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Supreme Court leaves Ohio voting restrictions in place

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to reinstate for the Nov. 8 general election Ohio’s “Golden Week”, which had allowed voters to register and cast ballots within the same seven-day period before it was repealed by a Republican-backed law two years ago.

Ohio Democrats had challenged the repeal on grounds that it discriminated against black voters, and had taken their case to the nation’s highest court after the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled against them in August.

The law was one of numerous measures enacted in recent years in Republican-governed states that Democrats and civil rights activists have said were intended to hamper voters, including African-Americans and Hispanics, who tend to favor Democratic candidates.

“Ohio Republicans can keep trying to make it harder for people to vote, but we will continue to fight them at every turn,” Ohio Democratic Party Chairman David Pepper said.

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, a Republican, countered that state election laws had made Ohio less vulnerable to voter fraud and “one of the easiest states in the nation in which to register and cast your ballot.”

The appeals court had reversed a May ruling by a U.S. district judge who blocked repeal of Golden Week, finding that the 2014 law violated voters’ rights.

The Supreme Court’s brief order did not note any dissenting votes on the short-handed eight-member court, evenly divided between liberal and conservative justices.

Ohio’s Republican-controlled legislature abolished Golden Week while also shortening the state’s early-voting period, during which ballots could be cast before an election, to four weeks from five weeks. Ohio often is a pivotal state in U.S. presidential elections.

In a separate Ohio voting-rights case decided on Tuesday by the 6th Circuit, a three-judge panel issued a split ruling.

Siding with a lower court, the appeals panel struck down a 2014 requirement that local election officials toss out absentee and provisional ballots if they contain an address or birth date that fails to perfectly match voting records.

But the panel reversed the lower court in upholding provisions restricting the assistance that poll workers can offer voters and reducing the number of days absentee voters have to remedy identification-envelope errors.

Golden Week was created to make it easier to vote in Ohio after lengthy lines at polling locations marred the 2004 election. In 2008, 60,000 people voted during Golden Week, and 80,000 did so in 2012.

The law erasing Golden Week was initially challenged in court by the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

In 2014, in an earlier round of litigation, the Supreme Court voted 5-4 to allow the repeal to take effect for that year’s election.

The case is one of several voting disputes being litigated ahead of the November election and is the third application for emergency action to reach the Supreme Court in recent weeks from three different states. The justices have rejected all three.

On Aug. 31, the court rejected a bid by North Carolina to reinstate several voting restrictions, including a requirement that people show identification at the polls.

Last Friday, the court rejected an effort by Michigan to reinstate a ban on “straight ticket” voting, the practice of using one mark to vote for all candidates from one party.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Additional reporting by Kim Palmer in Cleveland; Editing by Will Dunham)

Supreme Court stance on North Carolina law to send signal on voting limits

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court’s handling of North Carolina’s long-shot bid to reinstate its contentious voter identification law will set the tone for the court’s treatment of similar cases that could reach the justices before the Nov. 8 elections.

Voter identification laws were adopted by several states in recent years, generally driven by Republicans who said the laws were meant to prevent election fraud. Democrats have argued that the laws were meant to keep minorities, who tend to vote for Democrats, away from the polls. Civil rights groups have challenged the laws in court.

The Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on July 29 invalidated the North Carolina law, ruling that it intentionally discriminated against minority voters.

Attorneys for North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory, a Republican, filed court papers late on Monday with Chief Justice John Roberts, seeking restoration of parts of the law and arguing the appeals court was wrong to set it aside so close to the election.

The Supreme Court rarely grants such emergency requests, and is even less likely to do so now because it is down to only eight justices, rather than the usual nine, following the February death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia.

He was a likely vote to put the North Carolina law back in place for the election. But the court is now split evenly between liberals and conservatives.

“With a 4-4 court they are going to be very reticent (to intervene), whatever the topic,” said Rick Hasen, an election law expert at University of California, Irvine School of Law.

The vote of moderate liberal Justice Stephen Breyer could be key. Last month, he cast the deciding vote on a case involving a transgender student wanting to use the boys’ restroom at school. Saying he did so as a courtesy to his colleagues, Breyer voted to block a lower court decision in the student’s favor. This led some legal experts to say Breyer could vote this way again.

In 2014, the high court let some parts of the North Carolina law take effect for that year’s election. It acted similarly on a Texas voter identification law. Breyer did not publicly dissent in either case, unlike some of his liberal colleagues.

