Iowa Supreme Court cites Professor Chin, Dean Johnson

The Iowa Supreme Court cited Professor Gabriel “Jack” Chin and Dean Kevin R. Johnson in State of Iowa v. Scottize Danyelle Brown. Brown, a black woman, challenged her convictions for drunken driving and driving with a suspended license on the grounds she had been pulled over under a pretext.

Brown and a group of civil rights organizations said such stops violate an individual’s civil rights. In a 4-3 decision, the court rejected Brown's arguments that the Iowa Constitution requires judges to ask officers their subjective intentions for making a stop and to suppress evidence if the judge finds those intentions failed to meet requirement of the Iowa Constitution's protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Johnson’s article “How Racial Profiling in America Became the 'Law of the Land': United States v. Brignoni-Ponce and Whren v. United States and the Need for Truly Rebellious Lawyering,” and Chin’s article with Charles J. Vernon, “Reasonable but Unconstitutional: Racial Profiling and the Radical Objectivity of Whren v. United States,” were cited in dissent.

Gabriel “Jack” Chin is Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of Law and holder of the Edward L. Barrett, Jr. Endowed Chair at UC Davis School of Law.  He is a prolific and much-cited criminal and immigration law scholar whose work has addressed many of the most pressing social issues of our time.

Kevin R. Johnson is the law school’s dean, Mabie-Apallas Professor of Public Interest Law and professor of Chicana/o studies at UC Davis. He is an internationally recognized scholar in the fields of immigration law and policy, refugee law, and civil rights.