Latest news with #7thCircuit
Telegraph
2 days ago
- Politics
- Telegraph
It's a stain on US democracy that you can vote a fortnight after election day
Illinois doesn't have the best reputation when it comes to clean elections. The mere mention of the state conjures up memories of Chicago's notorious machine politics under the Daley family, and its sway over the 1960 presidential election. But now the Supreme Court has decided to consider a more recent stain against the state's name. In its next session, it has said that it will hear a case challenging Illinois' practice of counting mail-in ballots (known in other countries as postal votes) that arrive up to 14 days after election day. At stake is the integrity of the democratic process and the reasonable expectation that elections, like any competition governed by rules, should not be open to abuse. The case stems from a challenge by Representative Michael Bost (R-Ill), joined by two presidential electors, to an Illinois law that permits mail ballots to be counted even if they arrive up to two weeks after election day. A panel of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the challenge on the grounds of standing. But that was a procedural evasion of a question that demands substantive resolution: can we sustain trust in democratic outcomes while tolerating policies that might allow those outcomes to be perverted? Sixteen states plus the District of Columbia currently allow the counting of absentee ballots that arrive late, in most cases so long as they are postmarked by election day. And it's not a typical red state, blue state problem. Like Illinois, Utah also allows these votes to trickle in for up to 14 days. Maryland and Alaska allow 10. Maybe Alaska, given its geographical challenges, should get a pass. But not the other states. California and New York offer a full week for ballots to arrive after election day. Washington State, remarkably, doesn't even specify an arrival deadline – an open-ended invitation to confusion and loss of trust. The defenders of such policies claim that they improve access to voting. When they are criticised, they tend to respond hysterically that stopping them will end up disenfranchising voters. That's absurd. In most western democracies, mail ballots must arrive on election day or before. Also, the United States is uncommon in the world for its 'no-excuse' absentee voting, meaning that someone doesn't have to be out of their voting area or physically unable to vote in person in order to qualify. Voting is a right. Voting by post is a convenience. The distinction is not semantic. Rights are God-given, immutable, and must be protected. Conveniences, even useful ones, are conditional. The wholly reasonable suggestion here is that, if citizens choose to vote by mail, they should bear the responsibility of ensuring their ballot arrives by election day. In Mississippi, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that counting ballots after election day is illegal under federal law. This is not radicalism; it is order. The sooner all states move in this direction, the better. Consider what's at risk. Every late-counted vote has the potential to become, in the public mind, a vote that could be questioned. Certainly, a losing politician has every incentive to cast it as such. Every additional day of counting invites suspicion that the process is not being conducted fairly, especially in a country where almost one-third of voters already doubt the fairness of elections, according to a Pew Research Survey. Thus, timely vote-counting is not merely administrative housekeeping, it's about legitimacy. President Donald Trump's executive order on election integrity in March directed the Department of Justice to take appropriate legal action against states that count ballots arriving after election day for federal elections. It also proposes tying federal election funding to compliance with this standard. An election is not a season – it is a day. Election day is known in advance. It does not sneak up on the electorate. The ability to mail a ballot on time is not an undue burden; it is a modest civic expectation. If a voter can't manage that deadline, then perhaps in-person early voting or election day voting is the more reliable option. The Supreme Court, when it takes this case in the term beginning this October, has the opportunity to restore a sorely needed sense of boundaries. Trust in democracy begins not when the last ballot arrives, but when the last valid ballot is counted – on time.
