Supreme Court will take up Hungary’s bid to end lawsuit from Holocaust survivors
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to intervene for the second time in a dispute between Hungary and Holocaust survivors who want to be compensated for the property confiscated from them during World War II.
The justices will hear arguments in the fall in Hungary’s latest bid to end the lawsuit filed 14 years ago by survivors, all of whom are now over 90, and heirs of survivors. Some survived being sent to the Auschwitz death camp in Poland.
The issue in the case concerns whether an American court is the proper forum for the lawsuit.
Under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, sovereign nations like Hungary are shielded from lawsuits in U.S. courts. But the law makes an exception for lawsuits involving “property taken in violation of international law.”
Lower courts have been wrestling with how the exception works in this case.
In 2021, the justices sided with Germany in a multimillion-dollar dispute over a collection of religious artworks known as the Guelph Treasure. That decision made it harder for some lawsuits to be tried in U.S. courts over claims that property was taken from Jews during the Nazi era.
The justices heard the Hungary case at the same time, and returned it to the appeals court in Washington in light of the decision involving Germany.
The appeals court, hearing the case for a third time, refused to dismiss all the claims.
The survivors filed the lawsuit in 2010 with the goal of pursuing a class-action case against Hungary and its railway on behalf of all Hungarian Holocaust survivors and family members of Holocaust victims. The railroad played a key role in the genocide, transporting more than 400,000 Hungarian Jews to the Auschwitz death camp in Poland over a period of two months in 1944.
The justices will hear arguments in the fall in Hungary’s latest bid to end the lawsuit filed 14 years ago by survivors, all of whom are now over 90, and heirs of survivors. Some survived being sent to the Auschwitz death camp in Poland.
The issue in the case concerns whether an American court is the proper forum for the lawsuit.
Under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, sovereign nations like Hungary are shielded from lawsuits in U.S. courts. But the law makes an exception for lawsuits involving “property taken in violation of international law.”
Lower courts have been wrestling with how the exception works in this case.
In 2021, the justices sided with Germany in a multimillion-dollar dispute over a collection of religious artworks known as the Guelph Treasure. That decision made it harder for some lawsuits to be tried in U.S. courts over claims that property was taken from Jews during the Nazi era.
The justices heard the Hungary case at the same time, and returned it to the appeals court in Washington in light of the decision involving Germany.
The appeals court, hearing the case for a third time, refused to dismiss all the claims.
The survivors filed the lawsuit in 2010 with the goal of pursuing a class-action case against Hungary and its railway on behalf of all Hungarian Holocaust survivors and family members of Holocaust victims. The railroad played a key role in the genocide, transporting more than 400,000 Hungarian Jews to the Auschwitz death camp in Poland over a period of two months in 1944.
Supreme Court rejects appeal from ex-reality star Josh Duggar
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal from Josh Duggar, a former reality television star convicted of downloading child sexual abuse images.
Duggar was on the TLC show “19 Kids and Counting” with his large family before his 2021 conviction.
The court did not elaborate on the denial, as is typical.
Federal authorities investigated after police in Little Rock, Arkansas, found child sexual abuse material was being shared by a computer traced to him. Investigators testified that images depicting the sexual abuse of children, including toddlers, were downloaded in 2019 onto a computer at a car dealership Duggar owned. He was sentenced to 12 and one-half years in prison.
Lower courts have upheld his conviction, rejecting Duggar’s argument that his attorneys should have been able to ask about the prior sex-offense conviction of a former employee of the dealership who had used the same computer. Duggar’s attorneys did not ask the former employee to testify after the judge ruled they could not mention the prior conviction.
TLC canceled “19 Kids and Counting” in 2015 following allegations that Duggar had molested four of his sisters and a babysitter years earlier. Authorities began investigating after receiving a tip from a family friend but concluded that the statute of limitations on any possible charges had expired.
Duggar’s parents said after the allegations resurfaced in 2015 that he had confessed to the fondling and apologized privately. Duggar then apologized publicly for unspecified behavior and resigned as a lobbyist for the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian group.
Duggar was on the TLC show “19 Kids and Counting” with his large family before his 2021 conviction.
The court did not elaborate on the denial, as is typical.
Federal authorities investigated after police in Little Rock, Arkansas, found child sexual abuse material was being shared by a computer traced to him. Investigators testified that images depicting the sexual abuse of children, including toddlers, were downloaded in 2019 onto a computer at a car dealership Duggar owned. He was sentenced to 12 and one-half years in prison.
Lower courts have upheld his conviction, rejecting Duggar’s argument that his attorneys should have been able to ask about the prior sex-offense conviction of a former employee of the dealership who had used the same computer. Duggar’s attorneys did not ask the former employee to testify after the judge ruled they could not mention the prior conviction.
TLC canceled “19 Kids and Counting” in 2015 following allegations that Duggar had molested four of his sisters and a babysitter years earlier. Authorities began investigating after receiving a tip from a family friend but concluded that the statute of limitations on any possible charges had expired.
