June, 29 2012, 10:24am EDT
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Health Care and Immigration Rulings End Supreme Court Term and Begin Political Debate
The Supreme Court virtually guaranteed that it will be an issue in the upcoming presidential election by upholding both the key provision of President Obama's health care law and the key provision of Arizona's anti-immigrant law in a busy last week to the 2011 Term.
"The Supreme Court may have ended its Term, but it is a safe bet that the political debate over its role and its rulings has just begun," said Steven R. Shapiro, the ACLU's national legal director.
WASHINGTON
The Supreme Court virtually guaranteed that it will be an issue in the upcoming presidential election by upholding both the key provision of President Obama's health care law and the key provision of Arizona's anti-immigrant law in a busy last week to the 2011 Term.
"The Supreme Court may have ended its Term, but it is a safe bet that the political debate over its role and its rulings has just begun," said Steven R. Shapiro, the ACLU's national legal director.
The decision in the health care case, National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, was perhaps more anxiously awaited than any decision by the Supreme Court since Bush v. Gore. Defying many post-argument predictions, Chief Justice Roberts held that Congress had not exceeded its constitutional authority when it enacted the so-called individual mandate, requiring everyone either to purchase health insurance or make an additional payment on their federal taxes. Unfortunately, the Court's decision does make it easier for states to reject federal dollars intended to extend Medicaid coverage.
"We welcome the Court's decision, although we are disappointed by the Medicaid ruling," Shapiro said. "Health care is a national problem and the national government must be empowered to address it. It would have been a major step backward for the Court to rule otherwise."
The Court also reaffirmed the ultimate authority of the federal government to regulate immigration in Arizona v. United States when it struck down 3 provisions of Arizona's S.B. 1070 on the theory that they were inconsistent with federal law. Significantly, however, the one challenged provision of S.B. 1070 that the Court did not strike down was the "show-me-your-papers" provision that has generated so much attention and controversy. The Court acknowledged that the provision raised legitimate concerns about racial profiling and detention but chose not to address them pending the outcome of further litigation.
"S.B. 1070 reeks of racial discrimination," Shapiro said. "The Court's unwillingness to confront that reality in this decision is disappointing and will have real human consequences. At the same time, the Court correctly anticipated that the discrimination issue can and will be litigated in other cases, including ongoing litigation brought by the ACLU and other civil rights groups."
Indeed, the ACLU announced this week that it had amassed a war chest of almost $9 million to fight discriminatory immigration laws at the state and local level throughout the country.
In another major decision issued at the end of the Term, the Court ruled that the Stolen Valor Act violates the First Amendment. The Act makes it a federal crime to lie about receiving military honors. Justice Kennedy's plurality opinion emphatically rejected the government's contention that false statements of fact are categorically unprotected by the First Amendment. "The remedy for speech that is false is speech that is true," he wrote. "This is the ordinary course in a free society."
Some other major rulings that were expected this year fizzled out for one reason or another. In FCC v. Fox Television, the Court declined to decide the constitutionality of the FCC's indecency rules for radio and television, holding instead that CBS and Fox Television could not be penalized for violating a ban on "fleeting expletives" that was not announced until after their shows were broadcast. In Magner v. Gallagher, the Court granted review to decide whether the anti-discrimination provisions of the Fair Housing Act require proof of discriminatory intent or merely discriminatory impact, but the case was dismissed prior to argument. And, in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, the Court heard argument on the question of whether corporations can be sued for human rights abuses under the Alien Tort Statute, but instead of resolving that question the Court scheduled the case for reargument next Term to decide whether the Alien Tort Statute applies at all to human rights abuses committed abroad.
The Court did issue a number of important decisions this Term recognizing the rights of criminal defendants. In Jackson v. Hobbs and Miller v. Alabama, the Court held that juveniles convicted of murder cannot be subject to a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Before condemning a child to die in prison, the Court said, a sentencing judge must be allowed to take the defendant's youth into consideration. The Court also expressed its view that such sentences should be "uncommon."
