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Judge blocks early voting cuts in Ohio
A federal judge has blocked Ohio’s cuts to early voting and its elimination of same-day voter registration-a major voting rights victory in the nation’s ultimate presidential battleground state.
Judge Peter Economus ruled Thursday that the cuts violated the Voting Rights Act’s ban on racial discrimination in voting, as well as the Equal Protection clause of the U.S. Constitution. He issued an injunction barring them from going into effect before the November election, and directed Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted to add a second Sunday of early voting.[…]
Voting rights advocates cheered.
“This ruling will safeguard the vote for thousands of Ohioans during the midterm election,” said Dale Ho, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Voting Rights Project, which brought the case. “If these cuts had been allowed to remain in place, many voters would have lost a critical opportunity to participate in our democratic process this November. This is a huge victory for Ohio voters and for all those who believe in protecting the integrity of our elections.”
“Today’s outcome represents a milestone in our effort to continue to protect voting rights even after the Supreme Court’s deeply misguided decision in Shelby County,” said Attorney General Eric Holder, during a speech about the Justice Department’s investigation into the Ferguson, Missouri police department. The Justice Department had filed a supporting brief in the Ohio challenge.
Of course, Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State plans to appeal. We outnumber them and the only hope they have to remain in power is to disenfranchise us. Another reminder of why the presidency — and the Senate, where judicial nominations are confirmed — are so important.
Judge Finds BP Was ‘Reckless’ And Grossly Negligent In 2010 Deepwater Horizon Spill
A federal judge ruled Thursday that BP was grossly negligent in helping cause the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010, and that the oil company is liable for 67 percent of the blame.
U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier said in his decision that BP’s conduct was “reckless,” while the conduct of Halliburton and Transocean – the other two companies involved in the spill – was “negligent.” While BP was 67 percent responsible for the spill, Transocean, an offshore drilling company that owned the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, was 30 percent responsible, and Halliburton, the contracting company that was responsible for cementing the Macondo well, was only 3 percent responsible. […]
The ruling opens BP up to a fine of $18 billion – the maxiumum penalty under the Clean Water Act – which the company could be charged if Judge Barbier later rules that, as U.S. prosecutors say, the disaster spilled more than 4 million gallons into the Gulf. BP told the Wall Street Journal that it plans to appeal the decision.
The wheels of justice spin slowly but with good government and strong laws, people can often prevail in the courts.
More …
Health Law Gets Reprieve As Appeals Court Agrees To Rehear Key Case
The controversial federal court decision that threatened the future of the Affordable Care Act is no more.
The full District of Columbia Court of Appeals Thursday agreed to rehear Halbig v. Burwell, a case charging that the federal government lacks the authority to provide consumers tax credits in health insurance exchanges not run by states.
The order technically cancels the three-judge ruling from July that found for the plaintiffs. That ruling, if upheld, could jeopardize the entire structure of the Affordable Care Act by making insurance unaffordable for millions of consumers in the 36 states where the federal government operates the exchange.
The full court, with its ideological makeup, is unlikely to rule in favor of Halbig. The most important part of the set aside of the ruling is this:
For the time being, the order also eliminates the so-called circuit split that could prompt the Supreme Court to take up the case. The same day the panel from the Washington, D.C., circuit had decided that tax credits are not allowed in federal exchanges, a three-judge panel from the 4th Circuit in Richmond, Va., decided exactly the opposite.
But now that there are no appeals courts in technical disagreement, “it’s much less likely the Supreme Court will take it,” said Ian Millhiser of the Center for American Progress.
Scottie Thomaston at EOT: Seventh Circuit rules marriage bans in Indiana and Wisconsin are unconstitutional
In an opinion by Judge Richard Posner, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled in Wolf v. Walker and Baskin v. Bogan that same-sex marriage bans in Wisconsin and Indiana are unconstitutional.
Posner writes:
To return to where we started in this opinion, more than unsupported conjecture that same-sex marriage will harm heterosexual marriage or children or any other valid and important interest of a state is necessary to justify discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. As we have been at pains to explain, the grounds advanced by Indiana and Wisconsin for their discriminatory policies are not only conjectural; they are totally implausible.
Apparently Judge Posner added himself to the list of federal judges who found Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia mockworthy. Oops, it appears that he was already there:
Scalia and Posner, both appointed by Ronald Reagan, have been feuding for several years. In 2012, Posner wrote a lengthy piece in The New Republic attacking Scalia’s newly published book, arguing that the justice’s philosophy of “originalism” was a smokescreen for the goal of achieving conservative ideological outcomes.
Speaking of which, another reminder that Justice Scalia is often wrong but always unpleasant. Yesterday, a wrongfully convicted man was released from death row after DNA evidence exonerated him. Scalia used that case to make a point in 1994 that the death penalty was “exactly what was needed” for such a terrible crime:
The man, Henry Lee McCollum, was described by Justice Antonin Scalia in 1994 as an example of why the death penalty was justified.
That year, the Supreme Court declined to review the case. Scalia and Justice Harry Blackmun wrote rivaling dissenting opinions in Callins v. Collins stating their strong beliefs for and against the death penalty, respectively.
The “death of a convicted murderer by lethal injection,” Scalia wrote, “looks even better next to some of the other cases currently before us, which Justice Blackmun did not select as the vehicle for his announcement that the death penalty is always unconstitutional, for example, the case of the 11-year-old girl raped by four men and then killed by stuffing her panties down her throat. How enviable a quiet death by lethal injection compared with that!”
His comment is a call for revenge: that someone — anyone, apparently — must pay the ultimate price for the awful murder he describes. But what it missed is that to be murdered for a crime you did not commit simply to satisfy the blood lust of Antonin Scalia is just as awful, maybe more so because our jurists, unlike the murderer, are supposedly civilized. Oh, and this:
The New York Times reported that the two men, both African-Americans, were booked in 1983 despite physical evidence; McCollum eventually said he and his half brother gave false confessions after being coerced and threatened by the authorities, disavowing them during the trial.
That would surely never happen in post-racial America … except maybe every day.
Editor’s Note: Feel free to share other news stories in the comments.
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