Judge Robert S. Lasnik

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

WESTERN DISTRICT OF WASHINGTON AT SEATTLE

 

ROGER W. KNIGHT,                                    )

                                                                        )

                                    plaintiff,                        )           No.  C02-879L

            v.                                                         )

                                                                        )           PLAINTIFF’S MOTION FOR STAY OF

CITY OF MERCER ISLAND, ALAN            )           JUDGMENT IMPOSING LITIGATION

MERKLE, Mayor of Mercer Island, RON       )           BAR PENDING APPEAL, FRAP 8

ELSOE, Chief of Mercer Island Police,             )

LONDI K. LINDELL, Mercer Island City       )

Attorney, WAYNE STEWART, Assistant        )

Mercer Island City Attorney, FRED                  )           Noted for February 28, 2003

STEPHENS, Director of Department of            )

Licensing, DENNIS BRADDOCK, Secretary  )

of Department of Social and Health Services,    )

GARY LOCKE, Governor of Washington,       )

and SUPERIOR TOWING, a corporation        )

doing business in the State of Washington,         )

                                                                        )

                                    defendants.                   )

____________________________________)

 

MOTION

            Comes now the plaintiff, ROGER W. KNIGHT, and moves for a stay of judgment imposing the litigation bar pending appeal, pursuant to FRAP 8.

NINTH CIRCUIT UNLIKELY TO SUSTAIN THE LITIGATION BAR IF IT FOLLOWS ITS OWN AND SUPREME COURT PRECEDENT

 

            DeLong v. Hennessey, (9th Cir. 1990) 912 F. 2d. 1144, 1148 found:

            In the instant case, the district court held in its dismissal of the habeas petitions, and the subsequent denial of motions, that De Long lacked jurisdiction.  However, the district judge made no finding that De Long’s claims were frivolous.  Merely because a claim lacks jurisdiction does not make the claim per se frivolous.  Moreover, even if De Long’s habeas petition is frivolous, the court did not make a finding that the number of complaints was inordinate.

 

            The Ninth Circuit considers the presence or absence of jurisdiction to be irrelevant to the issue of whether the underlying claim is frivolous, without which a litigation bar is not appropriate.

            As for harassing intent, it is Mr. Knight, not the Mercer Island or State Officer defendants in this action who has been imprisoned for the debt in direct conflict with the plain language of Article I Sections 17 and 29 of the Washington Constitution and the Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection Clause.  It is Mr. Knight, not the defendants, who was arrested in Vantage and hauled to Kent as part of the kidnap and ransom scheme set forth in chapter 26.18 RCW in direct conflict with these same constitutional provisions.  It is Mr. Knight, not the defendants, whose car was towed from a legal parking space on Mercer Island while he himself was arrested and held in custody by the Mercer Island Police Department for several hours.  It is Mr. Knight, not the defendants, whose license was suspended solely for child support without any recent record of any traffic offenses whatsoever, and without even meeting the notice requirements set forth in RCW 74.20A.320(1).  It is Mr. Knight, not the defendants, who had to fight a RALJ appeal to win the right to insist that the City of Mercer Island prove that the notice requirements of RCW 74.20A.320(1) were met to prove an essential element of the crime of Driving While License Suspended (DWLS): that the license was validly suspended.  And as he won that state court case, good faith intention on his part must be presumed.  Then Mercer Island dropped the case and has so far failed to pay the $50.00 awarded to Mr. Knight in costs by King County Superior Court.

            It is defendant Fred Stephens who so far has refused to restore the license, in spite of the outcome of the Mercer Island DWLS case.  Even the Seattle Times editorial staff would call this a ridiculous situation:  Mr. Knight can now drive his car all he wants in King County, and never face a charge for DWLS or ever be convicted of DWLS where such conviction will be sustained, because the prosecutors will not or cannot prove that the license was validly suspended.  Yet defendant Fred Stephens won’t make it official and restore the license.

            Who is harassing who?

            It is an undisputed fact that after 1995, Mr. Knight ceased activity in the courts, state and federal, with respect to the child support issues.  It is an undisputed fact that his former spouse, and Lyle Quasim and Dennis Braddock, through their agency the Washington Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS), except for a few vague threatening letters, and the King County Prosecutor’s Office left Mr. Knight alone after he was laid off from The Boeing Company.

            Until 2000.  It is the state, county, and city officers who commenced this round of activity involving Mr. Knight.  They had the option of continuing to leave him alone.  An option they chose against.

            To accuse Mr. Knight of harassment is like blaming Monica Seles for the knife attack.

            O’Loughlin v. Doe, (1990) 920 F. 2d. 614, 617 found that:

            An in forma pauperis complaint is frivolous if it has “no arguable basis in fact or law.”  Franklin v. Murphy, 745 F. 2d. 1221, 1228 (9th Cir. 1984).

