Latest news with #6thCircuit
Boston Globe
a day ago
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Supreme Court will hear challenge to limits on political party spending
'It would at a minimum open up more opportunities for political parties to work with their campaigns,' Pildes said. 'More expansively, it could lead to political parties regaining some of the ground they lost to the Super PACs over the last 20 years.' Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up The national Republican senatorial and congressional committees, joined by then-Senator JD Vance, Republican of Ohio, and then-Representative Steve Chabot, Republican of Ohio, filed a lawsuit over the limits in 2022, saying they conflict with the free speech rights guaranteed by the First Amendment. Advertisement The Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit ruled against the Republicans, citing a 2001 Supreme Court ruling upholding the limits, but it acknowledged the high court 'has tightened the free speech restrictions on campaign finance regulation' in more recent decisions, so the issue may be ripe for revisiting. Advertisement In the 2001 case, the high court upheld the restrictions on coordinating spending by political parties in a 5-4 ruling, finding they 'minimize circumvention of [individual] contribution limits.' The GOP committees urged the justices to overturn that decision in a filing, arguing that the restrictions have 'harmed our political system by leading donors to send their funds elsewhere,' fueling the rise of super PACs and a decline in the power of political parties and contributing to 'a spike in political polarization and fragmentation across the board.' 'Congress has built a wall of separation between party and candidate, forcing party committees to figure out how to get their candidates elected without hearing from them,' the petitioners wrote. 'That is the campaign 'equivalent of prohibiting communication between a coach and quarterback late in a tied game.'' Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in a filing in the case that the Trump administration will not defend the restrictions on party spending. The move is unusual because the solicitor general typically defends federal law. The high court is allowing the Democratic National Committee, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to intervene in the case to defend the contribution limits, which the groups say are an essential part of trying to restrict the influence of wealthy donors on the political process. The Democratic groups argued in a brief filed with the courts that removing the limits could lead to corruption by 'blow[ing] open the cap on the amount of money that donors can funnel to candidates through party committees' coordinated expenditures.' For 2025, the Federal Election Commission limited how much parties are able to spend in coordination with a Senate nominee to between about $127,000 and $3.9 million, depending on the size of a state's voting-age population. For House candidates, the limits are between about $63,000 and $127,000. Parties face no limits on expenditures that are not coordinated with candidates. Advertisement The high court's decision to accept the case was a major blow to advocates for campaign finance regulation. Since the court's landmark 2010 decision in Citizens United v. FEC, which opened the door to unlimited contributions by corporations and unions, the conservative majority has consistently viewed limits on campaign spending as unconstitutional limits on free speech. If the court strikes down the current restrictions on coordinated spending by political parties — as expected by activists on both sides of the debate — it will be the latest ruling that erodes the campaign finance regulations enacted in the wake of Watergate to guard against the potentially corrupting influence of money in politics. 'This case is part of a long line of cases in which this court has set out to eviscerate campaign finance laws passed over decades to protect the American people from corruption,' said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a nonpartisan group that backs stronger regulation of campaign spending. 'This court is on a path that is completely hostile to campaign finance laws.' Most states don't restrict the amounts that parties can spend in coordination with candidates, said David Keating, president of the Institute for Free Speech, which filed a brief supporting the Republican committees' request for the high court's involvement. 'This case is a complete outlier, and this is long overdue,' Keating said. 'There is no evidence that it will lead to corruption, so I think it's extremely unlikely the court will uphold this restriction.' Advertisement The case is one of seven that the justices added Monday to their calendar for the term that begins in October. The court also agreed to take up a major copyright dispute between Cox Communications and a group of music labels seeking to hold the internet service provider accountable for alleged illegal downloading of music by Cox customers.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
There is no 'reverse discrimination,' people. There is only discrimination.
