Justices affirm ruling striking NC legislative districts
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court has upheld a lower court ruling that struck down 28 state House and Senate districts in North Carolina because they violated the rights of black voters. But the justices rejected the court's order to redraw the districts and hold a special election.
The action by the justices Monday sends the matter back to the lower court, which could order new districts in time for the regular cycle of elections in 2018.
Democrats hope new district maps will help them break the Republican stranglehold on the state legislature.
Democrats need to capture three House seats or six Senate seats currently held by Republicans to eliminate the GOP's veto-proof majorities. That would enhance the power of Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper.
A panel of three federal judges in North Carolina that struck down the districts as illegal racial gerrymanders had ordered the drawing of new districts in time for special elections this year. But the Supreme Court blocked the order for the new districts. The matter is back in the hands of the lower court.
The high court's action follows last month's ruling in which the justices struck down two North Carolina congressional districts because they diminished the voting strength of the state's black residents.
The districts were initially drawn in 2011 when Republicans controlled the legislature, as they do now. Civil rights groups and black voters challenged the districts, complaining that they packed too many black voters into some districts to make surrounding districts whiter and thus more likely to elect Republicans.
Cooper defeated Republican Gov. Pat McCrory in November.
Court limits seizure of assets from drug conspiracies
By Sam Hananel
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court is placing new limits on the government's ability to seize assets from people who are convicted of drug crimes but receive little of the illegal proceeds.
The unanimous ruling on Monday comes as the Justice Department has moved to impose harsher punishments for drug trafficking and related crimes, reversing Obama-era policies.
The case involved a Tennessee man convicted for his role selling iodine water purification filters to methamphetamine makers. Terry Honeycutt helped sell more than 20,000 filters at his brother's hardware store and prosecutors said both brothers knew the iodine was used by local meth cooks.
Honeycutt's brother pleaded guilty and forfeited $200,000 of the $270,000 in profits. The government tried to get the remaining $70,000 from Honeycutt, but he argued that he wasn't responsible for it since he didn't personally see any profits from the scheme.
A federal appeals court ruled against Honeycutt, agreeing with prosecutors that each brother bore the full responsibility for the entire amount.
But Justice Sonia Sotomayor said in her opinion for the high court that forfeiture laws are "limited to property the defendant himself actually acquired as the result of the crime."
She cited as an example a case in which a marijuana farmer masterminds a scheme to sell pot on college campuses and recruits a college student to deliver the packages for $300 a month. In her example, the farmer might earn $3 million in a year, while the student earns $3,600. She said under the government's theory, the student could face a forfeiture judgment for the entire conspiracy amount of $3 million.
"Congress did not authorize the government to confiscate substitute property from other defendants or coconspirators," Sotomayor said. "It authorized the government to confiscate assets only from the defendant who initially acquired the property and who bears responsibility for its dissipation."
The ruling is the latest effort by the high court to limit perceived overreaching by federal prosecutors, said John Marti, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
"In short, federal criminal statutes and forfeiture statutes are not blank checks for prosecutors," Marti said.
Court sides with religious hospitals in pension dispute
By Sam Hananel
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) - Religious hospitals don't have to comply with federal laws protecting pension plans, a unanimous Supreme Court ruled Monday in a case that affects retirement benefits for roughly a million workers nationwide.
The justices sided with three church-affiliated nonprofit hospital systems being sued for underfunding their employee pension plans.
The hospitals - two with Catholic affiliation and one with Lutheran ties - had argued that their pensions are "church plans" that are exempt from the law and have been treated as such for decades by federal officials.
Workers asserted that Congress never meant to exempt massive hospital systems that employ tens of thousands of workers. They said the hospitals are dodging legal safeguards that could jeopardize their benefits.
Pension plans are required to be fully funded and insured under federal law, but Congress carved out narrow exemptions for churches and other religious organizations. The hospitals claimed the law also exempts plans associated with or controlled by a church, whether or not it was created by a church in the first place.
Writing for the court, Justice Elena Kagan said a pension plan operated by a religiously affiliated hospital is exempt from the law "regardless of who established it."
The federal government has long agreed with the hospitals' understanding of the law. Agencies including the IRS and the Labor Department have assured them for more than 30 years that they are exempt from traditional pension rules.
But three federal appeals courts had ruled against the hospitals -Illinois-based Advocate Health Care Network, California-based Dignity Health and New Jersey-based Saint Peter's Healthcare System. The hospitals appealed, warning that the rulings could expose them to billions of dollars in liability.
Together, the three hospitals employ about 100,000 workers. But about a million workers around the country work for similar nonprofits that have been exempt from pension funding requirements.
In one of the cases, workers allege that Dignity Health - the fifth-largest provider of health care in the country - has underfunded its pension plan by $1.2 billion.
Justice Neil Gorsuch did not participate in the ruling, which was argued before he joined the court.
Recovery in securities fraud cases limited
By Sam Hananel
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court on Monday made it tougher for the government to recover ill-gotten gains from people convicted of securities fraud, ruling that such recoveries are subject to a five-year statute of limitations.
The unanimous ruling could hamstring prosecutors trying to recoup huge sums of money in cases where alleged fraud has been going on for decades before authorities file charges.
The justices overturned a lower court decision that ordered venture capitalist Charles Kokesh to pay the Securities and Exchange Commission $35 million from investor funds he used to pay himself and others at his New Mexico-based operation from 1995 to 2006.
Lawyers for Kokesh had argued that the five-year window would reduce his payment to just $5 million because the SEC did not bring charges against him until 2009.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor said in her opinion that so-called "disgorgement" actions are the equivalent of penalties, which have long been considered subject to the five-year limit for collection.
