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Supreme Court upholds key tool for fighting housing bias
Headline Legal News |
2015/06/25 16:00
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The Supreme Court handed a surprising victory to the Obama administration and civil rights groups on Thursday when it upheld a key tool used for more than four decades to fight housing discrimination.
The justices ruled 5-4 that federal housing laws prohibit seemingly neutral practices that harm minorities, even without proof of intentional discrimination.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, often a swing vote, joined the court's four liberal members in upholding the use of so-called "disparate impact" cases.
The ruling is a win for housing advocates who argued that the housing law allows challenges to race-neutral policies that have a negative impact on minority groups. The Justice Department has used disparate impact lawsuits to win more than $500 million in legal settlements from companies accused of bias against black and Hispanic customers.
In upholding the tactic, the Supreme Court preserved a legal strategy that has been used for more than 40 years to attack discrimination in zoning laws, occupancy rules, mortgage lending practices and insurance underwriting. Every federal appeals court to consider it has upheld the practice, though the Supreme Court had never previously taken it up.
Writing for the majority, Kennedy said that language in the housing law banning discrimination "because of race" includes disparate impact cases. He said such lawsuits allow plaintiffs "to counteract unconscious prejudices and disguised animus that escape easy classification" under traditional legal theories.
"In this way disparate-impact liability may prevent segregated housing patterns that might otherwise result from covert and illicit stereotyping," Kennedy said.
Kennedy was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
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French court rules police illegally targeted minorities
Legal Topics |
2015/06/24 16:00
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A French appeals court ruled Wednesday that police carried out unjustified identity checks on five minority men, ordering the government to pay them damages in an unprecedented ruling that activists hope will help reduce widespread discrimination.
The collective case was the first of its kind in France, where anti-racism groups say non-whites are unfairly targeted by police. Gratuitous ID checks have long been cited as a prime reason for troubled relations between police and residents of poor suburbs.
Thirteen men, all of black or Arab origin, originally filed suit in the case. None of the 13 men has a police record, but each said he was victim of multiple, humiliating ID checks, widely known as "stop and frisk" and considered by police as an important crime-fighting tactic.
A lower court ruled in 2013 that police didn't overstep legal boundaries with the ID checks. The Paris appeals court overturned part of that ruling, saying Wednesday that the checks against five men were illegal, and ordered the state to pay 1,500 euros ($1,680) euros to each man.
Lawyers say they haven't yet decided whether to appeal the other eight cases.
While the sum of damages is small, the significance of the ruling could be broad.
Lawyer Slim Ben Achour said that with this precedent they now plan to multiply such suits around France.
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US court upholds tough rules on for-profit college loans
Headline Legal News |
2015/06/24 15:59
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A federal court has ruled in favor of tough new regulations aimed at career training programs, dealing a major blow to the for-profit college industry.
In an opinion released Tuesday, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled the Education Department has the right to demand that schools show their graduates make enough money to repay their student loans. The Education Department announced its plan last fall as a way of weeding out fraudulent colleges that were targeting low-income students because of their ability to receive federal student loans, grants and military benefits.
Under the new rules, which go into effect July 1, a program has to show that the estimated annual loan payment of a typical graduate does not exceed 20 percent of his or her discretionary income or 8 percent of total earnings. The administration said about 99 percent of the training programs that will be affected come from the for-profit sector, although affected career training programs can come from certificate programs elsewhere in higher education.
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Same-sex marriage opponents urge Supreme Court to go slow
Attorney News |
2015/06/23 15:59
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Same-sex marriage opponents acknowledge they face a tough task in trying to persuade the Supreme Court to allow states to limit marriage to a man and a woman.
But they are urging the court to resist embracing what they see as a radical change in society's view of what constitutes a marriage, especially without more information about how same-sex marriage affects children who are raised by two fathers or two mothers.
The idea that same-sex marriage might have uncertain effects on children is strongly contested by those who want the court to declare that same-sex couples have a right to marry in all 50 states. Among the 31 plaintiffs in the cases that will be argued at the court on April 28 are parents who have spent years seeking formal recognition on their children's birth certificates or adoption papers.
