Court rejects Iowa senator’s defamation case
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has declined to revive a defamation lawsuit that an Iowa Republican state senator filed against his Democratic opponent over a misleading campaign ad.
The justices on Tuesday let stand the Iowa Supreme Court’s decision dismissing state Sen. Rick Bertrand’s lawsuit.
Bertrand said Democrat Rick Mullin and the Iowa Democratic Party had libeled and slandered him in a TV ad run before the November 2010 election that Bertrand won. The ad said Bertrand’s employer sold “a dangerous sleep drug to children.”
A jury in 2012 agreed with Bertrand that the ad falsely suggested he personally sold the drug and awarded him $231,000 in damages.
The Iowa court ruled that the ad’s false implication may have been negligence, but wasn’t a “reckless disregard for the truth.”
Appeal over Justice memo turned down
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court won’t hear an appeal from a civil liberties group that wants to make public an internal Justice Department memo that allows the FBI to informally obtain phone records.
The justices on Tuesday let stand an appeals court ruling that said the Justice Department could refuse to release the 2010 memo under an exception to the Freedom of Information Act.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation argued that the public has a right to see how the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel authorized the FBI to access phone call records from telephone companies for terrorism investigations.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said the memo was part of the government’s internal deliberations and therefore exempt from disclosure.
Justices block parts of Texas abortion law
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Tuesday blocked key parts of a 2013 law in Texas that had closed all but eight facilities providing abortions in America’s second most-populous state.
In an unsigned order, the justices sided with abortion rights advocates and health care providers in suspending an Oct. 2 ruling by a panel of the New Orleans-based U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals that Texas could immediately apply a rule making abortion clinics statewide spend millions of dollars on hospital-level upgrades.
The court also put on hold a separate provision of the law only as it applies to clinics in McAllen and El Paso that requires doctors at the facilities to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals. The admitting privileges remains in effect elsewhere in Texas.
Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas said they would have ruled against the clinics in all respects.
The fight over the Texas law is the latest over tough new abortion restrictions that have been enacted across the country. The office of Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, a Republican who is the favorite in next month’s governor’s race, is leading the defense of the law. Critics call the measure a backdoor effort to outlaw abortions.
The 5th Circuit is still considering the overall constitutionality of the sweeping measure overwhelmingly passed by the Republican-controlled Texas Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Rick Perry last year.
But even as it weighs the merits of the law, the appeals court said that it can be enforced in the meantime — opening the door for the emergency appeal to the Supreme Court.
“We’re seeing the terrible impact these restrictions have on thousands of Texas women who effectively no longer have access to safe and legal abortion,” said Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the daughter of Texas’ last Democratic governor. “We’re relieved that the court stepped in to stop this, and we hope this dangerous law is ultimately overturned completely.”
Abortion opponents predicted they will ultimately prevail.
“This does not protect the health and safety of women who are undergoing abortion,” said Joe Pojman, executive director of Texas Alliance for Life. “‘’This is definitely a short-term loss, but not necessarily a long- term loss.”
The 5th Circuit decision had blocked an August ruling by Austin-based U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel, who had found that requiring hospital-style upgrades was less about safety than making access to abortion difficult. Yeakel’s ruling temporarily suspended the upgrade rules before they could go into effect Sept. 1 — and the order from the Supreme Court means they are on hold again.
Allowing the rules on hospital-level upgrades to be enforced — including mandatory operating rooms and air filtration systems — shuttered more than a dozen clinics across Texas.
Until the nation’s highest court intervened, only abortion facilities in the Houston, Austin, San Antonio and the Dallas-Fort Worth areas remained open. And none was left along the Texas-Mexico border or outside any of the state’s largest urban areas.
Some other clinics, meanwhile, had closed even earlier amid enforcement of the rule on admitting privileges at nearby hospitals. That portion has already been upheld twice by the appeals court.
Attorneys for the state have denied that Texas women would be burdened by fewer abortion facilities, saying nearly nine in 10 would still live within 150 miles (240 kilometers) of a provider. The law’s opponents, however, note that still leaves nearly a million Texas women embarking on drives longer than three hours to get an abortion.
Democrat Wendy Davis launched her campaign for governor behind the celebrity she achieved through a nearly 13-hour filibuster last summer that temporarily blocked the law in the state Senate. Davis said she was “thankful that women can continue to make their own personal decisions.” Abbott’s office said he would continue to defend the law.
Court won’t touch foie gras ban
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is allowing California to continue enforcing a law that bans the sale of foie gras.
The justices on Tuesday rejected a challenge to the law from producers of the delicacy in New York and Canada.
Foie gras is the fatty liver of a force-fed duck. The California law bars state farmers from force-feeding birds with a tube, the way foie gras is made. The law also bans the sale of foie gras in California.
Lower courts in California earlier dismissed efforts to block the law from being enforced.
The case is Association des Eleveurs du Quebec, 13-1313.
Justices won’t review judges add-on to sentences
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has turned away an appeal of lengthy prison sentences described as Kafkaesque because they are based on charges on which a jury found the defendants not guilty.
The justices declined Tuesday to take up the issue of so-called acquitted conduct. In the case before the court, a jury convicted three defendants of distributing crack cocaine, but acquitted them of more serious charges of being part of a drug conspiracy.
But lawyers for the defendants said that when it came to their clients’ sentencing, the trial judge added at least 15 years to each man’s prison term based on the conspiracy charges.
Three justices said the court should have heard the case to decide whether judges have discretion to lengthen prison terms in such circumstances.
