New York
Judge reverses rule that would have removed medical debt from credit reports
NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge in Texas removed a Biden-era finalized rule by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that would have removed medical debt from credit reports.
U.S. District Court Judge Sean Jordan of Texas’s Eastern District, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, found on Friday that the rule exceeded the CFPB ‘s authority. Jordan said that the CFPB is not permitted to remove medical debt from credit reports according to the Fair Credit Reporting Act, which protects information collected by consumer reporting agencies.
Removing medical debt from consumer credit reports was expected to increase the credit scores of millions of families by an average of 20 points, the bureau said. The CFPB states that its research has shown outstanding healthcare claims to be a poor predictor of an individual’s ability to repay a loan, yet they are often used to deny mortgage applications.
The three national credit reporting agencies — Experian, Equifax and TransUnion — announced last year that they would remove medical collections under $500 from U.S. consumer credit reports. The CFPB’s rule was projected to ban all outstanding medical bills from appearing on credit reports and prohibit lenders from using the information.
The CFPB estimated the rule would have removed $49 billion in medical debt from the credit reports of 15 million Americans. According to the agency, one in five Americans has at least one medical debt collection account on their credit reports, and over half of the collection entries on credit reports are for medical debts. The problem disproportionately affects people of color, the CFPB has found: 28% of Black people and 22% of Latino people in the U.S. carry medical debt versus 17% of white people.
The CFPB was established by Congress after the 2008 financial crisis to monitor credit card companies, mortgage providers, debt collectors and other segments of the consumer finance industry. Earlier this year, the Trump administration requested that the agency halt nearly all its operations, effectively shutting it down.
Pennsylvania
Off-duty officer gets probation in death of bystander trying to help police at shooting
BEAVER, Pa. (AP) — An off-duty police officer who struck a bystander in the chest and knocked him to the ground as the man tried to give police information about a shooting outside in Pennsylvania has pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter in the man’s death.
John J. Hawk, 38, was sentenced Tuesday to five years of probation after entering the plea after jury selection in his scheduled trial in Beaver County, about 30 miles northwest of Pittsburgh. He also pleaded guilty to assault and reckless endangerment in the November 2022 attack on Kenneth Vinyard, 48, outside a Walmart.
At the sentencing, Vinyard’s family described the man as the family glue, according to Attorney General Dave Sunday.
“This sworn officer’s actions contributed to the death of a man who was not a threat to anyone at the scene of this shooting,” Sunday said in a statement.
Hawk, an officer in Center Township, was in civilian clothing when he confronted the victim as he spoke to police, Sunday said. He died upon arrival at a hospital. A medical examiner found the blunt force trauma and related stress contributed to his death.
Hawk apologized to the victim’s family at his sentencing. His lawyer, Stephen Colafella, said his client had been “grappling with” Vinyard’s death before deciding to enter a plea. “I think a lot of people got closure today,” Colafella said
Tuesday evening, noting that Hawk and the victim’s fiancee embraced in court. A related civil suit in the case has settled, and Hawk is no longer on the Center Township police force, he said.
“I hope that he can move on and have a good life with his family,” fiancee Marcy Beatty told WTAE-TV. “Ours is broken, and it will take a long time for that to heal.”
One person suffered a gunshot wound in the Walmart shooting, authorities said at the time.
Colorado
Financial problems and affairs led dentist to poison wife’s protein shakes, prosecutors say
DENVER (AP) — A dentist on trial for allegedly killing his wife by poisoning her protein shakes had fallen in love with another dentist, was in financial straits and had bought various poisons in the lead up to her death, prosecutors said in the trial’s opening statements on Tuesday.
Craig, 47, allegedly used cyanide and tetrahydrozoline, an ingredient in over-the-counter eye drops, to kill his wife of 23 years, Angela Craig, two years ago in suburban Denver.
In a nearly full courtroom, Craig sat in a dark suit as Assistant District Attorney Ryan Brackley laid out the case against him and pointed out that Craig may have been motivated by the payout from his wife’s life insurance.
Angela Craig, 43, who had six children with James Craig, had gone in and out of the hospital over several days. Her worsening symptoms, including dizziness, vomiting and fainting, perplexed doctors. Craig gave his wife a final dose of poison after she had already been admitted to the hospital, Brackley said.
“He went in that room to murder her, to deliberately and intentionally end her life with a fatal dose of cyanide,” Brackley said. “She spends the next three days dying.”
