The Virginia Supreme Court has appointed two special masters nominated by either political party to redraw Virginia’s electoral maps within a 30-day deadline after an independent state commission deadlocked over a redistricting plan. A special master is someone appointed by a court to carry out some sort of action on its behalf, in this case to make new state legislative and congressional district maps using newly available census data. While Virginia will continue to have 11 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, population shifts within the state mean the boundaries will have to move. Electoral district boundaries are generally decided by state legislatures, … Continue reading Virginia Supreme Court names outside experts to draw maps in messy redistricting fight

The Washington Supreme Court denied for the time being a request to unmask the off-duty Seattle police officers who took intense political heat after the fact for attending the Jan. 6 “Stop the Steal” rally in the nation’s capital. The huge rally in support of then-President Donald Trump’s claim that the election was being stolen took place as Congress began the process of officially tallying votes from the Electoral College. Some individuals entered the U.S. Capitol building, causing physical damage and halting for hours the count that eventually confirmed Joe Biden’s election as president. The unidentified law enforcement officials sued … Continue reading Washington Supreme Court refuses to allow release of officers’ names who attended Jan. 6 ‘Stop the Steal’ rally

The CVS Pharmacy chain has dropped a potentially precedent-setting Supreme Court case in which HIV/AIDS patients are claiming that the company was discriminating against them by enacting a policy requiring people in need of specialty medications to receive them by mail rather than at a local pharmacy. The case is CVS Pharmacy Inc. v. Doe. “Doe” refers collectively to five unnamed respondents who are individuals living with HIV/AIDS and who have employer-sponsored health care plans that allow them to obtain prescription drugs. The case was scheduled for oral argument before the Supreme Court on Dec. 7, but the parties filed a joint stipulation to … Continue reading CVS drops potentially precedent-setting Supreme Court case

The Supreme Court announced it will consider whether an hourly fast-food worker allegedly denied overtime pay is required to take her proposed wage-and-hour class-action lawsuit against a large Taco Bell franchisee to arbitration, instead of pursuing it in federal court. The case, Morgan v. Sundance Inc., court file 21-328, comes from the St. Louis, Missouri-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit. The Supreme Court okayed the petition for certiorari, or review, on Nov. 15, in an unsigned order. The respondent, Sundance Inc., owns upwards of 150 Taco Bell franchises throughout the country. The petitioner, Robyn Morgan, worked at one of those franchises … Continue reading Supreme Court agrees to hear Taco Bell overtime dispute

A lawyer for 17 doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals who object on religious grounds to New York’s tough vaccine mandate for health care workers filed an emergency application with the U.S. Supreme Court late on Nov. 12, claiming the state’s governor is waging “a veritable religious crusade to force medical professionals to be vaccinated.” The application is pending before a Supreme Court that has been reluctant to block mandates requiring people to accept vaccinations aimed at the CCP virus, which causes the disease COVID-19, but has been willing to curtail pandemic-related restrictions when religious freedoms have been threatened. In New York, for example, a year ago, … Continue reading NY governor’s hospital worker vaccine mandate said to be an unconstitutional ‘religious crusade’: Gov. Kathy Hochul previously said unvaccinated people are ignoring “what God wants”

Salmon fishermen are suing the Biden administration because an “unaccountable” federal fisheries board plans to shut down federal waters in Cook Inlet in Alaska, a move that will put them out of business. The legal complaint in Humbyrd v. Raimondo was filed Nov. 9 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska. Longtime salmon fishermen Wes Humbyrd, Robert Wolfe, and Dan Anderson are suing Gina Raimondo in her official capacity as secretary of the U.S. Department of Commerce. A regulation known as Amendment 14 that was proposed by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, a body created under federal law, would permanently close the federal … Continue reading Salmon fishermen sue to block federal shutdown of Alaskan fishery

An Illinois hospital defied an emergency court order over the weekend, refusing to allow an unvaccinated outside physician to administer the cheap drug ivermectin to a COVID-19 patient who was dying while being treated with expensive remdesivir, before finally relenting after being scolded by a judge. Some other hospitals have been ordered by courts to allow the drug to be used. The legal fight in the Illinois state court system comes as studies continue on the effectiveness of ivermectin in treating COVID-19. The costly drug remdesivir has been given emergency use authorization by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for treating certain … Continue reading After court admonishes hospital, it allows ivermectin for dying COVID-19 patient

A Texas death row inmate’s demand for his personal pastor not only to be present, but also praying and in physical contact with his body during administration of the lethal drugs that will end the prisoner’s life, is a delaying tactic, the state’s lawyer told the Supreme Court. Texas Solicitor General Judd E. Stone II said the condemned man, John Henry Ramirez, 37, has been wasting everyone’s time trying to delay his inevitable exit. “Petitioner has twice received the extremely exceptional remedy of having his execution halted at the last minute,” Stone said during oral arguments on Nov. 9. “Each time he … Continue reading Convicted murderer who insists on pastoral touch during execution is stalling, Texas tells Supreme Court

