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Court orders some fixes in Texas foster care
Legal Interview |
2018/10/20 18:41
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A federal appeals court says Texas must make improvements to abuse investigations within its foster care system and make sure workers have manageable caseloads, but the court also struck down dozens of other measures ordered by a judge.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued the ruling Thursday in a years-long case focused on children in the state’s long-term care. U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack had ordered sweeping changes earlier this year. Jack’s order followed a December 2015 opinion in which she ruled the system unconstitutionally broken and said children labeled permanent wards of the state “almost uniformly leave state custody more damaged than when they entered.”
The appeals court judges said they understood Jack’s frustration with the state failing to fix problems and agreed that “remedial action is appropriate.”
But the judges said her order went “well beyond” what’s necessary for constitutional compliance.
So while the appeals court said Texas was “deliberately indifferent” to the risk of harm posed by high caseloads and ordered the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services to come up with guidelines for manageable caseloads, the judges nixed Jack’s instruction for all sexualized children — either aggressor or victim — to be placed in a single-child home.
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EU court orders Poland to reinstate Supreme Court judges
Legal Interview |
2018/10/18 04:40
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The European Union's top court ordered Poland on Friday to immediately stop applying a law that lowered the retirement age for Supreme Court judges, forcing some 20 off the bench.
The interim injunction from the European Court of Justice also obliges EU member Poland to reinstate the judges who had to retire early after the law took effect in July. It lowered the age limit for Supreme Court service from 70 to 65.
The powerful leader of Poland's conservative ruling party, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, said Poland would observe EU law, but not whether the government would comply with the order. He also said the government would do all it could to "defend our state interest."
The European Commission, the EU's executive branch, asked for the injunction while the Court of Justice considers its challenge to the age cap as a violation of EU laws on judicial independence and the right to a fair trial. A ruling in the main proceedings is expected later.
Supreme Court judges, arguing the forced retirements are an infringement of Poland's Constitution, also have sought the European court's opinion.
Kaczynski's Law and Justice party has made overhauling the judicial system a key focus since it came to power in 2015. The government maintains that removing justices who were active during Poland's communist era will make the courts more efficient and fairer.
Among the evidence Court of Justice Vice President Rosario Silva de Lapuerta cited in the order was "a profound and immediate change in the composition of the Supreme Court" since the disputed law went into force. Along with the retirements, an increase in court seats from 93 to 120 created more than 44 vacancies, and President Andrzej Duda has filled at least 27 of them, Lapuerta said.
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Georgia high court won't stop vote on creation of new city
Legal Interview |
2018/10/17 04:41
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Georgia's highest court on Monday declined to stop voting in a referendum on whether a new city of Eagle's Landing should be created from part of the existing city of Stockbridge.
The General Assembly passed two acts that were signed by the governor earlier this year to create Eagle's Landing from land that is currently part of Stockbridge combined with unincorporated parts of Henry County. The proposed city's creation must be approved by local voters, but Stockbridge residents who live outside the boundaries of the proposed city won't get a say.
Opponents, including the Stockbridge mayor, say creation of a new city would take a significant amount of city's land and tax revenue and harm the Stockbridge's ability to pay municipal bond obligations.
Proponents of a new city say they want to secure better city services, increase property values and attract high-end businesses. But opponents say race is a factor. About 20 miles (30 kilometers) southeast of Atlanta, Stockbridge is predominantly black, while the city of Eagle's Landing would have a higher proportion of white residents.
Stockbridge sued the Henry County elections director and members of the county commission and asked a judge to declare that the acts setting up the referendum violated the state Constitution. The judge declined, and the city appealed to the Georgia Supreme Court, which heard arguments in the case last week.
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Colorado Supreme Court hears high-stakes oil and gas lawsuit
Legal Interview |
2018/10/14 04:41
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An attorney for six young people who want the state to impose tougher safeguards on the energy industry told the Colorado Supreme Court on Tuesday that the law requires regulators to protect public health from the hazards of drilling.
A lawyer for the state countered that regulators acted properly when they rejected a request for stronger health protections on the grounds that they did not have the authority to impose them.
The justices heard oral arguments in the high-stakes case but did not say when they would rule.
The case revolves around how much weight energy regulators should give public health and the environment — a contentious issue in Colorado, where cities often overlap lucrative oil and gas fields and drilling rigs sit within sight of homes and schools.
The six young plaintiffs in the case asked the Colorado Oil and Gas Commission, which regulates the industry, to enact a rule that would require energy companies to show they would not harm human health or the environment before regulators issued a drilling permit.