There is no such thing as reverse discrimination. There is just discrimination. It doesn't matter if someone is White or Black, straight or gay, male or female. It only matters if they've been discriminated against. On June 5, the Supreme Court handed down a unanimous decision removing barriers for members of majority groups to file anti-discrimination suits. In this case, Marlean Ames, a straight woman, filed a suit against her employer, which she said denied a promotion in favor of a gay woman, and later demoted her in favor of a gay man filling her role. The news media covering this decision has widely referred to it as a 'reverse discrimination' case, but that shows their understanding of discrimination is wrong. The unanimous decision from the court in this case is correct and offers valuable lessons for how the left needs to rethink its group politics. The ruling overturns a 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision that placed a heightened burden upon a plaintiff who is a member of a "majority group" in discrimination cases, requiring that the plaintiff shows 'background circumstances to support the suspicion that the defendant is that unusual employer who discriminates against the majority.' Essentially, the lower court established different criteria for determining whether a single person had a valid discrimination case against an employer, compared with a person who was part of the majority. The Supreme Court has ruled that it is unconstitutional, sending the case back to a lower court. Opinion: Trump abandons his most impressive presidential legacy ‒ conservative judges Different rules based on different groups is precisely the kind of discrimination that American law prohibits. This is the spirit of all of American anti-discrimination law, including the relevant statute in this case, Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prevents employment discrimination based on all sorts of characteristics. The only test in cases of discrimination should be if you prove you were discriminated against due to an immutable characteristic. If yes, you have a case. If not, you don't. There is no need to consider whether somebody is even a part of a minority group, or even how their discrimination plays into any sort of broader civil rights struggle. In this case, because the plaintiff was straight, the lower court added an additional burden for her to prove discrimination than if a gay person had filed an identical suit. Opinion alerts: Get columns from your favorite columnists + expert analysis on top issues, delivered straight to your device through the USA TODAY app. Don't have the app? Download it for free from your app store. Title VII provides far more detail on how one proves discrimination than my haphazard framework, but the spirit is the same in that there is no mention of one's group status being a determining factor. 'As a textual matter, Title VII's disparate-treatment provision draws no distinctions between majority-group plaintiffs and minority-group plaintiffs,' writes Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson for the unanimous decision. In the decision at issue, the court reached consensus, with all nine justices signing on to Justice Jackson's opinion. While unanimous decisions are not uncommon, what is interesting about this case is that the liberal justices have signed on to an approach typically favored by conservatives. Justice Clarence Thomas has long advocated for constitutional colorblindness, and the reality is that American law treats all characteristics equally in its application of laws. Opinion: Vance is doing his best to help Trump tear down the Supreme Court This very issue divided the nation's highest court into its respective ideological leanings just two years ago, when Students for Fair Admissions won against Harvard and the University of North Carolina, resulting in affirmative action admissions practices being outlawed nationwide. In that very decision, Justice Jackson authored a fiery dissent against the colorblind approach of the majority opinion. While that case deals with race and this one deals with sexual orientation, any protected characteristic should be viewed the same. Decisions like these make Justice Jackson's jurisprudence all the more frustrating. The same principles that demand neutrality of the law in some areas are suddenly thrown out the window when it comes to affirmative action. I hope that the recent case is a genuine change of heart from Justice Jackson and the other liberal justices, but I fear that this case is just another puzzling inconsistency from the court's junior justice. Dace Potas is an opinion columnist for USA TODAY and a graduate of DePaul University with a degree in political science. You can read diverse opinions from our USA TODAY columnists and other writers on the Opinion front page, on X, formerly Twitter, @usatodayopinion and in our Opinion newsletter. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Supreme Court ruling in discrimination case is step forward | Opinion
E&E News
5 days ago
- Politics
- E&E News
Committee clears Trump's first judicial nominees
The Senate Judiciary Committee voted along party lines Wednesday to advance appeals court nominee Whitney Hermandorfer and four other judicial picks. Hermandorfer, who was President Donald Trump's first judicial pick of his second term, would serve on the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The committee also voted on the nominations for Zachary Bluestone, Maria Lanahan, Cristian Stevens and Joshua Divine to federal district courts in Missouri. Advertisement Committee Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) described the nominees as 'dedicated to the rule of law and committed to the Constitution.'
