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Health overhaul's subsidies at Supreme Court
Court Watch |
2014/10/30 10:05
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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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Mom accused of killing 6 babies appears in court
Court Watch |
2014/10/22 13:38
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A Utah judge will get his first chance in December to hear the evidence against a woman accused of killing six of her seven newborns and storing all of their bodies in her garage.
Attorneys for Megan Huntsman, 39, decided Monday not to waive their right to a preliminary hearing. That proceeding has been set for Dec. 11. At the conclusion of the hearing, a judge will decide if there is sufficient proof to send the case to trial.
Huntsman is in jail on $6 million bail, charged with six counts of first-degree murder. She has not yet entered a plea. She made a brief appearance in court Monday, but didn't speak.
Huntsman's estranged husband discovered the infants' bodies on April 12 while cleaning out the home they had shared in Pleasant Grove, Utah, a city of about 35,000 south of Salt Lake City.
Police say Huntsman strangled or suffocated the infants from 1996 to 2006, and that a seventh baby found in her garage was stillborn. Investigators believe Huntsman was addicted to methamphetamine and didn't want to care for the babies.
DNA results have revealed that all seven babies were full term and that her now-estranged husband, Darren West, was the biological father of the infants.
Huntsman lived with West during the 10-year period the children were killed, but he is not considered a suspect in the deaths. He went to prison in 2006 and spent more than eight years behind bars after pleading guilty to drug charges.
West made the grisly discovery while cleaning out the garage. He called police to report finding a dead infant in a small white box covered with electrician's tape. Six other bodies were found wrapped in shirts or towels inside individual boxes in the garage after police obtained a search warrant. |
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Case of American jailed in Cuba back in US court
Court Watch |
2014/09/22 15:29
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A government subcontractor who has spent over four years imprisoned in Cuba should be allowed to sue the U.S. government over lost wages and legal fees, his attorney told an appeals court Friday.
Alan Gross was working in Cuba as a government subcontractor when he was arrested in 2009. He has since lost income and racked up legal fees, his attorney Barry Buchman told the three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. A lawyer for the government argued the claims are based on his detention in Cuba, making him ineligible to sue.
The panel is expected to issue a written ruling on the case at a later date.
A lower-court judge previously threw out Gross' lawsuit against the government in 2013, saying federal law bars lawsuits against the government based on injuries suffered in foreign countries. Gross' lawyers appealed.
Gross was detained in December 2009 while working to set up Internet access as a subcontractor for the U.S. government's U.S. Agency for International Development, which does work promoting democracy in the communist country. It was his fifth trip to Cuba to work with Jewish communities on setting up Internet access that bypassed local censorship. Cuba considers USAID's programs illegal attempts by the U.S. to undermine its government, and Gross was tried and sentenced to 15 years in prison. |
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Court: Silence can be used against suspects
Court Watch |
2014/08/18 14:16
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The California Supreme Court has ruled that the silence of suspects can be used against them.
Wading into a legally tangled vehicular manslaughter case, a sharply divided high court on Thursday effectively reinstated the felony conviction of a man accused in a 2007 San Francisco Bay Area crash that left an 8-year-old girl dead and her sister and mother injured.
Richard Tom was sentenced to seven years in prison for manslaughter after authorities said he was speeding and slammed into another vehicle at a Redwood City intersection.
Prosecutors repeatedly told jurors during the trial that Tom's failure to ask about the victims immediately after the crash but before police read him his so-called Miranda rights showed his guilt.
Legal analysts said the ruling could affect future cases, allowing prosecutors to exploit a suspect's refusal to talk before invoking 5th Amendment rights against self-incrimination.
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German court receives suit against EU bank union
Court Watch |
2014/07/28 13:33
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A group of German professors has filed a complaint to the country's highest court against the European Union's plans to create a so-called banking union, a central part of the effort to make the continent's financial system more resilient.
The Federal Constitutional Court said Monday it had received the complaint. It wasn't clear when the court might rule; verdicts on previous attempts to block measures meant to stem Europe's debt crisis took at least several months.
The group behind the complaint says the banking union "has no legal basis in the European treaties."
It objects to handing the European Central Bank direct supervision of the eurozone's biggest lenders with binding powers over national authorities, and opposes plans for a separate authority with the power to dissolve or restructure failing banks. |
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Utah to appeal gay marriage ruling to high court
Court Watch |
2014/07/11 10:20
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Utah has decided to go straight to the U.S. Supreme Court to argue against gay marriage, meaning the nation's highest court will have at least one same-sex marriage case on its plate when it returns in October.
The office of the Utah attorney general announced Wednesday that it would bypass a full appeals court and take the gay marriage case to the Supreme Court instead.
If the U.S. Supreme court decides to take the case, it will be the first time the top court considers gay marriage since justices last year struck down part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act. The high court is under no obligation to the take the case, and it could wait for rulings from one or more of the five other appellate courts with gay marriage cases pending, legal scholars say.
Utah's appeal is of a June 25 ruling from a three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, which found states cannot deprive people of the fundamental right to marry simply because they choose partners of the same sex. The panel immediately put the ruling on hold pending an appeal. |
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