The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal from Minnesota asking to revive the state’s ban on gun-carry permits for young adults.
The justices also left in place a ban on guns at the University of Michigan, declining to hear an appeal from a man who argued he has a right to be armed on campus. No justice noted a dissent in either case.
Taken together, the actions reflect the high court’s apparent lack of appetite for cases that further explore the constitutional right to “keep and bear arms.”
The court has repeatedly turned away gun cases since its 2022 ruling that expanded gun rights and a clarifying 2024 decision that upheld a federal gun control law that is intended to protect victims of domestic violence.
The decision not to hear the Minnesota case was somewhat surprising because both sides sought the Supreme Court’s review and courts around the country have come to different conclusions about whether states can limit the gun rights of people aged 18 to 20 without violating the Constitution.
The federal appeals court in St. Louis ruled that the Minnesota ban conflicted with the Second Amendment, which the court noted sets no age limit and generally protects ordinary, law-abiding young adults.
In January, the federal appeals court in New Orleans struck down a federal law requiring young adults to be 21 to buy handguns.
In February, a federal judge declined to block Hawaii’s ban on gun possession for people under 21.
Nadine Menendez, the wife of former U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, was convicted Monday of teaming up with her husband to accept bribes of cash, gold bars and a luxury car from three New Jersey men looking for help with their business dealings or legal troubles.
The jury returned a verdict of guilty on all counts in the same federal courthouse in Manhattan where a different jury convicted Bob Menendez of many of the same charges last year. The Democrat is supposed to begin serving an 11-year prison term in June.
Nadine Menendez, who stood but did not appear to react as the verdict was delivered by the jury foreperson, was scheduled to be sentenced on June 12, six days after her husband is expected to report to prison.
Outside the courthouse, she wore a pink mask as she stood next to her lawyer, Barry Coburn, said he was “devastated by the verdict.”
“We fought hard and it hurts,” he said. “This is a very rough day for us.”
The evidence shown to jurors over a three-week trial followed the timeline of the whirlwind romance between the couple that began in early 2018 and continued after criminal charges were brought against them in September 2023. Repeatedly during the trial, prosecutors said they were “partners in crime.”
During a 2022 raid on the couple’s Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, home, FBI agents found nearly $150,000 worth of gold bars and $480,000 in cash stuffed in boots, shoeboxes and jackets. In the garage was a Mercedes-Benz convertible, also an alleged bribe.
Both Nadine and Bob Menendez said they are innocent and never took bribes.
Initially, they were to be tried together, along with the three businessmen, but Nadine Menendez’s trial was postponed a year ago after she was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent surgery.
Bob Menendez, 71, resigned from the Senate last August following his conviction. Before the charges were brought he had been chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Prosecutors accused Nadine Menendez of starting to facilitating bribes to the senator around the time that they began dating, before they married in the fall of 2020.
At the time, she was in danger of losing her home in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, after missing nearly $20,000 in mortgage payments, trial testimony showed. A longtime friend, Wael Hana, provided cash to save the home — and prosecutors said that in return, the senator began helping Hana preserve a business monopoly he had arranged with the Egyptian government to certify that imported meat met religious requirements.
Nadine Menendez also needed a new car after her old one was destroyed when she struck and killed a man crossing a street. (She did not face charges in the crash). Prosecutors said a businessman, Jose Uribe, gave her a Mercedes-Benz, and in return Bob Menendez used his clout to pressure the New Jersey attorney general’s office to stop investigating some of Uribe’s associates.
Prosecutor said more cash and gold bribes were paid to the couple by Fred Daibes, a prominent real estate developer who prosecutors said wanted the senator to protect him from a criminal case he was facing in New Jersey. Prosecutors said Bob Menendez also helped Daibes secure a $95 million investment from a Qatari investment fund.
Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill is pushing forward with her efforts to force Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson to drop a longtime policy that generally prohibits deputies from directly engaging in federal immigration enforcement within the city’s jail.
In legal filings, Murrill claims that the policy — which the state characterizes as a so-called “sanctuary city” policy — is in direct conflict with a newly passed state law that requires state and local law enforcement agencies to cooperate with federal immigration agencies.
