Arizona
Former Mercury interim coach accuses team in lawsuit of racial and gender discrimination
PHOENIX (AP) — Lawyers for former Phoenix Mercury interim coach Nikki Blue have filed a lawsuit against the organization, alleging unequal treatment based on race and gender, unequal pay based on race and that her employment was terminated in retaliation for complaints about unequal treatment.
The suit was filed on Thursday in U.S. District Court in Arizona.
Blue, who is Black, was hired in 2022 as an assistant coach and was named the team’s interim coach in June 2023 after Vanessa Nygaard was fired midseason. Blue had a 7-21 record in the interim role.
Blue was not retained after the season. The Mercury hired Orlando Magic assistant Nate Tibbets, who is white.
The suit claims that Blue was paid $250,000 in her interim role, which was less than the $375,000 that Nygaard, who is white, was making. Tibbets is reportedly making more than $1 million per season.
Blue also claims that the Mercury organization set her up to fail, making roster decisions in 2023 that made the team noncompetitive.
“Despite her exemplary record and professionalism, Ms. Blue was cast aside, demeaned, and denied the opportunity to lead,” the law firm Mesidor PLLC, co-counsel on the case, said in a statement. “This lawsuit is not just about one woman’s career — it’s about the pervasive, institutional disrespect for Black women in sports leadership.”
One of Blue’s lawyers is Sheree Wright, who has filed other suits against the NBA’s Phoenix Suns and the Mercury in recent seasons.
“This is the fifth lawsuit brought against the organization by Sheree Wright, an attorney who has been disciplined twice by the Supreme Court of Arizona for committing numerous violations of the rules of professional conduct — including making false and unsupported allegations of racial bias against a judge,” Suns and Mercury senior vice president of communications Stacey Mitch said in a statement.
“Like Ms. Wright’s other cases, this case is completely meritless. Ms. Blue was interviewed and considered for the head coach position, but didn’t get the position based on her performance as interim head coach, as well as her limited professional coaching experience.
“Sheree Wright’s continued abuse of the legal system for financial gain is unethical.”
New York
Doctors and public health organizations sue over vaccine policy changes
NEW YORK (AP) — A coalition of doctors groups and public health organizations sued the U.S. government on Monday over the decision to stop recommending COVID-19 vaccinations for most children and pregnant women.
The American Academy of Pediatrics, American Public Health Association and four other groups — along with an unnamed pregnant doctor who works in a hospital — filed the lawsuit in federal court in Boston.
U.S. health officials, following infectious disease experts’ guidance, previously urged annual COVID-19 shots for all Americans ages 6 months and older. But in late May, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced he was removing COVID-19 shots from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendations for healthy children and pregnant women.
A number of health experts decried the move as confusing and accused Kennedy of disregarding the scientific review process that has been in place for decades — in which experts publicly review current medical evidence and hash out the pros and cons of policy changes.
The new lawsuit repeats those concerns, alleging that Kennedy and other political appointees at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services have flouted federal procedures and systematically attempted to mislead the public.
“This administration is an existential threat to vaccination in America, and those in charge are only just getting started,” said Richard H. Hughes IV, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs. “If left unchecked, Secretary Kennedy will accomplish his goal of ridding the United States of vaccines, which would unleash a wave of preventable harm on our nation’s children.”
HHS officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Also joining the suit are the American College of Physicians, the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the Massachusetts Public Health Association and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine.
Oregon
Jury convicts former NBA player of raping woman at team party
OREGON CITY, Ore. (AP) — Former NBA player Ben McLemore has been found guilty of raping a 21-year-old woman during a lake house party attended by many of his then-teammates from the Portland Trail Blazers, a jury ruled Thursday.
The jury in Clackamas County, located directly south of Portland, found McLemore, 32, guilty of rape, unlawful sexual penetration and one count of sexual abuse. He was found not guilty on another count of sexual abuse, Portland television station KGW reported.
Sentencing was scheduled for Wednesday.
“We recognize there are those who fear individuals with celebrity status or a position of prominence can avoid prosecution. Not in Clackamas County. This case demonstrates my office prosecutes criminal acts regardless of the offender’s community status,” District Attorney John Wentworth said in a statement.
The charges stemmed from a party Oct. 3, 2021, at the Lake Oswego home owned by his Trail Blazers teammate Robert Covington.
Prosecutors claimed during the trial that the sexual encounter was rape, while McLemore’s attorney countered it was consensual sex.
The woman said she was incapacitated after a night of heavy drinking and was unable to give consent. Prosecutors submitted photos of the woman hovering over a toilet and then passed out on a couch, The Oregonian/Oregon Live earlier reported.
