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Court reinstates lawsuit over NYPD surveillance of Muslims
Headline Legal News |
2015/10/14 05:55
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A federal appeals court has reinstated a lawsuit challenging the New York Police Department's surveillance of Muslim groups following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Tuesday's 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals ruling reverses the decision of a New Jersey federal judge who dismissed the case last year.
The appellate panel found the Muslim plaintiffs had raised sufficient allegations of equal-protection violations to warrant the case going forward.
The judges compared the NYPD's alleged practices to blanket scrutiny of Japanese-Americans during World War II and blacks during the civil rights movement
The city blamed The Associated Press, whose reporting exposed the surveillance program, for any harm to the plaintiffs.
The lower court judge agreed with that argument, but the appeals panel said the city was the cause of any harm.
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Connecticut court stands by decision eliminating execution
Headline Legal News |
2015/10/02 16:02
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The Connecticut Supreme Court on Thursday stood by its decision to eliminate the state's death penalty, but the fate of capital punishment in the Constitution State technically remains unsettled.
The state's highest court rejected a request by prosecutors to reconsider its landmark August ruling, but prosecutors have filed a motion in another case to make the arguments they would have made if the court had granted the reconsideration motion.
Lawyers who have argued before the court say it would be highly unusual and surprising for the court to reverse itself on such an important issue in a short period of time, but they say it is possible because the makeup of the court is different. Justice Flemming Norcott Jr., who was in the 4-3 majority to abolish the death penalty, reached the mandatory retirement age of 70 and was succeeded by Justice Richard Robinson.
In the August decision, the court ruled that a 2012 state law abolishing capital punishment for future crimes must be applied to the 11 men who still faced execution for killings committed before the law took effect. The decision came in the case of Eduardo Santiago, who was facing the possibility of lethal injection for a 2000 murder-for-hire killing in West Hartford.
The 2012 ban had been passed prospectively because many lawmakers refused to vote for a bill that would spare the death penalty for Joshua Komisarjevsky and Steven Hayes, who were convicted of killing a mother and her two daughters in a highly publicized 2007 home invasion in Cheshire.
The state's high court said the death penalty violated the state constitution, "no longer comports with contemporary standards of decency," and didn't serve any "legitimate penological purpose." The majority included Norcott and Justices Richard Palmer, Dennis Eveleigh and Andrew McDonald, the same four justices that rejected the prosecution's reconsideration request Thursday.
Chief Justice Chase Rogers and Justices Peter Zarella and Carmen Espinosa bashed the majority in the Santiago case, accusing the other four justices of tailoring their ruling based on personal beliefs. The three dissenting justices also were in favor of the prosecution's motion to reconsider.
Chief State's Attorney Kevin Kane had said the majority justices unfairly considered concerns that had not been raised during Santiago's appeal and denied prosecutors the chance to address those concerns. He said prosecutors have filed briefs in the still-pending death penalty appeal of Russell Peeler Jr., raising the same issues they did in the motion for reconsideration in the Santiago case.
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Arizona sheriff faces judge after defying court orders
Headline Legal News |
2015/09/25 03:58
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The sheriff in the nation's sixth-largest city faces a new round of contempt-of-court hearings Thursday for openly disobeying a judge's order to stop carrying out his signature immigration patrols.
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio could face fines as a result of the hearings and could later be called into criminal court on the same grounds.
The sheriff has acknowledged violating court orders by conducting immigration patrols for 18 months after he was ordered to stop, failing to turn over traffic-stop recordings before the 2012 racial profiling trial, and bungling a plan to gather videos once they were publicly revealed.
Other subjects to be examined include allegations the sheriff launched an investigation of the judge in the profiling case in a failed bid to get him disqualified and that Arpaio's officers pocketed identification and other personal items seized from people during traffic stops and safe-house busts.
The sheriff underwent a first round of contempt hearings in April. The second round is scheduled to stretch into November.
The first witness is expected to be Arpaio's second-in-command, Jerry Sheridan, who has acknowledged violating two of the judge's orders. It's unclear when Arpaio will testify.
The toughest legal defeats in Arpaio's 22-year tenure as sheriff have come from U.S. District Judge Murray Snow, who concluded more than two years ago that the police agency had systematically racially profiled Latinos in regular traffic and immigration patrols.
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Appeals court upholds injunction halting health mandate
Headline Legal News |
2015/09/19 18:11
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A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that President Barack Obama's health care law unjustly burdens religiously affiliated employers by forcing them to help provide insurance coverage for certain contraceptives, even though they can opt out of directly paying for it.
The ruling by a three-judge 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel in St. Louis upheld lower court decisions that sided with plaintiffs who included three Christian colleges in Missouri, Michigan and Iowa.