Opponents of the North Carolina law say the state’s argument about precipitous disruption of election law is weak, arguing that the 4th Circuit ruling left plenty of time for election workers to train on operating without voter ID in place.

Allison Riggs, an attorney for the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, a civil rights group that challenged the law, also noted that the state waited 17 days to file its Supreme Court application.

The North Carolina law, which also limited early voting and prevented residents from registering and voting on the same day, was enacted in 2013.

Whatever the high court does is likely to signal how it would act in any other voting controversies before the election.

In recent weeks, courts have handed wins to voting rights advocates in several states, including Wisconsin and Texas. Some of those disputes could also reach the high court before the election.

North Carolina’s application does not seek to reinstate all elements of the law prior to the election, meaning some provisions, including a ban on same-day registration, will not be in effect whatever the high court does.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Jonathan Oatis)

Court denies North Carolina motion to stay decision on voter ID law

(Reuters) – A U.S. appeals court issued an order on Thursday denying North Carolina’s motion to stay the court’s decision last week striking down the state’s voter ID law.

The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said staying its ruling now “would only undermine the integrity and efficiency of the upcoming election.”

On Friday, the court ruled that the North Carolina law, which required voters to show photo identification when casting ballots, intentionally discriminated against African-American residents.

Attorneys for the state in a written motion earlier this week asked the court to put its ruling on hold while the state appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court and seeks to overturn the decision ahead of the U.S. presidential election in November.

The court’s move to strike down the state’s voter ID law was a victory for rights advocates that will enable thousands of people to vote more easily and could boost Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s support in the state going into the election.

The decision by the U.S. appeals court also canceled provisions of the law that scaled back early voting in the potential swing state, prevented residents from registering and voting on the same day, and eliminated the ability of voters to vote outside their assigned precinct.

The order noted that North Carolina officials already said they could conduct early voting at Board of Election offices for each county, in line with the ruling.

“Finally, we observe that our injunction merely returns North Carolina’s voting procedures to the status quo prevailing before the discriminatory law was enacted,” the order denying a stay said.

(Reporting by Eric Beech in Washington and Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles; Editing by Eric Walsh and Diane Craft)

Texas professors seek U.S. court help to ban guns in classrooms

File photo of a student walking at the University of Texas campus in Austin

By Jon Herskovitz

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) – Three University of Texas professors plan to ask a U.S. judge on Thursday to give them the option of barring students from bringing guns into their classroom after the state gave some students that right under a law then went into effect this week.

The professors said academic freedom could be chilled under the so-called campus carry law backed by the state’s Republican political leaders that allows concealed handgun license holders 21 and over to bring handguns into classrooms and other university facilities.

“The forced presence of handguns will inevitably dampen classroom debate, discussion, and intellectual exploration by the undifferentiated intimidation unavoidably imposed by the close presence of hidden, loaded guns,” according to the lawsuit seeking a preliminary injunction filed by professors Jennifer Lynn Glass, Lisa Moore and Mia Carter.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican and a defendant in the suit, filed papers this week to halt the injunction, calling the professors’ case a “frivolous lawsuit.”

“There is no legal justification to deny licensed, law-abiding citizens on campus the same measure of personal protection they are entitled to elsewhere in Texas,” Paxton said in a statement.

Lawyers for the professors said they expect a decision before Aug. 24.

The professors argue that they discus controversial and emotionally laden subjects such as reproductive rights, and it would be inevitable for them to alter their classroom presentations because of potential gun violence, according to court filings.

The law took effect on Aug. 1 as the University of Texas held a memorial to mark the 50th anniversary of one of the deadliest U.S. gun incidents on a college campus.

On Aug. 1 1966, student Charles Whitman killed 16 people in a rampage, firing from a perch atop the clock tower at the University of Texas at Austin, the state’s flagship public university.

University of Texas professors lobbied unsuccessfully to prevent the campus carry law, arguing the combination of youth, firearms and college life could make for a deadly situation.

Republican lawmakers said campus carry could help prevent a mass shooting.

The law allows private colleges to opt out, and most of the state’s best-known private universities have done so, saying the measure runs counter to protecting student safety.

Eight states now have provisions allowing the carrying of concealed weapons on public postsecondary campuses, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, which tracks state laws.

