SUPREME COURT NOTEBOOK

Court rules for energy firm in class-action suit WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court won't make it tougher for defendants in class-action lawsuits to transfer cases from state courts to more business-friendly federal court. The justices on Monday ruled 5-4 in favor of a Michigan energy company that wanted to move a class-action case from Kansas state court to federal court without showing evidence that damages in the case would exceed $5 million. That is the minimum amount required for transferring such cases. The case involved a group of royalty owners who sued Dart Cherokee Basin Operating Co. alleging they were underpaid royalties on oil and gas wells. A federal judge refused to transfer the case without evidence of damages. A federal appeals court declined to consider an appeal, but the Supreme Court said the law does not require such evidence. Justices reject Arizona bid over abortion drugs WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court is refusing to allow Arizona to enforce stringent restrictions on drug-induced abortions while a challenge to those rules plays out in lower courts. The justices on Monday left in place a lower court ruling that blocked regulations that control where and how women can take medications that cause abortions. The rules also would prohibit use of the drugs after the seventh week of pregnancy instead of the ninth. Stephanie Grisham, spokeswoman for Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne, said it would have been extremely rare for the high court to grant the state's request to enforce the restrictions. "We're disappointed, of course, but at this point there is nothing more that we can do," Grisham said. Planned Parenthood is among the abortion providers challenging the rules in federal court. "The court did the right thing today, but this dangerous and misguided law should never have passed in the first place," Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said in a statement. The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in April issued an injunction blocking the rules while the case against them plays out in federal court in Tucson. A federal judge initially denied Planned Parenthood's request for an injunction. The appeals court overturned his ruling. Planned Parenthood Arizona has said about 800 women would have had to get surgical abortions in 2012 if the rules were in effect then. The state Legislature approved the restrictions in 2012. Arizona argues they protect women's health by mandating a federally approved protocol. Similar laws are in effect in North Dakota, Ohio and Texas. The Oklahoma Supreme Court struck down the restrictions in that state. The rules ban women from taking the most common abortion-inducing drug, mifepristone, after the seventh week of pregnancy. In 2000, the Food and Drug Administration approved the medication's use through the first seven weeks of pregnancy. Mifepristone is prescribed with a second drug, misoprostol. Since the FDA approval, medical researchers and clinical trials have shown mifepristone is effective in much smaller doses and for two weeks longer in a pregnancy, the challengers said. The second drug may be taken at home. Arizona's rules would require the drugs be taken only at the FDA-approved doses and only at clinics. Planned Parenthood says medication-induced abortions account for more than 40 percent of abortions at its clinics. To justify the restrictions, Arizona and the other states have pointed to the deaths of at least eight women who took the drugs. But the 9th Circuit said the FDA investigated those deaths and found no causal connection between them and the use of mifespristone or misoprostol. ------- Associated Press writer Astrid Galvan in Tucson, Arizona, contributed to this report. @Brief Headline:Traffic stop OK despite mistake of law By Sam Hananel Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) - Police can use evidence seized during a traffic stop even if it turns out the officers initially pulled a car over based on a misunderstanding of the law, the Supreme Court ruled Monday. The 8-1 decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts said that such a stop does not violate the Constitution's protection against unreasonable searches. The ruling came in a North Carolina case in which a police officer pulled over Nicholas Heien's car because the right brake light was out, although the left one still worked. A consensual search led to the discovery of cocaine in the trunk. A state appeals court said the stop was impermissible because a quirky state law only requires a car to have one functioning brake light. But the state's highest court reversed, finding that the officer's mistaken reading of the law was reasonable. The Supreme Court agreed, finding that the Fourth Amendment requires police to act reasonably, but not perfectly. Roberts said that just as a police officer's mistake of fact can justify a traffic stop, a reasonable misunderstanding about the law can also satisfy the Constitution. The ruling means Heien can't try to overturn his conviction for drug trafficking by suppressing the drug evidence found in his car. Heien had argued that ignorance of the law is no excuse for citizens accused of crimes and said there shouldn't be a double standard for police. But Roberts said that simply means the state can't impose a punishment for something that isn't illegal. "Heien is not appealing a brake-light ticket," Roberts said. "He is appealing a cocaine-trafficking conviction as to which there is no asserted mistake of fact or law." Heien was a passenger when his car was pulled over on a North Carolina highway in 2009 because the right brake light was out. Officer Matt Darisse of the Surry County Sheriff's Department issued a warning citation over the light to the driver, Maynor Javier Vasquez. Darisse then asked for permission to search the inside of the car and Heiein consented. The search revealed a plastic sandwich bag of cocaine in the trunk. Roberts said the officer's decision to stop the car in the first place was reasonable given the confusing way in which the law was worded. Under North Carolina's decades-old law, all cars made after 1955 are required to have a "stop lamp" that can be part of "one or more other rear lamps." But no court had ever interpreted the law in the modern era to require only one working brake light. "I suspect most of you here were surprised to learn that only one brake light is required in North Carolina, even if you are from North Carolina," Roberts said Monday as he read his opinion from the bench. Both the state and the Obama administration had argued that refusing to allow such stops would inject too much uncertainty into the daily actions of police in the field who need to make quick decisions. Reasonable mistakes of law are acceptable, they argued, especially when dealing with a complex law that might be subject to different interpretations. Justice Sonia Sotomayor was the lone dissenter. She said an officer's mistake of law "no matter how reasonable, cannot support the individualized suspicion necessary to justify a seizure under the Fourth Amendment." The notion that the law "is definite and knowable sits at the foundation of our legal system," Sotomayor said. "And it is courts, not officers, that are in the best position to interpret the laws." Published: Wed, Dec 17, 2014