In United States v. Jones, the Court held that the placement of a GPS device on a suspect's car constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment. In Missouri v. Frye and Lafler v. Cooper, the Court held that the Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel applies at the plea bargaining stage. In Maples v. Thomas, the Court reinstated the habeas corpus petition of a death row inmate, excusing his late filing on the ground that he had been effectively abandoned by his lawyers. In Dorsey v. United States, the Court ruled that the Fair Sentencing Act, which substantially reduced the disparity in federal sentences between crack and powder cocaine, applied to anyone sentenced after the law went into effect, regardless of when the crime was committed.
Looking ahead to next Term, he Court has already granted review in Fisher v. University of Texas, an important affirmative action case involving university admissions. Petitions for certiorari are expected soon from lower court decisions striking down Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in California, and the Defense of Marriage Act, which excludes same-sex couples from federal marriage benefits. It is also highly likely that the Court will be asked to review the preclearance provisions contained in Section 5 of the Voting Rights, thrusting the Court into the national debate over voter suppression.
"Controversy has a way of finding the Court," Shapiro said, "and next Term is shaping up to be another blockbuster year."
A summary of all the Court's major civil liberties cases from this Term is online at:
www.aclu.org/organization-news-and-highlights/aclu-summary-2011-supreme...
Shapiro is available for television interviews using the ACLU's in-house studio facility, which has an outbound fiber line for standard definition (SD) video. Contact the ACLU Media Line at (212) 549-2666 for bookings.
The American Civil Liberties Union was founded in 1920 and is our nation's guardian of liberty. The ACLU works in the courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to all people in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States.
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US Voter Registrations Surge as Republicans Try to Limit Ballot Access
One group said it has registered over 100,000 new voters since U.S. President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race.
Jul 26, 2024
The group behind a popular get-out-the-vote technology platform said Friday that it's registered more than 100,000 new U.S. voters since President Joe Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential race, a surge that came amid mounting Republican efforts to make it harder to register and vote.
Vote.org said that 84% of voters registered in the new wave are under age 35. Nearly 1 in 5 new registrees is 18 years old. Andrea Hailey, the group's CEO, said that "since 2020, we have led the largest voter registration drive in U.S. history," with more than 7.8 million people registered.
After dropping out, Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to face former Republican President Donald Trump and Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) in the November election. The new presumptive Democratic candidate has already earned endorsements from many Democrats in Congress and groups advocating on issues including climate, labor, and reproductive rights.
Vote.org's success comes as Republicans at the federal level are proposing and passing legislation creating obstacles to the ballot box.
Earlier this month, U.S. House Republicans passed Rep. Chip Roy's (R-Texas)
Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which would require proof of American citizenship to vote in federal elections. Republicans claim the bill is meant to fix the virtually nonexistent "problem" of noncitizen voter fraud.
However, Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.)
slammed the bill as a "xenophobic attack" meant to silence "Black voices, brown voices, LBGTQIA+ voices, [and] young voices."
Lee said the SAVE Act underscores the need to pass her recently introduced Right to Vote Act, "which would establish the first-ever affirmative federal voting rights guarantee, ensuring every citizen may exercise their fundamental right to cast a ballot."
Earlier this year, U.S. Senate Democrats also reintroduced the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, legislation its sponsors say will "update and restore critical safeguards of the original Voting Rights Act."
Meanwhile, Republican-controlled state legislatures and red-state governors are enacting laws imposing tough restrictions on voter registration, with violations punishable by stiff fines that critics say are meant to dissuade people from registration drives and similar efforts.
Again under the guise of preventing fraud, Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last year signed legislation limiting voter registration drives, with fines of up to $250,000 for violators.
"These draconian laws and rules are like taking a sledgehammer to hit a flea," Cecile Scoon, an attorney and president of the Florida chapter of the League of Women Voters,
toldThe New York Times in an article published Friday.
Three years after Kansas passed a law making "false representation" of an election official a crime, campaigners say it's become extremely difficult to sign up new voters.
"In 2020, even with the pandemic, we had registered nearly 10,000 Kansans to vote. Now, we haven't been able to register anyone," Davis Hammet, president of the youth voter mobilization group Loud Light, told the Times.
In Louisiana, Republican state lawmakers quietly passed legislation making it easier for election officials to toss out absentee ballots with missing details, limiting how people can mail in other voters' ballots, and restricting the ability to assist people with disabilities with their ballots.
