The State - News from Jan. 23, 1989

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed its own three-judge panel and ruled in San Francisco that the United Steelworkers and several other unions can go to court with their claim that Phelps Dodge Corp. conspired with Pima County, Ariz., sheriff’s deputies and a justice of the peace to suppress the civil rights of strikers in a bitter 1983 copper mine walkout in the town of Ajo. The full court agreed 9 to 2 that the evidence presented by the unions, “if believed by a jury,” would show a conspiracy to get strikers off the streets with improper arrests and high bails. The unions said the justice of the peace who issued the arrest warrants was on leave from her job as a Phelps Dodge security guard and had been nominated for her judicial post by the company’s security chief. It was alleged that numerous sheriff’s deputies lived in company rental housing and had relatives working for Phelps Dodge.