After his arrest, Craig tried to conscript a fellow inmate and others into covering his tracks. That included requests to create false testimony and kill the lead investigator on the case in exchange for money, Brackley said.
Craig, who shook his head at times when Brackley spoke, has pleaded not guilty to several charges, including first-degree murder.
Craig’s attorney, Ashley Whitham, said they aren’t disputing that Angela Craig was sick, hospitalized or that poison was found in her system. But Whitham argued that the evidence didn’t show that he poisoned and killed her.
Whitham seemed to suggest Angela Craig may have taken her own life. Whitham repeatedly described Angela Craig as “broken,” partly by Craig’s infidelity and her desire to stay married, since they were part of The Church of Jesus Christ and Latter-day Saints. Hospital staff had said Craig had been caring and “doting” while Angela Craig was in the hospital, said Whitham.
The police’s investigation was inadequate, said Whitham, and had been biased against Craig from the beginning. Investigators hadn’t taken Angela Craig’s laptop or found her journal in the search of the couple’s home in Aurora, said Whitham, adding that only parts of the journal were later turned over to investigators.
Whitham said the prosecution overdramatized Craig’s financial problems. She refuted prosecutors’ suggestion that Craig was so enamored with one of the women he had an affair with — a fellow dentist from Texas — that he was motivated to kill Angela Craig.
“That’s simply not the case,” Whitham said, adding that Craig had many affairs over the years that his wife knew about. “He was candid with Angela that he had been cheating.”
Prosecutors said Craig searched Google for “how to make a murder look like a heart attack” and “is arsenic detectable in an autopsy,” and that he tried to make it appear his wife had killed herself.
Angela Craig was hospitalized several times. After the first time, she can be seen on home surveillance video accusing her husband of implying to medical staff that she was suicidal.
“It’s your fault they treated me like I was a suicide risk, like I did it to myself, and like nothing I said could be believed,” she said to her husband on the video.
After Craig’s arrest in 2023, prosecutors alleged that he sent a letter to his daughter, offered a fellow jail inmate $20,000 to kill the case’s lead investigator and offered someone else $20,000 to find people to falsely testify that Angela Craig planned to die by suicide.
Whitham told the jury to consider the credibility of those witnesses, calling some “jailhouse snitches.”
In addition to first-degree murder, Craig has pleaded not guilty to the other charges, including solicitation to commit murder and solicitation to commit perjury.
Craig remains in custody, according to jail records.
West Virginia
US appeals court upholds restriction on abortion pill sales
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld a lower court’s decision to restrict abortion pill sales in West Virginia.
A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, affirmed a ruling by a U.S. district judge in 2023 despite federal regulators’ approval of the abortion pill as a safe and effective medication.
Most Republican-controlled states have enacted or adopted abortion bans of some kind, including restricting abortion pills by default, since the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022 overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that provided nationwide access to abortion. All have been challenged in court. The Supreme Court ruled in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
U.S. District Court Judge Robert C. Chambers had ruled that the near-total abortion ban signed by then-Republican Gov. Jim Justice in September 2022 took precedence over approvals from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
“For us to once again federalize the issue of abortion without a clear directive from Congress, right on the heels of Dobbs, would leave us one small step short of defiance,” 4th Circuit Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III wrote for the court.
“One can of course agree or disagree with the Dobbs decision. But that is not the point,” Wilkinson said. “At a time when the rule of law is under blunt assault, disregarding the Supreme Court is not an option.”
West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey, who took office in January, had defended challenges to the abortion law when he served as attorney general.
“Big win out of the 4th Circuit today,” Morrisey said in a statement.
GenBioPro Inc., the country’s only manufacturer of a generic version of the abortion pill mifepristone, had argued that the state cannot block access to a FDA-approved drug. Chambers had dismissed the majority of GenBioPro’s challenges, finding there is “no disputing that health, medicine, and medical licensure are traditional areas of state authority.”
Appeals judge DeAndrea Gist Benjamin concurred and dissented in part Tuesday, calling it a “troubling opinion.”
“Put plainly, this law erects barriers to life-saving healthcare for countless West Virginians in ways not envisioned by Congress,” Benjamin wrote.
Not at issue in the appeal was a challenge by GenBioPro concerning a separate West Virginia law that stopped providers from prescribing mifepristone by telehealth. Chambers had allowed that challenge to proceed. The U.S. Supreme Court last year unanimously preserved access to mifepristone, which is used in nearly two-thirds of all abortions in the U.S. in 2023.
