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Top court to hear case that could reshape US political map
Headline Legal News |
2017/06/17 09:03
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The Supreme Court will take up a momentous fight over parties manipulating electoral districts to gain partisan advantage in a case that could affect the balance of power between Democrats and Republicans across the United States.
At issue is whether Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin drew legislative districts that favored their party and were so out of whack with the state's political breakdown that they violated the constitutional rights of Democratic voters.
It will be the high court's first case in more than a decade on what's known as partisan gerrymandering. A lower court struck down the districts as unconstitutional last year.
The justices won't hear the arguments until the fall, but the case has already taken on a distinctly ideological, if not partisan, tone. Just 90 minutes after justices announced Monday that they would hear the case, the five more conservative justices voted to halt a lower court's order to redraw the state's legislative districts by November, in time for next year's elections.
The four more liberal justices, named to the court by Democrats, would have let the new line-drawing proceed even as the court considers the issue.
That divide could be significant. One factor the court weighs in making such decisions is which side seems to have a better chance of winning.
Republicans who control the state legislature assured the court that they could draw new maps in time for the 2018 elections, if the court strikes down the districts. If the state wins, there'll be no need for new districts.
Democrats hope a favorable decision will help them cut into Republican electoral majorities. Election law experts say the case is the best chance yet for the high court to put limits on what lawmakers may do to gain a partisan advantage in creating political district maps.
Both parties have tried to get the largest partisan edge when they control redistricting. Yet Democrats are more supportive of having courts rein in extreme districting plans, mainly because Republicans control more legislatures and drew districts after the 2010 census that enhanced their advantage in those states and in the House of Representatives.
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Court filing questions innocence panel insistence on secrecy
Headline Legal News |
2017/06/03 23:38
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As a man convicted of murder tries to prove to the North Carolina's innocence commission that he didn't commit the crime, his attorney says the commission has misled a judge in order to keep its files secret, causing delays in the case.
Attorney Chris Mumma represents Robert Bragg, who's serving a sentence of life without parole for a 1994 slaying. Bragg contends he's innocent. Last September his case came before the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission, a state agency established to investigate and evaluate post-conviction innocence claims. The commission referred it to a three-judge panel, which is scheduled to hold a hearing in July — 10 months after the original commission hearing and two months after the original May hearing date.
The delay came, in part, as Bragg's attorney fought a protective order that the commission said was necessary to shield a confidential investigative file. The commission said evidence in the file was obtained through methods that require it to be kept under a stricter level of judicial protection than other criminal investigative files.
But in a court filing, Mumma says the commission misrepresented the file's contents. In fact, only one protective order was found in the documents, and defense attorneys already had received that file, Mumma said in the court filing last month in Bragg's case.
While Mumma now has the full commission file and can use it in this appeal, the protective order means she can't use it again in the future without seeking a judge's permission.
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High court ruling may give voter rights groups a strong tool
Headline Legal News |
2017/05/22 09:01
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The Supreme Court's ruling that two North Carolina congressional districts relied too heavily on race should give voting-rights advocates a potent tool to fight other electoral maps drawn to give Republicans an advantage in the state.
The justices agreed Monday with a federal court that had struck down two congressional districts as illegally race-based. Because those districts were already redrawn for the 2016 election, the ruling doesn't require immediate changes from North Carolina. But it looms large in other battles unfolding over voting districts there and elsewhere.
Also pending before the high court is a separate challenge to North Carolina state House and Senate districts that have helped the GOP cement veto-proof majorities in both chambers.
A lawyer challenging the General Assembly districts said legislative mapmakers used similar reasoning to defend the congressional and legislative maps, so Monday's ruling bolsters her cause.
"It's abundantly clear that what the state of North Carolina did in drawing its legislative districts cannot withstand constitutional muster," Anita Earls of the Southern Coalition for Social Justice said in a phone interview.
In the case Earls is arguing, a federal court had previously thrown out 28 state House and Senate districts as illegal racial gerrymanders. But earlier this year the Supreme Court temporarily halted an order to redraw those legislative districts. The justices could act on the challenge to the state districts as early as next week.
In recent years, the Supreme Court has ruled for civil rights groups and black voters in challenges to political districts in Alabama, North Carolina and Virginia.
A Democratic group led by former Attorney General Eric Holder is focusing on redistricting challenges to counter political gains Republicans have made since the 2010 census and the redrawing of electoral districts that followed. |
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Court likely to question if Trump's travel ban discriminates
Headline Legal News |
2017/05/16 16:16
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For the second time in a week, government lawyers will try to persuade a federal appeals court to reinstate President Donald Trump's revised travel ban — and once again, they can expect plenty of questions Monday about whether it was designed to discriminate against Muslims.
A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has scheduled arguments in Seattle over Hawaii's lawsuit challenging the travel ban, which would suspend the nation's refugee program and temporarily bar new visas for citizens of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
Last week, judges on the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments over whether to affirm a Maryland judge's decision putting the ban on ice. They peppered Acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall with questions about whether they could consider Trump's campaign statements calling for a ban on Muslims entering the U.S., with one judge asking if there was anything other than "willful blindness" that would prevent them from doing so.
Monday's arguments mark the second time Trump's efforts to restrict immigration from certain Muslim-majority nations have reached the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit.
After Trump issued his initial travel ban on a Friday in late January, bringing chaos and protests to airports around the country, a Seattle judge blocked its enforcement nationwide — a decision that was unanimously upheld by a three-judge 9th Circuit panel.
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Connecticut court takes up doctor-patient confidentiality
Headline Legal News |
2017/04/24 04:37
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The Connecticut Supreme Court will be deciding an issue that most people may think is already settled — whether medical providers have a duty to keep patients' medical records confidential.
A trial court judge in Bridgeport, Richard Arnold, ruled in 2015 that Connecticut law, unlike laws in many other states, has yet to recognize a duty of confidentiality between doctors and their patients, or that communications between patients and health care providers are privileged under common law.
The decision came in a paternity case where a doctors' office in Westport sent the medical file of a child's mother without her permission to a probate court under a subpoena issued by the father's lawyer — not a court — and the father was able to look at the file.
The mother, Emily Byrne, a former New Canaan resident now living in Montpelier, Vermont, sued the Avery Center for Obstetrics & Gynecology in 2007 for negligence in failing to protect her medical file and infliction of emotional distress. She alleges the child's father used her highly personal information to harass, threaten and humiliate her, including filing seven lawsuits and threatening to file criminal complaints.
But Arnold dismissed the claims, saying "no courts in Connecticut, to date, recognized or adopted a common law privilege for communications between a patient and physicians."
The state Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments in the case Monday. Byrne, a nurse, referred questions to her lawyer, Bruce Elstein, who said the case will result in an important, precedent-setting decision by the Supreme Court.
"The confidentiality of medical information is at stake," Elstein said. "If the court rules in the Avery Center's favor, the tomorrow for medical offices will be that no patient communications are privileged. Their private health information can be revealed without their knowledge or consent."
A lawyer for the Avery Center didn't return messages seeking comment. The concept of doctor-patient confidentiality dates back roughly 2,500 years to the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates and the famous oath named after him that includes a pledge to respect patients' privacy. |
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