|
|
|
Supreme Court grapples with governor’s 400-year veto, calling it ‘crazy’
Topics in Legal News |
2024/10/12 11:48
|
Justices on the Wisconsin Supreme Court said Wednesday that Gov. Tony Evers’ creative use of his expansive veto power in an attempt to lock in a school funding increase for 400 years appeared to be “extreme” and “crazy” but questioned whether and how it should be reined in.
“It does feel like the sky is the limit, the stratosphere is the limit,” Justice Jill Karofsky said during oral arguments, referring to the governor’s veto powers. “Perhaps today we are at the fork in the road ... I think we’re trying to think should we, today in 2024, start to look at this differently.”
The case, supported by the Republican-controlled Legislature, is the latest flashpoint in a decades-long fight over just how broad Wisconsin’s governor’s partial veto powers should be. The issue has crossed party lines, with Republicans and Democrats pushing for more limitations on the governor’s veto over the years.
In this case, Evers made the veto in question in 2023. His partial veto increased how much revenue K-12 public schools can raise per student by $325 a year until 2425. Evers took language that originally applied the $325 increase for the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years and instead vetoed the “20” and the hyphen to make the end date 2425, more than four centuries from now.
“The veto here approaches the absurd and exceeds any reasonable understanding of legislative or voter intent in adopting the partial veto or subsequent limits,” attorneys for legal scholar Richard Briffault, of Columbia Law School, said in a filing with the court ahead of arguments.
That argument was cited throughout the oral arguments by justices and Scott Rosenow, attorney for Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce Litigation Center, which handles lawsuits for the state’s largest business lobbying group and brought the case.
The court should strike down Evers’ partial veto and declare that the state constitution forbids the governor from striking digits to create a new year or to remove language to create a longer duration than the one approved by the Legislature, Rosenow argued.
Finding otherwise would give governors unlimited power to alter numbers in a budget bill, Rosenow argued.
Justices appeared to agree that limits were needed, but they grappled with where to draw the line.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Senior Hong Kong journalist is sentenced to prison in sedition case
Topics in Legal News |
2024/09/27 09:27
|
A Hong Kong court sentenced a former editor of a shuttered news publication to 21 months in prison on Thursday in a sedition case that is widely seen as an indicator of media freedom in the city, once hailed as a beacon of press freedom in Asia. A second editor was freed after his sentence was reduced because of ill health and time already served in custody.
Former Stand News editor-in-chief Chung Pui-kuen and former acting editor-in-chief Patrick Lam are the first journalists convicted under a colonial-era sedition law since the former British colony returned to Chinese rule in 1997. Chung was sentenced to 21 months, while Lam was also sentenced but allowed to go free.
The news outlet was one of last in Hong Kong that dared to criticize authorities as Beijing imposed a crackdown on dissidents following massive pro-democracy protests in 2019.
The closure came months after the demise of pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily, whose jailed founder Jimmy Lai is battling collusion charges under a tough national security law imposed by Beijing in 2020.
Last month, the court found Chung and Lam guilty of conspiracy to publish and reproduce seditious materials, along with Best Pencil (Hong Kong) Ltd., Stand News’ holding company. They faced up to two years in prison and a fine of 5,000 Hong Kong dollars (about $640).
Judge Kwok Wai-kin began the sentencing hearing two hours after the scheduled time. The journalists’ lawyer, Audrey Eu, requested a sentence mitigation, saying Lam had been diagnosed with a rare disease and she was concerned that he could not be treated by the hospital handling his case if he were sent to jail again.
She argued that they be sentenced to up to time served, saying their case was different because they were journalists whose duties were to report different people’s views. The pair were detained for nearly a year after their arrests before being released on bail in late 2022.
In his sentencing, Kwok said the defendants were not genuine journalists but had participated in the territory’s resistance movement.
Kwok wrote in his verdict in August that Stand News had become a tool for smearing the Beijing and Hong Kong governments during the 2019 protests. He ruled that 11 articles published under the defendants’ leadership carried seditious intent, including commentaries written by activist Nathan Law and veteran journalists Allan Au and Chan Pui-man. Chan, who is also Chung’s wife, earlier pleaded guilty in the Apple Daily case and is in custody awaiting her sentence.
Kwok said Lam and Chung were aware of and agreed with the seditious intent, and that they made Stand News available as a platform to incite hatred against the Beijing and Hong Kong governments and the judiciary.
Eu told the court that the articles in question represented only a small portion of what Stand News had published. The defendants also stressed their journalistic mission in their mitigation letters.
On Thursday morning, dozens of people waited in line to secure a seat in the courtroom. Former Stand News reader Andrew Wong said he wanted to attend the hearing to show his support, though he felt it was like “attending a funeral.” Wong, who works in a non-governmental organization, said he expected the convictions last month, but still felt “a sense that we’ve passed a point of no return” when he heard the verdict.
“Everything we had in the past is gone,” he said. Their trial, which began in October 2022, lasted some 50 days. The verdict was postponed several times for reasons including a wait for an appeal outcome in another landmark sedition case.
