National Roundup

Indiana
NCAA hit hard by pandemic, spent $68 million on legal fees
The NCAA spent nearly $68 million on legal services during the 2019-20 fiscal year even as it lost hundreds of millions in revenue in the pandemic, according to tax documents released Monday.

Revenue was down more than 50% over the previous year, from more than $1.1 billion to just over $520 million, mostly because the lucrative college basketball tournaments were canceled as the coronavirus hit the U.S. hard early in 2020.

The media rights loss for the men’s tourney alone was $702 million, the NCAA said. Championship revenue was down $162 million due to the cancellation of winter and spring title events, though the NCAA said the blow was offset to some extent since expenses for those dropped by $119 million.

Saying it “continues to defend its mission and core values,” the NCAA also listed its legal expenses for 2019-20 at $67.7 million, more than double the $33 million the previous year “due to an accrual of $34.8 million related to the Alston case.”

Last month, the Supreme Court ruled against the NCAA in that case, upholding a lower court’s ruling in an antitrust case. The 9-0 decision means the NCAA cannot cap compensation schools provide to athletes for educational benefits.

The 990 tax form, which the NCAA is required to file as a tax exempt organization, also showed President Mark Emmert’s compensation for the fiscal year at over $2.8 million.

California
Court upends part of law to protect gay seniors
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Gay rights advocates said Monday that they will seek to challenge an appeals court decision tossing out part of a California law designed to protect older LGBTQ residents in nursing homes.

The 2017 law is intended to protect against discrimination or mistreatment based on residents’ sexual orientation or gender identity.

The Third District Court of Appeal overturned the part of the law barring employees of long-term care facilities from willfully and repeatedly using anything other than residents’ preferred names and pronouns.

That ban violates employees’ rights to free speech, the court ruled Friday.

“The law compels long-term care facility staff to alter the message they would prefer to convey,” the court reasoned, adding that the ban “burdens speech more than is required” to reach the state’s objective of eliminating discrimination including harassment on the basis of sex.

Referring to residents other than by their preferred gender “may be disrespectful, discourteous, and insulting,” Associate Justice Elena Duarte wrote on behalf of the three-judge panel. But it can also be a way “to express an ideological disagreement with another person’s expressed gender identity.”

“The pronoun provision at issue here tests the limits of the government’s authority to restrict pure speech that, while potentially offensive or harassing to the listener, does not necessarily create a hostile environment,” she wrote, adding italics to “potentially” and “necessarily.”

Democratic Sen. Scott Wiener, who carried the law, said deliberately using the wrong name or pronoun is “straight up harassment” and “erases an individual’s fundamental humanity.”

Rick Chavez Zbur, executive director of Equality California, which bills itself as the nation’s largest statewide LGBTQ+ civil rights organization, said using the wrong name and pronoun is “a hateful act that denies someone their dignity and truth” and can cause depression and even suicides.

Both said they will fight the ruling, without being specific on what that would mean.

That is a decision for the state attorney general’s office, which defended the law in court, said Equality California spokesman Joshua Stickney.

The attorney general’s office said it is reviewing the decision and considering its next steps.

The appeals court upheld a second challenged portion of the law prohibiting facilities or employees from assigning rooms based on anything other than a transgender resident’s gender identity.

A Sacramento County judge had previously thrown out both parts of the lawsuit.

The law was challenged by Taking Offense, described in the decision as an “unincorporated association which includes at least one California citizen and taxpayer who has paid taxes to the state within the last year.”

The plaintiff’s attorney, David Llewellyn Jr., did not respond to telephone and email messages.


Indiana
Federal court nixes voter registration purge law
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — A federal appeals court has sided with opponents of an Indiana law aimed at having elections officials immediately purge voter registrations for people who appear to have registered in another state.

The decision released Monday upholds an order issued by an Indianapolis-based judge that blocked the law enacted in 2020 from taking effect. The appeals court disparaged the law adopted by the Republican-dominated Legislature as an attempt to get around court rulings against a similar 2017 law.

The revised law dropped a much-criticized national voter database started by Kansas officials in favor of Indiana election officials collecting voter registration information from other states to compare with Indiana's. The Chicago-based 7th Circuit Court of Appeals called the change "different window dressing" that was "largely cosmetic."

The court faulted Indiana's revised law for still violating the National Voter Registration Act by allowing county elections officials to remove voters from registration rolls without receiving consent from that person or notifying the voter and letting two federal elections pass without the person voting.

The revised law "impermissibly allows Indiana to cancel a voter's registration without either direct communication from the voter or compliance with the NVRA's notice-and-waiting procedures," the three-judge appeals panel said.

The NAACP's Indiana State Conference and the League of Women Voters of Indiana, the groups that filed the lawsuit, hailed the decision.

"The laws Indiana passed in 2017 and 2020 risked improper purges of Indiana voters, particularly Black and brown voters," Indiana NAACP President Barbara Bolling-Williams said. "This decision is a win for democracy and racial justice."

The Indiana secretary of state's office, which oversees Indiana's voter registration process, said it was reviewing the ruling.