"What we've found is that these measures have a disproportionate impact on voters with disabilities, both Black and white," NAACP Legal Defense Fund senior policy counsel Jared Evans
toldNola.com earlier this week.
"It's clear that their goal is to make it harder to vote, harder for specific communities to vote especially," Evans added. "What they don't realize is that these laws hurt white voters, too."
In Nebraska, Republican Secretary of State Bob Evnen last week
ordered county election offices to stop registering voters with past felony convictions who have not received official pardons. The move came after the state's unicameral Legislature passed a bill granting voting eligibility to felons immediately after they have completed their sentences instead of waiting two years.
"We refuse to accept thousands of Nebraskans having their voting rights stripped away," ACLU of Nebraska legal and policy fellow Jane Seu said in a statement. "We are confident in the constitutionality of these laws, and we are exploring every option to ensure that Nebraskans who have done their time can vote."
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Critics Warn Manchin-Barrasso Permitting Bill 'Is Taken Straight From Project 2025'
"You thought Project 2025 was just a threat after the election? It's actually happening *right now,*" said one climate campaigner.
Jul 26, 2024
Climate and environmental defenders on this week implored U.S. senators to block a permitting reform bill introduced this week by Sens. Joe Manchin and John Barrasso that campaigners linked to Project 2025, a conservative coalition's agenda for a far-right overhaul of the federal government.
Common Dreamsreported Monday that Manchin (I-W.Va.) and Barrasso (R-Wyo.)—respectively the chair and ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee—introduced the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024.
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) noted that although the proposal "includes several positive reforms for the accelerated development of transmission projects," it also advocates "limiting opportunities for communities to challenge projects, loosening oversight for drilling and mining projects, extending drilling permits and fast-tracking [liquified natural gas] permits, and several other provisions friendly to fossil fuel giants."
"This dangerous bill doesn't deserve a floor vote."
These are nearly identical policies to what's proposed in Project 2025's Mandate for Leadership. The plan, which was spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, calls for "unleashing all of America's energy resources," including by ending federal restrictions on fossil fuel drilling on public lands; limiting investments in renewable energy; and rolling back environmental permitting restrictions for new oil, gas, and coal projects, including power plants.
While Manchin has been trying—and failing—to pass fossil fuel-friendly permitting reform legislation for years, Brett Hartl, director of public affairs at the Center for Biological Diversity, said that his "Frankenstein legislation is taken straight from Project 2025, and it's the biggest giveaway in decades to the fossil fuel industry."
Hartl said the bill "deprives communities of the power to defend themselves and gives that power to Big Oil by making it harder for communities to challenge polluting projects in court," and "prioritizes the profits of coal barons over public health."
"And it mandates oil and gas extraction in our oceans," he continued. "The insignificant crumbs thrown at renewable energy do nothing to address the climate emergency."
"Monday was the hottest day in recorded history," Hartl noted. "It's shocking that as the climate emergency continues to break records around us, the Senate continues to fast-track the fossil fuel expansion that is killing us. This dangerous bill doesn't deserve a floor vote."
Hartl added that "to preserve a livable planet," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) "must squash this legislation now."
Manchin—who has said this will be his last term in office—has been a steadfast supporter of the fossil fuel industry, partly because his family owns a coal company. The senator says his permitting reform bill "will advance American energy once again to bring down prices, create domestic jobs, and allow us to continue in our role as a global energy leader."
However, Allie Rosenbluth, Oil Change International's U.S. manager, warned Thursday that "this bill is yet another dangerous attempt by Sen. Manchin to line the pockets of his fossil fuel donors, sacrificing communities and our climate along the way."
"Don't be fooled: The Energy Permitting Reform Act is another dirty deal to fast-track fossil fuels above all else," she continued. "It would unleash more drilling on federal lands and waters, unnecessarily rush the review of proposed oil and gas export projects, and lift the Biden administration's pause on new LNG exports."
"We urge Congress to reject this proposal and commit to action that protects frontline communities from the impacts of fossil fuel development and the climate crisis," Rosenbluth added.
"Don't be fooled: The Energy Permitting Reform Act is another dirty deal to fast-track fossil fuels above all else."
