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Abortion-rights supporters welcomed the delay Tuesday.
Court Feed News |
2014/11/05 22:43
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"Today the Oklahoma Supreme Court handed the women of Oklahoma a crucial victory by protecting their constitutional rights and restoring critical options for those seeking safe and legal abortion services," said Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is supporting efforts to fight the laws.
"Time and time again, courts are seeing that the true motive behind these underhanded and baseless restrictions is to push essential reproductive health care services out of reach for as many women as possible," she said.
A message seeking comment from Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt was not immediately returned. A spokesman for Gov. Mary Fallin said the governor was on the road on Election Day and was unsure if she could be reached for comment.
The New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights filed a lawsuit in October on behalf of an Oklahoma doctor who performs nearly half the state's abortions, seeking to block the law requiring admitting privileges law.
The physician, Dr. Larry Burns, said he had applied for admitting privileges at 16 nearby hospitals but had yet to get approval from any facility.
When Burns filed his lawsuit in October, Fallin — who signed the legislation into law in May— said she believed abortion was wrong and that she had been "proud to work with lawmakers in both parties to support legislation that protects the health and lives of both mothers and their unborn children." |
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Court won't hear dispute over abortion clinic law
Court Feed News |
2014/11/05 00:00
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The Supreme Court won't hear an appeal challenging the constitutionality of a Colorado law that prohibits people from obstructing entry to abortion clinics.
The justices on Monday left in place a lower court ruling that said the law does not restrict free speech or otherwise violate the rights of abortion protesters.
Protester Jo Ann Scott was convicted of violating the law after a jury found that she made physical contact with a woman trying to enter a Planned Parenthood clinic in Denver. An appeals court affirmed.
Scott argued that the law contains vague and overly broad terms that give police too much discretion to enforce it. |
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Health overhaul's subsidies at Supreme Court
Court Feed News |
2014/10/30 18:25
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Supreme Court justices have their first chance this week to decide whether they have the appetite for another major fight over President Barack Obama's health care law.
Some of the same players who mounted the first failed effort to kill the law altogether now want the justices to rule that subsidies that help millions of low- and middle-income people afford their premiums under the law are illegal.
The challengers are appealing a unanimous ruling of a three-judge panel of the federal appeals court in Richmond, Virginia, that upheld Internal Revenue Service regulations that allow health-insurance tax credits under the Affordable Care Act for consumers in all 50 states. The appeal is on the agenda for the justices' private conference on Friday, and word of their action could come as early as Monday.
The fight over subsidies is part of a long-running political and legal campaign to overturn Obama's signature domestic legislation by Republicans and other opponents of the law. Republican candidates have relentlessly attacked Democrats who voted for it, and the partisanship has continued on the federal bench. Every judge who has voted to strike down the subsidies was appointed by a Republican president.
The appeal has arrived at the Supreme Court at a curious time; there is no conflicting appeals court ruling that the justices often say is a virtual requirement for them to take on an issue. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg cited that practice, for example, as a reason she and her colleagues decided not to take on the same-sex marriage issue. And in the gay marriage cases, both sides were urging the court to step in. |
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Website asks high court to throw out lawsuit
Court Feed News |
2014/10/22 22:09
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A lawyer told the Washington Supreme Court on Tuesday that a lawsuit filed by three young girls who were sold as prostitutes on a website should be thrown out because the website didn't write the ads, so it's not liable.
But the victims' lawyer said the website, Backpage, doesn't have immunity under the federal Communications Decency Act because the website markets itself as a place to sell "escort services" and provides pimps with instructions on how to write an ad that works, making them a participant in the largest human-trafficking website in the U.S.
The justices plan to rule on the case at a later date.
Before the hearing several dozen people stood in the rain on the court steps with signs that read: "People's bodies are not commodities," ''End Child Slavery" and "Stop Buying Our Girls."