Yahoo
25-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
An ‘impossible' PIP revives age bias lawsuit against Caterpillar
This story was originally published on HR Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily HR Dive newsletter. A district court erred when it dismissed a former Caterpillar employee's age discrimination claim because he demonstrated that the performance improvement plan that preceded his firing was 'impossible' to complete successfully, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held June 18. Per the decision in Murphy v. Caterpillar, Inc., the plaintiff had already once won an age-discrimination jury verdict against Caterpillar after allegedly being passed over for a promotion. The two sides settled and Caterpillar reinstated the plaintiff and agreed not to retaliate against him. Years later, the company allegedly presented the plaintiff with a PIP in which one of the plan's deadlines had already passed, indicating that the plaintiff had already violated the plan. The employee claimed his supervisors denied his request to edit the plan and, instead, signed the portion of the PIP indicating that he failed to meet the deadline. He sued for age discrimination and retaliation. The district court granted summary judgment for Caterpillar, but the 7th Circuit reversed on the age discrimination claim only, holding that the PIP supported a reasonable inference of discriminatory pretext. The Age Discrimination in Employment Act prohibits age-based employment discrimination against applicants and employees who are 40 years of age or older. The plaintiff in Murphy was 58 when his employment at Caterpillar ended, and the three-judge panel of the 7th Circuit noted that he met or exceeded expectations in every evaluation category at the time that supervisors placed him on the PIP. That the plaintiff was technically in violation of the plan before even agreeing to sign it constituted an oddity that could not be explained away as an oversight, the court said. It added that a jury could infer that the supervisors' decision to sign the document confirming the plaintiff's failure to meet the plan before it took effect 'signaled to [the plaintiff] that his fate had been decided.' Quoting a prior decision, the court wrote that 'the handwriting may not have been on the wall, but it was certainly etched into the signature block of the action plan, and the axe was poised to fall because [the plaintiff] was already in breach of the plan's terms.' Caterpillar offered several justifications for the PIP as well as the termination decision. According to the 7th Circuit, the company told the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that the plan was partially prompted by inappropriate comments the plaintiff made to two co-workers. But the court noted that the supervisors testified the PIP was initiated before they learned of the alleged comments. The company also supported its motion for summary judgment by pointing to a supervisor's set of personal 'desk notes' about the plaintiff which claimed to document his performance issues. The district court relied upon the notes as part of its rationale in ruling for Caterpillar, but the 7th Circuit deemed the notes to be inadmissible hearsay whose reliability was not supported by the record. EEOC has resolved tens of thousands of age-discrimination cases in recent years, and those cases have at times resulted in large settlements for plaintiffs. Examples include a manufacturer that agreed to pay $460,000 to settle claims that the company planned to replace older workers with younger candidates. Meanwhile, older workers continue to report ageism at work. One 2024 report found that 59% of job seekers ages 50 and older said they believed their age created obstacles in the hiring process, and more than one-quarter of respondents said that they had witnessed age-related microaggressions in the workplace. Recommended Reading Trump moves to shutter OFCCP after months of chopping away at it Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
02-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Supreme Court agrees to hear absentee ballot appeal from Illinois congressman
The Supreme Court said Monday that it will hear an appeal from Illinois Rep. Mike Bost who wants to challenge the state's decision to count absentee ballots after Election Day. At issue is a lower court ruling that found the Republican and two presidential elector nominees did not have standing to sue. The Supreme Court will likely hear arguments in the case in the fall. Bost sued in 2022, claiming that an Illinois law allowing mail-in ballots to arrive up to two weeks after Election Day ran afoul federal law that sets a uniform day for federal elections. As in other states, the mail-in ballots at issue must be postmarked on or before the election. President Donald Trump has attacked the practice with an executive order that pressures states to abandon their post-election deadlines for mail-in ballots to arrive at election offices. His directives are subject to litigation as well. Roughly 20 other states and jurisdictions count ballots that arrive after Election Day. Republicans are pursuing litigation in multiple courts attempting to roll back the expansion of mail-in voting. A federal appeals court in Louisiana last year ruled that Mississippi was violating federal law by counting mail ballots that arrive after Election Day, but stopped short of blocking the policy before the November election. Lower courts never considered Bost's underlying claim. A federal district court ruled that Bost and the other plaintiffs were not injured by the state ballot law and so they did not have standing to sue. A divided 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that decision and Bost appealed the technical question of standing to the high court. Bost, first elected in 2014, tried to argue that his campaign was required to pay for an additional two weeks of staff to monitor ballot counting. But the 7th Circuit noted that Bost won reelection in his Southern Illinois district by a healthy margin and that he chose to spend resources to avoid a hypothetical future harm. 'Plaintiffs cannot manufacture standing by choosing to spend money to mitigate such conjectural risks,' the court wrote. The three-judge panel included one judge nominated by Trump and another named by President Joe Biden. US Circuit Judge Michael Scudder, who was also nominated by Trump, dissented. 'As a sitting member of Congress in the midst of an ongoing reelection campaign, he is nothing close to a 'mere bystander' to the upcoming election or the allegation at the heart of this lawsuit,' Scudder wrote.
