The Law Is The Law! Or Is It?

And the judge determines the law but what happens when the judge is biased?

A judge refused to recognize pro-trans law in a hate crime case. That’s judicial misconduct.
A trans woman was shot at a gas station by a man shouting anti-trans epithets. But a judge ignored state law and ruled that it wasn't a hate crime.
LGBTQ Nation
Commentary by Katrina C. Rose
February 26, 2020

On July 23, 2018, Kimura Steuball went to a Mobil station on Seven Mile Road in Detroit. Upon arrival, she saw Deonton Rogers inside the station with a woman. When Steuball got in line to make a purchase, Rogers began talking to her using derogatory, transphobic language.

Rogers then began asking about her sex organs – specifically whether he could see “it.” Steuball tried to ignore him, but he persisted in calling her a man. Then he got violent.

He pulled out a gun and threatened to kill her. The woman with Rogers told him to leave Steuball alone and leave.  It was at this time that a child who had been in Rogers’ car entered the station. As Rogers began moving toward the exit, gun in hand, he walked threateningly close to Steuball, who reacted by grabbing at the gun to get it away from him.
[…]
Rogers was eventually apprehended and charged with being a habitual offender, discharging a firearm in a building causing physical injury and serious impairment, felonious assault, possessing a gun during a felony, felon firearm possession, and fourth degree child abuse.

Questions. Who was the instigator?

At the next court level up, Rogers again sought to dismiss the building-firearm charges – as well as the ethnic intimidation charge, arguing not only that the prosecution had failed to demonstrate that he’d committed a malicious physical act accompanied by a specific intent to harass Steuball because of her gender but also that the Ethnic Intimidation Act – the state’s hate crime law – did not apply to trans people at all.

The judge there blamed the victim for initiating the physical contact that led to the firearm discharge and agreed with Rogers that trans people were strangers to Michigan’s ethnic intimidation statute.

So someone pulls a gun on you and you try to defend yourself, and all of sudden you’re the instigator!

The prosecution appealed this decision up to a panel of the Court of Appeals, which split 2-1 with the majority opinion being authored by Mike Gadola, a product of Republican former Gov. Rick Snyder’s administration (though, sickeningly, he was unopposed when he ran for a full term in 2016) and a member of the advisory board of the Michigan chapter of the Federalist Society.

In Detroit News they report,

Court: Intimidation law does not protect transgender individuals
By Beth LeBlanc,
January 8, 2020

The Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that transgender people are not included within the definition of “gender” because at the time the ethnic intimidation law was enacted gender was limited by definition to the “biological roles of male and female,” Appeals Court judge Michael Gadola wrote in a ruling joined by Judge James Redford.

Both judges were appointed by Republican former Gov. Rick Snyder

The dissenting judge wrote…

“Just as a person’s religion may not be outwardly apparent, but may be sometimes gleaned from his or her words or chosen manner of dress, and thus motivate intimidation or harassment, so too can a person’s gender,” wrote Servitto, who was appointed by Democratic former Gov. James Blanchard. “And it is the harassment or intimidation that follows the recognition of and apparent disagreement with another’s religion or gender (among other things) that is criminalized.”

How many times have you heard the Republican blame verdicts that go against them as “activist judges” well it also applies to conservative judges who ignore the law.