Puerto Rico Cockfighting Case Is ‘No Place to Mock’ Trump: Judge

Puerto Rico’s mayors must refile an amicus brief opposing a pending cockfighting ban because they mocked President Trump in the case caption by putting “ironic” quotes around the title “honorable,” a federal judge ruled.

“To insert ironic quotation marks in a brief’s heading when referring to the president of the United States’s official title (‘Hon.’) constitutes an indecorous action,” Judge Gustavo A. Gelpi wrote. “A court of law is no place to mock, ridicule, or politically attack the president.”

The cockfighting ban passed last year as part of the annual Agriculture Improvement Act, commonly known as the federal “farm bill.” The lawsuit challenging it was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Puerto Rico by a cockfighting group. It blasts the law as a paternalistic, unconstitutional assault on a cherished tradition, “national sport,” and “cultural right of all Puerto Ricans.”

Unfair stigmas and stereotypes of cockfighting as an “illegal and dangerous sport, played primarily by thieves and minorities,” are behind the ban, the plaintiffs claim. Cockfighting is already heavily regulated, with weight classes and professional judges authorized to stop one-sided fights, the suit says.

The new ban would allegedly violate the “anti-commandeering” rule, a separation-of-powers doctrine that generally stops the federal government from coercing the states into enforcing federal policy. The suit targets various federal officials and departments, including Attorney General Bill Barr and President Trump.

The Asociación de Alcaldes de Puerto Rico, or Puerto Rico Mayors’ Association, filed court papers opposing the ban Oct. 9. Cockfighting within the territory doesn’t affect interstate commerce, so there’s no constitutional basis for Congress to regulate it, the amicus brief said.

It listed two defendants: the United States of America and the “Hon.” Donald J. Trump.

Those sarcastic quotation marks were inappropriate, Gelpi said in his one-page, Oct. 15 order striking the brief. He gave the association until Oct. 18 to file a new one.

The mayors are represented by Martinez Luciano & Rodríguez Escudero. The plaintiffs challenging the ban are represented by Félix Román & Associates and Ojeda & Ojeda Law Offices PSC. The government is represented by the Department of Justice’s Civil Division.

The case is Club Gallistico de Puerto Rico Inc. v. U.S., D.P.R., No. 19-cv-1481, 10/15/19.