Judge reverses rule that would have removed medical debt from credit reports
NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge in Texas removed a Biden-era finalized rule by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that would have removed medical debt from credit reports.
U.S. District Court Judge Sean Jordan of Texas’s Eastern District, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, found on Friday that the rule exceeded the CFPB ‘s authority. Jordan said that the CFPB is not permitted to remove medical debt from credit reports according to the Fair Credit Reporting Act, which protects information collected by consumer reporting agencies.
Removing medical debt from consumer credit reports was expected to increase the credit scores of millions of families by an average of 20 points, the bureau said. The CFPB states that its research has shown outstanding healthcare claims to be a poor predictor of an individual’s ability to repay a loan, yet they are often used to deny mortgage applications.
The three national credit reporting agencies — Experian, Equifax and TransUnion — announced last year that they would remove medical collections under $500 from U.S. consumer credit reports. The CFPB’s rule was projected to ban all outstanding medical bills from appearing on credit reports and prohibit lenders from using the information.
The CFPB estimated the rule would have removed $49 billion in medical debt from the credit reports of 15 million Americans. According to the agency, one in five Americans has at least one medical debt collection account on their credit reports, and over half of the collection entries on credit reports are for medical debts. The problem disproportionately affects people of color, the CFPB has found: 28% of Black people and 22% of Latino people in the U.S. carry medical debt versus 17% of white people.
The CFPB was established by Congress after the 2008 financial crisis to monitor credit card companies, mortgage providers, debt collectors and other segments of the consumer finance industry. Earlier this year, the Trump administration requested that the agency halt nearly all its operations, effectively shutting it down.
Pennsylvania
Off-duty officer gets probation in death of bystander trying to help police at shooting
BEAVER, Pa. (AP) — An off-duty police officer who struck a bystander in the chest and knocked him to the ground as the man tried to give police information about a shooting outside in Pennsylvania has pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter in the man’s death.
John J. Hawk, 38, was sentenced Tuesday to five years of probation after entering the plea after jury selection in his scheduled trial in Beaver County, about 30 miles northwest of Pittsburgh. He also pleaded guilty to assault and reckless endangerment in the November 2022 attack on Kenneth Vinyard, 48, outside a Walmart.
At the sentencing, Vinyard’s family described the man as the family glue, according to Attorney General Dave Sunday.
“This sworn officer’s actions contributed to the death of a man who was not a threat to anyone at the scene of this shooting,” Sunday said in a statement.
Hawk, an officer in Center Township, was in civilian clothing when he confronted the victim as he spoke to police, Sunday said. He died upon arrival at a hospital. A medical examiner found the blunt force trauma and related stress contributed to his death.
Hawk apologized to the victim’s family at his sentencing. His lawyer, Stephen Colafella, said his client had been “grappling with” Vinyard’s death before deciding to enter a plea. “I think a lot of people got closure today,” Colafella said
Tuesday evening, noting that Hawk and the victim’s fiancee embraced in court. A related civil suit in the case has settled, and Hawk is no longer on the Center Township police force, he said.
“I hope that he can move on and have a good life with his family,” fiancee Marcy Beatty told WTAE-TV. “Ours is broken, and it will take a long time for that to heal.”
One person suffered a gunshot wound in the Walmart shooting, authorities said at the time.
Colorado
Financial problems and affairs led dentist to poison wife’s protein shakes, prosecutors say
DENVER (AP) — A dentist on trial for allegedly killing his wife by poisoning her protein shakes had fallen in love with another dentist, was in financial straits and had bought various poisons in the lead up to her death, prosecutors said in the trial’s opening statements on Tuesday.
Craig, 47, allegedly used cyanide and tetrahydrozoline, an ingredient in over-the-counter eye drops, to kill his wife of 23 years, Angela Craig, two years ago in suburban Denver.
In a nearly full courtroom, Craig sat in a dark suit as Assistant District Attorney Ryan Brackley laid out the case against him and pointed out that Craig may have been motivated by the payout from his wife’s life insurance.
Angela Craig, 43, who had six children with James Craig, had gone in and out of the hospital over several days. Her worsening symptoms, including dizziness, vomiting and fainting, perplexed doctors. Craig gave his wife a final dose of poison after she had already been admitted to the hospital, Brackley said.
“He went in that room to murder her, to deliberately and intentionally end her life with a fatal dose of cyanide,” Brackley said. “She spends the next three days dying.”