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Sandra Maler)

Thirteen U.S. States ask court to halt transgender bathroom policy

A sign protesting a recent North Carolina law restricting transgender bathroom access is seen in the bathroom stalls at the 21C Museum Hotel in Durham, North Carolina

By Julia Harte

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Thirteen states that have sued the Obama administration over its policy on transgender access to bathrooms asked a federal court in Texas on Wednesday to prevent the administration from enforcing the policy while their lawsuit proceeds.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed the motion in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas on behalf of the state coalition.

“Schools are facing the potential loss of funding for simply exercising the authority to implement the policies that best protect their students,” Paxton said in a statement on Wednesday.

The 13-state coalition’s lawsuit is one of several state-based challenges to the federal government’s May directive that public schools must allow transgender students to use bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity or face the loss of federal funding.

The issue has thrown transgender rights into the national spotlight and enraged social conservatives who say federal civil rights protections encompass biological sex, not gender identity.

A Justice Department official told the states’ lawyers that the department opposed the motion, but agreed to respond to it faster than usual so that the matter could be resolved before the start of the 2016-17 school year, according to the injunction motion.

The Justice Department declined to comment, “due to pending litigation.” It must respond to the injunction request by July 27, according to the motion.

The lawsuit is expected to be heard by conservative judges at the district and appeals court levels, and could end up heading to the U.S. Supreme Court if the appeals court rules against the Obama administration.

The Justice Department is also battling North Carolina in federal court over a North Carolina state law approved in March that prohibits people from using public restrooms not corresponding to the sex on their birth certificates.

The Justice Department asked the court in that case to enjoin the North Carolina law late on Tuesday.

In June, a Virginia school board announced that it would seek Supreme Court review of a court ruling that gave a transgender high-school student access to the bathroom of his gender identity.

(Reporting by Julia Harte; Editing by Leslie Adler)

Supreme Court rejects two new abortion cases

The Wider Image: Marble, drape and justice: inside the U.S. Supreme Court

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday let stand lower court rulings that blocked restrictions on doctors who perform abortions in Mississippi and Wisconsin a day after the court struck down a similar measure in Texas.

The laws in both states required doctors to have admitting privileges, a type of difficult-to-obtain formal affiliation, with a hospital within 30 miles (48 km) of the abortion clinic. Both were put on hold by lower courts. The Mississippi law would have shut down the only clinic in the state if it had gone into effect.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)

Split U.S. Supreme Court blocks Obama immigration plan

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday blocked President Barack Obama’s plan to spare millions of immigrants in the country illegally from deportation in a split ruling that heartened political foes who had accused him of overstepping his powers.

The 4-4 ruling, coming seven months before Obama’s term in office ends, marked the latest success that his Republican adversaries have had in thwarting a major policy initiative of the Democratic president. Obama had hoped that overhauling the U.S. immigration system and resolving the fate of the estimated 11 million people in the country illegally would be part of his presidential legacy.

The ruling is likely to further amplify the role that the immigration issue will play in the run-up to the Nov. 8 presidential election in which voters will pick Obama’s successor. It also leaves in legal limbo the roughly 4 million people Obama’s action was meant to help.

Obama unveiled his plan in November 2014. It was quickly challenged in court by Republican-governed Texas and 25 other states that argued that Obama overstepped the powers granted to him by the U.S. Constitution by infringing upon the authority of Congress. His unilateral executive action bypassed the Republican-led Congress.

Because the court was split, a 2015 lower-court ruling invalidating Obama’s plan was left in place. The plan never was implemented because the lower courts had blocked it.

The plan was tailored to let roughly 4 million people – those who have lived illegally in the United States at least since 2010, have no criminal record and have children who are U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents – get into a program that shields them from deportation and supplies work permits.

A split ruling was possible because the court was down to eight justices, four liberals and four conservatives, after conservative justice Antonin Scalia died in February. The Republican-led Senate has refused to act on Obama’s nomination of appeals court judge Merrick Garland to replace Scalia.

In an appearance at the White House after the ruling, Obama expressed frustration at the court’s inability to issue a decisive ruling on the merits of the case and at Senate Republicans for “willfully” keeping the court shorthanded.

“I think it is heartbreaking for the millions of immigrants who made their lives here, who’ve raised families here, who hope for the opportunity to work, pay taxes, serve in our military, and fully contribute to this country we all love in an open way,” Obama said.

Obama said the U.S. immigration system has been broken for two decades and that this ruling set it back even further.

