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High court won’t extend Wisconsin’s absentee ballot deadline
Court News |
2020/10/27 16:29
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The Supreme Court is siding with Republicans to prevent Wisconsin from counting mailed ballots that are received after Election Day. In a 5-3 order, the justices on Monday refused to reinstate a lower court order that called for mailed ballots to be counted if they are received up to six days after the Nov. 3 election. A federal appeals court had already put that order on hold.
The three liberal justices dissented from the order that the court issued just before the Senate started voting on Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court nomination. Chief Justice John Roberts last week joined the liberals to preserve a Pennsylvania state court order extending the absentee ballot deadline but voted the other way in the Wisconsin case, which has moved through federal courts.
“Different bodies of law and different precedents govern these two situations and require, in these particular circumstances, that we allow the modification of election rules in Pennsylvania but not Wisconsin,” Roberts wrote. Democrats argued that the flood of absentee ballots and other challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic makes it necessary to extend the period in which ballots can be counted. Wisconsin is one of the nation’s hot spots for COVID-19, with hospitals treating a record high number of patients with the disease.
Republicans opposed the extension, saying that voters have plenty of opportunities to cast their ballots by the close of polls on Election Day and that the rules should not be changed so close to the election. Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman Ben Wikler responded to the ruling by pledging Democrats would be “dialing up a huge voter education campaign” to prod roughly 360,000 people who hadn’t yet returned absentee ballots to hand-deliver them by 8 p.m. on Election Day, or to vote in person.
State Republican Party Chairman Andrew Hitt praised the ruling. “Absentee voting in Wisconsin is extremely easy and hundreds of thousands of people have done it already- last-minute attempts to change election laws only cause more voter confusion and erode the integrity of our elections,” he said in a statement.
The justices often say nothing, or very little, about the reasons for their votes in these emergency cases, but on Monday, four justices wrote opinions totaling 35 pages to lay out their competing rationales.
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High Court Won't Take up Ex-Kentucky Clerk Kim Davis' Case
Court News |
2020/10/05 09:07
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The Supreme Court is leaving in place a decision that allowed a lawsuit to move forward against a Kentucky clerk who was jailed in 2015 after refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
The high court said Monday it would not take the case involving Kim Davis, the former clerk of Rowan County, and two same-sex couples who had sued her. Soon after the 2015 Supreme Court decision in which same-sex couples won the right to marry nationwide, Davis, a Christian who has a religious objection to same-sex marriage, stopped issuing all marriage licenses.
That led to lawsuits against her, and a judge ordered Davis to issue the licenses. She spent five days in jail after refusing. Davis had argued that a legal doctrine called qualified immunity protected her from being sued for damages by couples David Ermold and David Moore as well as James Yates and Will Smith. Their case will now move forward. Davis, a Republican, ultimately lost her bid for reelection in 2018. Democrat Elwood Caudill Jr. is now the county’s clerk.
Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas wrote for himself and Justice Samuel Alito that while he agreed with the decision not to hear the case, it was a "stark reminder of the consequences" of the court's 2015 decision in the same-sex marriage case. Because of that case, he wrote, “those with sincerely held religious beliefs concerning marriage will find it increasingly difficult to participate in society without running afoul" of the case “and its effect on other antidiscrimination laws.”
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Israel court says woman can be extradited in child sex case
Court News |
2020/09/21 10:14
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An Israeli court on Monday approved the extradition of a former teacher wanted in Australia on charges of child sex abuse, potentially paving the way for her to stand trial after a six-year legal battle.
Malka Leifer, a former educator who is accused of sexually abusing several former students, has been fighting extradition from Israel since 2014. Leifer maintains her innocence and the battle surrounding her extradition has strained relations between Israel and Australia.
Earlier this month, Israel's Supreme Court rejected an appeal by Leifer's attorney over a Jerusalem court's ruling that she was mentally fit to stand trial, saying it was “putting an end to the saga that has been drawn out for many years.”
On Monday, the Jerusalem District Court ruled that Leifer could be extradited to Australia to stand trial for 74 charges of child sex abuse. The formal extradition now requires an order by Israel's justice minister.
Leifer’s attorneys said they would appeal an extradition order to Israel’s Supreme Court, saying it would be a "political decision."
“For those who think that this chapter is now closed, I’m sorry, the process will still last quite a few months more,” said Nick Kaufman, one of Leifer’s defense lawyers.
Critics, including Leifer’s alleged victims, have accused Israeli authorities of dragging out the case for far too long.
State prosecutor Avital Ribner Oron said Leifer had made “every effort to avoid and delay the extradition proceedings” but that “today the court put an end to those efforts and declared her extraditable to Australia.”