An appeals court was wrong to revive a stalled lawsuit against the FBI that was based on a claim that the agency discriminated against Muslims by targeting them in a counterterrorism investigation, the Biden administration told the Supreme Court on Nov. 8. The hearing in FBI v. Fazaga, court file 20-828, ran 47 minutes over the allotted 80. Former imam Yassir Fazaga and two other Muslim men from California sued the FBI and several individual agents, claiming the agency targeted Muslims for surveillance because of their religion as part of a program called Operation Flex. In the investigation, former FBI informant Craig Monteilh, who posed … Continue reading Supreme Court considers state-secrets privilege in Muslims’ surveillance lawsuit against FBI

Provisions in the Democrats’ proposed “Build Back Better Act,” a massive social spending bill that will cost trillions of dollars, will boost labor union coffers by billions of dollars, according to a new report from the Freedom Foundation in Washington state. In the report, Maxford Nelsen, director of labor policy for the Freedom Foundation, states that the bill, H.R. 5376, would vastly expand Medicaid funding for home- and community-based services (HCBS) that provide in-home care to, and prevent the institutionalization of, adults with disabilities. Such services are provided via state-designed and operated programs operating within federal parameters. The workers in those … Continue reading Democrats’ proposed Build Back Better Act a gift to unions, report says

A good-government group is suing Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson for refusing to remove dead registrants from her state’s voter rolls and for refusing to provide documents regarding her agency’s efforts to remove them from those lists. The Indianapolis-based Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) filed a federal lawsuit on Nov. 3 against Benson, a Democrat in office since 2019, for alleged violations of Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) of 1993, in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan. Section 8 of the NVRA requires the state to “conduct a general program that makes a reasonable effort to … Continue reading Michigan secretary of state sued for failing to remove dead from voter rolls

A student gymnast at the University of Minnesota is suing the school for sex-based discrimination after it cut the men’s varsity gymnastics team because it believes too many men participate in campus sports, given that female students outnumber males. The complaint initiating the lawsuit, Ng v. Board of Regents of the University of Minnesota, was filed on Oct. 29 in U.S. District Court in the District of Minnesota. Evan Ng is being represented pro bono by Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), a Sacramento-based nonprofit public interest law firm, with the assistance of attorney Samuel Diehl of CrossCastle PLLC. Ng, 19, has been a competitive gymnast since he … Continue reading Male gymnast sues University of Minnesota for sex-based discrimination after school cancels team

The Supreme Court seemed receptive to arguments that New York state’s tough concealed-carry gun permitting system violates the Second Amendment during a court hearing on Nov. 3. The legal challenge is important because it could result in a nationwide recognition of the right of Americans to possess guns outside the home, and carry guns in public places such as parks, schools, shopping malls, and churches. The Supreme Court has been strengthening Second Amendment protections in recent years and observers say the court’s 6-3 conservative supermajority could help expand gun ownership protections. In District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), the Supreme Court held … Continue reading Supreme Court takes aim at restrictive New York concealed-carry gun law

There was skepticism on both sides as the nine justices of the Supreme Court heard the arguments of opposing counsel this week in a challenge to Texas’s unique new fetal-heartbeat abortion law that relies on citizen participation for enforcement. The high-profile case moved at lightning speed, by Supreme Court standards, finding its way to oral arguments at the high court exactly two months after the controversial law took effect in the Lone Star State. Observers see the case as a way to test the cohesiveness of the court’s 6–3 conservative supermajority that’s been in place since 2020 when Justice Amy Coney Barrett replaced … Continue reading Skeptical Supreme Court hears challenge to Texas abortion law

The Supreme Court ordered an appeals court in New York to reconsider its ruling forcing religious charities to provide abortion coverage against their religious beliefs in their employee health insurance packages. The case is Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany v. Emami, court file 20-1501. The Supreme Court granted the diocese’s petition for certiorari, or review, on Nov. 1 and immediately vacated—without hearing oral arguments—the ruling of the New York court and remanded it to that court for further consideration in light of its pro-religious-freedom ruling earlier this year in Fulton v. Philadelphia. Apart from citing the previous ruling, the unsigned order didn’t provide reasons for the … Continue reading Supreme Court orders NY court to revisit ruling forcing Catholic diocese to cover employee abortions

A Texas law banning abortions after six weeks of pregnancy that authorizes anyone to sue when an illegal abortion is performed violates decades-old Supreme Court precedents, the Biden administration told the high court Nov. 1. Texas designed the statute “to thwart judicial review by offering bounties to the general public to carry out the state’s enforcement function,” U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar told the justices. “And it structured those enforcement proceedings to be so burdensome and to threaten such significant liability, that they chill the exercise of the constitutional right altogether.” The Supreme Court actually heard two related cases the same day. The first … Continue reading Texas ‘heartbeat’ abortion law is unconstitutional, Biden administration tells Supreme Court

The Supreme Court stayed a lower court’s order on Oct. 27 that would force a Michigan company to hand over documents to a Chinese manufacturer that’s disputing the value of the assets of the company’s German parent company that it purchased in 2017. In the case, ZF Automotive U.S. Inc. v. Luxshare Ltd., court file 21-401, the high court is being asked to resolve a split between federal courts of appeal on whether parties in private arbitration outside the country remain able to avail themselves of U.S. courts’ power to compel the production of evidence. The Supreme Court was recently poised to consider … Continue reading Supreme Court blocks order compelling company to hand over documents to Chinese manufacturer