Court Digest

Indiana
Federal judge affirms Indiana University vaccine requirement
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — A federal judge is allowing Indiana University to continue with its COVID-19 vaccine requirement for all students and employees.

A ruling from a judge in South Bend has rejected a request from eight IU students who sought to block the requirement while they pursued a lawsuit claiming that the university’s policy violated both their constitutional rights and the state’s new law banning vaccine passports.

The judge held a hearing on the case last week and wrote in his ruling dated Sunday that evidence so far shows that IU has pursued a reasonable policy in the “legitimate interest of public health for its students, faculty and staff.”

The judge said the students who object to receiving the vaccine shots can seek medical and religious exemptions offered by the university, while also having the option of taking the fall semester off or attending another school.

IU said in a statement that the ruling allows the school to focus on “a full and safe return” for the fall semester on all its campuses.

Mississippi
Meridian inaugurates its 1st Black municipal judge
MERIDIAN, Miss. (AP) — A city in eastern Mississippi has sworn in its first Black municipal judge.

Dustin Markham took the oath of office Friday in Meridian, WTOK-TV reported. The City-County on Tuesday approved him as the successor for former Judge Robbie Jones.

Markham served one term on the City Council before running unsuccessfully for mayor in 2017. Markham has his own law practice. Many supporters came out to watch his inauguration.

Markham said he wants the court system to be more empathetic to its citizens.

“I have some versatility because I come from the juvenile justice center, so there are a lot of things out there that you see that the public doesn’t normally see,” Markham said. “It’s going to be able to give me some better understanding or basis of knowledge as to how we either apply disciplinary aspects to individuals or rehabilitative aspects to individuals.

“In the end, we need to do what’s best for citizens to make sure they have a safe environment,” he said.

Iowa
Court: University violated religious club’s First Amendment rights
A federal appeals court has upheld a 2019 ruling against the University of Iowa, affirming that the university discriminated against a Christian club by stripping it and dozens of other religious clubs of their registered status.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeal on Friday found that a lower federal court correctly ruled that the university can’t selectively deregister student organizations. That ruling came on a lawsuit filed by InterVarsity Christian Fellowship after university administrators deregistered its local chapter along with multiple other religious groups.

The university moved to deregister the groups after another faith-based group, Business Leaders in Christ, sued the university for kicking it off campus following a complaint that it wouldn’t let an openly gay member seek a leadership post.

The appeals court said Friday that the university engaged in “viewpoint discrimination” by selectively enforcing its policy requiring all clubs to offer equal opportunity and access regardless of classifications including race, religion, national origin, age, gender, sexual orientation or gender identity.

The university exempts sororities, fraternities and some sports clubs from its policy prohibiting sex discrimination and allows some groups to require members of specific racial groups, the appeals court said. It even allowed one group, LoveWorks, to require its members to sign a “gay-affirming statement of Christian faith” while disqualifying groups that required members to affirm different religious statements of faith, the court said.

“The university’s choice to selectively apply the Human Rights Policy against InterVarsity suggests a preference for certain viewpoints — like those of LoveWorks—over InterVarsity’s,” Circuit Judge Jonathan Allen Kobes wrote for the panel. “The university focused its ‘clean up’ on specific religious groups and then selectively applied the Human Rights Policy against them. Other groups were simply glossed over or ignored.”

Attorneys with the Iowa Attorney General’s Office listed on court filings as representing the university in the lawsuit did not immediately return phone messages Friday seeking comment.

A UI spokeswoman, Anne Bassett, said in an email Friday afternoon that the university “respects the decision of the court and will move forward in accordance with the decision.”

Daniel Blomberg, an attorney for InterVarsity, said Friday’s ruling puts other schools on notice.

“Schools are supposed to be a place of free inquiry and open thought, but the school officials here punished opinions they didn’t like and promoted ones they did — all while using taxpayer dollars to do it,” Blomberg said.

Prosecutor’s office sued over video of slain teenager

UTICA, N.Y. (AP) — The family of a teenager stabbed to death in 2019 is suing a New York prosecutor’s office, saying it was wrong to share video taken by the killer with the media.

The estate of Bianca Devins sued Oneida County District Attorney Scott McNamara’s office in federal court Thursday, the Observer-Dispatch of Utica reported. A lawyer for McNamara and the county said the complaint has no merit.

Devins, 17, was killed in July 2019 after coming back to Utica with Brandon Clark from a concert in New York City. Clark admitted cutting Devins’ throat and posting photos of her body online afterward. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison in March.

The lawsuit says McNamara and his office shared video Clark took of him having sex with Devins and then killing her with media outlets including the A&E network, the “48 Hours” CBS program and a blogger. The lawsuit called it an “unconscionable dissemination of snuff and child pornography of a 17-year-old murder victim.”

McNamara declined to comment. David Walsh, a lawyer for McNamara and the county, said officials in McNamara’s office told him they followed the law for public records requests made by the media outlets.


Georgia
State settles lawsuit with medical prison whistleblower
ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia will pay $300,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by a physician who drew attention to unsanitary conditions at Augusta State Medical Prison.