"No one has the right to sell a kid for sex," said Jo Lembo, with Shared Hope International. "That's why we're here. Someone has to speak up for them. They're kids."
A similar case was filed last week in federal court in Boston, but a previous case in Missouri was dismissed, said Yiota Souras, a lawyer with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. "The Washington state case has gone further than any previous case," she said. |
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Texas abortion clinics reopen after court reprieve
Court Feed News |
2014/10/20 20:03
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Texas abortion clinics that closed under tough new restrictions began reopening Wednesday after winning a reprieve at the U.S. Supreme Court, but the facilities were scheduling women with uncertainty and skeleton staffs.
A five-sentence ruling late Tuesday blocked parts of a sweeping Texas abortion law that required clinics to meet hospital-level operating standards starting Oct. 3. That had left only eight abortion facilities in the nation's second-most populous state.
Celebration among some abortion providers, however, was muted by logistics and fears that the victory is only temporary. Women seeking abortions kept phone lines busy at the Routh Street Women's Clinic in Dallas, where a former staff of 17 people is down to to single digits after the procedure was halted by the law earlier this month.
The high court only suspended the restrictions for now pending appeals, and offered no explanation for the decision.
"Some of them will come back, and some of them probably aren't," said Ginny Braun, the Dallas clinic director, about former employees that took other jobs in the past two weeks. "As one person eloquently put it this morning, whiplash is no longer a sustainable life choice for her."
Along the Texas-Mexico border, the only abortion clinic in 300 miles will resume abortion services in McAllen starting Friday, said Amy Hagstrom Miller, founder of Whole Woman's Health. But staffing and financial difficulties prevent any immediate reopening of clinics in Austin and Fort Worth, and the prospects of reopening another in Beaumont are even dimmer, she said.
Hagstrom Miller said she has laid off more than 50 employees since last year, and that the on-again, off-again status of her clinics have led to taking on $500,000 in debt over the last six months. |
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Colorado high court considers pot firing case
Court Feed News |
2014/10/03 16:41
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Pot may be legal in Colorado, but you can still be fired for using it.
Brandon Coats, a quadriplegic medical marijuana patient who was fired by the Dish Network after failing a drug test more than four years ago, says he still can't find steady work because employers are wary of his off-duty smoking.
In a case being closely watched around the country, Colorado's Supreme Court on Tuesday will hear arguments in Coats' case, which could have big implications for pot smokers in the first state to legalize recreational sales of the drug. The case highlights the clash between state laws that are increasingly accepting of marijuana use and employers' drug-free policies that won't tolerate it.
"Attitudes are changing toward marijuana. Laws are going to have to change, too," Coats told The Associated Press. "I'd like for this to enable people like me to find employment without being looked down upon."
Coats, 35, was paralyzed in a car crash as a teenager and has been a medical marijuana patient since 2009, when, after a doctor's urging, he discovered that pot helped calm violent muscle spasms that were making it difficult to work.
Coats, who worked for three years as a telephone operator with Dish, was fired in 2010 for failing a random company drug test. He said he told his supervisors in advance that he probably would fail the test.
He said he was never high at work, and Dish did not allege he was ever impaired on the job. But pot's intoxicating chemical, THC, can stay in the system for weeks.
Coats is making his argument under a state law intended to protect cigarette smokers from being fired for legal behavior off the clock.
But the company argues that because pot remains illegal at the federal level, medical marijuana isn't covered by the state law. A trial court judge and Colorado's appeals court agreed.
A patchwork of laws across the country and the conflict between state and federal laws has left the issue unclear. Twenty-three states and Washington, D.C., allow medical marijuana, but courts have ruled against employees who say their pot use is protected. Colorado and Washington state also now allow recreational sales, though court cases so far have involved medical patients.
Colorado's constitution specifically says that employers don't have to amend their policies to accommodate employees' marijuana use. But Arizona law, for example, says workers can't be punished for lawfully using medical marijuana unless it would jeopardize an employer's federal contract. |
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