Posted at 10:45 a.m., Thursday, July 12, 2001

Court throws out subpoenas for Felix probe

By Alice Keesing
Advertiser Education Writer

U.S. District Judge David Ezra today said the Legislature has no power to force representatives of the federal court to answer questions about the millions of dollars being spent on special education.

Ezra quashed two subpoeanas that a legislative investigative committee had issued for Ivor Groves, the court-appointed monitor who oversees the state's progress in the Felix consent decree, and Juanita Iwamoto, executive director of the Felix Monitoring Project.

Agreeing with special master Jeff Portnoy's recommendation earlier this week, Ezra said the pair are protected by judicial immunity.

Legislators "simply cannot do what they have attempted to do here," Ezra said.

"I suspect and I hope that this was the result of a serious and unfortunate mistake ... and not an effort to create some sort of issue for publicity purposes ... and I certainly am not accusing them of that," he added.

Despite an ongoing disagreement between legislators and the federal court and Felix attorneys, Ezra said his ruling is not to challenge legislators nor "stone-wall" them as they seek information about the state's efforts to comply with the Felix consent decree.

"I want them to get as much information as they need," Ezra said, offering Legislators the chance to ask written questions of Groves and Iwamoto and the court's assistance in getting the information they need.

"If they are truly interested in finding out what's going on, they will take the court up on its offer and forget about this business of trying to subpoena federal court officers," he said. "If their purposes are something else, then that's up to them."

Legislators have said they issued the subpoenas because they have been unable to get answers through other avenues.

Legislators already have suggested they may appeal the ruling to which Ezra responded that he believes they have no chance of success because they are not a party to the lawsuit.

Despite Ezra conciliatory tone, he fired a parting warning that he would find legislators and the state auditor in contempt if any more court officers are "harassed" or if there are any more attempts to "demand documents."

He was referring to an incident where representatives of the auditor's office had gone to Groves' office demanding documents.