She said she woke up at one point during the rape and froze in terror.
“I don’t know who this person is,” she testified. “This is a random person that is doing something like this to me.” The Associated Press generally does not identify victims of sexual assault.
At one point, she said she let her body slide to the floor in an effort to stop the assault. The woman testified McLemore pulled her back onto the couch and continued.
Covington earlier testified he saw the woman flirting with McLemore while they sat on a couch.
McLemore testified he was also drinking but claimed the sex was consensual. He also said he and the woman did not have a conversation before, during or after the act, after which he immediately left the home.
One of his attorneys, Kris Winemiller, said McLemore left after receiving an angry message from this then-wife, who tracked him and wanted to know why he wasn’t in their own Lake Oswego home.
Clackamas County prosecutor Scott Healy said there was no confusion. “When you look at all the surrounding circumstances and you assess the evidence in this case, I submit to you that the defendant is guilty,” he said during closing arguments Tuesday.
Another defense attorney, Lisa Maxfield, argued for McLemore’s acquittal.
“The only reasonable verdict in a case where two people get drunk and have sex and the man is drunker than the woman, the only reasonable verdict in a case like that is not guilty,” she said.
The woman said she did not hire an attorney to sue McLemore and didn’t seek money from him. Instead she pursued the criminal case because “you can’t do that to somebody, let alone somebody that you don’t know.”
McLemore, who played college at Kansas, was the seventh pick in the 2013 NBA draft by the Sacramento Kings. He also played for Memphis, Houston and the Los Angeles Lakers before his last NBA season with Portland in 2021-2022.
Since then, he has played in Europe and China. Last August he signed with a team in Turkey.
North Dakota
Appeals court rules against tribes in voting rights case that could go to Supreme Court
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — A federal appeals court won’t reconsider its decision in a redistricting case that went against two Native American tribes that challenged North Dakota’s legislative redistricting map, and the dispute could be headed for the U.S. Supreme Court.
The case has drawn national interest because of a 2-1 ruling issued in May by a three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that erased a path through the federal Voting Rights Act for people in seven states to sue under a key provision of the landmark federal civil rights law. The tribes argued that the 2021 map violated the act by diluting their voting strength and ability to elect their own candidates.
The panel said only the U.S. Department of Justice can bring such lawsuits. That followed a 2023 ruling out of Arkansas in the same circuit that also said private individuals can’t sue under Section 2 of the law.
Those rulings conflict with decades of rulings by appellate courts in other federal circuits that have affirmed the rights of private individuals to sue under Section 2, creating a split that the Supreme Court may be asked to resolve. However, several of the high court’s conservative justices recently have indicated interest in making it harder, if not impossible, to bring redistricting lawsuits under the Voting Rights Act.
After the May decision, the Spirit Lake Tribe and Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians asked the appeals court for a rehearing before all 11 judges. Attorneys general of 19 states, numerous former U.S. Justice Department attorneys, several voting rights historians and others also asked for a rehearing.
But in a ruling Thursday, the full court denied the request, which was filed by the Native American Rights Fund and other groups representing the tribes. Three judges said they would have granted it, including Circuit Chief Judge Steven Colloton, who had dissented in the previous ruling.
The majority opinion in May said that for the tribes to sue under the Voting Rights Act, the law would have had to “unambiguously” give private persons or groups the right to do so.
Lenny Powell, a staff attorney for the fund, said in a statement that the refusal to reconsider “wrongly restricts voters disenfranchised by a gerrymandered redistricting map” from challenging that map.
Powell said Monday that the tribes are now considering their legal options.
Another group representing the tribes, the Campaign Legal Center, said the ruling is “contrary to both the intent of Congress in enacting the law and to decades of Supreme Court precedent affirming voters’ power to enforce the law in court.”
The office of North Dakota Secretary of State Michael Howe did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.
The groups said they will continue to fight to ensure fair maps. The North Dakota and Arkansas rulings apply only in the states of the 8th Circuit: Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota. In the wake of the Arkansas decision, Minnesota and other states have moved to shore up voting rights with state-level protections to plug the growing gaps in the federal law.
The North Dakota tribes filed their lawsuit in 2022. The three-judge panel heard appeal arguments last October after Republican Secretary of State Michael Howe appealed a lower court’s November 2023 decision in favor of the tribes.
In that ruling, U.S. District Judge Peter Welte ordered creation of a new district that encompassed both tribes’ reservations, which are about 60 miles (97 kilometers) apart. In 2024, voters elected members from both tribes, all Democrats, to the district’s Senate seat and two House seats.
Republicans hold super majority control of North Dakota’s Legislature.
