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North Carolina appeals court blocks use of UNC's digital ID for voting
Top Court Watch |
2024/09/27 07:33
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A North Carolina appeals court on Friday blocked students and employees at the state's flagship public university from providing a digital identification produced by the school when voting to comply with a new photo ID mandate.
The decision by a three-judge panel of the intermediate-level Court of Appeals reverses at least temporarily last month's decision by the State Board of Elections that the mobile ID generated by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill met security and photo requirements in the law and could be used.
The Republican National Committee and state Republican Party sued to overturn the decision by the Democratic-majority board earlier this month, saying the law allows only physical ID cards to be approved. Superior Court Judge Keith Gregory last week denied a temporary restraining order to halt its use. The Republicans appealed.
Friday's order didn't include the names of the three judges who considered the Republicans' requests and who unanimously ordered the elections board not to accept the mobile UNC One Card for casting a ballot this fall. The court releases the judges' names later. Eleven of the court's 15 judges are registered Republicans.
The order also didn't give the legal reasoning to grant the GOP's requests, although it mentioned a board memo that otherwise prohibits other images of physical IDs — like those copied or photographed — from qualifying.
In court briefs, lawyers for the RNC and N.C. GOP said refusing to block the ID's use temporarily would upend the status quo for the November election — in which otherwise only physical cards are accepted — and could result in ineligible voters casting ballots through manipulating the electronic card.
North Carolina GOP spokesperson Matt Mercer said Friday's decision "will ensure election integrity and adherence to state law."
The Democratic National Committee and a UNC student group who joined the case said the board rightly determined that the digital ID met the requirements set in state law. The DNC attorneys wrote that preventing its use could confuse or even disenfranchise up to 40,000 people who work or attend the school so close to the election.
North Carolina is considered a presidential battleground state where statewide races are often close.
Friday's ruling could be appealed to the state Supreme Court. A lawyer for the DNC referred questions to a spokesperson for Kamala Harris' campaign who didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. A state board spokesperson also didn't immediately respond to a similar request.
Voters can still show photo IDs from several broad categories, including their driver's license, passport and military IDs. The board also has approved over 130 types of traditional student and employee IDs.
The mobile UNC One Card marked the first such ID posted from someone's smartphone that the board has approved. Only the mobile ID credentials on Apple phones qualified.
The mobile UNC One Card is now the default ID card issued on campus, although students and permanent employees can still obtain a physical card instead for a small fee. The school said recently it would create physical cards at no charge for those who received a digital ID but want the physical card for voting.
The Republican-dominated North Carolina legislature enacted a voter ID law in late 2018, but legal challenges prevented the mandate's implementation until municipal elections in 2023. Infrequent voters will meet the qualifications for the first time this fall. Voters who lack an ID can fill out an exception form.
Early in-person voting begins Oct. 17, and absentee ballots are now being distributed to those requesting them. Absentee voters also must provide a copy of an ID or fill out the exception form.
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Mexican cartel leader’s son convicted of violent role in drug trafficking plot
Top Court Watch |
2024/09/21 06:26
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The son of a Mexican drug cartel leader was convicted Friday of charges that he used violence, including the deadly downing of a military helicopter, to help his father operate one of the country’s largest and most dangerous narcotics trafficking organizations.
Rubén Oseguera, known as “El Menchito,” is the son of fugitive Jalisco New Generation cartel boss Nemesio Oseguera and served as the “CJNG” cartel’s second-in-command before his extradition to the U.S. in February 2020.
A federal jury in Washington, D.C., deliberated for several hours over two days before finding the younger Oseguera guilty of both counts in his indictment: conspiring to distribute cocaine and methamphetamine for U.S. importation and using a firearm in a drug conspiracy.
“El Menchito now joins the growing list of high-ranking Cartel leaders that the Justice Department has convicted in an American courtroom,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in an emailed statement. “We are grateful to our Mexican law enforcement partners for their extensive cooperation and sacrifice in holding accountable leaders of the Jalisco Cartel.”
The younger Oseguera, who was born in California and holds dual U.S.-Mexican citizenship, is scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 10 by U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell. He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison and a mandatory minimum of 40 years in prison.
Oseguera didn’t have an obvious reaction to the jury’s verdict. One of his lawyers patted him on his shoulder before he was led out of the courtroom.
The U.S. government has offered a reward of up $10 million for information leading to the arrest of the elder Oseguera, whose alias, “El Mencho,” is a play on his first name.
Prosecutors showed jurors a rifle bearing Oseguera’s nicknames, “Menchito” and “JR,” along with the cartel’s acronym. The gun was in his possession when he was arrested.
“JR” also was etched on a belt found at the site where a Mexican military helicopter crashed after cartel members shot the aircraft down with a rocket-propelled grenade in 2015. Prosecutors said the younger Oseguera, now 34, ordered subordinates to shoot down the helicopter in Jalisco, Mexico, so that he and his father could avoid capture. At least nine people on board the helicopter were killed in the attack, according to prosecutors.
