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Court: Ariz. citizenship proof law illegal
Headline Legal News |
2013/06/20 22:26
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The Supreme Court ruled Monday that states cannot require would-be voters to prove they are U.S. citizens before using a federal registration system designed to make signing up easier.
The justices voted 7-2 to throw out Arizona's voter-approved requirement that prospective voters document their U.S. citizenship in order to use a registration form produced under the federal "Motor Voter" voter registration law.
Federal law "precludes Arizona from requiring a federal form applicant to submit information beyond that required by the form itself," Justice Antonia Scalia wrote for the court's majority.
The court was considering the legality of Arizona's requirement that prospective voters document their U.S. citizenship in order to use a registration form produced under the federal "motor voter" registration law. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which doesn't require such documentation, trumps Arizona's Proposition 200 passed in 2004.
Arizona appealed that decision to the Supreme Court.
The case focuses on Arizona, which has tangled frequently with the federal government over immigration issues involving the Mexican border. But it has broader implications because four other states — Alabama, Georgia, Kansas and Tennessee — have similar requirements, and 12 other states are contemplating such legislation. |
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Court: Ex-Im Bank needs to explain Air India loan
Areas of Focus |
2013/06/19 18:09
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A federal bank that backed a huge airplane loan for Air India will have to explain that the loan didn't hurt U.S. airlines.
A lawsuit by Delta Air Lines Inc. had accused the Export-Import Bank of failing to follow a requirement that it makes sure its loans to foreign companies won't hurt U.S. competitors. The Ex-Im bank guaranteed $3.4 billion in loans in 2011 so that Air India could buy planes from Boeing Co. But Delta competes with Air India on some routes.
The Court of Appeals in Washington did not force the bank to reverse the loan guarantee, as Delta had asked. But the ruling says the bank needs to follow the law and provide more justification for the loan. |
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NJ court: Special US Senate election in Oct. OK
Areas of Focus |
2013/06/14 15:45
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A special U.S. Senate election to replace the late Democratic Sen. Frank Lautenberg can be held in October, as it was scheduled by Republican Gov. Chris Christie, a state court ruled Thursday.
The ruling could be appealed. And while it keeps an election on course it does not seem likely to chill criticism of the popular governor for how he chose to replace Lautenberg, the Senate's oldest member, who died last week at age 89.
Four Democrats and two Republicans have filed petitions to run in the Senate race to complete Lautenberg's term, with three early polls showing Democratic Newark Mayor Cory Booker as the front-runner.
Christie scheduled the election for Oct. 16. A group of Democrats sued, saying it should be held Nov. 5, the day voters are going to the polls in the general elections anyway.
Christie's critics have complained that holding the election in October will cost taxpayers unnecessarily. Officials say each election costs the state about $12 million to run.
Judge Jane Grall wrote Thursday that objections to the costs of the election are policy matters that aren't questions for the court. |
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Court says human genes cannot be patented
Legal Topics |
2013/06/13 16:19
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The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that companies cannot patent parts of naturally-occurring human genes, a decision with the potential to profoundly affect the emerging and lucrative medical and biotechnology industries.
The high court's unanimous judgment reverses three decades of patent awards by government officials. It throws out patents held by Salt Lake City-based Myriad Genetics Inc. on an increasingly popular breast cancer test brought into the public eye recently by actress Angelina Jolie's revelation that she had a double mastectomy because of one of the genes involved in this case.
Justice Clarence Thomas, who wrote the court's decision, said that Myriad's assertion — that the DNA it isolated from the body for its proprietary breast and ovarian cancer tests were patentable — had to be dismissed because it violates patent rules. The court has said that laws of nature, natural phenomena and abstract ideas are not patentable.
"We hold that a naturally occurring DNA segment is a product of nature and not patent eligible merely because it has been isolated," Thomas said.