The 25-page opinion conflicts with all other federal appellate courts, which have found in the U.S. government's favor.
As religiously affiliated entities, those colleges victorious with Thursday's ruling don't have to pay directly for their workers' birth control. Instead, they can seek an accommodation that requires their insurance providers to pay for it. But the groups still say the scheme makes them complicit in the providing of contraception and subjected them to possible fines for noncompliance.
Circuit Judge Roger Wollman, writing the ruling on the panel's behalf, wrote that the contraceptive mandate and accommodation process of the Affordable Care Act substantially burdens the plaintiffs' exercise of religion.
Those plaintiffs included Heartland Christian College in Newark, Missouri, Dordt College in Sioux Center, Iowa, and Cornerstone University in Grand Rapids, Michigan, as well as Bethel, Missouri-based CNS International Ministries Inc., a nonprofit provider of addiction services.
The Justice Department, which has called the lawsuits meritless and an attempt to prevent female employees from obtaining coverage, defended the federal government in the cases but directed The Associated Press' questions Thursday to the White House, where a statement called the rulings disappointing.
"As all of the other seven U.S. courts of appeals to address this issue have held, the contraceptive accommodation process strikes the proper balance between ensuring women have equal access to health care and protecting religious beliefs," that statement read.
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Washington Supreme Court rules against Backpage.com
Headline Legal News |
2015/09/04 09:36
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The website Backpage.com may not be immune from state liability law and a lawsuit filed by three young girls who said they were sold as prostitutes on the website can proceed to trial, the Washington Supreme Court ruled Thursday.
In a 6-3 decision, the justices said the federal Communications Decency Act does not protect Backpage from state lawsuits because of allegations that the company didn't just host the ads, but helped develop the content.
"The plaintiffs before us have been the repeated victims of horrific acts committed in the shadows of the law," said Justice Steven Gonzalez, writing for the majority. "They brought this suit in part to bring light to some of those shadows: to show how children are bought and sold for sexual services online on Backpage.com in advertisements that, they allege, the defendants help develop."
The case should proceed because the girls have alleged facts that, if proved, would show that Backpage helped produce illegal content, the justices said.
Erik Bauer, the girls' lawyer, praised the decision.
"It says it's not legal to help pimps sell kids, even if you're a website operator," Bauer told The Associated Press.
Jim Grant, a Seattle lawyer representing Village Voice Media Holdings LLC and Backpage.com, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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Alaska Supreme Court won't block Medicaid expansion
Headline Legal News |
2015/09/02 06:35
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Thousands of lower-income Alaskans will become eligible for Medicaid after the Alaska Supreme Court on Monday refused to temporarily block the state from expanding the health care program.
The win capped a big day for Alaska Gov. Bill Walker, who earlier flew with President Barack Obama from Washington, D.C., to Anchorage.
"The Alaska Supreme Court's ruling today brings final assurance that thousands of working Alaskans will have access to health care tomorrow," Walker said in a statement issued Monday evening.
Walker earlier this summer announced plans to accept federal funds to expand Medicaid coverage after state legislators tabled his expansion legislation for further review.
The Legislative Council, acting on behalf of lawmakers, sued to stop expansion.
Thirty other states and the District of Columbia have expanded Medicaid, or plan to do so, to include all adults with incomes at or below 138 percent of the federal poverty level.
The federal government agreed to pay all costs for the new enrollees through 2016, but it will begin lowering its share in 2017. States will pay 10 percent of the costs by 2020.
Some Alaska legislators have expressed concern with adding more people to a system they consider broken. Administration officials have acknowledged the current Medicaid program isn't sustainable, but they see expansion as a way to get federal dollars to help finance reform efforts.
On Friday, Superior Court Judge Frank Pfiffner denied the request from lawmakers to halt expansion while a lawsuit moves forward. The Alaska Supreme Court on Monday agreed, saying lawyers for the lawmakers failed to show Pfiffner erred when denying the motion for a preliminary injunction. |
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Amended voter identification law subject of court hearing
Headline Legal News |
2015/08/23 06:34
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North Carolina's voter identification mandate recently was eased before its slated 2016 start. But attorneys for voters and groups who oppose the law say the new exceptions don't mean their lawsuit challenging voter ID should evaporate.
A Superior Court judge scheduled arguments Monday in Raleigh about the state's request to have the litigation dismissed.
The original law required someone showing a qualifying photo identification card before voting in person. Now people with a "reasonable impediment" to getting a qualified ID can sign forms and present information and still vote.
The plaintiffs say the amended law still will hinder potential voters and want the judge to delay the voter ID mandate until after March's presidential primary.
This is one of four lawsuits filed challenging all or parts of 2013 elections changes.
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