CBS News
5 days ago
- Health
- CBS News
Appeals court rules Michigan's newborn blood screening program constitutional
A yearslong effort to challenge Michigan's practice of storing millions of dried blood samples from newborn babies has been turned upside down by a federal appeals court, which threw out key decisions in favor of parents who said the policy violated their rights. In a 3-0 opinion, the court found nothing unconstitutional about how the state Department of Health and Human Services handles leftover samples, which are called blood spots. The 2018 lawsuit by a small group of parents was not aimed at stopping the routine procedure of pricking the heels of newborns to draw blood and screen for diseases, a longstanding practice in hospitals across the United States. Rather, the case centered on what happens to leftover spots and the health data extracted from them — and whether parents feel truly informed when they're presented with a consent form about the process at the tumultuous time of birth. Attorneys argued that parents might not know that health researchers pay the state to use spots stored in the Michigan Neonatal Biobank in Detroit. In very rare circumstances, police also can get access. "Although plaintiff-parents strongly oppose defendants' storage and research of their children's blood spots and data, we cannot elevate every concern to a 'fundamental right,' " wrote Judge Richard Griffin of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The court noted that blood spots stored at the Biobank are labeled with a code and not someone's name, which may ease privacy concerns for some. The parents failed to prove their property interest in blood spots and related data, the court said Wednesday, setting aside the findings of U.S. District Judge Thomas Ludington. "I'm extremely disappointed, but the battle isn't over yet," attorney Philip Ellison said. "We're going to the U.S. Supreme Court. We think the 6th Circuit completely messed up the decision in this case." He said leftover blood spots from the children of parents he represents had been destroyed earlier in the litigation, though the appeals court decision means the state can keep related health data. "With AI and the data the state has, we don't know what the future holds," he said, referring to artificial intelligence. In a statement, Attorney General Dana Nessel said the latest decision means the state can continue "advancing medical research through privacy-protected" data. The Health Department has defended the program. It notes that no blood spots are kept for research unless parents give permission, though the dried blood samples still will be stored for up to a hundred years even without permission. Spots also can be destroyed upon request, but the number of people who have taken that step is small. In 2022, at a separate stage of the case, the state agreed to destroy more than 3 million blood spots kept in Lansing, but millions more remain under its control. Research using blood spots occurs in other states, including California, New York and Minnesota, where samples can be kept for decades. In 2009, Texas agreed to destroy millions of blood spots that were stored without consent. Spots obtained since 2012 now are destroyed after two years unless Texas parents agree to have them maintained longer for research.
Associated Press
6 days ago
- Health
- Associated Press
Michigan wins appeal in legal challenge to how it handles extra blood samples from newborns
DETROIT (AP) — A yearslong effort to challenge Michigan's practice of storing millions of dried blood samples from newborn babies has been turned upside down by a federal appeals court, which threw out key decisions in favor of parents who said the policy violated their rights. In a 3-0 opinion, the court found nothing unconstitutional about how the state Department of Health and Human Services handles leftover samples, which are called blood spots. The 2018 lawsuit by a small group of parents was not aimed at stopping the routine procedure of pricking the heels of newborns to draw blood and screen for diseases, a longstanding practice in hospitals across the United States. Rather, the case centered on what happens to leftover spots and the health data extracted from them — and whether parents feel truly informed when they're presented with a consent form about the process at the tumultuous time of birth. Attorneys argued that parents might not know that health researchers pay the state to use spots stored in the Michigan Neonatal Biobank in Detroit. In very rare circumstances, police also can get access. 'Although plaintiff-parents strongly oppose defendants' storage and research of their children's blood spots and data, we cannot elevate every concern to a 'fundamental right,' ' wrote Judge Richard Griffin of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The court noted that blood spots stored at the Biobank are labeled with a code and not someone's name, which may ease privacy concerns for some. The parents failed to prove their property interest in blood spots and related data, the court said Wednesday, setting aside the findings of U.S. District Judge Thomas Ludington. 'I'm extremely disappointed, but the battle isn't over yet,' attorney Philip Ellison said. 'We're going to the U.S. Supreme Court. We think the 6th Circuit completely messed up the decision in this case.' He said leftover blood spots from the children of parents he represents had been destroyed earlier in the litigation, though the appeals court decision means the state can keep related health data. 'With AI and the data the state has, we don't know what the future holds,' he said, referring to artificial intelligence. In a statement, Attorney General Dana Nessel said the latest decision means the state can continue 'advancing medical research through privacy-protected' data. The Health Department has defended the program. It notes that no blood spots are kept for research unless parents give permission, though the dried blood samples still will be stored for up to a hundred years even without permission. Spots also can be destroyed upon request, but the number of people who have taken that step is small. In 2022, at a separate stage of the case, the state agreed to destroy more than 3 million blood spots kept in Lansing, but millions more remain under its control. Research using blood spots occurs in other states, including California, New York and Minnesota, where samples can be kept for decades. In 2009, Texas agreed to destroy millions of blood spots that were stored without consent. Spots obtained since 2012 now are destroyed after two years unless Texas parents agree to have them maintained longer for research.