The issue of illegal immigration has featured prominently in the presidential campaign. Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, has called for deportation of all illegal immigrants – most of them from Mexico and other Latin American countries – and building a wall along the Mexican border.

The court did not reveal how each justice voted in the ruling, but it was possible the four liberals backed Obama and the four conservatives backed the states.

The court appeared divided along ideological lines during oral arguments on April 18, with liberals indicating support for the administration and conservative opposed.

‘MAJOR SETBACK’

The nation’s top elected Republican, U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, and others in his party welcomed the ruling.

“This is a major setback to President Obama’s attempts to expand executive power, and a victory for those who believe in the separation of powers and the rule of law,” said Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican.

The Constitution assigns certain powers to the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the federal government.

The split decision set no nationwide legal precedent on presidential power or immigration law. The ruling indicates that any major immigration policy change that would address the long-term situation of illegal immigrants would have to be enacted by Congress.

“We feel that justice has turned its back on millions of immigrants who, much like our founding fathers and mothers, sought a better future for themselves and their children and yet continue to live in the shadows without the respect and dignity that they deserve,” said Jorge-Mario Cabrera, a spokesman for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles.

The Obama administration could ask the high court to rehear the case, as losing parties in two other cases in which the court has split 4-4 have done. The court has not yet acted on those other petitions.

The Supreme Court decision does not affect a separate 2012 program aimed at protecting people brought to the United States as children from deportation, which Texas and the other states did not challenge.

Obama took the action after House Republicans killed bipartisan immigration legislation, billed as the biggest overhaul of U.S. laws on the matter in decades and providing a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, that was passed by the Senate in 2013.

Maya Ledezma, an immigrant from Mexico who lives in Maryland, said would have been eligible for Obama’s program because she has lived in the United States for more than a decade and has an 8-year-old daughter who is a U.S. citizen.

“My life would have changed if the vote had been favorable,” she said through a translator during a rally outside the Supreme Court.

Republicans have been critical of Obama’s use of executive action to get around Congress on immigration policy and other issues such as gun control and healthcare.

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton criticized the ruling for “throwing millions of families across our country into a state of uncertainty.” Trump said the ruling “blocked one of the most unconstitutional actions ever undertaken by a president.”

(Additional reporting by Ayesha Rascoe and Emily Stephenson in Washington and Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles)

Supreme Court rejects challenge to state assault weapon bans

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday left in place gun control laws in New York and Connecticut that ban military-style assault weapons like the one used in last week’s massacre at an Orlando nightclub, rejecting a legal challenge by gun rights advocates.

The court’s action underlined its reluctance to insert itself into the simmering national debate on gun control. The Supreme Court issued important rulings in gun cases in 2008 and 2010 but has not taken up a major firearms case since.

The justices declined to hear an appeal of an October ruling by the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that upheld laws prohibiting semiautomatic weapons and large capacity magazines in the two northeastern states.

“Sensible gun safety legislation works. The Supreme Court’s action today in declining to hear this appeal affirms that the reforms enacted in Connecticut following the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School were reasonable, sensible and lawful,” Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen, a Democrat, said.

The New York and Connecticut laws, among the strictest in the nation, were enacted after a gunman with a semiautomatic rifle killed 20 young children and six educators in 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

The gunman in the June 12 attack at an Orlando gay nightclub that killed 49 people, the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history, used a semiautomatic rifle that would have been banned under the New York and Connecticut laws.

“The overwhelming majority of responsible gun owners want reasonable and effective gun control legislation,” New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said. “They know that there is no place for weapons of war on the streets of America. New York’s assault weapons ban keeps New Yorkers safer – period.”

Schneiderman, a Democrat, urged other states to enact similar laws.

The legal challenge mounted by gun rights groups and individual firearms owners asserted that the New York and Connecticut laws violated the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment guarantee of the right to bear arms. The court denied the appeal with no comment or recorded vote.

The challengers to the Connecticut law said it banned “some of the most popular firearms in America,” guns they said are owned by millions of Americans for the lawful purposes of self-defense, hunting and recreational shooting. The state said these kinds of guns are used in “the most heinous forms of gun violence.”

In December, the court declined to hear a challenge to a Illinois town’s assault weapons ban. But the justices in March threw out a Massachusetts court ruling that stun guns are not covered by the Second Amendment and sent the case back to the state’s top court for further proceedings.