Former Mercury interim coach accuses team in lawsuit of racial and gender discrimination
PHOENIX (AP) — Lawyers for former Phoenix Mercury interim coach Nikki Blue have filed a lawsuit against the organization, alleging unequal treatment based on race and gender, unequal pay based on race and that her employment was terminated in retaliation for complaints about unequal treatment.
The suit was filed on Thursday in U.S. District Court in Arizona.
Blue, who is Black, was hired in 2022 as an assistant coach and was named the team’s interim coach in June 2023 after Vanessa Nygaard was fired midseason. Blue had a 7-21 record in the interim role.
Blue was not retained after the season. The Mercury hired Orlando Magic assistant Nate Tibbets, who is white.
The suit claims that Blue was paid $250,000 in her interim role, which was less than the $375,000 that Nygaard, who is white, was making. Tibbets is reportedly making more than $1 million per season.
Blue also claims that the Mercury organization set her up to fail, making roster decisions in 2023 that made the team noncompetitive.
“Despite her exemplary record and professionalism, Ms. Blue was cast aside, demeaned, and denied the opportunity to lead,” the law firm Mesidor PLLC, co-counsel on the case, said in a statement. “This lawsuit is not just about one woman’s career — it’s about the pervasive, institutional disrespect for Black women in sports leadership.”
One of Blue’s lawyers is Sheree Wright, who has filed other suits against the NBA’s Phoenix Suns and the Mercury in recent seasons.
“This is the fifth lawsuit brought against the organization by Sheree Wright, an attorney who has been disciplined twice by the Supreme Court of Arizona for committing numerous violations of the rules of professional conduct — including making false and unsupported allegations of racial bias against a judge,” Suns and Mercury senior vice president of communications Stacey Mitch said in a statement.
“Like Ms. Wright’s other cases, this case is completely meritless. Ms. Blue was interviewed and considered for the head coach position, but didn’t get the position based on her performance as interim head coach, as well as her limited professional coaching experience.
“Sheree Wright’s continued abuse of the legal system for financial gain is unethical.”
New York
Doctors and public health organizations sue over vaccine policy changes
NEW YORK (AP) — A coalition of doctors groups and public health organizations sued the U.S. government on Monday over the decision to stop recommending COVID-19 vaccinations for most children and pregnant women.
The American Academy of Pediatrics, American Public Health Association and four other groups — along with an unnamed pregnant doctor who works in a hospital — filed the lawsuit in federal court in Boston.
U.S. health officials, following infectious disease experts’ guidance, previously urged annual COVID-19 shots for all Americans ages 6 months and older. But in late May, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced he was removing COVID-19 shots from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendations for healthy children and pregnant women.
A number of health experts decried the move as confusing and accused Kennedy of disregarding the scientific review process that has been in place for decades — in which experts publicly review current medical evidence and hash out the pros and cons of policy changes.
The new lawsuit repeats those concerns, alleging that Kennedy and other political appointees at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services have flouted federal procedures and systematically attempted to mislead the public.
“This administration is an existential threat to vaccination in America, and those in charge are only just getting started,” said Richard H. Hughes IV, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs. “If left unchecked, Secretary Kennedy will accomplish his goal of ridding the United States of vaccines, which would unleash a wave of preventable harm on our nation’s children.”
HHS officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Also joining the suit are the American College of Physicians, the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the Massachusetts Public Health Association and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine.
Oregon
Jury convicts former NBA player of raping woman at team party
OREGON CITY, Ore. (AP) — Former NBA player Ben McLemore has been found guilty of raping a 21-year-old woman during a lake house party attended by many of his then-teammates from the Portland Trail Blazers, a jury ruled Thursday.
The jury in Clackamas County, located directly south of Portland, found McLemore, 32, guilty of rape, unlawful sexual penetration and one count of sexual abuse. He was found not guilty on another count of sexual abuse, Portland television station KGW reported.
Sentencing was scheduled for Wednesday.
“We recognize there are those who fear individuals with celebrity status or a position of prominence can avoid prosecution. Not in Clackamas County. This case demonstrates my office prosecutes criminal acts regardless of the offender’s community status,” District Attorney John Wentworth said in a statement.
The charges stemmed from a party Oct. 3, 2021, at the Lake Oswego home owned by his Trail Blazers teammate Robert Covington.
Prosecutors claimed during the trial that the sexual encounter was rape, while McLemore’s attorney countered it was consensual sex.
The woman said she was incapacitated after a night of heavy drinking and was unable to give consent. Prosecutors submitted photos of the woman hovering over a toilet and then passed out on a couch, The Oregonian/Oregon Live earlier reported.