“The consent decree now sits fundamentally at odds with state law as applicable to immigration detainers,” Murrill said in court documents filed Friday.
A federal court will now determine whether to allow the state of Louisiana to join a 2011 federal suit that resulted in the policy and whether to throw out the policy altogether. A hearing has been set for April 30.
The state’s campaign against “sanctuary” policies comes as President Donald Trump is pushing local law enforcement agencies to join the federal government in his promised immigration crackdown. Since his inauguration, Trump has ordered the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to push for more partnerships between local law enforcement units and federal immigration agencies. A few have already signed up. Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, a longtime immigration hardliner and Trump ally, has worked with Republican lawmakers in the state to enact laws that encourage those collaborations.
As attorney general, Landry criticized a policy adopted by the New Orleans Police Department, under a long-running federal consent decree that blocks officers from enforcing immigration laws.
Neither Murrill’s office nor representatives for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement responded to requests for comment.
In court filings, Murrill said Hutson “does not oppose the (state’s) intervention” in the case.” But a spokesperson for Hutson said that’s not exactly true. “It’s more accurate that we take no position regarding the state intervention,” a Sheriff’s Office spokesperson said in an emailed statement on Wednesday.
While she has not taken a position for or against increased collaboration with ICE, in an interview with Fox 8 in December, Hutson noted that the jail’s resources were far too stretched to take on immigration enforcement.
The sheriff’s policy stems from a 2013 federal court settlement in a civil rights case involving two New Orleans construction workers picked up on minor charges in 2009 and 2010. Mario Cacho and Antonio Ocampo sued after they were allegedly illegally held in the city’s jail past the completion of their sentences. The two were held at the request of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The agency issues such “detainer” requests to local law enforcement agencies, asking them to hold onto arrestees who are suspected of immigration violations. Local agencies are only supposed to honor the hold requests for 48 hours, after which they should let detainees free. But in 2009 and 2010, then-Sheriff Marlin Gusman detained Cacho and Ocampo for months, according to legal filings in their case against the office.
Ocampo and Cacho settled the case with the Sheriff’s Office in 2013, and Gusman agreed to adopt a new policy on immigration investigations. The resulting policy blocks the agency from investigating immigration violations and from detaining immigrants for ICE without a court order, except in certain cases where they are facing charges for a small number of serious violent crimes.
North Carolina appeals court judges listened to arguments Friday about whether votes on tens of thousands of ballots in an unsettled state Supreme Court election from November should remain in the tally or could be discarded.
A three-judge panel of the intermediate-level Court of Appeals will decide if the State Board of Elections in December properly dismissed the formal protests of those ballots by Republican Jefferson Griffin. A trial judge upheld the board’s actions last month.
After two recounts, Democratic incumbent Allison Riggs leads Griffin by 734 votes from more than 5.5 million ballots cast in the Supreme Court race. Griffin’s lawyers have cited more than 65,000 ballots from three categories they argued came from ineligible voters. Removing them from counts could flip the vote advantage to Griffin.
No immediate ruling was issued Friday after 90 minutes of arguments before the panel, which is composed of two registered Republicans and one Democrat. There’s no date set on when the panel will act. But there is pressure to act quickly. The eight-year term on the highest court in the ninth-largest state was supposed to begin in early January. Riggs has meanwhile remained serving in her seat. And Griffin is in his current job as one of the 15 Court of Appeals judges.
While The Associated Press declared more than 4,400 winners in the 2024 general election, the state Supreme Court election is the only race that is still undecided.
However Judges John Tyson, Fred Gore and Toby Hampson rule, their decision will likely be subject to more appeals to the state Supreme Court on which the two candidates are fighting to serve, as well as potentially federal courts.
While Griffin has recused himself from Court of Appeals deliberations in his case, having the three judges rule in a matter directly affecting a colleague and Riggs — herself a Court of Appeals judge briefly in 2023 — is extraordinary.
The panel’s judges asked many questions about the three categories of ballots Griffin challenged.
The largest category covers ballots cast by voters whose registration records lacked either a driver’s license number or the last four digits of a Social Security number. Other votes being challenged were cast by overseas voters who have never lived in the U.S. and military or overseas voters who did not provide copies of photo identification with their ballots.
