***Mike Davis Sues Graduate Assembly, Judicial Council Freezes $90,000 in GA Money***
This could be big. Mike Davis just won an injunction from the Judicial Council freezing funds from the Graduate Assembly as they wait to hear his suit. Here is his claim (from his brief):

Since the time the Senate and the Graduate Assembly mutually passed Title 10, which allows the GA to:
“…withhold payment of the amounts for ASUC Elections, if it can conclusively show that Elections Council is not publicizing ASUC Elections to Graduate Students in an equitable manner.”,
The GA has neither shown the Elections Council to be delinquent in their duties nor have they paid for their fair share of student government elections... The Association has spent approximately three hundred thousand dollars on our elections, while the Graduate Assembly has only ever allocated 8,000 dollars to reimburse the Association for its costs... I request the Council order the Graduate Assembly to pay the Association in excess of ninety-thousand dollars in back payments.

Request for Emergency Preliminary Injunction:

I ask the Council to freeze the sum of ninety thousand dollars in the Graduate Assembly various accounts in order to transfer the funds should the Council rule in my favor...

This has the potential to fuck things up quite a bit. The reason I say that is I don't think the GA has much of a case. I think Davis will win, and I think the Judicial Council will try to take the money, and I think the GA will fight back. 90,000 dollars sure sounds like a hell of a lot of money to me, enough to make it worth fighting tooth and nail over it.

Two potential avenues for the GA could be to ask the Chancellor to intervene and allow them to keep some of that money in defiance of a Judicial Council order, or seek a federal or state court judgment allowing them to retain some of the money. That brings us back into DAAP extortion territory, a strategy that appears quite effective. By threatening ASUC autonomy, they could potentially wrest a major concession from the ASUC, and that looks like their most effective avenue to defend their funds. Informed (and uninformed) commenters, please chime in with your own analysis.Email This Post!