Oseguera ordered the killings of at least 100 people and frequently bragged about murders and kidnappings, according to prosecutors. They said he personally shot and killed at least two people, including a rival drug trafficker and a disobedient subordinate.
During the trial’s closing arguments Thursday, Justice Department prosecutor Kaitlin Sahni described Oseguera as “a prince, an heir to an empire.”
“But this wasn’t a fairytale,” she said. “This was the story of the defendant’s drugs, guns and murder, told to you by the people who saw it firsthand.”
Jurors heard testimony from six cooperating witnesses who tied Oseguera to drug trafficking.
Defense attorney Anthony Colombo tried to attack the witnesses’ credibility and motives, calling them “sociopaths” who told self-serving lies about his client.
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Google faces new antitrust trial after ruling declaring search engine a monopoly
Top Court Watch |
2024/09/11 08:14
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One month after a judge declared Google’s search engine an illegal monopoly, the tech giant faces another antitrust lawsuit that threatens to break up the company, this time over its advertising technology.
The Justice Department, joined by a coalition of states, and Google each made opening statements Monday to a federal judge who will decide whether Google holds a monopoly over online advertising technology.
The regulators contend that Google built, acquired and maintains a monopoly over the technology that matches online publishers to advertisers. Dominance over the software on both the buy side and the sell side of the transaction enables Google to keep as much as 36 cents on the dollar when it brokers sales between publishers and advertisers, the government contends in court papers.
They allege that Google also controls the ad exchange market, which matches the buy side to the sell side.
“It’s worth saying the quiet part out loud,” Justice Department lawyer Julia Tarver Wood said during her opening statement. “One monopoly is bad enough. But a trifecta of monopolies is what we have here.”
Google says the government’s case is based on an internet of yesteryear, when desktop computers ruled and internet users carefully typed precise World Wide Web addresses into URL fields. Advertisers now are more likely to turn to social media companies like TikTok or streaming TV services like Peacock to reach audiences.
In her opening statement, Google lawyer Karen Dunn likened the government’s case to a “time capsule with with a Blackberry, an iPod and a Blockbuster video card.”
Dunn said Supreme Court precedents warn judges about “the serious risk of error or unintended consequences” when dealing with rapidly emerging technology and considering whether antitrust law requires intervention. She also warned that any action taken against Google won’t benefit small businesses but will simply allow other tech behemoths like Amazon, Microsoft and TikTok to fill the void.
According to Google’s annual reports, revenue has actually declined in recent years for Google Networks, the division of the Mountain View, California-based tech giant that includes such services as AdSense and Google Ad Manager that are at the heart of the case, from $31.7 billion in 2021 to $31.3 billion in 2023,
The trial that began Monday in Alexandria, Virginia, over the alleged ad tech monopoly was initially going to be a jury trial, but Google maneuvered to force a bench trial, writing a check to the federal government for more than $2 million to moot the only claim brought by the government that required a jury.
The case will now be decided by U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, who was appointed to the bench by former President Bill Clinton and is best known for high-profile terrorism trials including that of Sept. 11 defendant Zacarias Moussaoui. Brinkema, though, also has experience with highly technical civil trials, working in a courthouse that sees an outsize number of patent infringement cases.
The Virginia case comes on the heels of a major defeat for Google over its search engine, which generates the majority of the company’s $307 billion in annual revenue. A judge in the District of Columbia declared the search engine a monopoly, maintained in part by tens of billions of dollars Google pays each year to companies like Apple to lock in Google as the default search engine presented to consumers when they buy iPhones and other gadgets.
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Protesters storm Mexico’s Senate after ruling party wins votes for court overhaul
Top Court Watch |
2024/09/08 08:12
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Hundreds of protesters broke into Mexico’s Senate on Tuesday as lawmakers weighed a contentious plan to overhaul the country’s judiciary, forcing the body to take a temporary recess for the safety of the senators.
The shut down came just hours after Mexico’s ruling party, Morena, wrangled the votes it needed to jam through the proposal after one member of an opposition party flipped to support it.
That move and other political maneuvering ahead of a vote on the plan championed by outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador fueled even more outrage after weeks of protests by judicial employees and law students.
Critics and observers say the plan, in which all judges would be elected, could threaten judicial independence and undermine the system of checks and balances.
Some protesters entered the Senate chambers in an effort to block the vote after they said lawmakers were not listening to their demands. Protesters broke through the door of the Senate chamber pushing aggressively, using pipes and chains. At least one person fainted after protesters broke in.
“The judiciary isn’t going to fall,” yelled the protesters, waving Mexican flags and signs against the overhaul. They were joined by a number of opposition senators as they chanted in the chamber. Others outside the court roared when newscasters announced the Senate was taking a recess.
Among them was Alejandro Navarrete, a 30-year-old judicial worker, who said that people like him working in the courts “knowing the danger the reform represents” came to call on the Senate to strike down the proposal.
