Public-interest group Judicial Watch is standing behind a published report on its blog that the chief justice of the Arizona Supreme Court agreed to ban the terms "illegal" and "aliens" in all of the state's courtrooms at the request of the Arizona Hispanic Bar Association.
Recently an Arizona Supreme Court official threatened to sue Judicial Watch for slander for disclosing the information, which is documented in correspondence between Arizona's Hispanic Bar Association and the state's Supreme Court Chief Justice Ruth McGregor. Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton says the Hispanic group wanted McGregor to censor speech in the courtrooms. "One of the terms they don't want used is 'illegal' in terms of aliens. They don't even want the word 'alien' used. They don't want words like 'immigration crisis,' 'immigration epidemic,' all sorts of words that are commonly used in the debate over illegal immigration," he explains. "And a letter like this should have been laughed out of the judge's courtroom." But Fitton notes, instead, the judge responded by agreeing to the demands by writing in a letter that judges and employees will be asked to refrain from using certain "derogatory" terms in court documents and proceedings. "When we wrote about it, saying it looks like these words are banned, we got this call from the court spokesperson who talked about slander, which is a code word for 'you pull back or we'll sue,'" Fitton contends. "So we've effectively been threatened by the court with a lawsuit over this. It's political correctness run amok." Judicial Watch sent a response letter back to the court, standing behind its story and providing a website link to copies of all the documents in question. Fitton points out the Arizona Supreme Court has since backed off, saying no words are being banned in the courts.
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