"Disgorgement orders go beyond compensation, are intended to punish, and label defendants wrongdoers as a consequence of violating public laws," Sotomayor said.
Government lawyers had argued that disgorgement was not a punishment because the goal is to prevent those who break the law from being unjustly enriched. But Sotomayor disagreed, saying disgorgement can sometimes exceed the profits gained. She said it could include benefits to third parties or fail to consider expenses that reduce the amount of illegal profits.
Business and securities industry groups had argued that ruling in favor of the government would harm financial markets by creating uncertainty about the limits of potential liability for securities fraud. They said going beyond the five-year window would mean relying on stale evidence and witnesses with faded memories.
SEC spokesman Ryan White declined to comment on the ruling. The agency collected more than $4 billion in disgorgement actions and other penalties in the 2016 fiscal year.
Railroad worker case overturned
By Matt Volz
Associated Press
HELENA, Mont. (AP) - The U.S. Supreme Court has overturned a Montana court's ruling that two BNSF Railway workers could sue the company for their injuries in the state, even though the men never worked in Montana and they weren't hurt here.
The nation's high court ruled 8-1 on May 30 that state courts don't have jurisdiction over a railroad company headquartered elsewhere just because it has tracks running through those states. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in the opinion that deciding the workers' cases in Montana would be a violation of the Texas-based BSNF's due process rights under the 14th Amendment.
"The business BNSF does in Montana is sufficient to subject the railroad to specific personal jurisdiction in that State on claims related to the business it does in Montana," Ginsburg wrote. But, she added, that does not allow the state to exercise jurisdiction over claims "that are unrelated to any activity occurring in Montana."
The ruling largely reaffirms earlier Supreme Court decisions that prevent a state court from having the general authority to decide cases against a corporation unless the court is in the corporation's principal place of business, with limited exceptions.
The Montana Supreme Court ruled a year ago that railroad workers have special protections that allow them to file injury lawsuits wherever their employers do business. The Federal Employers' Liability Act was written specifically to allow injured railway workers to file such out-of-state lawsuits, as long as the rail company operates in the state where the claims are filed, the state court ruled.
BNSF has about 2,000 miles of track and 2,000 workers in Montana, which represents 10 percent of the company's operations.
Robert Nelson and the family of Brent Tyrell sued BNSF separately in Montana in 2014. Nelson was injured in Washington state in 2008. Tyrrell's lawsuit alleged his exposure to carcinogenic chemicals while working in South Dakota, Minnesota and Iowa that caused him to develop cancer and die.
BNSF spokesman Mike Trevino said in a statement the company "is grateful to the Supreme Court for the clarification they provided in deciding this case."
Julie Murray, an attorney for the Public Citizen Litigation Group that represented Nelson and Tyrell, said in a statement that her clients will continue to press their claims when the case is sent back to the Montana Supreme Court. But, she added, the U.S. Supreme Court decision is a loss for injured railroad workers who may have to travel far from home for a judge to hear their claims.
"Workers already suffering from disabling injuries caused by their employers shouldn't have to bear that burden," Murray said.
Her comments echoed Justice Sonia Sotomayor's dissenting opinion. Sotomayor She wrote that the majority opinion grants a windfall to large multistate and multinational corporations and that individual plaintiffs will be forced to sue in distant jurisdictions where they have no contacts or connections.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, one of four organizations to file "friend-of-the-court" briefs as interested parties in the case, said the Montana court's decision resurrected unfairness and uncertainty over the question of court jurisdiction that the nation's high court sought to eliminate with previous rulings.
Justices won't hear college drug-testing case
By Jim Suhr
Associated Press
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) - The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Monday to hear a Missouri technical college's challenge of a ruling that its mandatory drug testing policy is unconstitutional when applied to all students.
The nation's highest court ended the six-year legal dispute by refusing without comment to intervene at the request of 1,200-student State Technical College of Missouri, the 56-year-old school formerly known as Linn State Technical College.
The college, based in Linn in central Missouri, has insisted that fostering a drug-free environment amounted to a "special need" justifying departure from the usual warrant and probable-cause requirements. The American Civil Liberties Union countered that such universal drug testing was unconstitutionally invasive.
Under a ruling last December by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that quashed the college's blanket drug-screening policy as a condition of enrollment, the school can test students enrolled in a handful of programs with public safety concerns. Those include heavy machinery and aviation maintenance.
"This case establishes - once and for all - that under the Fourth Amendment, every person has the right to be free from an unreasonable search and seizure, including college students," the ACLU, which filed the class-action lawsuit in 2011, said in a statement Monday.
Shawn Strong, the college's president, said in an emailed statement to The Associated Press that the school "will now look at modifying our policies to comply with the (8th Circuit's) ruling."
"Before embarking on this course the college realized it might be called upon to defend its efforts to protect Missouri's college students from the physical dangers and economic perils of illicit drug use," Strong said. "The courts have confirmed our right to drug test a number of our technical programs."
In its December ruling, the 8th Circuit concluded the college's drug-testing mandate wasn't sparked by a crisis and that the school "does not believe it has a student drug-use problem greater than that experienced by other colleges."
"Fostering a drug-free environment is surely a laudable goal," Judge Roger Wollman wrote for the court's majority, but "Linn State has not demonstrated that fostering a drug-free environment is a 'special need' as defined by the U.S. Supreme Court."
In a dissenting opinion, Judge C. Arlen Beam wrote that the college had a right to drug test all students, adding that the court erred "in rejecting Linn State's reasoned conclusion that its suspicionless drug testing and screening program ensures safety and deters harm to every student."
Published: Wed, Jun 07, 2017