Hong Kong was ranked 135 out of 180 territories in Reporters Without Borders’ latest World Press Freedom Index, down from 80 in 2021, and 18 in 2002.
Self-censorship has also become more common during the political crackdown on dissent following the 2019 protests, with increased reports of harassment against journalists in recent months. In March, the city government enacted another new security law that raised concerns about further curtailment of press freedom.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Man Charged in an Illinois Attack That Left 4 Dead Is Due Back in Court
Topics in Legal News |
2024/04/02 16:38
|
A northern Illinois man charged with killing four people and injuring seven others by stabbing, beating and driving over them is expected back in court on Tuesday.
A judge in the city of Rockford is expected to consider prosecutors' request that Christian Soto remain jailed pending trial. The 22-year-old appeared briefly in court on Thursday, a day after the attacks in Rockford and his arrest. His defense asked for more time to prepare for the hearing.
The Winnebago County Public Defender's office, listed as Soto's representative in court documents, has not returned messages from The Associated Press seeking comment on his behalf.
The Winnebago County coroner on Thursday identified those killed as 63-year-old Romona Schupbach; 23-year-old Jacob Schupbach; 49-year-old Jay Larson; and 15-year-old Jenna Newcomb.
Authorities last week described a series of frenzied attacks within minutes at multiple addresses in a Rockford neighborhood, but said they had not determined a motive.
Winnebago County State’s Attorney J. Hanley said Soto told police after his arrest that he had smoked marijuana with Jacob Schupbach and believed the drugs “were laced with an unknown narcotic" that made him paranoid.
Authorities have said Soto first stabbed Schupbach and his mother then violently attacked other people in the area and inside other homes. They said he beat, stabbed and used a truck to run over Larson, who was working as a mail carrier; wounded three people inside one home; and beat Newcomb, her sister and a friend with a baseball bat inside another home.
Authorities said Winnebago County sheriff deputies arrested Soto as he fled from another home where he had stabbed a woman and had been slowed down by a man driving by who stopped to intervene. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
A Supreme Court ruling in a social media case could set standards
Topics in Legal News |
2024/03/19 10:11
|
In a busy term that could set standards for free speech in the digital age, the Supreme Court on Monday is taking up a dispute between Republican-led states and the Biden administration over how far the federal government can go to combat controversial social media posts on topics including COVID-19 and election security.
The justices are hearing arguments in a lawsuit filed by Louisiana, Missouri and other parties accusing officials in the Democratic administration of leaning on the social media platforms to unconstitutionally squelch conservative points of view. Lower courts have sided with the states, but the Supreme Court blocked those rulings while it considers the issue.
The high court is in the midst of a term heavy with social media issues. On Friday, the court laid out standards for when public officials can block their social media followers. Less than a month ago, the court heard arguments over Republican-passed laws in Florida and Texas that prohibit large social media companies from taking down posts because of the views they express.
The cases over state laws and the one being argued Monday are variations on the same theme, complaints that the platforms are censoring conservative viewpoints. The states argue that White House communications staffers, the surgeon general, the FBI and the U.S. cybersecurity agency are among those who coerced changes in online content on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter) and other media platforms.
“It’s a very, very threatening thing when the federal government uses the power and authority of the government to block people from exercising their freedom of speech,” Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said in a video her office posted online.
The administration responds that none of the actions the states complain about come close to problematic coercion. The states “still have not identified any instance in which any government official sought to coerce a platform’s editorial decisions with a threat of adverse government action,” wrote Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, the administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer. Prelogar wrote that states also can’t “point to any evidence that the government ever imposed any sanction when the platforms declined to moderate content the government had flagged — as routinely occurred.”
The companies themselves are not involved in the case.
Free speech advocates say the court should use the case to draw an appropriate line between the government’s acceptable use of the bully pulpit and coercive threats to free speech.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Trump arrives in federal court in Florida for classified docs case
Topics in Legal News |
2024/02/13 16:46
|
Former President Donald Trump arrived Monday morning at a federal courthouse in Florida for a closed hearing in his criminal case charging him with mishandling classified documents.
The hearing was scheduled to discuss the procedures for the handling of classified evidence in the case, which is currently set for trial on May 20. Trump faces dozens of felony counts accusing him of hoarding highly classified records at his Mar-a-Lago estate and obstructing FBI efforts to get them back.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon expects to hear arguments in the morning from defense lawyers and in the afternoon from prosecutors, each outside of the other’s presence.
“Defense counsel shall be prepared to discuss their defense theories of the case, in detail, and how any classified information might be relevant or helpful to the defense,” Cannon wrote in scheduling the hearing.
Trump’s motorcade arrived at the courthouse in Fort Pierce shortly after 9 a.m.
The hearing is one of several voluntary court appearances that Trump has made in recent weeks — he was present, for instance, at appeals court arguments last month in Washington — as he looks to demonstrate to supporters that he intends to fight the four criminal prosecutions he faces while also seeking to reclaim the White House this November. |
|
|
|
|
|
Legal News RSS Feed
