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Justices to consider case involving fishing boat monitor pay
Business |
2023/05/01 17:59
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The U.S. Supreme Court will take up the subject of who pays for workers who gather valuable data aboard commercial fishing boats.
Justices announced Monday that they will take the case, which stems from a lawsuit by a group of fishermen who want to stop the federal government from making them pay for the workers. The workers are tasked with collecting data on board fishing vessels to help inform rules and regulations.
The fishermen involved in the lawsuit harvest Atlantic herring, which is a major fishery off the East Coast that supplies both food and bait. Lead plaintiff Loper Bright Enterprises of New Jersey and other fishing groups have said federal rules unfairly require them to pay hundreds of dollars per day to contractors.
“Our way of life is in the hands of these justices, and we hope they will keep our families and our community in mind as they weigh their decision,” said Bill Bright, a New Jersey fisherman and plaintiff in the case.
The high court announced its decision to take the case via an order list that made no comment on the merits of the lawsuit. The fishermen previously lost in lower court rulings. Their lawsuit over fishing monitors is part of a long-standing fight between commercial fishing groups and the federal government over who pays for data collection and regulatory compliance.
Fishermen have argued that Congress never gave federal regulators authority to require the expense of paying for monitors.
Fisheries in the U.S. are regulated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. A representative for NOAA declined to comment on the case. The agency does not typically comment on pending litigation. |
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German court: naked landlord doesn’t justify lower rent
Bankruptcy |
2023/04/26 16:46
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A German court said Wednesday that a landlord sunbathing naked in the courtyard of his building wasn’t a reason for his tenants to reduce their rental payments.
The case involved a building in an upmarket residential district of Frankfurt, which included an office floor, rented by a human resources company. The company withheld rent because it objected, among other things, to the landlord’s naked sunbathing. In response, the landlord sued.
The Frankfurt state court rejected the company’s reasoning, finding that “the usability of the rented property was not impaired by the plaintiff sunning himself naked in the courtyard.”
It said in a statement that it couldn’t see an “inadmissible, deliberately improper effect on the property.”
Judges were ruling on an appeal against a lower court decision that went in the landlord’s favor, and the tenant had only limited success overall. They found that the tenant had been entitled to reduce rental payments for three months only because of noisy construction work in the neighborhood.
The court said that the spot where the landlord sunbathed could only be seen from the rented office by leaning far out of the window.
It also said the tenant failed to prove that he took the stairs to the courtyard unclothed. “On the contrary, the plaintiff stated credibly that he always wore a bathrobe which he only took off just before the sun lounger,” it said. |
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Judge in Catholic bankruptcy recuses over church donations
Biotech |
2023/04/23 22:01
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A federal judge overseeing the New Orleans Roman Catholic bankruptcy recused himself in a late-night reversal that came a week after an Associated Press report showed he donated tens of thousands of dollars to the archdiocese and consistently ruled in favor of the church in the case involving nearly 500 clergy sex abuse victims.
U.S. District Judge Greg Guidry initially announced hours after the AP report that he would stay on the case, citing the opinion of fellow federal judges that no “reasonable person” could question his impartiality. But amid mounting pressure and persistent questions, he changed course late Friday in a terse, one-page filing.
“I have decided to recuse myself from this matter in order to avoid any possible appearance of personal bias or prejudice,” Guidry wrote. The 62-year-old jurist has overseen the 3-year-old bankruptcy in an appellate role, and his recusal is likely to throw the case into disarray and trigger new hearings and appeals of every consequential ruling he’s made.
But legal experts say it was the only action to take under the circumstances, citing federal law that calls on judges to step aside in any proceeding in which their “impartiality might reasonably be questioned.”
“This was a clear and blatant conflict that existed for some time,” said Joel Friedman, a longtime legal analyst in New Orleans who is now a law professor at Arizona State University. “It creates the exact problem the rules are designed to avoid, the impression to the public that he’s not an impartial decisionmaker.”
Guidry’s recusal underscores how tightly woven the church is in the city’s power structure, a coziness perhaps best exemplified when executives of the NFL’s New Orleans Saints secretly advised the archdiocese on public relations messaging at the height of its clergy abuse crisis.
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Supreme Court hears mail carrier’s religious tolerance case
Biotech |
2023/04/21 22:00
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The Supreme Court is being asked to decide under what circumstances businesses must accommodate the needs of religious employees.
A case before the justices Tuesday involves a Christian mail carrier in rural Pennsylvania. He was told that as part of his job he’d need to start delivering Amazon.com packages on Sundays. He declined, saying his Sundays are for church and family. U.S. Postal Service officials initially tried to get substitutes for the man’s shifts, but they couldn’t always. When he didn’t show, that meant more work for others. Ultimately, the man quit and sued for religious discrimination.
The case is the latest religious confrontation the high court has been asked to referee. In recent years, the court’s 6-3 conservative majority has been particularly sensitive to the concerns of religious plaintiffs. That includes a ruling last year in which the court said a public high school football coach should be allowed to pray on the field after games. Another case the court is weighing this term involves a Christian graphic artist who wants to create wedding websites, but doesn’t want to serve gay couples.