The commission responded that it did not have that authority. Commission members said Colorado law required them to balance public safety with responsible oil and gas production.
Colorado Solicitor General Frederick R. Yarger, representing the attorney general's office, told the Supreme Court that the commission correctly interpreted state law to mean it must consider other factors in addition to public health. |
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Former FIFA official Makudi at court for ban appeal hearing
Legal Watch |
2018/10/11 18:00
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Former FIFA executive committee member Worawi Makudi is at the Court of Arbitration for Sport challenging his ban for forgery ahead of a Thailand soccer federation election.
Makudi said outside the court on Thursday he was "very confident. I didn't do anything wrong."
The former Thai federation president appealed against a 3 1/2-year ban by FIFA that expires in April 2020. He was also fined 10,000 Swiss francs ($10,100).
FIFA's ethics committee found him guilty of forgery, falsifying documents, and not cooperating with investigators. Makudi was alleged to have altered federation statutes before his 2013 re-election campaign.
He was convicted in a Bangkok criminal court, though said on Thursday that case was resolved in his favor.
"You know very clearly that the court in Thailand already decided I won the case, OK?" he said.
Makudi was a long-time ally of Qatar's Mohamed bin Hammam when sitting on FIFA's ruling committee for 18 years until 2015. He was voted out by Asian federations.
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Manhattan DA drops part of Weinstein case
Legal News |
2018/10/11 14:58
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Manhattan’s district attorney dropped part of the criminal sexual assault case against Harvey Weinstein on Thursday after evidence emerged that cast doubt on the account one of his three accusers provided to the grand jury.
The development was announced in court Thursday with Weinstein looking on.
The tossed charge involves allegations made by one of the three accusers in the case, Lucia Evans, who was among the first women to publicly accuse Weinstein of sexual assault.
In an expose published in The New Yorker one year ago Wednesday, Evans accused Weinstein of forcing her to perform oral sex when they met alone in his office in 2004 to discuss her fledgling acting career. At the time, Evans was a 21-year-old college student.
Assistant District Attorney Joan Illuzzi-Orbon told the judge that prosecutors wouldn’t oppose dismissal of the count in the case involving Evans. She insisted the rest of the case, involving two other accusers, was strong.
“In short, your honor, we are moving full steam ahead,” she said.
Weinstein’s lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, told the judge he believed Evans had lied both to the grand jury and to The New Yorker about her encounter with Weinstein. He also said he believed a police detective had corruptly attempted to influence the case by keeping a witness from testifying about her misstatements. |
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Supreme Court wrestles with case on detention of immigrants
Court Center |
2018/10/10 01:10
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The Supreme Court wrestled Wednesday with a case about the government’s ability to detain certain immigrants after they’ve served sentences for committing crimes in the United States. Several justices expressed concerns with the government’s reading of immigration law.
Justice Stephen Breyer seemed perhaps the most sympathetic to the arguments of immigrants in the case. The immigrants, mostly green-card holders, say they should get hearings where they can argue for their release while deportation proceedings against them are ongoing. Breyer noted that the United States “gives every triple ax murderer a bail hearing.”
While members of the court’s conservative majority seemed more inclined than its liberal members to back the government, both of President Donald Trump’s appointees asked questions that made it less clear how they might ultimately rule.
The issue in the case before the justices has to do with the detention of noncitizens who have committed a broad range of crimes that make them deportable. Immigration law tells the government to pick those people up when they are released from federal or state prisons and jails and then hold them without bond hearings while an immigration court decides whether they should be deported.
But those affected by the law aren’t always picked up immediately and are sometimes not detained until years later. They argue that unless they’re picked up essentially within a day of being released, they’re entitled to a hearing where they can argue that they aren’t a danger to the community and are not likely to flee. If a judge agrees, they can stay out of custody while their deportation case goes forward. That’s the same hearing rule that applies to other noncitizens the government is trying to deport.
The Trump administration argues, as the Obama administration did, against hearings for those convicted of crimes and affected by the law. The government reads immigration law to say that detention is mandatory for those people regardless of when they are picked up.
Sounding sympathetic to the immigrants’ arguments, Breyer asked a lawyer arguing for the government whether he thought “a person 50 years later, who is on his death bed, after stealing some bus transfers” is still subject to mandatory detention without a hearing. But Breyer also seemed to suggest that the government might be able to hold noncitizens without bond hearings if they were picked up more than a day after leaving custody, maybe up to six months.
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