Maybe this guy was actually AOTC on the Chinese, you know, given the Chinese Virus running amuck?
https://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/transportation/judge-admonishes-suburban-express-while-striking-down-extra-fine-against/article_c82b2d98-a8b9-5d6f-a3d9-3761885f2c67.htmlCHICAGO — A federal judge ruled that Suburban Express won’t have to pay a $20,000 fine to the Illinois Attorney General due to a technicality but also gave a warning to the defunct bus company and owner Dennis Toeppen.
The fine would have been in addition to the $100,000 Toeppen paid as part of a court-enforced agreement the two sides reached in April 2019. It shut down a month later.
“The Court warns Toeppen that its patience has worn thin and admonishes him to cease his resistance to complying with the consent decree,” U.S. Judge Andrea R. Wood said Monday.
The consent decree was reached after former Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan sued Suburban Express in April 2018 for alleged discrimination against its customers.
Eight days after the consent decree was reached, the attorney general’s office alleged that Toeppen immediately violated the agreement by re-uploading a webpage that attacked a customer who made negative comments online about Suburban Express and another that attacked a student of Asian origin.
But Wood said the office should have given Toeppen 30 days to remove those webpages, as the language in the agreement allows for.
“For now, the Court finds that the (attorney general’s office) should have first followed the procedures laid out in the consent decree’s enforcement provision before moving for enforcement,” Wood wrote.
Toeppen had defended the webpages, describing them as “response” pages that call out individuals who had “cheated” the company, and argued that he had accidentally left the word “Chinese” unredacted on a page commenting about a “pushy little Chinese engineering student.”
But Wood said she “understands the (attorney general’s office’s) frustrations.”
“In the month after the consent decree was entered, Defendants’ behavior, at best, can be described as testing the consent decree’s boundaries,” she wrote. “Moreover, Toeppen’s efforts at complying with the consent decree can generously be described as begrudging. Toeppen has often attempted to evade or undermine his obligations under the consent decree with bad-faith arguments for highly technical interpretations of its provisions. Toeppen apparently wants to make this matter go away without meaningfully changing any of his conduct that led to the initiation of the lawsuit in the first place.”
After Wood ordered Toeppen to comply with the agreement in April 2019, the attorney general’s office said he again violated it by telling a reporter for WTTW-TV in Chicago that the lawsuit “had a great deal of MSG sprinkled on it.”
While Wood said that finding this comment to be a violation “risks impinging on Toeppen’s First Amendment rights,” she said his defense that the comment was innocent with no racial connotation “strains credulity.”
“Toeppen’s reference to MSG, a seasoning closely linked with Asian foods, when criticizing a lawsuit addressing discrimination against Asians was far too specific for this Court to believe that it was not deliberate,” she wrote.
Wood also disputed Toeppen’s argument that he felt extorted by the attorney general’s office.
“Despite what he may believe, Toeppen faced no duress in entering into the consent decree. If he believed Defendants’ conduct was acceptable, he was free to make his case to a jury,” Wood wrote. “By settling, Toeppen agreed to certain obligations that he is required to fulfill. He cannot evade those obligations by insisting upon nonsensical interpretations of the consent decree that fit only his purposes. Rather, Toeppen must make a good-faith effort at complying with each requirement in the consent decree.”
The lawsuit against Toeppen stemmed from an email advertisement he sent in December 2017 that said Suburban Express’ benefits included “Passengers like you. You won’t feel like you’re in China when you’re on our buses.”
That led to a swift backlash, apologies and a subpoena to determine whether Suburban Express had violated the Illinois Human Rights Act.
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