But opponents, in dozens of briefs asking the court to uphold state bans on same-sex marriage, insist they are not motivated by any prejudice toward gays and lesbians.
"This is an issue on which people of good will may reasonably disagree," lawyer John Bursch wrote in his defense of Michigan's gay-marriage ban. Bursch argued on behalf of the states that same-sex couples can claim no constitutional right to marriage.
Same-sex couples now can marry in 36 states and the District of Columbia, the product of a dizzying pace of change in state marriage laws. Just three years ago, only six states allowed it.
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Supreme Court Voids Routine Police Check Of Hotel Registries
Headline Legal News |
2015/06/23 15:59
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The Supreme Court struck down a Los Angeles ordinance Monday that allowed police to inspect hotel guest records on demand.
The justices voted 5-4 to reject the city's argument that the measure was needed to help fight prostitution, drug trafficking and illegal gambling at budget hotels and motels.
Los Angeles said that people engaging in those activities are less likely to use hotels if they know the facilities must collect guest information and turn it over at a moment's notice.
But Justice Sonia Sotomayor said for the court that the law is unconstitutional because it penalizes the hotel owners if they don't comply. "A hotel owner who refuses to give an officer access to his or her registry can be arrested on the spot," Sotomayor wrote. Business owners must at least be given a chance to object to a judge, she said.
Justice Anthony Kennedy and Sotomayor's three liberal colleagues joined her in the majority.
In dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia said the law "is eminently reasonable" given the use of cheap motels as places to stash migrants who have been smuggled across the border and as rendezvous points for child sex workers and their clients.
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Man pleads guilty to charge over noose on Ole Miss statue
Legal Topics |
2015/06/22 18:32
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A federal prosecutor said in court Thursday that Graeme Phillip Harris hatched a plan, after a night of drinking at a University of Mississippi fraternity house, to hang a noose on a campus statue of James Meredith, the first black student at Ole Miss.
Harris, who is white, pleaded guilty Thursday to a misdemeanor charge of threatening force to intimidate African-American students and employees at the university. Prosecutors agreed to drop a stiffer felony charge in exchange for the plea arising from the incident last year.
The 20-year-old Harris faces up to a year in jail and a fine of up to $100,000. U.S. District Judge Michael Mills said sentencing will be within 60 to 90 days, and he allowed Harris to remain free on a $10,000 bond.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Bob Norman told Mills that Harris, who had a history of using racist language and saying African Americans were inferior to whites, proposed the plan to two fellow freshmen while at the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity house on the night of Feb 15, 2014.
That led to the plan to hang the noose and a former Georgia state flag that features the Confederate battle flag on the statue of Meredith, in a jab at Ole Miss' thorny racial history.
When a federal court ordered the university to admit Meredith in 1962, the African-American student had to be escorted onto campus by armed federal agents. The agents were attacked during an all-night riot that claimed two lives and was ultimately quelled by federal troops.
After the noose and flag were placed on the statue, Norman said Harris and one of the other freshmen returned at sunrise on Feb. 16 to observe and were filmed by a video camera at the Ole Miss student union.
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High court strikes down raisin program as unconstitutional
Headline Legal News |
2015/06/22 15:26
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The Supreme Court ruled Monday that a 66-year-old program that lets the government take raisins away from farmers to help reduce supply and boost market prices is unconstitutional.
In an 8-1 ruling, the justices said forcing raisin growers to give up part of their annual crop without full payment is an illegal confiscation of private property.
The ruling is a victory for California farmers Marvin and Laura Horne, who claimed they were losing money under a 1940s-era program they call outdated and ineffective. They were fined $695,000 for trying to get around the program.
A federal appeals court said the program was acceptable because the farmers benefited from higher market prices and didn't lose the entire value of their crop.
The government argued that the Hornes benefited from increased raisin prices, but their cause had won wide support from conservative groups opposed to government action that infringes on private property rights.
Writing for the court, Chief Justice John Roberts said the government must pay "just compensation" when it takes personal goods just as when it takes land away. He rejected the government's argument that the Hornes voluntarily chose to participate in the raisin market and have the option of selling different crops if they don't like it. |
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