CNN
02-06-2025
- Politics
- CNN
Supreme Court agrees to hear absentee ballot appeal from Illinois congressman
The Supreme Court said Monday that it will hear an appeal from Illinois Rep. Mike Bost who wants to challenge the state's decision to count absentee ballots after Election Day. At issue is a lower court ruling that found the Republican and two presidential elector nominees did not have standing to sue. The Supreme Court will likely hear arguments in the case in the fall. Bost sued in 2022, claiming that an Illinois law allowing mail-in ballots to arrive up to two weeks after Election Day ran afoul federal law that sets a uniform day for federal elections. As in other states, the mail-in ballots at issue must be postmarked on or before the election. President Donald Trump has attacked the practice with an executive order that pressures states to abandon their post-election deadlines for mail-in ballots to arrive at election offices. His directives are subject to litigation as well. Roughly 20 other states and jurisdictions count ballots that arrive after Election Day. Republicans are pursuing litigation in multiple courts attempting to roll back the expansion of mail-in voting. A federal appeals court in Louisiana last year ruled that Mississippi was violating federal law by counting mail ballots that arrive after Election Day, but stopped short of blocking the policy before the November election. Lower courts never considered Bost's underlying claim. A federal district court ruled that Bost and the other plaintiffs were not injured by the state ballot law and so they did not have standing to sue. A divided 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that decision and Bost appealed the technical question of standing to the high court. Bost, first elected in 2014, tried to argue that his campaign was required to pay for an additional two weeks of staff to monitor ballot counting. But the 7th Circuit noted that Bost won reelection in his Southern Illinois district by a healthy margin and that he chose to spend resources to avoid a hypothetical future harm. 'Plaintiffs cannot manufacture standing by choosing to spend money to mitigate such conjectural risks,' the court wrote. The three-judge panel included one judge nominated by Trump and another named by President Joe Biden. US Circuit Judge Michael Scudder, who was also nominated by Trump, dissented. 'As a sitting member of Congress in the midst of an ongoing reelection campaign, he is nothing close to a 'mere bystander' to the upcoming election or the allegation at the heart of this lawsuit,' Scudder wrote.
CNN
02-06-2025
- Business
- CNN
Supreme Court agrees to hear absentee ballot appeal from Illinois congressman
The Supreme Court said Monday that it will hear an appeal from Illinois Rep. Mike Bost who wants to challenge the state's decision to count absentee ballots after Election Day. At issue is a lower court ruling that found the Republican and two presidential elector nominees did not have standing to sue. The Supreme Court will likely hear arguments in the case in the fall. Bost sued in 2022, claiming that an Illinois law allowing mail-in ballots to arrive up to two weeks after Election Day ran afoul federal law that sets a uniform day for federal elections. As in other states, the mail-in ballots at issue must be postmarked on or before the election. President Donald Trump has attacked the practice with an executive order that pressures states to abandon their post-election deadlines for mail-in ballots to arrive at election offices. His directives are subject to litigation as well. Roughly 20 other states and jurisdictions count ballots that arrive after Election Day. Republicans are pursuing litigation in multiple courts attempting to roll back the expansion of mail-in voting. A federal appeals court in Louisiana last year ruled that Mississippi was violating federal law by counting mail ballots that arrive after Election Day, but stopped short of blocking the policy before the November election. Lower courts never considered Bost's underlying claim. A federal district court ruled that Bost and the other plaintiffs were not injured by the state ballot law and so they did not have standing to sue. A divided 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that decision and Bost appealed the technical question of standing to the high court. Bost, first elected in 2014, tried to argue that his campaign was required to pay for an additional two weeks of staff to monitor ballot counting. But the 7th Circuit noted that Bost won reelection in his Southern Illinois district by a healthy margin and that he chose to spend resources to avoid a hypothetical future harm. 'Plaintiffs cannot manufacture standing by choosing to spend money to mitigate such conjectural risks,' the court wrote. The three-judge panel included one judge nominated by Trump and another named by President Joe Biden. US Circuit Judge Michael Scudder, who was also nominated by Trump, dissented. 'As a sitting member of Congress in the midst of an ongoing reelection campaign, he is nothing close to a 'mere bystander' to the upcoming election or the allegation at the heart of this lawsuit,' Scudder wrote.
