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High court won't hear Nevada patient dumping case
Legal News |
2015/07/01 14:21
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The Supreme Court won't hear an appeal from Nevada over a lawsuit that claims the state wrongfully bused indigent psychiatric patients to San Francisco without paying the costs of their medical care.
The justices on Tuesday let stand a lower court decision that said California state courts have authority to hear the case challenging Nevada's discharge policies.
San Francisco is seeking $500,000 in reimbursement costs for treating 29 patients who were given vouchers for one-way bus tickets to California. It also wants an order barring Nevada from sending over any more patients.
A California Superior Court judge ruled that Nevada could be sued in California because it knew San Francisco would have to spend money on the patients.
Nevada claims the lawsuit interferes with its sovereign powers.
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Supreme Court upholds key tool for fighting housing bias
Legal News |
2015/06/25 09:20
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The Supreme Court handed a surprising victory to the Obama administration and civil rights groups on Thursday when it upheld a key tool used for more than four decades to fight housing discrimination.
The justices ruled 5-4 that federal housing laws prohibit seemingly neutral practices that harm minorities, even without proof of intentional discrimination.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, often a swing vote, joined the court's four liberal members in upholding the use of so-called "disparate impact" cases.
The ruling is a win for housing advocates who argued that the housing law allows challenges to race-neutral policies that have a negative impact on minority groups. The Justice Department has used disparate impact lawsuits to win more than $500 million in legal settlements from companies accused of bias against black and Hispanic customers.
In upholding the tactic, the Supreme Court preserved a legal strategy that has been used for more than 40 years to attack discrimination in zoning laws, occupancy rules, mortgage lending practices and insurance underwriting. Every federal appeals court to consider it has upheld the practice, though the Supreme Court had never previously taken it up.
Writing for the majority, Kennedy said that language in the housing law banning discrimination "because of race" includes disparate impact cases. He said such lawsuits allow plaintiffs "to counteract unconscious prejudices and disguised animus that escape easy classification" under traditional legal theories.
"In this way disparate-impact liability may prevent segregated housing patterns that might otherwise result from covert and illicit stereotyping," Kennedy said.
Kennedy was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
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Dispute over union fees could return to Supreme Court
Headline Legal News |
2015/06/23 09:19
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Powerful public-sector unions are facing another high-profile legal challenge that they say could wipe away millions from their bank accounts and make it tougher to survive.
A group of California schoolteachers, backed by a conservative group, wants the Supreme Court to rule that unions representing government workers can't collect fees from those who choose not to join.
Half the states currently require state workers represented by a union to pay "fair share" fees covering bargaining costs, even if they are not members. The justices could decide as soon as next week whether to take the case.
Union opponents say it violates the First Amendment to require fees from nonmembers that may go to causes they don't support. They want the high court to overturn a 38-year-old precedent allowing the fees.
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Court allows hotly disputed discount contact lens price law
Lawyer Media News |
2015/06/14 19:09
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A federal appeals court ruling has cleared the way for discount contact lens retailers to drop prices while a legal battle is waged between the state of Utah and manufacturers who want to impose minimum prices on their products.
The decision handed down from the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver on Friday comes after three of the nation's largest contact lens manufacturers sued to halt a hotly contested law.
Supporters, including Utah-based discount seller 1-800 Contacts, say the newly enacted legislation bans price fixing for contact lenses. But opponents, including Alcon Laboratories, Johnson & Johnson and Bausch & Lomb, say it's a brazen overreach that allows discount sellers to violate interstate commerce regulations and skirt industry price standards.
Utah's attorney general has said the companies are wrongly driving up prices, and the law is a legitimate antitrust measure designed to enhance competition and help customers. Attorney General Sean Reyes' office didn't have a comment on the decision Friday.
The ruling allows the law to go into effect while a legal battle over the measure works its way through the courts. The appeals court did agree to fast-track the case and new briefs are due in the case later this month.
Donna Lorenson, a spokeswoman for Alcon, says the company is "extremely disappointed" and maintains the law violates interstate commerce rules. |
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Court says net neutrality rules will go into effect Friday
Legal News |
2015/06/13 19:09
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Rules that treat the Internet like a public utility and prevent companies from blocking or slowing down some online traffic will go into effect Friday after a federal appeals court refused to delay them.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said it won't postpone implementation of the net neutrality regulations even though AT&T, Verizon, and other companies are fighting against them. The panel said the United States Telecom Association, the plaintiffs in the case, did not satisfy the requirements for a stay.
The ruling is a setback for the industry, but the litigation will go on. The court accepted the Telecom Association's request to speed up the proceedings and asked the two sides to submit a schedule for briefing within two weeks.
Last February, the FCC agreed in a 3-2 vote to new rules that specifically prohibit service providers from blocking or slowing Internet traffic. To make sure the FCC has the authority to punish violators, the agency agreed to put Internet service in the same regulatory camp as the telephone and other utilities. That means providers would have to act in the "public interest" when supplying Internet service and refrain from "unjust or unreasonable" business practices. |
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New Jersey's top court sides with Christie on pensions
Lawyer Media News |
2015/06/11 19:08
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New Jersey's top court sided with Gov. Chris Christie on Tuesday, giving him a major victory in a fight with public worker unions over pension funds and sparing a new state budget crisis.
The state Supreme Court overturned a lower-court judge's order that told the Republican governor and the Democrat-controlled Legislature to work out a way to increase pension contributions for the current fiscal year, which ends June 30.
In a 5-2 ruling, the court said there wasn't an enforceable contract to force the full payment, as unions had argued there was.
"That the State must get its financial house in order is plain," Justice Jaynee LaVecchia wrote in the majority opinion. "The need is compelling in respect of the State's ability to honor its compensation commitment to retired employees. But this Court cannot resolve that need in place of the political branches. They will have to deal with one another to forge a solution to the tenuous financial status of New Jersey's pension funding in a way that comports with the strictures of our Constitution."
She noted that the state is obligated to pay individual retirees their pensions. That's not in danger this year, but unions say the funds could start going insolvent within the next decade.
Justice Barry Albin dissented and was joined by Chief Justice Stuart Rabner.
"The decision unfairly requires public workers to uphold their end of the law's bargain — increased weekly deductions from their paychecks to fund their future pensions — while allowing the State to slip from its binding commitment to make commensurate contributions," Albin wrote. "Thus, public workers continue to pay into a system on its way to insolvency."
One of Christie's signature achievements as governor has been a 2011 deal on pensions for public workers. Employees had to pay more and the government was locked into making up for years of skipped or reduced contributions.
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