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Court won't allow challenge to surveillance law
Top Court Watch |
2013/02/28 23:43
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A sharply-divided Supreme Court on Tuesday threw out an attempt by U.S. citizens to challenge the expansion of a surveillance law used to monitor conversations of foreign spies and terrorist suspects.
With a 5-4 vote, the high court ruled that a group of American lawyers, journalists and organizations can't sue to challenge the 2008 expansion of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) because they can't prove that the government will monitor their conversations along with those of potential foreign terrorist and intelligence targets.
Justices "have been reluctant to endorse standing theories that require guesswork," said Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote for the court's majority.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, was enacted in 1978. It allows the government to monitor conversations of foreign spies and terrorist suspects abroad for intelligence purposes. The 2008 FISA amendments allow the government to obtain from a secret court broad, yearlong intercept orders, raising the prospect that phone calls and emails between those foreign targets and innocent Americans in this country would be swept under the umbrella of surveillance.
Without proof that the law would directly affect them, Americans can't sue, Alito said in the ruling.
Despite their documented fears and the expense of activities that some Americans have taken to be sure they don't get caught up in government monitoring, they "have set forth no specific facts demonstrating that the communications of their foreign contacts will be targeted," he added. |
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Jury: Oregon car-bomb suspect guilty of terrorism
Top Court Watch |
2013/02/01 15:16
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Three hours before they handed down a sentence that could put an Oregon man in prison for life, deliberating jurors sent a note to a trial judge with a question.
Did the man whose fate they were deciding need to have envisioned the specific crime for which he was accused? Or did he merely need to be inclined toward some kind of terroristic act?
Their question more broadly reflects the central debate at the heart of the trial of Mohamed Mohamud, a 21-year-old Somali-American found guilty on Thursday of attempting to bomb a Portland Christmas tree-lighting in November 2010.
Prosecutors were met by a claim of entrapment by Mohamud's defense team, and needed to convince jurors that he was predisposed to terrorism by the time an FBI informant began discussing radical jihad with him over emails.
The judge, Garr King, told jurors Thursday that Mohamud only had to be likely to commit the offense or one like it, and he did not specifically have to be thinking about a bomb at the specific time and place at which he and two undercover FBI agents decided to plant one.
The bomb was a fake, supplied by the agents posing as jihadis.
Jurors were given starkly different portraits of the man who was 17 when the FBI began to focus on him. In the prosecution's description, Mohamud was a powder keg in search of a spark, an angry teenager with the right combination of anti-Western sentiment and a plausible cover story as an Oregon college student. |
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Mont. can pursue ex-billionaire bankruptcy
Top Court Watch |
2012/12/20 14:09
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Montana's bid to force ultra-luxury resort founder Tim Blixseth into bankruptcy and make him come up with up $57 million in purported back taxes has been resurrected by an appeals court ruling in the case.
A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overruled a lower court Monday and said Nevada is the proper venue for the case.
Blixseth, a one-time billionaire who lives in Washington state, is believed to have most of his assets in a Nevada-based trust.
On Tuesday, he promised an appeal.
The appellate ruling comes after a Dec. 5 order that Blixseth pay $41 million to creditors from the Yellowstone Club, the private ski resort he founded near Big Sky.
Beginning in 2005, Blixseth diverted most of a $375 million loan to the club to himself and then-wife Edra Blixseth. They used the money to buy up luxury estates around the world, a pair of jets, cars, furniture, art and jewelry.
When the resort started to founder, Tim Blixseth turned it over to Edra Blixseth during their 2008 divorce and took most of their remaining assets. The Yellowstone Club went bankrupt months later. It was later sold and is now under new ownership.
Montana tax authorities contend the money Blixseth got out of the 2005 loan, from banking giant Credit Suisse, was taxable. They've tried for more than two years to get him to pay up. A separate proceeding to get the money is pending before the Montana Tax Appeals Board. |
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Court: District court can hear some fed complaints
Top Court Watch |
2012/12/10 15:00
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The Supreme Court says some discrimination complaints from federal workers can go to federal district court, instead of being forced into the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.
The justices on Monday ruled unanimously that some appeals from the Merit Systems Protection Board can go before U.S. district judges if they involve discrimination claims dismissed for procedural reasons.
Carolyn M. Kloeckner was fired from the Labor Department in 2005 after complaining of sex and age discrimination and a hostile work environment, as well as being declared "absent without leave."
The Merit Systems board dismissed her claims as untimely, and she tried to appeal to district court. But the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said her appeal could only be heard by the D.C.-based Federal Circuit. |
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Limits on class-action lawsuits at Supreme Court
Top Court Watch |
2012/11/06 11:07
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The Supreme Court appeared divided Monday in two cases in which businesses are trying to make it harder for customers or investors to band together to sue them.
The justices heard arguments in appeals from biotech company Amgen Inc. and cable provider Comcast Corp. that seek to shut down class-action lawsuits against the businesses.
Amgen is fighting securities fraud claims that misstatements about two of its drugs used to treat anemia artificially inflated its stock price. Comcast is facing a lawsuit from customers who say the company's monopoly in parts of the Philadelphia area allowed it to raise prices unfairly.
Last year, the Supreme Court raised the bar for some class-action suits when it sided with Wal-Mart against up to 1.6 million of its female employees who complained of sex discrimination. In the Wal-Mart case, the court said there were too many women in too many jobs at the nation's largest private employer to wrap into one lawsuit.
Class actions increase pressure on businesses to settle suits because of the cost of defending them and the potential for very large judgments. |
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