NRDC managing director of government affairs Alexandra Adams said Wednesday that "this bill is a giveaway for the oil and gas industry that will ramp up drilling and environmental destruction at a time when we need to be putting a hard stop to fossil fuels."
"We cannot afford to roll back so many of our bedrock environmental and community legal protections and offer a blank check to the oil and gas industry," she stressed. "We need new solutions for permitting if we are going to meet our clean energy potential and address the climate challenge. But this is not it."
"This bill would altogether be a leap backward on climate, health, and justice if passed into law," Adams added. "The Senate should reject it and look toward alternative solutions already being considered."
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'Nothing To Eat': War-Torn Sudan Faces Mass Famine as Military Delays Aid
Both parties in Sudan's civil war are to blame for a looming mass famine, experts say, and the military's blocking of U.N. aid at a border crossing with Chad exacerbates the problem.
Jul 26, 2024
Sudan's military is blocking United Nations aid trucks from entering at a key border crossing, causing severe disruptions in aid in a country that experts fear may be on the brink of one of the worst famines the world has seen in decades, The New York Timesreported Friday.
The border city of Adré in eastern Chad is the main international crossing into the Darfur region of Sudan, but the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), the state's official military, which is engaged in a civil war with a paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), has refused to issue permits for U.N. trucks to enter there, as it's an RSF-controlled area.
U.S. and international officials have issued increasingly alarmed calls for steady aid access to help feed the millions of severely malnourished people in Darfur and other areas of Sudan.
Last week, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the United States ambassador to the U.N., said that the SAF's obstruction of the border was "completely unacceptable."
Both warring parties in Sudan continue to perpetrate brazen atrocities, including starvation of civilians as a method of warfare. This piece focuses on the SAF's ongoing obstruction of essential aid. The situation is catastrophic. The policy is criminal. https://t.co/FKhqQh3EI9.
— Tom Dannenbaum (@tomdannenbaum) July 26, 2024
The Sudanese who've made it out of the country and into Adré reported dire and unsafe conditions in their home country.
"We had nothing to eat," Bahja Muhakar, a Sudenese mother of three, told the Times after she crossed into Chad, following a harrowing six-day journey from Al-Fashir, a major city in Darfur. She said the family often had to live off of one shared pancake per day.
Another mother, Dahabaya Ibet, said that her 20-month-old boy had to bear witness to his grandfather being shot and killed in front of his eyes when the family home in Darfur was attacked by gunmen late last year.
Now the mothers and their families are refugees in Adré, where 200,000 Sudanese are living in an overcrowded, under-resourced transit camp.
In addition to those that have made it out of the country, there are 11 million people internally displaced within Sudan, most of whom have become displaced since the civil war began in April 2023.
An unnamed senior American official told the Times that the looming famine in Sudan could be as bad as the 2011 famine in Somalia or even the great Ethiopian famine of the 1980s.
In April, Reutersreported that people in Sudan were eating soil and leaves to survive, and The Washington Postcalled it a nation in "chaos," reporting that World Food Program trucks had been "blocked, hijacked, attacked, looted, and detained."
In late June, a coalition of U.N. agencies, aid groups, and governments warned that 755,000 people in Sudan faced famine in the coming months.
The U.S. last week announced $203 million in additional aid to Sudan—part of a $2.1 billion pledge that world leaders made in April, which some countries have not yet delivered on.
Some officials including Thomas-Greenfield, who has dubbed the situation in Sudan "the worst humanitarian crisis in the world," have called for the U.N. Security Council to allow aid delivery into the country even in the absence of SAF approval; it's believed that Russia would veto such a measure.
Sudan's civil war has seen a great deal of international interference. Amnesty International on Thursday published an investigatory briefing showing that weapons from Russia, China, Serbia, Turkey, Yemen, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had been identified in the country. And The Guardian on Friday reported that the passports of Emirati citizens had been found among wreckage in Sudan, indicating the UAE may have troops or intelligence officers on the ground, though the UAE denied the accusation.
The International Service for Human Rights on Friday warned that both the SAF and RSF were engaged in wrongful killings and arrests, especially targeted at lawyers, doctors, and activists. The group called for an immediate cease-fire.
The SAF and Sudanese government figures have cast doubt on international experts' claims about famine in the country.
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