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Supreme Court Will Take up New Health Law Dispute
Areas of Focus |
2013/11/29 18:30
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The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to referee another dispute over President Barack Obama's health care law, whether businesses can use religious objections to escape a requirement to cover birth control for employees.
The justices said they will take up an issue that has divided the lower courts in the face of roughly 40 lawsuits from for-profit companies asking to be spared from having to cover some or all forms of contraception.
The court will consider two cases. One involves Hobby Lobby Inc., an Oklahoma City-based arts and crafts chain with 13,000 full-time employees. Hobby Lobby won in the lower courts.
The other case is an appeal from Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp., a Pennsylvania company that employs 950 people in making wood cabinets. Lower courts rejected the company's claims.
The court said the cases will be combined for arguments, probably in late March. A decision should come by late June.
The cases center on a provision of the health care law that requires most employers that offer health insurance to their workers to provide a range of preventive health benefits, including contraception.
In both instances, the Christian families that own the companies say that insuring some forms of contraception violates their religious beliefs.
The key issue is whether profit-making corporations can assert religious beliefs under the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act or the First Amendment provision guaranteeing Americans the right to believe and worship as they choose. Nearly four years ago, the justices expanded the concept of corporate "personhood," saying in the Citizens United case that corporations have the right to participate in the political process the same way that individuals do.
"The government has no business forcing citizens to choose between making a living and living free," said David Cortman of the Alliance Defending Freedom, the Christian public interest law firm that is representing Conestoga Wood at the Supreme Court. |
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Spanish court sentences 'Robin Hood' mayor
Areas of Focus |
2013/11/25 23:24
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A Spanish court has sentenced a town mayor and four others to seven months in prison for occupying unused military land they wanted to be loaned to farmers hard hit by the economic crisis.
The regional court of southern Andalusia on Thursday convicted Marinaleda town mayor Juan Manuel Sanchez Gordillo and the others of serious disobedience for ignoring warnings to leave the "Las Turquillas" ranch land they occupied during the summer of 2012.
Sanchez Gordillo has staged several activities to highlight the plight of Spain's near 6 million unemployed, including "Robin Hood"-style supermarket lootings in 2012 to aid the poor.
His town boasts full employment thanks to its farm cooperatives.
Defendants given sentences of less than two years in Spain are generally not imprisoned unless they have previous convictions. |
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N. Ind. court helps veterans get back on track
Areas of Focus |
2013/11/11 22:08
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A northern Indiana judge is helping troubled veterans get their lives back in order.
Porter Superior Judge Julia Jent started the Veterans Treatment Court slightly more than two years ago. Case managers, mental health professionals, prosecutors and public defenders work to help veterans who have had a run-in with the law try to solve some of the problems they are facing.
On Friday, six military veterans who graduated from the program. Sixty-three-year-old Paul Hake of Porter says it completely change his life. Hake is a Marine veteran who served in Vietnam. He says he had a problem with alcohol, but now he has his life back.
The class was the third graduating class since the program began. |
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Soldiers in fatal stabbing due in Washington court
Areas of Focus |
2013/10/11 17:52
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There may have been some "trash talk" between a car full of black soldiers and three white soldiers on foot, but race was not the main issue in the weekend stabbing death of a soldier near a large Army base in Washington, police and prosecutors said.
A key piece of evidence was found Monday when searchers located the knife in a wooded area of Tillicum, about 3 miles from Lakewood where the soldier was killed. Both communities are near Joint Base Lewis-McChord.
Three soldiers arrested for investigation of murder where scheduled to make their first court appearance Tuesday in Pierce County Superior Court.
Spc. Tevin Geike, 20, of Summerville, S.C., was walking with two other soldiers early Saturday when words were exchanged with someone in a car. The car stopped and five people confronted the three, police said.
The groups were separating after realizing they were all active duty soldiers when Geike was fatally stabbed.
Police had said a racial motive was under investigation _ and potentially a hate crime. However, both prosecutor Mark Lindquist and Lakewood Police Lt. Chris Lawler said there was no indication that there was racial hatred or that the men were seeking out people of a certain race to attack. |
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PG&E starts pipeline shutdown under court order
Areas of Focus |
2013/10/07 17:36
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Pacific Gas & Electric Co. says it will comply with a judge's order and shut down a natural gas pipeline after safety issues were raised.
The utility said Sunday it believes the pipeline is safe despite an engineer's email questioning the safety of the 83-year-old line's welds. PG&E said it could take until Tuesday to safely shut down the line and seamlessly switch its customers to another line.
A judge ordered the line shut down after San Carlos city officials discovered the email and declared a "state of emergency."
The email said PG&E's records incorrectly show the line containing a newer, more reliable weld than it actually has.
PG&E said state-of-the-art tests show the line is safe and that it was shutting the line only because of the court order. |
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Appeals court panel considers TABOR challenge
Areas of Focus |
2013/09/25 18:51
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Colorado is asking the federal courts to stay out of a dispute about whether its strict tax and spending limits has robbed the state of a republican form of government.
In arguments Monday, state Solicitor General Daniel Domenico told a three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that lawmakers still have the ability to ask voters to approve a tax increase if they think one is needed under the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights.
"Just because it's a little bit harder doesn't make it unrepublican," he said of the referendum needed to raise taxes under TABOR.
Domenico said that if lawmakers tried and failed to win a tax increase, they might have a case. But he also argued that courts haven't gotten involved in enforcing the provision in the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing a republic — or representative democracy — to the states, leaving that to Congress instead. |
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Italian court insists Berlusconi devised tax fraud
Areas of Focus |
2013/08/27 16:21
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Italy's supreme court is defending its decision earlier this month to uphold the tax fraud conviction of Silvio Berlusconi, saying the evidence was clear that the former premier devised a tax fraud scheme for the acquisition of film rights for his media empire.
The Court of Cassation released on Thursday a written document explaining its Aug. 1 decision, which upheld a Milan appellate court ruling that Berlusconi was guilty. The Cassation judges also upheld a four-year prison term and a ban on public office, although it ordered another court to establish the length of the ban.
The center-right leader says he's the victim of magistrates he contends sympathize with the left. His lawyers will be scrutinizing the 208-page document to try to bolster their claims that Berlusconi's rights were violated. |
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