After his arrest, Craig tried to conscript a fellow inmate and others into covering his tracks. That included requests to create false testimony and kill the lead investigator on the case in exchange for money, Brackley said.
Craig, who shook his head at times when Brackley spoke, has pleaded not guilty to several charges, including first-degree murder.
Craig’s attorney, Ashley Whitham, said they aren’t disputing that Angela Craig was sick, hospitalized or that poison was found in her system. But Whitham argued that the evidence didn’t show that he poisoned and killed her.
Whitham seemed to suggest Angela Craig may have taken her own life. Whitham repeatedly described Angela Craig as “broken,” partly by Craig’s infidelity and her desire to stay married, since they were part of The Church of Jesus Christ and Latter-day Saints. Hospital staff had said Craig had been caring and “doting” while Angela Craig was in the hospital, said Whitham.
The police’s investigation was inadequate, said Whitham, and had been biased against Craig from the beginning. Investigators hadn’t taken Angela Craig’s laptop or found her journal in the search of the couple’s home in Aurora, said Whitham, adding that only parts of the journal were later turned over to investigators.
Whitham said the prosecution overdramatized Craig’s financial problems. She refuted prosecutors’ suggestion that Craig was so enamored with one of the women he had an affair with — a fellow dentist from Texas — that he was motivated to kill Angela Craig.
“That’s simply not the case,” Whitham said, adding that Craig had many affairs over the years that his wife knew about. “He was candid with Angela that he had been cheating.”
Prosecutors said Craig searched Google for “how to make a murder look like a heart attack” and “is arsenic detectable in an autopsy,” and that he tried to make it appear his wife had killed herself.
Angela Craig was hospitalized several times. After the first time, she can be seen on home surveillance video accusing her husband of implying to medical staff that she was suicidal.
“It’s your fault they treated me like I was a suicide risk, like I did it to myself, and like nothing I said could be believed,” she said to her husband on the video.
After Craig’s arrest in 2023, prosecutors alleged that he sent a letter to his daughter, offered a fellow jail inmate $20,000 to kill the case’s lead investigator and offered someone else $20,000 to find people to falsely testify that Angela Craig planned to die by suicide.
Whitham told the jury to consider the credibility of those witnesses, calling some “jailhouse snitches.”
In addition to first-degree murder, Craig has pleaded not guilty to the other charges, including solicitation to commit murder and solicitation to commit perjury.
Craig remains in custody, according to jail records.
West Virginia
US appeals court upholds restriction on abortion pill sales
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld a lower court’s decision to restrict abortion pill sales in West Virginia.
A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, affirmed a ruling by a U.S. district judge in 2023 despite federal regulators’ approval of the abortion pill as a safe and effective medication.
Most Republican-controlled states have enacted or adopted abortion bans of some kind, including restricting abortion pills by default, since the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022 overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that provided nationwide access to abortion. All have been challenged in court. The Supreme Court ruled in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
U.S. District Court Judge Robert C. Chambers had ruled that the near-total abortion ban signed by then-Republican Gov. Jim Justice in September 2022 took precedence over approvals from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
“For us to once again federalize the issue of abortion without a clear directive from Congress, right on the heels of Dobbs, would leave us one small step short of defiance,” 4th Circuit Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III wrote for the court.
“One can of course agree or disagree with the Dobbs decision. But that is not the point,” Wilkinson said. “At a time when the rule of law is under blunt assault, disregarding the Supreme Court is not an option.”
West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey, who took office in January, had defended challenges to the abortion law when he served as attorney general.
“Big win out of the 4th Circuit today,” Morrisey said in a statement.
GenBioPro Inc., the country’s only manufacturer of a generic version of the abortion pill mifepristone, had argued that the state cannot block access to a FDA-approved drug. Chambers had dismissed the majority of GenBioPro’s challenges, finding there is “no disputing that health, medicine, and medical licensure are traditional areas of state authority.”
Appeals judge DeAndrea Gist Benjamin concurred and dissented in part Tuesday, calling it a “troubling opinion.”
“Put plainly, this law erects barriers to life-saving healthcare for countless West Virginians in ways not envisioned by Congress,” Benjamin wrote.
Not at issue in the appeal was a challenge by GenBioPro concerning a separate West Virginia law that stopped providers from prescribing mifepristone by telehealth. Chambers had allowed that challenge to proceed. The U.S. Supreme Court last year unanimously preserved access to mifepristone, which is used in nearly two-thirds of all abortions in the U.S. in 2023.