 

Mr. Knight’s construction of the Antipeonage Act is not only reasonable, Brent Moss v. Superior Court, (1996) 56 Cal. Rptr. 2d. 864, 868-870 found it to be meritorious.  That should answer the question of whether a claim that use of license suspension under RCW 74.20A.320 to attempt to coerce Mr. Knight into a repayment agreement with which he can comply only by employment[1] is declared null and void by 42 U.S.C. §1994 is frivolous.  The California Court of Appeals did not think such a claim with respect to contempt proceedings has “no arguable basis in fact or law.”  Therefore, it is not and cannot be frivolous.

            The blanket litigation bar against any challenge to the Workfirst Act is not likely to be sustained either, if the Ninth Circuit follows its own and Supreme Court precedent.  Mr. Knight’s previous challenges to the Workfirst Act in the state courts as a multi-subject bill prohibited by Article II Section 19 of the Washington Constitution are not frivolous and cannot be frivolous in the wake of Initiative 695 as previously explained in the pleadings herein.  A challenge to the WorkFirst Act as a bill of attainder is not frivolous in light of the prohibition of consideration of ability to pay in the administrative hearing as set forth in RCW 74.20A.320(3).  It is thus, for those unable to comply with support orders, an inescapable and automatic suspension of the right[2] to operate an automobile based solely on a legislative judgment.  United States v. Brown, (1965) (1965) 381 U.S. 437, 14 L. Ed. 2d. 484, 85 S. Ct. 1707 found the statute prohibiting employment of members of the Communist Party of the United States by labor unions to be a bill of attainder.  Brown at 381 U.S. 438 note 1 quotes the statute:

            (a) No person who is or has been a member of the Communist Party . . .

Such persons thus could not escape the prohibition by renouncing their membership in this particular political party.  Even if there is only a preventative purpose to such a prohibition, Brown at 381 U.S. 457 found that to be within the meaning of punishment for bill of attainder analysis.  Footnote 32 at 381 U.S. 457 found that inescapability need not necessarily be proven to prove a statute a bill of attainder.

            RCW 74.20A.320 imposes a punishment in that there is no remedial purpose for such a license suspension:  If a party is unable to comply with a support order, a license suspension does not improve the probability of compliance.  There is no more rational relationship between license suspension for child support and the public interest in the safety of the roads and highways than there would be if the licenses were suspended, revoked, or refused on the basis of gender, race, or religion.  Whatever interest the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is pursuing with its ban on women drivers, it isn’t the safety of its roads and highways.

            That leads to another good faith argument with which to attack the validity of RCW 74.20A.320 by Mr. Knight and other persons similarly situated.  Schware v. Board of Bar Examiners, (1957) 353 U.S. 232, 239, 1 L. Ed. 2d. 796, 77 S. Ct. 752 found:

            A state can require high standards for qualification, such as good moral character or proficiency in its law, before it admits an applicant to the bar, but any qualification must be have a rational connection with the applicant’s fitness or capacity to practice law.

. . .

            Obviously an applicant could not be excluded merely because he was a Republican or a Negro or a member of a particular church.

 

The Supreme Court of Washington has at least once, in City of Seattle v. Bittner, (1973) 81 Wash. 2d. 747, 754, 654, 505 P. 2d. 126 interpreted this to mean:

But even where the character of an applicant is subject to evaluation by the licensing officer, the matters taken into account must be relevant to the activity licensed.

 

and thereby invalidated a city ordinance concerning the licensing of motion picture theaters.

            Several years previous to Schware, Justice Frankfurter wrote in his dissent in Barsky v. Board of Regents of University, (1954) 347 U.S. 442, 470, 98 L. Ed. 829, 74 S. Ct. 650 that there must be a rational relation between a suspension of a professional license to the qualifications required of a practicioner in that profession.  Justice Douglas wrote in his dissent at Barsky, 347 U.S. 473:

            So far as I know, nothing in a man’s political beliefs disables him from setting broken bones or removing ruptured appendixes, safely and efficiently.  A practicing surgeon is unlikely to uncover many state secrets in the course of his professional activities.  When a doctor cannot save lives in America because he is opposed to Franco in Spain, it is time to call a halt and look critically at the neurosis that has possessed us.

 

            Amen.

            Whether a man is able to comply with a support order provides no disability or impairment in his safe operation of a motor vehicle.  When a divorced father in America cannot operate a motor vehicle because he is unable to comply with a support order and considers it to be declared null and void by the Antipeonage Act, and repugnant to the manifest tenor of the Constitution of the United States and to the manifest tenor of the Constitution of the State of Washington, it is time we call a halt and look critically at the neurosis that has possessed us.

            Numerous good faith arguments can be advanced against any statutory scheme designed to deny to any portion of the citizenry the rights and privileges available to the citizenry in general, for reason not related to the right or privilege in question.  If this not be the case, the road signs being in miles, the flags on the poles, and Private Nakamura’s name on the courthouse fooled all of us.  We thought we were in the United States of America.

CONCLUSION

            For the reasons stated herein, this Motion to Stay Judgment Imposing Litigation Bar should be granted.

            RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED, February 3, 2003.

 

                                                            ____________________________________

                                                            Roger W. Knight, plaintiff