“They have decided to sell out the nation, and sell out for political capital they were offered, we felt obligated to enter the Senate,” he said, carrying a Mexican flag. “Our intention is not violent, we didn’t intend to hurt them, but we intend to make it clear that the Mexican people won’t allow them to lead us into a dictatorship.”
Despite unrest in recent weeks, the plan sailed through the lower chamber of Congress last week, and was passed onto the Senate, where López Obrador’s Morena party lacked the necessary supermajority to approve it. In recent weeks, it was able to peel off two senators from an opposition party, but came into this week still missing one more.
It was unclear where that vote would come from because the country’s opposition vehemently opposes the plan. But over the weekend, observers began to speculate that a senator from the conservative National Action Party (PAN), Miguel Ángel Yunes Márquez, would support Morena as he refused to answer calls from his party leadership.
On Tuesday, Yunes Márquez announced he would take leave due to health issues and be replaced by his father, Miguel Ángel Yunes Linares, a former governor of Veracruz said he would vote for the plan. He said he knew the plan was “not the best” but said more laws down the line could improve it.
“Mexico is not going to be destroyed for approving this reform, nor will the reform automatically change the reality of a justice system that is calling out for fundamental change,” Yunes Linares said.
Yunes Linares strolled into the Senate chambers and was met with applause and chants of “hero!” by Morena senators and screams of “traitor!” from his own party. One PAN senator, Lilly Téllez, even threw dozens of coins at Yunes Linares, calling him a ”traitor who sold out his country” for his own benefit. A Senate vote was expected Wednesday.
The national head of PAN, Marko Cortés, claimed that it “is evident” that there was an “impunity pact” between the Yuneses and the government so he would vote in favor of the overhaul. Cortés was referring to a July arrest order for Sen. Yunes Márquez, for alleged falsification of documents and fraud related to his candidacy.
Yunes had challenged it and got a temporary suspension, calling it a political persecution by the governing Morena party, the same party his father now appears ready to support.
His father, Yunes Linares, dodged questions from the media about how he would vote but accused Cortés of “lynching” him and claimed it was “absolutely false” that he has been coerced to vote for the overhaul. He was flanked by two Morena senators as he spoke.
A Yunes vote in favor would allow the ruling party to clear the biggest hurdle in making the proposal law. If it passes the Senate, it will have to be ratified by the legislatures of 17 of Mexico’s 32 states, but the governing party is believed to have the necessary support.
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Court revives Sarah Palin’s libel lawsuit against The New York Times
Top Court Watch |
2024/08/27 13:33
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A federal appeals court revived Sarah Palin’s libel case against The New York Times on Wednesday, citing errors by a lower court judge, particularly his decision to dismiss the lawsuit while a jury was deliberating.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan wrote that Judge Jed S. Rakoff’s decision in February 2022 to dismiss the lawsuit mid-deliberations improperly intruded on the jury’s work.
It also found that the erroneous exclusion of evidence, an inaccurate jury instruction and an erroneous response to a question from the jury tainted the jury’s decision to rule against Palin. It declined, however, to grant Palin’s request to force Rakoff off the case on grounds he was biased against her. The 2nd Circuit said she had offered no proof.
The libel lawsuit by Palin, a onetime Republican vice presidential candidate and former governor of Alaska, centered on the newspaper’s 2017 editorial falsely linking her campaign rhetoric to a mass shooting, which Palin asserted damaged her reputation and career.
The Times acknowledged its editorial was inaccurate but said it quickly corrected errors it called an “honest mistake” that were never meant to harm Palin.
Shane Vogt, a lawyer for Palin, said in an email that Palin was “very happy with today’s decision, which is a significant step forward in the process of holding publishers accountable for content that misleads readers and the public in general.”
“The truth deserves a level playing field, and Governor Palin looks forward to presenting her case to a jury that is ‘provided with relevant proffered evidence and properly instructed on the law,’” Vogt added, quoting in part from the 2nd Circuit ruling.
Charlie Stadtlander, a spokesperson for the Times, said the decision was disappointing. “We’re confident we will prevail in a retrial,” he said in an email.
The 2nd Circuit, in a ruling written by Judge John M. Walker Jr., reversed the jury verdict, along with Rakoff’s decision to dismiss the lawsuit while jurors were deliberating.
Despite his ruling, Rakoff let jurors finish deliberating and render their verdict, which went against Palin.
The appeals court noted that Rakoff’s ruling made credibility determinations, weighed evidence, and ignored facts or inferences that a reasonable juror could plausibly find supported Palin’s case.
It also described how “push notifications” that reached the cellphones of jurors “came as an unfortunate surprise to the district judge.” The 2nd Circuit said it was not enough that the judge’s law clerk was assured by jurors that Rakoff’s ruling had not affected their deliberations.
“Given a judge’s special position of influence with a jury, we think a jury’s verdict reached with the knowledge of the judge’s already-announced disposition of the case will rarely be untainted, no matter what the jurors say upon subsequent inquiry,” the appeals court said.
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