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Alabama immigration fight recalls civil rights era
Law & Court News |
2011/10/30 08:38
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The epicenter of the fight over the patchwork of immigration laws in the United States is not Arizona, which shares a border with Mexico and became a common site for boycotts. Nor was it any of the four states that were next to pass their own crackdowns.
No, the case that's likely to be the first sorted out by the U.S. Supreme Court comes from the Deep South state of Alabama, where the nation's strictest immigration law has resurrected ugly images from the state's days as the nation's battleground for civil rights a half-century ago.
And Alabama's jump to the forefront says as much about the country's evolving demographics as it does the nation's collective memory of the state's sometimes violent path to desegregation.
With the failure of Congress in recent years to pass comprehensive federal immigration legislation, Arizona, Georgia, Utah, South Carolina and Indiana have passed their own. But supporters and opponents alike agree none contained provisions as strict as those passed in Alabama, among them one that required schools to check students' immigration status. That provision, which has been temporarily blocked, would allow the Supreme Court to reconsider a decision that said a kindergarten to high school education must be provided to illegal immigrants. |
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Court sidesteps Connecticut student speech case
Law & Court News |
2011/10/28 08:39
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The Supreme Court is refusing to disturb a court ruling that Connecticut school officials acted reasonably in disciplining a student for an Internet posting she wrote outside of school.
The justices on Monday turned down an appeal from Avery Doninger, who was a high school junior in Burlington, Conn., when she took to the Internet to criticize administrators for canceling a popular school activity.
Doninger sued school officials after they punished her by preventing her from serving as class secretary as a senior.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York sided with the school officials. |
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Artists sue auction houses over royalties law
Law & Court News |
2011/10/21 09:39
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Famed New York painter Chuck Close and other artists are suing Sotheby's, Christie's and eBay, contending the auctioneers willfully violated a California law requiring royalty payments on sales of their works.
The three federal suits filed Tuesday seek class-action status to represent many other artists and demand unspecified royalties and damages — which could total hundreds of thousands of dollars given current art prices.
The suits were filed on behalf of Close — best known for his enormous photorealistic paintings — along with Los Angeles artist Laddie John Dill, and the estate of late sculptor Robert Graham. Graham's works include the ceremonial gate for the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum that was commissioned for the 1984 Olympics and features nude statues modeled on some of the athletes.
A foundation of late California painter Sam Francis also is named as a plaintiff in the suits against Christie's and eBay Inc. |
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Mom pleads guilty to forcing beer on children
Law & Court News |
2011/10/21 09:39
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A Connecticut mother has pleaded guilty to charges that she forced her 4-year-old son to drink beer and gave her 10-month-old daughter beer and cocaine.
The Connecticut Post reports Juliette Dunn, of Bridgeport, pleaded guilty Wednesday to risk of injury to a child under the Alford Doctrine, where the defendant doesn't agree to the facts but agrees the state has enough evidence to win a conviction.
A companion, 33-year-old Lisa Jefferson, pleaded guilty to the same charges.
Police say officers were waved down in June by a neighbor who complained that a woman was feeding children beer at a playground.
The children were turned over to the Department of Children and Families after 29-year-old Dunn's arrest. Custody hasn't been decided. |
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US House group files motion in gay marriage suit
Law & Court News |
2011/10/17 10:09
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Gays and lesbians are not entitled to the same heightened legal protection and scrutiny against discrimination as racial minorities and women in part because they are far from politically powerless and have ample ability to influence lawmakers, lawyers for a U.S. House of Representatives group said in a federal court filing.
The filing Friday in San Francisco's U.S. District Court comes in a lesbian federal employee's lawsuit that claims the government wrongly denied health insurance coverage to her same-sex spouse. Karen Golinski says the law under which her spouse was denied benefits — the Defense of Marriage Act — violates the U.S. Constitution's guarantee of equal protection.
But attorneys representing the House's Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group counter that DOMA is subject to a lower level of court scrutiny because gays and lesbians don't meet the legal criteria for groups who receive heightened protection from discrimination. Under that lower standard, DOMA is constitutional, they argue. |
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