The United States has among the most permissive gun rights in the world. Because the U.S. Congress long has been a graveyard for gun control legislation, some states and localities have enacted their own measures.

In total, seven states and the District of Columbia ban semiautomatic rifles. A national law barring assault weapons expired in 2004. Congressional Republicans and some Democrats, backed by the influential National Rifle Association gun rights lobby, foiled efforts to restore it.

In the aftermath of the Orlando massacre, the Senate was taking up gun legislation on Monday, although the four measures were not expected to win passage.

There is a longstanding legal debate over the scope of Second Amendment rights.

In the 2008 District of Columbia v. Heller case, the Supreme Court held for the first time that the Second Amendment guaranteed an individual’s right to bear arms, but the ruling applied only to firearms kept in the home for self-defense. That ruling did not involve a state law, applying only to federal regulations.

Two years later, in the case McDonald v. City of Chicago, the court held that the Heller ruling covered individual gun rights in states.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)

Supreme Court agrees to hear immigrant detention dispute

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to decide whether immigrants detained for more than six months by the U.S. government while deportation proceedings take place are eligible for a hearing in which they can argue for their release.

The decision by the justices to hear a case focusing on the rights of people flagged for deportation comes during a presidential election campaign in which immigration has been a hot topic.

The court agreed to hear an Obama administration appeal of an October 2015 ruling by the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that upheld a lower-court injunction requiring a hearing after six months of detention.

The long-running class action litigation brought by the American Civil Liberties Union includes some immigrants who were held at the border when seeking illegal entry into the United States and others, including legal permanent residents, who have been convicted of crimes.

If the immigrants were granted a bond hearing, the government would have to show they are flight risks or a danger to the community in order for the detention to continue.

The Justice Department said in court papers that the appeals court decision was “fundamentally wrong” because it dramatically expanded the number of people eligible for hearings and set a high bar for the government to argue that a detainee should not be released.

The ACLU responded in its court papers that the government had exaggerated the impact of the court injunction, which has been in place since 2012 and applies only to immigrants in the Los Angeles area.

Since it has been in effect, there has been “no evidence of adverse effects on immigration enforcement,” the ACLU lawyers said.

The court will hear oral arguments and decide the case during its next term, which starts in October and ends in June 2017.

In one of the biggest cases of its current term, the Supreme Court is due to decide by the end of the month whether to reinstate President Barack Obama’s 2014 executive action to shield millions of immigrants in the country illegally from deportation. The plan was blocked by lower courts.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)

Supreme Court turns down challenge to Seattle’s minimum wage raise

People celebrate with ice cream at Seattle City Hall after a Seattle City Council meeting in which the council voted on raising the minimum wage in Seattle

By Daniel Wiessner

(Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a challenge by business groups to a trendsetting Seattle law that will raise the city’s minimum wage to $15 an hour, leaving in place a lower court’s decision to uphold the ordinance.

The law, which took effect in April 2015, requires businesses in Seattle with more than 500 employees nationwide to raise their minimum wage to $15 by 2018. Smaller companies have until 2021 to do so.

Seattle was the first major U.S. city to commit to such a high basic wage amid pressure from unions and workers’ rights groups. The move has since been followed to varying degrees by cities such as San Francisco and Los Angeles as well as by state lawmakers in California and New York.

The International Franchise Association’s 2014 lawsuit took issue with the Seattle law’s treatment of local franchises as subsidiaries of brand parents such as McDonald’s <MCD.N> or Burger King <QSR.TO> rather than independent businesses, meaning they had to comply by the earlier deadline.

A federal judge in Seattle in March 2015 rejected claims that the ordinance was discriminatory, and the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year agreed.

Seattle officials and the Service Employees International Union, which backed the city in the case, said franchises are not typical small businesses because franchising offers inherent advantages such as access to loans, brand recognition and bulk purchasing. But the franchise association countered that those perks come at a cost, namely royalties, fees and rent.

The association said the lawsuit was an attempt “to level the playing field” for the 600 franchise businesses that employ 19,000 people in Seattle, and it was disappointed with the court’s action.

“Seattle’s ordinance is blatantly discriminatory and affirmatively harms hard-working franchise small business owners every day since it has gone into effect,” the group’s president, Robert Cresanti, said in a statement.

The case is International Franchise Association v. City of Seattle, U.S. Supreme Court, No. 15-958.

(Reporting by Daniel Wiessner in Albany, New York; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Will Dunham)

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