Posner: State Department Confirms Wikipedia Entry

August 18th, 2016

Only Judge Posner would first cite WIkipedia, and then cite a State Department Human Rights Report to “confirm” Wikipedia. His dissent in Fuller v. Lynch considered a removal case where the alien asserted he would be subject to persecution in his native Jamaica because he was bisexual. To show that in fact Jamaica has a hostile culture towards the LGBT community, Posner cites (what else?) Wikipedia.

Fuller testified before the immigration judge at length and in detail about his being bisexual and having had nu‐ merous sexual relationships with both men and women be‐ ginning when he was a pre‐teen, and about the hatred directed against LGBT persons in Jamaica, including by members of his own family. He testified that in college he was stoned by other students on several occasions and a few years later taunted as gay by a group of men who sliced his face with a knife. On another occasion he was robbed at gunpoint by a man who called him a “batty man,” which is a Jamaican slur for a homosexual. And he didn’t make that up: see “Batty boy,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batty_boy (last visited Aug. 17, 2016, as were the other web‐ sites in this opinion), where we learn that “in 2006 Time Magazine claimed that Jamaica was the worst place in the Americas for LGBT people and one of the most homophobic places in the world.

Later in the paragraph, we learn that our State Department agrees with Wikipedia.

Our State Department’s Human Rights Reports for 2012 and 2013 confirm the Wik‐ ipedia entry, as do a report by Amnesty International and a decision by another federal court of appeals: Bromfield v. Mukasey, 543 F.3d 1071, 1076–77 (9th Cir. 2008). The immi‐ gration judge’s opinion is oblivious to these facts.

Priorities.