She said she woke up at one point during the rape and froze in terror.
“I don’t know who this person is,” she testified. “This is a random person that is doing something like this to me.” The Associated Press generally does not identify victims of sexual assault.
At one point, she said she let her body slide to the floor in an effort to stop the assault. The woman testified McLemore pulled her back onto the couch and continued.
Covington earlier testified he saw the woman flirting with McLemore while they sat on a couch.
McLemore testified he was also drinking but claimed the sex was consensual. He also said he and the woman did not have a conversation before, during or after the act, after which he immediately left the home.
One of his attorneys, Kris Winemiller, said McLemore left after receiving an angry message from this then-wife, who tracked him and wanted to know why he wasn’t in their own Lake Oswego home.
Clackamas County prosecutor Scott Healy said there was no confusion. “When you look at all the surrounding circumstances and you assess the evidence in this case, I submit to you that the defendant is guilty,” he said during closing arguments Tuesday.
Another defense attorney, Lisa Maxfield, argued for McLemore’s acquittal.
“The only reasonable verdict in a case where two people get drunk and have sex and the man is drunker than the woman, the only reasonable verdict in a case like that is not guilty,” she said.
The woman said she did not hire an attorney to sue McLemore and didn’t seek money from him. Instead she pursued the criminal case because “you can’t do that to somebody, let alone somebody that you don’t know.”
McLemore, who played college at Kansas, was the seventh pick in the 2013 NBA draft by the Sacramento Kings. He also played for Memphis, Houston and the Los Angeles Lakers before his last NBA season with Portland in 2021-2022.
Since then, he has played in Europe and China. Last August he signed with a team in Turkey.
North Dakota
Appeals court rules against tribes in voting rights case that could go to Supreme Court
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — A federal appeals court won’t reconsider its decision in a redistricting case that went against two Native American tribes that challenged North Dakota’s legislative redistricting map, and the dispute could be headed for the U.S. Supreme Court.
The case has drawn national interest because of a 2-1 ruling issued in May by a three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that erased a path through the federal Voting Rights Act for people in seven states to sue under a key provision of the landmark federal civil rights law. The tribes argued that the 2021 map violated the act by diluting their voting strength and ability to elect their own candidates.
The panel said only the U.S. Department of Justice can bring such lawsuits. That followed a 2023 ruling out of Arkansas in the same circuit that also said private individuals can’t sue under Section 2 of the law.
Those rulings conflict with decades of rulings by appellate courts in other federal circuits that have affirmed the rights of private individuals to sue under Section 2, creating a split that the Supreme Court may be asked to resolve. However, several of the high court’s conservative justices recently have indicated interest in making it harder, if not impossible, to bring redistricting lawsuits under the Voting Rights Act.
After the May decision, the Spirit Lake Tribe and Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians asked the appeals court for a rehearing before all 11 judges. Attorneys general of 19 states, numerous former U.S. Justice Department attorneys, several voting rights historians and others also asked for a rehearing.
But in a ruling Thursday, the full court denied the request, which was filed by the Native American Rights Fund and other groups representing the tribes. Three judges said they would have granted it, including Circuit Chief Judge Steven Colloton, who had dissented in the previous ruling.
The majority opinion in May said that for the tribes to sue under the Voting Rights Act, the law would have had to “unambiguously” give private persons or groups the right to do so.
Lenny Powell, a staff attorney for the fund, said in a statement that the refusal to reconsider “wrongly restricts voters disenfranchised by a gerrymandered redistricting map” from challenging that map.
Powell said Monday that the tribes are now considering their legal options.
Another group representing the tribes, the Campaign Legal Center, said the ruling is “contrary to both the intent of Congress in enacting the law and to decades of Supreme Court precedent affirming voters’ power to enforce the law in court.”
The office of North Dakota Secretary of State Michael Howe did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.
The groups said they will continue to fight to ensure fair maps. The North Dakota and Arkansas rulings apply only in the states of the 8th Circuit: Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota. In the wake of the Arkansas decision, Minnesota and other states have moved to shore up voting rights with state-level protections to plug the growing gaps in the federal law.
The North Dakota tribes filed their lawsuit in 2022. The three-judge panel heard appeal arguments last October after Republican Secretary of State Michael Howe appealed a lower court’s November 2023 decision in favor of the tribes.
In that ruling, U.S. District Judge Peter Welte ordered creation of a new district that encompassed both tribes’ reservations, which are about 60 miles (97 kilometers) apart. In 2024, voters elected members from both tribes, all Democrats, to the district’s Senate seat and two House seats.
Republicans hold super majority control of North Dakota’s Legislature.
