Supreme Court rules in favor of fired whistleblower
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that a former air marshal who was fired after leaking plans to the media about security cutbacks can seek whistleblower protection.
By a 7-2 vote, the justices said Robert MacLean did not violate federal law when he revealed that the Transportation Security Administration planned to save money by cutting back on overnight trips for undercover air marshals.
MacLean leaked the information in 2003 to an MSNBC reporter after supervisors ignored his safety concerns. His disclosure triggered outrage in Congress, and the Department of Homeland Security quickly reversed the policy, calling it a mistake. But the TSA fired McLean three years later after it discovered he was the leaker.
A federal appeals court sided with MacLean, but the Obama administration appealed. The government argued that whistleblower laws contain a major exception - they do not protect employees who reveal information that is "prohibited by law" or by an executive order. Government lawyers pointed to TSA regulations that prohibit employees from disclosing "sensitive security information," including any information relating to air marshal deployments.
Chief Justice John Roberts said in his opinion for the court that nothing in federal law prohibits MacLean from doing what he did. The government has raised legitimate security concerns, Roberts said, but they must be addressed by the president through an executive order or Congress by changing the law. "Although Congress and the president each has the power to address the government's concerns, neither has done so. It is not our role to do so for them," he wrote.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Anthony Kennedy dissented.
MacLean also had argued that the information about cutting overnight trips wasn't really sensitive because it had been sent as a text to his cell phone without using more secure methods.
The government warned that allowing MacLean to gain whistleblower status would only encourage other federal employees to divulge secret information, posing a future threat to public safety. Roberts repeated what several justices said during arguments in November - that if the safety issue were grave enough, the president could simply sign an executive order prohibiting federal workers from revealing such sensitive data.
The case is Department of Homeland Security v. MacLean, 13-894.
Protests over campaign finance during high court session
WASHINGTON (AP) - Supreme Court police removed several spectators who disrupted proceedings in the courtroom Wednesday to mark the fifth anniversary of the court's Citizens United ruling on campaign finance.
Kai Newkirk, the leader of the protest group 99Rise, claimed responsibility for the demonstration that briefly delayed the justices from reading summaries of their opinions just after 10 a.m. EST.
The demonstrators "stood up in the tradition of nonviolent dissent to speak out against corruption and to defend our democracy on the fifth anniversary of Citizens United," Newkirk said in a telephone interview.
The 5-4 Citizens United decision in January 2010 freed corporations and labor unions to spend as much as they want on elections for Congress and president.
President Barack Obama issued a statement repeating his view that the decision was wrong and "has caused real harm to our democracy."
Newkirk was arrested last year, and barred from the court grounds for a year, after a protest in which the group managed to get a camera inside the courtroom and post video on the Internet.
Newkirk said protesters also had a camera Wednesday, but that he did not yet know whether there would be footage available.
Court security stepped up security screenings following the embarrassing breach of court rules, which do not allow cameras.
Newkirk said seven members of the group were arrested. An Associated Press reporter saw five people in plastic handcuffs outside the courtroom.
A Supreme Court spokeswoman did not immediately have details about those who were taken out of the courtroom.
Supreme Court sides with Teva in drug dispute
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court on Tuesday sided with Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. in the company's high-profile patent dispute with rival firms over the top-selling multiple sclerosis drug.
The justices ruled 7-2 that a federal appeals court wrongly overturned five of Teva's patents for the drug Copaxone. The high court's decision gives the Israel-based company another chance to keep its exclusive rights to the drug until September 2015.
Copaxone generates about $4 billion in annual sales for Teva.
Teva had argued that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit should not have second-guessed factual findings made by a federal district court that had earlier ruled in Teva's favor.
Writing for the majority, Justice Stephen Breyer said all appeals courts must generally defer to findings of fact made by lower courts. He said there is no exception to this rule for patent cases, in which a judge has carefully considered the entire case and has a better chance to gain "familiarity with specific scientific problems and principles."
The high court's ruling is a loss for generic companies Mylan Inc., Momenta Pharmaceuticals Inc., Natco Pharma Ltd. and Sandoz, Inc. Those companies had failed to convince a federal judge in New York that Teva's patent claim based on the drug's molecular weight was too ambiguous. But they convinced the Federal Circuit to reverse that decision and find Teva's patent invalid.
The Supreme Court's ruling sends the case back to lower courts for further proceedings.
