The Supreme Court is gearing up to hear a serious legal challenge on Dec. 1 to its 1973 ruling legalizing abortion throughout the United States—and contributing mightily to the polarization of the politics of the nation for nearly half a century. The court will hear Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, court file 19-1392, a challenge to Mississippi’s Gestational Age Act, which allows abortions after 15 weeks’ gestational age only in medical emergencies or for severe fetal abnormality. Lower courts struck down the statute. It’s the first direct challenge to Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that made abortion lawful throughout the United States, … Continue reading Supreme Court to hear Mississippi abortion case that could overturn Roe v. Wade

The Supreme Court gave a cool reception to the Biden administration during oral arguments on Nov. 29 in a case in which a health care system was seeking higher government reimbursements for treating low-income patients. The case, on appeal from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, is Becerra v. Empire Health Foundation, court file 20-1312. Xavier Becerra is U.S. secretary of health and human services. At issue is how the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) figures out special Medicare payments to “disproportionate share hospitals,” sometimes called “DSH hospitals,” whose patients are largely low-income persons. Empire Health … Continue reading Supreme Court hears dispute over Medicare payment formula for safety-net hospitals

The Biden-Harris regime’s embattled nominee to oversee the banking system is a dishonest small-c communist who aspires to nationalize Americans’ bank accounts, crush the energy sector, and deindustrialize the world’s largest economy by creating a mammoth new bureaucracy to implement aspects of both the Green New Deal and the Great Reset. What could possibly go wrong? She’s not alone. Plenty of Democrats share Comptroller of the Currency nominee Saule Tarikhovna Omarova’s view that the economy is a plaything to be manipulated for political ends. Fortunately for your wallet, five of the more survival-savvy Democrats –including Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Mark Warner … Continue reading Partiya Lenina, Sila Narodnaya!

A conservative think tank filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against California to halt a law that will force quotas on publicly held corporations headquartered in the state, requiring them to appoint board members based solely on their race and sexual orientation. The legislation at issue is the fruit of last year’s race riots that caused more than $2 billion in property damage and were organized nationwide by Black Lives Matter and Antifa. The lawsuit, National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR) v. Weber, was filed on Nov. 22 in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California. Defendant Shirley Weber, a radical … Continue reading California sued over law forcing appointment of minorities and LGBT to corporate boards

After a civil trial, a federal jury in Virginia ordered organizers of the ill-fated “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville to pay 9 plaintiffs more than $20 million in compensatory and punitive damages for physical and emotional injuries. The case in Sines v. Kessler, civil action 3:17-cv-72, was heard in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia. The rally in question took place in Charlottesville on Aug. 12, 2017. The event attracted neo-Nazis, but many non-Nazis attended to protest a proposal to remove a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee from a nearby park. The plaintiffs claimed that a nighttime … Continue reading Civil jury finds ‘Unite the Right’ rally organizers responsible for 2017 Charlottesville violence

The Supreme Court is leaving in place a lower court ruling that allows New Jersey to unilaterally withdraw from a powerful bistate commission that was created to monitor corruption at the storied Port of New York and New Jersey. The case is Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor v. Murphy, court file 20-772. The port’s reckoning with organized crime was immortalized in director Elia Kazan’s 1954 film, “On the Waterfront,” which won eight Academy Awards. But organized crime was driven out years ago and critics have long blamed the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor for over-regulating businesses involved in the port and for labor … Continue reading Supreme Court allows New Jersey to quit Waterfront Commission

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