Duggar’s parents said after the allegations resurfaced in 2015 that he had confessed to the fondling and apologized privately. Duggar then apologized publicly for unspecified behavior and resigned as a lobbyist for the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian group.
Supreme Court rejects challenge to Connecticut law that eliminated religious vaccination exemption
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a challenge to a 2021 Connecticut law that eliminated the state’s longstanding religious exemption from childhood immunization requirements for schools, colleges and day care facilities.
The justices did not comment in leaving in place a federal appeals court ruling that upheld the contentious law. A lower court judge had earlier dismissed the lawsuit challenging the law, which drew protests at the state Capitol.
Connecticut law requires students to receive certain immunizations before enrolling in school, allowing some medical exemptions. Prior to 2021, students also could seek religious exemptions. Lawmakers ended the religious exemption over concerns that an uptick in exemption requests was coupled with a decline in vaccination rates in some schools.
The change allowed current students in K-12 who already had a religious exemption to keep it.
A group that has challenged other vaccination laws, including for COVID-19, sued. We the Patriots USA Inc. and several parents argued that Connecticut violated religious freedom protections by removing the exemption. The new law shows a hostility to religious believers and jeopardizes their rights
to medical freedom and child rearing, they said in court papers.
The justices did not comment in leaving in place a federal appeals court ruling that upheld the contentious law. A lower court judge had earlier dismissed the lawsuit challenging the law, which drew protests at the state Capitol.
Connecticut law requires students to receive certain immunizations before enrolling in school, allowing some medical exemptions. Prior to 2021, students also could seek religious exemptions. Lawmakers ended the religious exemption over concerns that an uptick in exemption requests was coupled with a decline in vaccination rates in some schools.
The change allowed current students in K-12 who already had a religious exemption to keep it.
A group that has challenged other vaccination laws, including for COVID-19, sued. We the Patriots USA Inc. and several parents argued that Connecticut violated religious freedom protections by removing the exemption. The new law shows a hostility to religious believers and jeopardizes their rights
to medical freedom and child rearing, they said in court papers.
Supreme Court rejects COVID-19 vaccine appeals from nonprofit founded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday rejected two appeals related to COVID-19 vaccines from Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine nonprofit founded by independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The justices did not comment in letting stand rulings against the group from the federal appeals courts in New Orleans and Philadelphia.
In a case from Texas, the group joined parents in objecting to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s authorization to administer coronavirus vaccines to children. In a case from New Jersey, Children’s Health Defense challenged a Rutgers University requirement, imposed in 2021, for most students to be vaccinated to attend courses on campus, though the school did not force faculty or staff to be vaccinated.
Children’s Health Defense has a lawsuit pending against a number of news organizations, among them The Associated Press, accusing them of violating antitrust laws by taking action to identify misinformation, including about COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines. Kennedy took leave from the group when he announced his run for president but is listed as one of its attorneys in the lawsuit.
The justices did not comment in letting stand rulings against the group from the federal appeals courts in New Orleans and Philadelphia.
In a case from Texas, the group joined parents in objecting to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s authorization to administer coronavirus vaccines to children. In a case from New Jersey, Children’s Health Defense challenged a Rutgers University requirement, imposed in 2021, for most students to be vaccinated to attend courses on campus, though the school did not force faculty or staff to be vaccinated.
Children’s Health Defense has a lawsuit pending against a number of news organizations, among them The Associated Press, accusing them of violating antitrust laws by taking action to identify misinformation, including about COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines. Kennedy took leave from the group when he announced his run for president but is listed as one of its attorneys in the lawsuit.
Supreme Court rejects a settlement in a water dispute between New Mexico and Texas
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Friday rejected a settlement between Western states over the management of one of North America’s longest rivers.
In a 5-4 decision, the justices ruled that the water-sharing deal between Texas and New Mexico can’t go through because the federal government still has concerns about New Mexico water use on the Rio Grande, which Colorado also draws from.
“Having acknowledged those interests, and having allowed the United States to intervene to assert them, we cannot now allow Texas and New Mexico to leave the United States up the river without a paddle,” said Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, reading the majority opinion, which crossed ideological lines as it was joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh and John Roberts.
In a dissent, Justice Neil Gorsuch said the United States’ theory about how water should be distributed between the two states is “so aggressive that New Mexico fears it could devastate its economy.” Joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Amy Coney Barrett, he wrote that the high court’s ruling “defies 100 years of this court’s water law jurisprudence.”
New Mexico’s state engineer said it was disappointing the high court scuttled the deal recommended by a federal judge overseeing the case.
“We need to keep working to make the aquifers in the Lower Rio Grande region sustainable, and lasting solutions are more likely to come from parties working together than from continued litigation,” said Mike Hamman, whose office is responsible for administering the state’s water resources.
Some New Mexico lawmakers had voiced concerns about the proposed settlement, which would have meant reducing the state’s use of Rio Grande water with steps like paying farmers to leave their fields barren and making infrastructure improvements.
Attorney Samantha Barncastle with the Elephant Butte Irrigation District, the largest in New Mexico, greeted the ruling with pleasure and said her group hopes all the parties will go back to the settlement table and hammer out a new agreement.
