High court rejects lawsuit by Baraka
The former N.J. poet laureate had challenged the elimination of his post and $10,000 honorarium.
NEWARK, N.J. - Efforts by former New Jersey poet laureate Amiri Baraka to challenge the elimination of his post hit a dead end yesterday.
The U.S. Supreme Court, without comment, declined to hear Baraka's case against former Gov. Jim McGreevey, Gov. Corzine and other officials. In March, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in a 2-1 decision, had ruled that the officials were immune from Baraka's lawsuit.
Baraka, a longtime activist in Newark, lost his post in July 2003 when McGreevey eliminated it amid an uproar after the poet had read his 60-stanza poem "Somebody Blew Up America."
Some lines suggested that Israel had advance knowledge of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and the poem included a reference to then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon: "Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed/Who told 4,000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers to stay home that day?/Why did Sharon stay away?"
Baraka denied being anti-Semitic and refused to resign. The governor and Legislature were barred from firing the poet laureate, so McGreevey signed a bill that eliminated the post. Baraka sued, asserting his First Amendment rights had been violated when he lost the post and its $10,000 total honorarium.
The Third Circuit also found that the officials did not withhold the money over Baraka's views because the Legislature had not yet appropriated it.
The nation and other states have poets laureate. In New Jersey, the job description was to "promote and encourage poetry within the state and . . . give two public readings within the state each year."
McGreevey had appointed Baraka poet laureate in July 2002. Calls for Baraka's ouster emerged after he read the poem at a poetry festival in Stanhope on Sept. 19, 2002. During the controversy, Baraka said he had created the poem in October 2001 and read it all over the world.
Reached at a poetry reading in Venezuela, Baraka said he had expected the court's decision and called it "confirmation of the neo-fascist trend in the United States."
His attorney, Robert Thomas Pickett, said they were disappointed but would seek to recoup the honorarium in state court. "The government had no right to terminate his position based on what he said," Pickett said.