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Supreme Court Will Take up New Health Law Dispute
Headline Court News | 2013/11/29 09:55
The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to referee another dispute over President Barack Obama's health care law, whether businesses can use religious objections to escape a requirement to cover birth control for employees.

The justices said they will take up an issue that has divided the lower courts in the face of roughly 40 lawsuits from for-profit companies asking to be spared from having to cover some or all forms of contraception.

The court will consider two cases. One involves Hobby Lobby Inc., an Oklahoma City-based arts and crafts chain with 13,000 full-time employees. Hobby Lobby won in the lower courts.

The other case is an appeal from Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp., a Pennsylvania company that employs 950 people in making wood cabinets. Lower courts rejected the company's claims.

The court said the cases will be combined for arguments, probably in late March. A decision should come by late June.

The cases center on a provision of the health care law that requires most employers that offer health insurance to their workers to provide a range of preventive health benefits, including contraception.

In both instances, the Christian families that own the companies say that insuring some forms of contraception violates their religious beliefs.

The key issue is whether profit-making corporations can assert religious beliefs under the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act or the First Amendment provision guaranteeing Americans the right to believe and worship as they choose. Nearly four years ago, the justices expanded the concept of corporate "personhood," saying in the Citizens United case that corporations have the right to participate in the political process the same way that individuals do.

"The government has no business forcing citizens to choose between making a living and living free," said David Cortman of the Alliance Defending Freedom, the Christian public interest law firm that is representing Conestoga Wood at the Supreme Court.


Amanda Knox appeals slander case to European court
Court Watch News | 2013/11/29 09:54
Lawyers for Amanda Knox filed an appeal of her slander conviction in Italy with the European Court of Human Rights, as her third murder trial was underway in Florence.

The slander conviction was based on statements Knox made to police in November 2007 when she was being questioned about the slaying of her British roommate, Meredith Kercher, in the house they shared in Perugia.

Knox says she was coerced into making false statements blaming the slaying on bar owner Patrick Lumumba.

"The interrogation took place in a language I barely spoke, without a lawyer present, and without the police informing me that I was a suspect in Meredith's murder, which was a violation of my human rights," Knox said in a statement released Monday as the appeal was filed.

Knox was convicted of slander at her first trial in December 2009. That conviction was upheld during the appeal that resulted in her 2011 murder acquittal.

Knox has returned to Seattle, where she is a student at the University of Washington. She is not attending the third trial being held in an appeals court in Florence.

The European Court for Human Rights is an international court in Strasbourg, France, that oversees the European Convention on Human Rights.


Appeals court won't toss NYC stop-frisk rulings
Press Release | 2013/11/25 14:30
A federal appeals court refused Friday to toss out court rulings finding that New York City carried out its police stop-and-frisk policy in a discriminatory manner, ending what was likely the city's last chance to nullify the decisions before the arrival of a new mayor who has criticized the tactic.

A three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a five-page order Friday, saying the city could make its arguments to toss out the rulings when its appeal of the decisions of U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin is heard next year.

Last month, the same appeals panel had suspended the effects of Scheindlin's rulings and removed her from the case, saying she misapplied a related ruling that allowed her to take the stop-and-frisk case and made comments to the media during a trial that called her impartiality into question.

The city had argued that the panel's decision to remove Scheindlin meant it should also nullify her rulings.


Wind energy firm pleads guilty to eagle deaths
Press Release | 2013/11/25 14:30
The government for the first time has enforced environmental laws protecting birds against wind energy facilities, winning a $1 million settlement from a power company that pleaded guilty to killing 14 eagles and 149 other birds at two Wyoming wind farms.

The Obama administration has championed pollution-free wind power and used the same law against oil companies and power companies for drowning and electrocuting birds. The case against Duke Energy and its renewable energy arm was the first prosecuted under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act against a wind energy company.

"In this plea agreement, Duke Energy Renewables acknowledges that it constructed these wind projects in a manner it knew beforehand would likely result in avian deaths," Robert G. Dreher, acting assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division, said in a statement Friday.

An investigation by The Associated Press in May revealed dozens of eagle deaths from wind energy facilities, including at Duke's Top of the World farm outside Casper, Wyo., the deadliest for eagles of 15 such facilities that Duke operates nationwide. The other wind farm included in the settlement, Campbell Hill, is northwest of Casper.


International court summit debates Africa issues
Press Release | 2013/11/22 09:35
The International Criminal Court's vexed relationship with Africa took center stage Wednesday on the opening day of the annual summit of its 122 member states.

The prosecutions of Kenya's president and his deputy have plunged relations between the world's first permanent war crimes court and the African Union to the deepest point in the court's 12-year history.

Kenyan Deputy President William Ruto is on trial for allegedly fomenting violence in the aftermath of his country's 2007 elections, and President Uhuru Kenyatta is due to go on trial in February on similar charges. Both men insist they are innocent.

"The court is facing a test of its veracity and its effectiveness," Kenya's Foreign Affairs Minister Amina Mohamed told delegates. "This meeting must come up with practical solutions to the challenges facing the court and the entire Rome Statute system."

The Rome Statute is the court's founding document, and one of its provisions is that heads of state do not enjoy immunity from prosecution.

But the African Union argues that Ruto and Kenyatta's trials should be delayed because Kenya needs its leaders to help fight al-Shabab terrorists in neighboring Somalia and at home.


Republicans block nominee to key appeals court
Headline Topics | 2013/11/22 09:31
Senate Republicans on Monday blocked President Barack Obama's nomination of Robert L. Wilkins to a key appellate court, continuing a nomination fight that has stoked partisan tensions in the Senate.

Wilkins, a District Court judge in Washington who in 2010 was confirmed by the Senate on a voice vote, was nominated to fill one of three vacancies on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He is the third straight nominee to the powerful court that Republicans have stopped from being seated.

The Senate voted 53-38 in favor of ending Republican-led delays, falling short of the 60 votes required to advance Wilkins' nomination. Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine voted with Democrats to end debate.

The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia is often referred to as the second most powerful court in the country, after the Supreme Court. Informally known as the D.C. circuit, the court's influence stems from its caseload — it rules on administration orders and regulations — and because some of its judges become Supreme Court justices. The D.C. circuit currently has eight active judges evenly divided between Democratic and Republican nominees.


Court reinstates death penalty notice for Monfort
Press Release | 2013/11/18 16:00
The state Supreme Court ruled Thursday that King County prosecutors can seek the death penalty against a man accused of killing a Seattle police officer.

In a unanimous decision, the high court overturned a February King County Superior Court ruling that had found that Prosecutor Dan Satterberg's decision to seek the death penalty against Christopher Monfort was invalid because he relied on a mitigation investigation by his office, rather than waiting for evidence from the defense. The Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty notice, and sent the case back to the trial court to proceed.

Monfort is accused of killing Officer Tim Brenton and wounding another officer as they sat in a patrol car Oct. 31, 2009, as well as setting fires to police cars earlier that month. Monfort was wounded by police during his arrest about a week later in Tukwila. He is paralyzed from the waist down and confined to a wheelchair.

Nearly 10 months after Monfort was arraigned, Satterberg announced he would seek the death penalty. At the time, his office had conducted interviews with more than two dozen of Monfort's friends, acquaintances and family members to see if there was mitigating evidence. Satterberg had not considered any mitigating evidence presented by defense attorneys, because they hadn't given him any.

Under state law, mitigating circumstances that could merit leniency include mental disturbance or disease.


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