The ruling “was an important decision for the rule of law, for international cooperation, and most importantly, to the victims of Malka Leifer’s crimes,” Oron said. |
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Gay marriages rise 5 years after Supreme Court ruling
Court News |
2020/09/18 11:20
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Five years after the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriages around the U.S., more than a half million households are made up of married same-sex couples, according to figures the U.S. Census Bureau released Thursday.
Since 2014, the year before the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same sex marriages, the number of married same-sex households has increased by almost 70%, rising to 568,110 couples in 2019, according to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.
Of the 980,000 same-sex couple households reported in 2019, 58% were married couples and 42% were unmarried partners, the survey showed.
There were slightly more female couple households than male couple households.
“Opponents of marriage equality frequently argued that same-sex couples really weren’t all that interested in marriage. But the large increase in marriages among same-sex couples since marriage equality became legal nationwide offers evidence of the clear desire for marriage among same-sex couples,” said Gary Gates, a demographer specializing in LGBT issues.
The survey revealed noticeable economic differences between male couples and female couples, as well as same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples.
Same-sex married couples had a higher median income than opposite-sex married couples, $107,210 compared to $96,932. In same-sex marriages, though, male couples earned more than female couples, $123,646 versus $87,690.
According to the survey, same-sex married households were more likely to be in the workforce than opposite-sex married households, 84.6% compared to 80.4%.
However, there was a difference between gay and lesbian couples. Married women in same-sex households were much more likely to be working than married women in opposite-sex households, but the reverse was true for married men in same-sex households. They were less likely to be working than married men in opposite-sex households, according to the Census Bureau.
“While most research shows that gay and bisexual men, on average, do not earn more than their comparable heterosexual male counterparts, that research also shows that they tend to earn more than lesbian and bisexual women,” Gates said. “Unfortunately, gender discrimination is present, regardless of sexual orientation.”
Separate survey results also released Thursday show almost 15% of same-sex couples had at least one child under age 18, compared to 37.8% of opposite-sex couples. Of the nearly 300,000 children living in a homes with same-sex couples, 66% were children of both partners or spouses, compared to 95% for opposite-sex couples, according to the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey.
The District of Columbia had the greatest concentration of same-sex households, at 2.4% of households, followed by Delaware (1.3%), Oregon (1.2%), Massachusetts (1.2%) and Washington State (1.1%), according to the American Community Survey. |
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Court: Trump can end temporary legal status for 4 countries
Court News |
2020/09/14 08:32
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The Trump administration can end humanitarian protections that have allowed hundreds of thousands of people from El Salvador, Nicaragua, Haiti and Sudan to remain in the United States, a divided appeals court ruled Monday.
While an appeal is imminent and orders to leave wouldn’t take effect for months, the decision moved many people closer to losing legal status, including families who have been in the U.S. for decades and have young children who are American citizens.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals lifted a preliminary injunction that blocked the government from ending Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, for people from those four countries that are affected by natural disasters and civil conflict.
The order also applies to beneficiaries from Honduras and Nepal, who sued separately but are subject to Monday’s ruling under an agreement between attorneys for both sides, said Ahilan Arulanantham, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, who argued on behalf of TPS holders.
Since 1990, the policy has granted temporary legal status, which is often extended. But the Trump administration decided to end it for several countries, saying the conditions that justified protections in America no longer exist.
That decision had been on hold even as President Donald Trump moved to restrict other forms of humanitarian status in the U.S., such as refugee resettlement and access to asylum.
A three-judge 9th Circuit panel in Pasadena, California, rejected arguments that the administration failed to follow proper procedures and that racially motivated comments by the president and his aides about some of the countries drove the decision to end TPS.
The ACLU noted that in 2017, Trump said recent immigrants from Haiti “all have AIDS” and that Nigerians, once seeing the United States, would never “go back to their huts” in Africa.
White House pressure on Homeland Security leaders to end TPS didn’t prove racial motivation and was “neither unusual nor improper,” wrote Judge Consuelo Callahan, who was appointed by President George W. Bush. She noted that the administration extended TPS for other non-white, non-European countries.
“While we do not condone the offensive and disparaging nature of the president’s remarks, we find it instructive that these statements occurred primarily in contexts removed from and unrelated to TPS policy or decisions,” Callahan wrote. |
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Investment Fraud Litigation |
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Securities fraud, also known as stock fraud and investment fraud, is a practice that induces investors to make purchase or sale decisions on the basis of false information, frequently resulting in losses, in violation of the securities laws. Securities Arbitration. Generally speaking, securities fraud consists of deceptive practices in the stock and commodity markets, and occurs when investors are enticed to part with their money based on untrue statements.
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The content contained on the web site has been prepared by Securities Law News as a service to the internet community and is not intended to constitute legal advice or a substitute for consultation with a licensed legal professional in a particular case. | Affordable Law Firm Website Design by Law Promo |
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