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Court: School ban of US flag shirts allowed
Top Legal News |
2014/02/28 23:39
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A Northern California high school's decision to order students wearing American flag T-shirts to turn the garments inside out during a celebration of the holiday Cinco de Mayo was appropriate, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the school officials' concerns of racial violence outweighed students' freedom of expression rights. Administrators feared the American-flag shirts would enflame the passions of Latino students celebrating the Mexican holiday. Live Oak High School, in the San Jose suburb of Morgan Hill, had a history of problems between white and Latino students on that day.
The unanimous three-judge panel said past problems gave school officials sufficient and justifiable reasons for their actions. The court said schools have wide latitude in curbing certain civil rights to ensure campus safety.
"Our role is not to second-guess the decision to have a Cinco de Mayo celebration or the precautions put in place to avoid violence," Judge M. Margaret McKeown wrote for the panel. The past events "made it reasonable for school officials to proceed as though the threat of a potentially violent disturbance was real," she wrote.
The case garnered national attention as many expressed outrage that students were barred from wearing patriotic clothing. The Ann Arbor, Mich.-based American Freedom Law Center, a politically conservative legal aid foundation, and other similar organizations took up the students' case and sued the high school and the school district.
William Becker, one of the lawyers representing the students, said he plans to ask a special 11-judge panel of the appeals court to rehear the case. Becker said he would appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court if he loses again. |
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Supreme Court allows Stanford Ponzi scheme suits
Press Releases |
2014/02/28 23:37
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The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that victims of former Texas tycoon R. Allen Stanford's massive Ponzi scheme can go forward with class-action lawsuits against the law firms, accountants and investment companies that allegedly aided the $7.2 billion fraud.
The decision is a loss for firms that claimed federal securities law insulated them from state class-action lawsuits and sought to have the cases thrown out. But it offers another avenue for more than 21,000 of Stanford's bilked investors to try to recover their lost savings.
Federal law says class-action lawsuits related to securities fraud cannot be filed under state law, as these cases were. But a federal appeals court said the cases could move forward because the main part of the fraud involved certificates of deposit, not stocks and other securities.
The high court agreed in a 7-2 decision, with the two dissenting justices warning that the ruling would lead to an explosion of state class-action lawsuits.
Stanford was sentenced to 110 years in prison after being convicted of bilking investors in a $7.2 billion scheme that involved the sale of fraudulent certificates of deposits from the Stanford International Bank. They supposedly were backed by safe investments in securities issued by governments, multinational companies and international banks, but those investments did not exist. |
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Moscow court sends 7 to prison for protest rally
Headline News |
2014/02/24 23:12
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A Russian court handed down prison sentences Monday of up to four years for seven people who took part in a 2012 protest against Vladimir Putin. An eighth defendant received a suspended sentence.
Hundreds of their supporters gathered outside the courthouse to condemn the trial and the Kremlin's crackdown on opposition. Police detained about 200 of them, accusing them of violating public order.
Among those detained were members of the punk band Pussy Riot who had spent nearly two years in prison as punishment for their own anti-Putin protest.
The defendants sentenced Monday were among 28 people rounded up after the May 6, 2012, protest on the eve of Putin's inauguration for a third presidential term. The rally turned violent after police restricted access to Bolotnaya Square, across the river from the Kremlin, where the protesters had permission to gather.
The eight defendants were found guilty last week, but sentencing was postponed until Monday. All have been in custody for nearly two years except for Anastasia Dukhanina, 20, who was under house arrest. She was given a suspended sentence. |
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Court: Spain can extradite Liberty Reserve founder
Headline News |
2014/02/24 23:12
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A Spanish court has ruled that a man accused of being behind one of the world’s biggest money laundering businesses can be extradited to the U.S. to face charges there.
Arthur Budovsky, who founded currency transfer and payment processing company Liberty Reserves, can appeal the ruling, the National Court said late Friday. Spain’s government must also approve the decision for an extradition to happen.
It wasn’t immediately clear if Budovsky would appeal. The 40-year-old Costa Rican, who was arrested at Madrid airport in May 2013, has acknowledged founding Liberty Reserve in 2006, but says he sold his share to stay on only as a consultant.
U.S. officials accuse Budovsky of using Liberty Reserve as a kind of underworld bank which handled about $6 billion worth of illicit transactions. |
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Gov. Snyder signs jury duty, trampoline court laws
Press Releases |
2014/02/20 23:46
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Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder has signed a law letting full-time college students postpone jury duty until the end of the school year.
The governor on Tuesday also approved rules for indoor trampoline parks where adults and kids can bounce around for a fee.
Snyder says jury duty is "an important part of our civil responsibility" but can be disruptive to college students' studies. A similar exemption already exists for high school students.
The other law requires trampoline courts to publicly display rules and inform customers of the activity's inherent dangers. Trampoliners also must adhere to rules specified in the law.
A trampoline user, spectator or operator who violates the law is liable for damages in civil lawsuits. |
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Argentina asks top US Court to stop 'catastrophe'
Press Releases |
2014/02/20 23:46
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Argentina filed a long-shot appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday asking the justices in Washington to avert an "economic catastrophe" by overturning lower court rulings that could force the South American government to default on billions of dollars in debts.
Making Argentina pay cash in full to investors who didn't accept bond swaps in exchange for defaulted debt could destabilize the global economy by making other voluntary debt restructurings "substantially more difficult, if not impossible," the petition said.
"Full payment of the holdouts would cut Argentina's reserves approximately in half, an unimaginable result for any nation," Argentina's lawyers argued. "Any sovereign would protest if a foreign court issued an extraterritorial order threatening its creditors and citizens and coercing it into turning over billions of dollars from its immune reserves."
By ignoring the federal sovereign immunity law that normally protects other countries' assets from seizure outside the United States, the lower court decisions also could make U.S. assets overseas vulnerable to similar seizures by other governments, the petition said. |
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Vietnamese court rejects appeals by dissident
Court Center |
2014/02/18 23:13
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A Vietnamese appeals court on Tuesday upheld the conviction and 30-month prison sentence against a U.S.-trained lawyer and well-known dissident found guilty of tax evasion in a case that international rights groups say was politically motivated.
The court in Hanoi rejected Le Quoc Quan’s appeal after a half-day trial on Tuesday. His lawyer Ha Huy Son quoted judges as saying they found no new evidence, and that the conviction by the intermediate court was well founded.
The lawyer said Quan maintained his innocence throughout the trial.
‘‘I told the court that the case should not be criminalized, but should be resolved through administrative procedures instead.’’ Son said in a telephone interview. ‘‘But the court rejected my arguments.’’
Quan was sentenced to 30 months in jail in October.
About 100 people gathered near the courthouse demanding Quan’s release, and police sealed off the area. |
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