According to the same article, Section 1983: is the most widely used civil rights enforcement statute, allowing people to sue in civil court over civil rights. According to the same article: A §1983 claim requires according to the United States Supreme Court in Adickes v. S. H. Kress &amp; Co. (1970) two elements for recovery: (1) the plaintiff must prove that the defendant has deprived him of a right secured by the, &quot;constitution and laws,&quot; of the US, and (2) the plaintiff must show that the defendant deprived him of this constitutional right 'under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory' (under color of law)
Does this person have witnesses to his existence? Particularly before the age of five? Under 8 U.S. Code § 1401, native-born citizens include a person of unknown parentage found in the United States while under the age of five years, until shown, prior to his attaining the age of twenty-one years, not to have been born in the United States; If he appears out of nowhere, he is likely to be suspect of illegal immigration. Age may be a factor there, too.
Your premise that &quot;the law did not exist previously&quot; is, from the perspective of how courts work, mistaken. The law always existed, it's just that some people (maybe even judges) mistakenly thought the law didn't exist (actually, &quot;meant something else&quot;). Many people have wrong ideas about what the law says, but ignorance of misunderstanding of the law is no excuse. Even having an understandable wrong belief is no excuse. There is an area in which ignorance of the law is excused. Violation of a person's civil rights under color of law is a civil wrong for which the officer can be sued. See Hope v. Pelzer, 536 U.S. 730 and citations therein: Respondents may nevertheless be shielded from liability for their constitutionally impermissible conduct if their actions did not violate &quot;clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.&quot; Thus an officer may not use a qualified immunity defense if the court finds that an action is a civil rights violation and this &quot;clarification&quot; of the law is new.
Legally speaking, there is no such thing as &quot;treason against the government&quot;. Any legal charge of treason is treason against the country. Article III, Section 3, Clause 1 of the US constitution reads: Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court. See also 18 U.S. Code § 2381 - Treason which reads: Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States. It is hard to see how making war on the United States, or helping an open enemy do so, could &quot;save the nation&quot; and in the absence of either of these, there is no treason, although other charges might possibly apply. The interactive Constitution site from the National Constitutions Center says about this provision of the Constitution: Treason is a unique offense in our constitutional order—the only crime expressly defined by the Constitution, and applying only to Americans who have betrayed the allegiance they are presumed to owe the United States. While the Constitution’s Framers shared the centuries-old view that all citizens owed a duty of loyalty to their home nation, they included the Treason Clause not so much to underscore the seriousness of such a betrayal, but to guard against the historic use of treason prosecutions by repressive governments to silence otherwise legitimate political opposition. Debate surrounding the Clause at the Constitutional Convention thus focused on ways to narrowly define the offense, and to protect against false or flimsy prosecutions. The Constitution specifically identifies what constitutes treason against the United States and, importantly, limits the offense of treason to only two types of conduct: (1) “levying war” against the United States; or (2) “adhering to [the] enemies [of the United States], giving them aid and comfort.” Although there have not been many treason prosecutions in American history—indeed, only one person has been indicted for treason since 1954—the Supreme Court has had occasion to further define what each type of treason entails. The offense of “levying war” against the United States was interpreted narrowly in Ex parte Bollman &amp; Swarthout (1807), a case stemming from the infamous alleged plot led by former Vice President Aaron Burr to overthrow the American government in New Orleans. The Supreme Court dismissed charges of treason that had been brought against two of Burr’s associates—Bollman and Swarthout—on the grounds that their alleged conduct did not constitute levying war against the United States within the meaning of the Treason Clause. It was not enough, Chief Justice John Marshall’s opinion emphasized, merely to conspire “to subvert by force the government of our country” by recruiting troops, procuring maps, and drawing up plans. Conspiring to levy war was distinct from actually levying war. Rather, a person could be convicted of treason for levying war only if there was an “actual assemblage of men for the purpose of executing a treasonable design.” In so holding, the Court sharply confined the scope of the offense of treason by levying war against the United States. The Court construed the other treason offense authorized by the Constitution similarly narrowly in Cramer v. United States (1945). That case involved another infamous incident in American history: the Nazi Saboteur Affair. Cramer was prosecuted for treason for allegedly helping German soldiers who had surreptitiously infiltrated American soil during World War II. In reviewing Cramer’s treason conviction, the Court explained that a person could be convicted of treason only if he or she adhered to an enemy and gave that enemy “aid and comfort.” As the Court explained: A citizen intellectually or emotionally may favor the enemy and harbor sympathies or convictions disloyal to this country’s policy or interest, but, so long as he commits no act of aid and comfort to the enemy, there is no treason. On the other hand, a citizen may take actions which do aid and comfort the enemy—making a speech critical of the government or opposing its measures, profiteering, striking in defense plants or essential work, and the hundred other things which impair our cohesion and diminish our strength—but if there is no adherence to the enemy in this, if there is no intent to betray, there is no treason. In other words, the Constitution requires both concrete action and an intent to betray the nation before a citizen can be convicted of treason; expressing traitorous thoughts or intentions alone does not suffice.