Dr. Timothy Young said in the suit that he faced retaliation for being a whistleblower. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported the state will pay $300,000 on behalf of defendants Georgia Correctional HealthCare, which provides medical care at the prison; its statewide medical director, Dr. Billy Nichols; and the medical prison’s warden, Ted Philbin.

As director of the outpatient program, Young repeatedly alerted state officials about poor conditions. He said trash piled up outside an operating room, and leaky ceilings caused black mold. He also said doctors and nurses during surgery had to deal with insects attracted by the debris.

Young also was alarmed at security not being provided for medical staff when treating inmates who could pose a threat, and at delays in getting inmates’ essential care.

Young leaked information to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

After the newspaper reported on conditions in 2017, Young said the warden refused to take his calls, and he was told by medical officials not to put complaints in writing. Young also said inmate care suffered. Young resigned in January 2018, after a 16-year career at the prison.

Young is now clinical director of health services at a federal prison in South Carolina. He said money was not the point of his Georgia lawsuit. He said his overriding goal was to trigger a state investigation of Georgia Correctional HealthCare and the Department of Corrections and hold them accountable.

“Both were responsible for the inmates’ deaths and suffering,” he said.

He said that in the settlement, the defendants denied responsibility for wrongdoing.

The Georgia Attorney General’s Office represented defendants in the case and declined to comment on the settlement, the newspaper reported.

Georgia Correctional HealthCare is a branch of Augusta University. Christen Engle, the university’s vice president of communications and marketing, declined to comment.


Maryland
Jury awards $730K to Secret Service agent detained on duty
GREENBELT, Md. (AP) — A federal jury has awarded $730,000 to a Black Secret Service agent, finding that two white U.S. Park Police officers unlawfully detained him in 2015 as he waited to accompany a Cabinet secretary’s motorcade.

The jury returned a verdict July 9, finding that Gerald Ferreyra and Brian Phillips violated Nathaniel Hicks’ constitutional right to be free from an unreasonable seizure. The jury also found the totality of the officers’ actions during the seizure unreasonable.

In July 2015, Hicks was preparing to lead a motorcade through Maryland when the officers detained him on the shoulder of the Baltimore-Washington Parkway. Ferreyra pointed his weapon at Hicks as he approached the agent’s parked vehicle and saw a gun on the front seat, the lawsuit says.

Hicks alleged in the suit that the officers singled him out because of his race and said he did nothing to justify being detained after the officers confirmed he was an on-duty Secret Service agent. Hicks claims Ferreyra and Phillips both yelled at him, talked to him in a degrading manner, and wouldn’t let him leave even after he showed them his Secret Service credentials.

Hicks, now a retired 20-year veteran of the Secret Service, had been assigned to a protection motorcade for then-Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson on the morning of July 11, 2015. The motorcade slowed to allow Hicks to join it, but officers continued to detain the agent. One of them mockingly waved at the passing vehicles, according to Hicks’ attorneys.

Phillips briefly stopped Hicks a second time — allegedly for talking on a cellphone while driving erratically — after he drove away from the spot along Interstate 295 in Maryland where the officers initially detained him.
Phillips continued to talk to Hicks in a demeaning tone before throwing his identification and registration at him, the suit alleged.

Attorneys for the officers did not respond to messages seeking comment on the verdict. U.S. Park Police officials did not yet have details about whether the officers were still with the agency.

Maine
Men ordered to pay back $2.4M in health care fraud case
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — A federal judge has ordered two men to pay back a total of more than $2.4 million for their role in defrauding a health care insurance provider for low-income people in Maine.

One man also was sentenced to two years in prison on Friday and the other was sentenced to three years of probation. Both had pleaded guilty in 2019.

According to court records, the two were Somali interpreters who conspired with several mental health counseling services in the Lewiston and Auburn areas to submit claims to MaineCare for services that weren’t rendered as billed from 2015 to 2018.

In some cases, one of the men conspired with a counseling center director to change the diagnosis of many clients so they could remain eligible to receive MaineCare reimbursement.

A lawyer for the man sentenced to three years probation said she thought the judge took a thoughtful approach to his sentencing. Unlike other defendants in the case, her client is not an American citizen and may face the possibility of being deported. She said the sentence will allow her client, who didn’t have a criminal record, to spend time with his family and work to support them.


Mississippi
Man pleads guilty in sexual abuse and death of 2-year-old child
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A Mississippi man is scheduled to be sentenced in November after he pleaded guilty last week to federal charges of second-degree murder and aggravated sexual abuse of a child.

Brett K. Hickman, 27, faces up to life in prison on the murder charge and at least 30 years on the aggravated sexual abuse charge, and a $250,000 fine on each count.

Hickman pleaded guilty to both counts June 13 in federal court in Jackson, according to a news release from the acting U.S. attorney for the southern district of Mississippi, Darren LaMarca, and the special agent in charge of the FBI in Mississippi, Michelle Sutphin.

On June 8, 2019, Hickman physically and sexually abused a 2-year-old child who lived at his home in the Tucker Community of the Choctaw Indian Reservation, and that caused the death of the child, according court documents and statements in court.

A federal grand jury indicted Hickman in July 2019. He is scheduled for sentencing Nov. 2 by U.S. District Judge David Bramlette III in Natchez.