Farmers in southern New Mexico have had to rely more heavily on groundwater wells over the last two decades as drought and climate change resulted in reduced flows and less water in reservoirs along the Rio Grande. Texas sued over the groundwater pumping, saying the practice was cutting into the amount of water that was ultimately delivered as part of the interstate compact.
U.S. Circuit Judge Michael Melloy had previously deemed the proposal a fair and reasonable way to resolve the conflict consistent with a decadeslong water-sharing agreement.
The federal government, though, lodged several objections, including that the proposal did not mandate specific water capture or use limitations within New Mexico.
In a 5-4 decision, the justices ruled that the water-sharing deal between Texas and New Mexico can’t go through because the federal government still has concerns about New Mexico water use on the Rio Grande, which Colorado also draws from.
“Having acknowledged those interests, and having allowed the United States to intervene to assert them, we cannot now allow Texas and New Mexico to leave the United States up the river without a paddle,” said Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, reading the majority opinion, which crossed ideological lines as it was joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh and John Roberts.
In a dissent, Justice Neil Gorsuch said the United States’ theory about how water should be distributed between the two states is “so aggressive that New Mexico fears it could devastate its economy.” Joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Amy Coney Barrett, he wrote that the high court’s ruling “defies 100 years of this court’s water law jurisprudence.”
New Mexico’s state engineer said it was disappointing the high court scuttled the deal recommended by a federal judge overseeing the case.
“We need to keep working to make the aquifers in the Lower Rio Grande region sustainable, and lasting solutions are more likely to come from parties working together than from continued litigation,” said Mike Hamman, whose office is responsible for administering the state’s water resources.
Some New Mexico lawmakers had voiced concerns about the proposed settlement, which would have meant reducing the state’s use of Rio Grande water with steps like paying farmers to leave their fields barren and making infrastructure improvements.
Attorney Samantha Barncastle with the Elephant Butte Irrigation District, the largest in New Mexico, greeted the ruling with pleasure and said her group hopes all the parties will go back to the settlement table and hammer out a new agreement.
Farmers in southern New Mexico have had to rely more heavily on groundwater wells over the last two decades as drought and climate change resulted in reduced flows and less water in reservoirs along the Rio Grande. Texas sued over the groundwater pumping, saying the practice was cutting into the amount of water that was ultimately delivered as part of the interstate compact.
U.S. Circuit Judge Michael Melloy had previously deemed the proposal a fair and reasonable way to resolve the conflict consistent with a decadeslong water-sharing agreement.
The federal government, though, lodged several objections, including that the proposal did not mandate specific water capture or use limitations within New Mexico.
Supreme Court to consider reinstating a critical approval for a rail project in eastern Utah
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to consider reviving a critical approval for a railroad project that would carry crude oil and boost fossil fuel production in rural eastern Utah.
The justices will review an appeals court ruling that overturned the approval issued by the Surface Transportation Board for the Uinta Basin Railway, an 88-mile (142-kilometer) railroad line. Arguments will take place in the fall.
The rail line would connect oil and gas producers in rural Utah to the broader rail network, allowing them to access larger markets and ultimately sell to refineries near the Gulf of Mexico. Producers who are currently limited to tanker trucks would be able to ship an additional 350,000 barrels of crude daily on trains extending for up to 2 miles (3.2 kilometers).
Proponents include oil businesses, rural Utah officials and the Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah & Ouray Reservation. They have argued that the railroad would be a boon to struggling local economies and boost domestic energy production.
Environmental groups and Colorado’s Eagle County, which sued to challenge the project, worry about safety and potential train derailments. The environmental groups also contend that the rail line will allow more oil to be extracted and burned, contributing to climate change.
The federal appeals court in Washington ruled last year that the Surface Transportation Board’s environmental approval was rushed and violated federal law.
The issue at the Supreme Court is whether the agency should have weighed the potential environmental harm of the main cargo the railroad would carry when it has no regulatory authority over oil production.
The justices will review an appeals court ruling that overturned the approval issued by the Surface Transportation Board for the Uinta Basin Railway, an 88-mile (142-kilometer) railroad line. Arguments will take place in the fall.
The rail line would connect oil and gas producers in rural Utah to the broader rail network, allowing them to access larger markets and ultimately sell to refineries near the Gulf of Mexico. Producers who are currently limited to tanker trucks would be able to ship an additional 350,000 barrels of crude daily on trains extending for up to 2 miles (3.2 kilometers).
Proponents include oil businesses, rural Utah officials and the Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah & Ouray Reservation. They have argued that the railroad would be a boon to struggling local economies and boost domestic energy production.
Environmental groups and Colorado’s Eagle County, which sued to challenge the project, worry about safety and potential train derailments. The environmental groups also contend that the rail line will allow more oil to be extracted and burned, contributing to climate change.
The federal appeals court in Washington ruled last year that the Surface Transportation Board’s environmental approval was rushed and violated federal law.
The issue at the Supreme Court is whether the agency should have weighed the potential environmental harm of the main cargo the railroad would carry when it has no regulatory authority over oil production.