A federal law, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, requires employers to accommodate employees’ religious practices unless doing so would be an “undue hardship” for the business. But a Supreme Court case from 1977, Trans World Airlines v. Hardison, says employers can deny religious accommodations to employees when they impose “more than a de minimis cost” on the business.
Three current justices — Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch — have said the court should reconsider the Hardison case.
The case currently before the court involves Gerald Groff, a former employee of the U.S. Postal Service in Pennsylvania’s Amish Country. For years, Groff was a fill-in mail carrier who worked on days when other mail carriers were off.
But when an Amazon.com contract with the Postal Service required carriers to start delivering packages on Sundays, Groff balked. Initially, to avoid the shifts, Groff transferred to a more rural post office not yet doing Sunday deliveries, but eventually that post office was required to do them too.
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Supreme Court asked to preserve abortion pill access rules
Health Care |
2023/04/14 18:02
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The Biden administration and a drug manufacturer asked the Supreme Court on Friday to preserve access to an abortion drug free from restrictions imposed by lower court rulings, while a legal fight continues.
The Justice Department and Danco Laboratories both warned of “regulatory chaos” and harm to women if the high court doesn’t block an appeals court ruling in a case from Texas that had the effect of tightening Food and Drug Administration rules under which the drug, mifepristone, can be prescribed and dispensed.
The new limits would take effect Saturday unless the court acts before then.
“This application concerns unprecedented lower court orders countermanding FDA’s scientific judgment and unleashing regulatory chaos by suspending the existing FDA-approved conditions of use for mifepristone,” Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, the Biden administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer, wrote Friday, less than two days after the appellate ruling.
A lawyer for the anti-abortion doctors and medical organizations suing over mifepristone said the justices should reject the drugmaker’s and the administration’s pleas and allow the appeals court-ordered changes to take effect.
The fight over mifepristone lands at the Supreme Court less than a year after conservative justices reversed Roe v. Wade and allowed more than a dozen states to effectively ban abortion outright.
The justices are being asked for a temporary order to keep in place Food and Drug Administration regulations governing mifepristone. Such an order would give them time to more fully consider each side’s arguments without the pressure of a deadline.
The Biden administration and Danco, which is based in New York, also want a more lasting order that would keep the current rules in place as long as the legal fight over mifepristone continues. As a fallback, they asked the court to take up the issue, hear arguments and decide by early summer a legal challenge to mifepristone that anti-abortion doctors and medical organizations filed last year.
The court rarely acts so quickly to grant full review of cases before at least one appeals court has thoroughly examined the legal issues involved.
A ruling from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals late Wednesday would prevent the pill, used in the most common abortion method, from being mailed or prescribed without an in-person visit to a doctor. It also would withdraw the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone for use beyond the seventh week of pregnancy. The FDA says it’s safe through 10 weeks. |
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Democratic senators urge chief justice to probe Thomas trips
Bankruptcy |
2023/04/11 22:30
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Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee called on U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts on Monday to open an investigation into the undisclosed acceptance of luxury trips taken by Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife that were paid for by a Republican megadonor.
The letter said the committee plans to hold a hearing in coming days regarding the “need to restore confidence in the Supreme Court’s ethical standards.” And if the Supreme Court does not deal with the issue on its own, the committee will consider voting on legislation. Such a measure would also need support from the Republican-led House to become law.
“But you do not need to wait for Congress to act to undertake your own investigation into the reported conduct and to ensure that it cannot happen again,” the 11 Democratic senators wrote to Roberts. “We urge you to do so.”
The nonprofit investigative journalism organization ProPublica reported Thursday that Thomas, who has been a justice for more than 31 years, has for more than two decades accepted luxury trips from Republican donor Harlan Crow nearly every year.
Thomas, 74, and his wife, Virginia, have traveled on Crow’s yacht and private jet as well as stayed at his private resort in New York’s Adirondack Mountains, ProPublica reported. A 2019 trip to Indonesia the story detailed could have cost more than $500,000 had Thomas chartered the plane and yacht himself. |
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Court rules documents in Sanford case must be unsealed
Corporate Governance |
2023/04/07 18:22
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The South Dakota Supreme Court ruled Thursday that affidavits from an investigation into child pornography allegations against billionaire philanthropist T. Denny Sanford must be unsealed.
In 2019, South Dakota investigators searched his email account, as well as his cellular and internet service providers, for evidence of possession of child pornography, after his accounts were flagged by a technology firm.
Sanford, the state’s richest man, was not charged after the South Dakota attorney general’s office said its investigation into the allegations found no prosecutable offenses within the state’s jurisdiction.
Sanford had sought to bar affidavits used to issue search warrants in the case. But the Sioux Falls Argus Leader and ProPublica argued in court that the documents should be made public.
After the decision not to file charges, Judge James Power ordered in June 2022 that South Dakota law required the affidavits to be unsealed. They were kept sealed while Sanford’s attorneys appealed, sending the case to the state Supreme Court. |
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