United States District Judge Michael Wise Mosman refused to protect the people of his district today by telling Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum that she lacks standing and presented little evidence of people being snatched off the street. Judge Mosman's decision is like most decisions made by judges in high profile highly politicized case, highly political.
According to Judge Mosman the Attorney General of a state lacks standing to challenge the behavior of federal employees in that state on behalf of people in that state because those actions are not "vindicating an interest that is specific to the state itself" (see decision in PDF format by clicking the PDF icon above this article). That opinion sounds ridiculous to us because we are well aware of many incidents in which the state has sued on behalf of the people of Oregon. That is often the case in consumer protections cases when the Oregon Department of Justice Consumer Protection Division files suits against businesses for unfair trade practices that may or may not also be criminal. In such cases the state has the authority to sue on behalf of its citizens, so why is this any different? Mosman thinks that you need a far more widespread pattern of abuse to give the state standing, so unless you have proof that many people are being kidnapped at a rate that guarantees that more will be unless a TRO is issued for the state to have standing.
Mosman also went on to claim that the state has no evidence of protesters being snatched off the streets by federal agents despite clear video evidence to the contrary (https://copblaster.com/blast/25848/pdx-body-snatchers-random-snatch-and-grab-kidnappings-in-portland). Mosman says that just one incident is not enough despite other videos showing officers creeping up on people, trying to snatch others, and many examples of snatching people on non-federal property near the courthouse. When people are being secretly snatched off the streets there is typically little evidence because if there were transparency and evidence it would not be a secret anymore. Perhaps a better approach would have been to seek a ban on arrests unless those arrests are on federal property and in support present evidence of people caught and released near the courthouse.
Mosman is a conservative law and order judge appointed by George W. Bush. Like most judges his decisions are highly political. Liberal judges are just as bad. For example, whenever you have a case being brought against a right wing defendant in a liberal court, the judge is likely to do all they can achieve the outcome they want rather than assuring that the law is enforced to the literal letter. They can do this due to the broad discretion they are given and an abundance of conflicting case law in appeals courts that often result in decisions supporting any decision they make. Only when you find a seminal case clearly prohibiting certain conduct do you stand a chance at deterring a judge from doing what they want. The founder of this website for instance, found himself prosecuted as a means of getting around the First Amendment many years ago and that prosecution was led by liberals before a liberal court. That judge did not care about free speech or the Constitution, he just cared about whether or not his speech made people angry and whether or not he would had committed the crime he committed had he not been angering people with his speech. The result was a temporary restraint being put on his speech as a release condition saying that people needed to be protected from how he might respond if people angered by his speech were to start stalking and harassing him again. Until then he always enjoyed the protection of the law, liberals had been unsuccessful at changing the law, so they set up him by harassing him for the purpose of provoking a violent response so that he could be prosecuted for something. That required the government not to enforce the laws on people that committed crimes against him and prosecute him to the fullest extent of the law. He believe that a more conservative court would have been far less sympathetic towards his alleged "victim" and more likely to support free speech in his case. Unfortunately, conservative judges also find excuses to avoid changing the status quo even when doing so is clearly in the public's best interest, especially if that would require other conservatives to act differently. In the case of law enforcement, conservative judges almost always side with them citing a lack of precedent against them or some compelling public interest that is typically served by the police and therefore should not be interfered with. The end result is two different yet equally tyrannical sides, one committed to doing whatever they can to make changes (the liberal), and the other committed to do all they can to avoid changing (the conservative).
A good example of liberal persecution is the case against Mark and Patricia McCloskey in St. Louis, Missiouri. The McCloskey's decided to deter protesters from trespassing by standing on their property with guns and in some cases pointing them at people that either stepped on their lawn or came close to it. The liberal city attorney Kim Gardner charged them with unlawful use of a weapon on the grounds that they unlawfully intimidated people for exercising their First Amendment rights and tried to prevent them from continuing to exercise them. If you actually watch footage of the McCloskey's however, you will see that their goal is clearly just keeping people off their property. Pointing a gun and saying "move along" does not chill the free speech of people that were are marching to a different house anyway, it just encourages them to keep going where they intended to go in the first place (https://copblaster.com/blast/25860/mark-and-patricia-mccloskey-charged-with-unlawful-use-of-a-weapon).
In this conservative case you have a judge that does not want to do anything to help liberals change how police operate in Oregon, so he finds excuses based on current case law for refusing to change anything. DOJ lawyer David M. Morrell urged Mosman not to do anything that would hinder the ability of the police to do their jobs. People like Morrell and Mosman, who used to be the U.S. Attorney for Oregon, love law enforcement and will not do anything to get in their way unless they have no other choice.