Ohio
Supreme Court to hear school ‘takeovers’ case
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — The Ohio Supreme Court has scheduled oral arguments for Oct. 23 in a legal fight over the state law that shifted operational control of poor-performing school districts from locally elected boards to unelected CEOs.
The Youngstown school board and school employees’ unions argue the law violates the Ohio Constitution. They also say lawmakers violated a procedural rule when the divisive House Bill 70 was pushed through the Legislature in 2015.
The state denies those arguments and says the law should stand.
Youngstown was the first school district affected. Its board asked the high court to consider the case after an appeals court sided with the state.
Meanwhile, lawmakers have been considering proposals to change or undo the law on so-called “state takeovers” of troubled districts.
Ohio
Former death row inmate gets life, no parole
CLEVELAND (AP) — A Cleveland man whose 2002 death sentence for aggravated murder and rape was overturned has been resentenced to life in prison without parole.
A three-judge panel in Cuyahoga County imposed the sentence Wednesday on 42-year-old Kelly Foust after approving a plea agreement between Foust and prosecutors that allowed the former death row inmate to avoid facing a possible death penalty again.
Foust’s attorney, Jason Haller, declined to comment Thursday.
Cleveland.com reports that authorities said Foust broke into a home in 2001, looking for his estranged girlfriend. They say he fatally beat Jose Coreano with a claw hammer, raped the girl and set fire to the house.
A federal appeals court overturned Foust’s death sentence in 2011, finding that his lawyers didn’t present evidence of “horrific” childhood abuse he suffered.
Montana
Woman testifies in neo-Nazi troll lawsuit
MISSOULA, Mont. (AP) — A Montana real estate agent said Thursday she still feels the emotional and financial effects nearly three years after the publisher of a neo-Nazi website told his followers to unleash a “troll storm” on her family.
Tanya Gersh testified in U.S. District Court in Missoula Thursday as a judge considered her request to order The Daily Stormer publisher Andrew Anglin pay her money for damages, pain and suffering and to punish the website operator.
Gersh is asking for a default judgment in the civil lawsuit after Anglin failed to appear for a deposition in April. After the hearing, Gersh and her attorney, David Dinielli of the Southern Poverty Law Center, spoke to reporters.
“I have lost my sense of safety, my security and I don’t know that I am ever going to get it back,” Gersh said. But, she added, “I refuse to let these haters define the rest of my life.”
In 2016, Anglin published a series of posts in which he accused Gersh of trying to drive the mother of white nationalist Richard Spencer out of Whitefish. He published the phone numbers, email addresses and social media profiles of Gersh, her husband and son and wrote, “Are y’all ready for an old fashioned troll storm?”
Gersh, who is Jewish, said she and her family received hundreds of threatening messages, many of them anti-Semitic.
Anglin does not dispute writing the posts, but he argued unsuccessfully that he has a First Amendment right to do so and that he is not liable for his followers’ actions.
He failed to show up to testify at the April 30 deposition in New York after saying he lives outside the U.S. and believes it would be dangerous for him to return.
That prompted U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeremiah Lynch to rule that Anglin was in default, and Thursday’s hearing was scheduled to determine the amount in damages Gersh should be awarded.
She estimates at least $1.3 million in current and future losses, said she is seeing a psychiatrist and takes anti-depressants. She is also asking for punitive damages against Anglin.
“We presented evidence from Ms. Gersh, from her therapist and from her husband demonstrating that very significant damages ought to be assessed,” said her attorney, David Dinielli of the Southern Povery Law Center.
Anglin did not appear for the hearing. The judge did not make a ruling on Thursday.
Anglin faces default judgments in at least three other federal cases, including lawsuits filed by two other alleged targets of his online trolling campaigns.
In one, a federal judge in Ohio last month awarded Muslim-American radio host Dean Obeidallah $4.1 million after Anglin falsely accused him of terrorism.
Nevada
Judge: Jury to hear ammo maker trial
LAS VEGAS (AP) — A federal judge in Nevada says a jury will decide if an Arizona man illegally manufactured bullets sold to the gunman who staged the deadliest mass shooting in the nation’s modern history.
U.S. District Judge James Mahan’s ruling on Wednesday puts Douglas Haig on track for trial beginning Aug. 12 in Las Vegas.
Haig’s attorneys wanted a bench trial in Phoenix, close to Haig’s home in Mesa, Arizona.
They argued jurors can’t fairly hear the case in Las Vegas, where 58 people died and hundreds were injured in the October 2017 shooting.
Haig isn’t accused of the shooting.
He admits selling ammunition and is accused of illegally making tracer and armor-piercing bullets found in the hotel room where the Las Vegas gunman rained rapid gunfire into a concert crowd before killing himself.
Missouri
Public unions see only modest decline after court ruling
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Union membership among public employees has fallen only slightly in the nation’s most labor-friendly states since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled a year ago that government workers no longer could be required to pay union fees.
An analysis of federal data conducted for The Associated Press shows the decline in union membership rates has been larger in states that had previously allowed mandatory fees to be deducted from the paychecks of government workers than in states that had not.
Yet the drop has been less than what some labor leaders had feared following the high court decision.
Anticipating that the Supreme Court might end the mandatory union fees, some labor-friendly states enacted laws last year to protect membership rolls while unions redoubled their recruitment efforts.