Can illegal immigrants sue the U.S. government if they got injured while being detained? Yes, if they are in the USA at the time. See the opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States in Zadvydas v. Davis, 533 U.S. 678 (2001): It is well established that certain constitutional protections available to persons inside the United States are unavailable to aliens outside of our geographic borders. [citations omitted] But once an alien enters the country, the legal circumstance changes, for the Due Process Clause applies to all ‘persons’ within the United States, including aliens, whether their presence is lawful, unlawful, temporary, or permanent. (My emboldenment) In my research for this answer I came across a 2017 FactCheck.org article that disproved a fake news story that was doing the rounds. I have not repoduced it here to prevent its wider circulation by being found by internet search engines. Instead, this is what FactCheck has to say: Q: Did the Supreme Court rule that immigrants living in the U.S. illegally can’t sue anyone if they feel they’ve been mistreated? A: No. That claim was made in a bogus story published on satirical and fake news websites. The fake news story appears to have come from the case of Hernandez v Mesa that... ...centered on the 2010 shooting of a Mexican teenager [Hernandez] on the Mexican side of the Mexico–United States border by a U.S. Border Patrol agent [Mesa] who was standing on the U.S. side of the border at the time he fired his weapon. ... and whether the Constitution extends protection to an individual who is killed on foreign soil, even though that person is standing just a few yards outside the United States. Apparently it doesn't as, after much toing and froing, on 25 February 2020 the SCOTUS... ruled against Hernandez and held that the Court's precedent under Bivens did not extend to cross-border shootings.
The relevant law for you is ORC 4705.07. (A) No person who is not licensed to practice law in this state shall do any of the following: (1) Hold that person out in any manner as an attorney at law; (2) Represent that person orally or in writing, directly or indirectly, as being authorized to practice law; (3) Commit any act that is prohibited by the supreme court as being the unauthorized practice of law. (This is a prime example of legal language that cannot be interpreted on the basis of rules of English -- the issue is the meaning of "that person"). This does not prohibit you from giving an opinion as to what the law is, which is a right protected under the First Amendment. You would be in trouble if you said "This is my advice as a lawyer". Section 2 b.t.w. says that only the Supreme Court (of Ohio) can determine if a person has committed an act on their don't-do-it list. Rule 7 pertaining to their procedure is here. Section 2 therein enumerates the relevant categories, which fall under the categories "rendering of legal services for another" and "Holding out to the public or otherwise representing oneself as authorized to practice law in Ohio", which is what the statute says.
This law sounds likely to be unconstitutional and/or invalid because it is pre-empted by state or federal laws. Among other things it probably violates the First Amendment right to petition the government, and the Fourteenth Amendment right to equal protection of the laws (by depriving people who have had previous police calls of the right to call the police without penalty) and due process (by imposing a penalty based upon a call, without a presumption of innocence, rather than a finding of wrongdoing that overcomes a presumption of innocence). It could also implicate a tenant's right as a Fourth Amendment seizure without probable cause, or a Fifth Amendment taking of property without just compensation. It is probably also pre-empted by state law which establishes the grounds for which someone may be lawfully evicted, which almost certainly do not include this condition. Likewise, the conditions under which liability for police injuries is imposed are also probably pre-empted by state law. California has an express statutory prohibition on this kind of rule at Cal.Civ.Code § 1946.8(c) which provides that: A landlord cannot punish, or threaten to punish, you or another resident for exercising your right to request law enforcement or emergency assistance on behalf of a: victim of abuse; victim of crime; or person in an emergency. Your landlord also cannot put any penalties in place if a person who is not a resident or tenant calls law enforcement or emergency assistance to your residence. To be protected under this law, the person who calls the police must believe that law enforcement or emergency assistance is needed to prevent or deal with an act of abuse, or the heightening or worsening of an act of abuse, a crime, or an emergency. The American Civil Liberties Union is currently actively attempting to identify cases where these laws (often called nuisance laws) are being used in this manner for the purposes of bringing litigation to invalidate the laws or restrain their use. Litigation is in process in Seattle, Washington and East Rochester, New York. The ACLU also notes that: In situations where an alleged &quot;nuisance&quot; offense is related to an incident of domestic violence, landlords may choose to evict all the residents to avoid future incidents or police calls that could result in a fine. Yet, these evictions violate federal law. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has made it clear that tenants who are denied or evicted from housing because they have suffered domestic violence can file sex discrimination complaints with HUD under the federal Fair Housing Act. Thus, there would often be pre-emption of the local law by federal law as well. An op-ed piece in the New York Times reviews similar issues in Lakewood, Ohio and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, pointing out that the U.S. Constitution and federal housing laws are likely to be violated by these statutes. In at least two instances, one included in an edited question in Norristown, Pennsylvania, and one mentioned in another answer, the case of Somai v. City of Bedford in Bedford, Ohio, the ACLU has concluded favorable settlements after litigation to have these ordinances repealed and to win compensation for aggrieved parties, although, because they are settlements, neither case establishes a binding appellate precedent. We don't intend to challenge the laws at this time - they make it easier for us to evict problem tenants whose visitors damage our property - but were wondering if there are examples of similar laws that have either gone unchallenged for a long period of time or that have been challenged and judged to be legal. As landlords, you are in a difficult position. These laws have not gone unchallenged for a long period of time nor have they been challenged and judged to be legal. Instead, in all likelihood, a legal challenge to these newly enacted laws is likely to be imminent. And, while you face violations of local laws in these cases by not taking action, you may face federal housing law liability if you do utilize these laws and these laws are found to be invalid.