In dissent, Justices Clarence Thomas said that reviewing patents is not simply a factual question, but falls more on the side of a legal determination. He said a judge's resolution of a patent claim is similar to interpreting a law, and should therefore merit a fresh review by the appeals court.
Thomas was joined in dissent by Justice Samuel Alito.
Court won't hear priest's appeal of reviving lawsuit
WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. Supreme Court is allowing a lawsuit to proceed against a Roman Catholic church and a priest over allegations that a teen was kissed and fondled by an adult church parishioner.
The justices did not comment Tuesday in rejecting an appeal from the Roman Catholic Church of the Diocese of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and the priest of a state Supreme Court decision. That earlier ruling revived the lawsuit that contends the teen told the priest what had happened to her and that the priest should have reported the allegations.
The church and the priest argued that allowing the lawsuit to go forward could lead to the priest being called to testify about information that was disclosed during private confessions.
Supreme Court: Death row inmate deserves hearing
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that lower courts should take another look at an appeal from a Missouri man on death row for killing a woman and her two children 16 years ago.
The justices said inmate Mark Christeson should get a chance to argue that his court-appointed attorneys were ineffective because they missed a 2005 deadline to appeal his conviction in federal court.
It is uncommon for someone to be executed without a federal appeals court hearing.
Christeson would have been the 11th man executed in Missouri last year. But the Supreme Court put his execution on hold in October while it considered his appeal.
A group of attorneys argued that Christeson's court-appointed lawyers, Phil Horwitz and Eric Butts, should be replaced due to a conflict of interest because they would not admit their own ineffectiveness. The outside attorneys who reviewed the case file said substituting lawyers could give Christeston another chance to win federal review.
Horwitz and Butts missed the 2005 deadline to file a federal appeals petition by four months. But they declined to let outside counsel review documents that might show possible negligence in missing the deadline.
Last year, a federal court declined to substitute Christeson's lawyers. The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals also refused the request, prompting the appeal to the Supreme Court.
In an unsigned opinion, the Supreme Court said lower courts should have acknowledged that Horwitz and Butts faced a conflict of interest. The justices said the lawyers could not be expected to make a legal argument "which threatens their professional reputation and livelihood."
Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented, saying they would not have reversed the appeals court's decision without full briefing and arguments from the parties.
Christeson faces death for killing Susan Brouk, 36, and her children in 1998. According to court records, Christeson, then 18, and his 17-year-old cousin, Jesse Carter, had planned to run away from a home outside Vichy in central Missouri where they were living with a relative. They walked a half-mile away to Brouk's home to steal her Ford Bronco.
Armed with shotguns, they tied her daughter and son's hands with shoelaces. Christeson forced Brouk into a bedroom and raped her. The pair then forced Brouk and the children into her Bronco and drove to a pond.
Brouk and Kyle were stabbed and thrown into the pond to drown. Adrian suffocated when Christeson pressed on her throat while Carter held her.
US Supreme Court rules for bearded Muslim inmate
WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. Supreme Court is siding with a Muslim prison inmate who sued for the right to grow a short beard for religious reasons.
The court's unanimous ruling Tuesday in a case about religious liberty stands in contrast to the Hobby Lobby case that bitterly divided the justices in June over whether family-owned corporations could mount religious objections to paying for women's contraceptives under the health care overhaul.
The justices said that inmate Gregory Holt could maintain a half-inch beard because Arkansas prison officials could not substantiate claims that the beard posed a security risk.
High court rejects military contractors appeals
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court on Tuesday turned away three appeals from military contractor KBR Inc. that seek to shut down lawsuits over a soldier's electrocution in Iraq and open-air burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The justices offered no comment in allowing the lawsuits to proceed.
One lawsuit was filed by the parents of Staff Sgt. Ryan Maseth, who was electrocuted in his barracks shower at an Army base in Iraq in 2008. The suit claims KBR unit Kellogg Brown & Root Services Inc. was legally responsible for the shoddy electrical work that was common in Iraqi-built structures taken over by the U.S. military. KBR disputes that claim.
Dozens of lawsuits by soldiers and others assert they were harmed by improper waste disposal while serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. They seek to hold KBR and Halliburton Co. responsible for exposing soldiers to toxic emissions and contaminated water when they burned waste in open pits without proper safety controls.
The contractors say they cannot be sued because they essentially were operating in war zones as an extension of the military.
The Obama administration agreed with the contractors that lower courts should have dismissed the lawsuits, but said the Supreme Court should not get involved now because lower courts still could dismiss or narrow the claims.
Published: Thu, Jan 22, 2015