Patents are the legal protection that gives inventors the right to prevent others from making, using or selling a novel device, process or application. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has been awarding patents on human genes for almost 30 years, but opponents of Myriad Genetics Inc.'s patents on the two genes linked to increased risk of breast and ovarian cancer say such protection should not be given to something that can be found inside the human body. |
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Court: Texas inmate's decades-old sentence invalid
Areas of Focus |
2013/06/12 20:41
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The life sentence given to a Texas man who has remained in prison for 33 years since being pulled off of death row isn't valid, Texas' highest criminal court said Wednesday, possibly paving the way for a new trial or the inmate's release.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals said once it overturned Jerry Hartfield's murder conviction in 1980 for the killing of a bus station worker four years earlier, there was no longer a death sentence for then-Gov. Mark White to commute.
The opinion was given in response to a rare formal request by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to confirm the validity of its ruling overturning Hartfield's conviction, in light of the governor's 1983 commutation. The New Orleans-based federal court made the request, which upheld a lower state court's ruling that the sentence was invalid.
"The status of the judgment of conviction is that (Hartfield) is under no conviction or sentence," Judge Lawrence Meyers wrote in a decision supported by the court's other eight judges. "Because there was no longer a death sentence to commute, the governor's order had no effect."
Hartfield, now 57, was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1976 robbery and killing of a Southeast Texas bus station employee. The criminal appeals court overturned his murder conviction, ruling that a potential juror improperly was dismissed after expressing reservations about the death penalty.
White commuted Hartfield's sentence in 1983 at the recommendation of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, and he has remained in prison since then, unaware until a few years ago that his case was in legal limbo. Court documents in his case described him as an illiterate 5th-grade dropout with in IQ of 51, although Hartfield says he's learned to read and write while in prison. |
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Battle between SC Episcopalians back state court
Areas of Focus |
2013/06/11 15:57
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The legal fight between two factions of South Carolina Episcopalians will be decided in state court.
U.S. District Judge C. Weston Houck has issued an order saying the federal court has no jurisdiction and hearing the case would disrupt the balance between state and federal courts. Houck heard arguments in the dispute last week.
The conservative Diocese of South Carolina last year separated from the more liberal national Episcopal Church. The break-away churches then sued in state court to protect the use of the name and a half billion dollars' worth of property.
Parishes remaining with the national church then sued in federal court saying the case raised First Amendment and other federal issues.
But Houck disagreed and late Monday sent the case back to state court. |
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Court: $1M coverage for Conn. fire victim families
Headline Legal News |
2013/06/11 15:56
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Families suing the operator of a Hartford nursing home where 16 patients died in a 2003 fire suffered a setback Monday, when the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled that the home's insurance coverage was $1 million instead of the $10 million claimed by the victims' relatives.
The justices' 3-2 decision reversed a lower court judge's interpretation of Greenwood Health Center's insurance policy in favor of the families. The high court instead found in favor of Boston-based Lexington Insurance Co., a subsidiary of American International Group Inc.
"It just seems completely inadequate," Van Starkweather, an attorney for one victim's family, said about the lower coverage figure. "I'm disappointed. It was a close decision. Three justices went with AIG. Two justices went with the victims."
A lawyer for Lexington Insurance declined to comment Monday.
The fire at Greenwood Health Center on Feb. 26, 2003, broke out after psychiatric patient Leslie Andino set her bed on fire while flicking a cigarette lighter. Officials at the time said it was the 10th deadliest nursing home fire in U.S. history. Andino was charged with 16 counts of arson murder, but was found incompetent to stand trial and committed to a psychiatric hospital.
Relatives of 13 of the 16 victims sued the nursing home's operator for cash damages, saying it failed to adequately supervise Andino. Hartford Superior Court Judge Marshall K. Berger Jr. ruled in 2009 that Greenwood's insurance policy with Lexington provided $250,000 in coverage for each plaintiff and the policy's maximum coverage was $10 million.
But Lexington Insurance appealed Berger's decision, saying that the $10 million was the total coverage for all seven nursing homes run by Greenwood's operator and that each home was insured up to $1 million.
In a decision written by Chief Justice Chase T. Rogers, the Supreme Court's majority found that each plaintiff actually was eligible for up to $500,000 from the insurance policy if they won their lawsuit, but that the policy's total coverage was limited to $1 million. |
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