Griffin’s lawyers have argued that counting the challenged ballots violates state laws or the state constitution, and the state elections board — composed of three Democrats and two Republicans — is to blame by failing to follow them. They want these ballots declared ineligible and ultimately discounted.
Doesn’t the 2005 ruling “say that if a voter relied on board guidance that is contrary to the statute that still is not a reason to excuse the noncompliance?” Tyson asked state attorney Nick Brod, representing the board. Brod disagreed.
Riggs’ allies have held rallies across the state demanding Griffin concede. Before Friday’s hearing, several outside groups filed briefs backing the board’s decisions, including voters whose ballots have been challenged by Griffin.
by breakinglegalnews.com
A hearing in a New Mexico courtroom devolved into chaos when three people rushed the defendant in a homicide case, setting off a brawl with flying fists and kicks.
Courtroom video cameras recorded the Jan. 31 melee, which subsided as a law enforcement officer drew a stun gun and protected the defendant from further attack.
Felony charges were filed against two men: battery and assault on a public official.
A woman was also arrested on the same charges, Albuquerque TV station KRQE reported Thursday. The courtroom video showed her hitting the defendant and an officer with a chair.
The presence of corrections officers and other security details in courtrooms does not always keep the peace. Last year a defendant in a felony battery case in Nevada flung himself over a judge’s bench and grabbed her hair, sparking a bloody brawl with court officials.
Katina Watson, court executive officer at New Mexico’s Second Judicial District, told KRQE that “these are the types of things that we see regularly.”
She praised an officer for reacting to ensure safety, without mention of potential security enhancements.
General Historical Trends
Consistently Above National Averages
- New Mexico has historically experienced higher-than-average crime rates compared to many other U.S. states. This has been true for both property crimes (like burglary and vehicle theft) and violent crimes (like aggravated assault and homicide).
1990s
- Across the United States, including New Mexico, violent crime rates were relatively high in the early 1990s. New Mexico followed the national trend of a steady decline in violent crime through the mid-to-late 1990s.
- Property crime also began to decrease nationally during this time, although in some parts of New Mexico, it remained elevated compared to the U.S. average.
2000s
- Through the early 2000s, national crime rates continued a general downward trend. New Mexico’s crime rates mirrored that pattern to some extent, but the state consistently reported higher rates than the national average.
- Metropolitan areas—especially Albuquerque—tended to account for a sizable portion of reported offenses, including both violent crime and property crime.
Late 2000s to Early 2010s
- The national decline in crime continued in many states, though New Mexico had periods where certain offenses, particularly property crimes (like auto theft), rose.
- Violent crime rates in New Mexico also fluctuated. Some years saw moderate declines, but the overall rate stayed somewhat higher than the national level.
Mid-2010s
- Reports showed an uptick in violent crime in several parts of the country, including New Mexico. Cities such as Albuquerque saw increases in both violent incidents and property crimes.
- Factors contributing to local crime trends can include economic changes, fluctuations in drug activity, and broader social issues.
Late 2010s
- New Mexico began implementing various crime-prevention initiatives and criminal justice reforms to address consistently high rates.
- While certain categories of crime showed improvement, others—especially property crimes—remained challenges in specific regions.
Factors Influencing Crime in New Mexico
- Socioeconomic Conditions: Poverty and unemployment can correlate with higher crime rates. Rural areas in New Mexico also face unique challenges, such as limited access to mental health and addiction resources.
- Substance Abuse and Drug Trafficking: Drug-related offenses and activities tied to opioid or methamphetamine use have significantly impacted crime trends.
- Policing and Criminal Justice Policies: Changes in law enforcement practices, sentencing guidelines, and community policing can all influence crime rates over time.
- Population Density and Urban Centers: Higher crime rates typically cluster in urban areas. Albuquerque, the state’s largest city, often reports a significant share of New Mexico’s overall crime statistics.
Key Takeaways
- Longstanding High Rates: New Mexico has commonly ranked above the national average in both violent and property crime for decades.
- Variable Trends: Although the overall U.S. crime rate declined significantly from the 1990s through the mid-2010s, New Mexico’s rates have fluctuated, sometimes mirroring national trends and sometimes diverging.
- Concentrated Hotspots: Urban centers, especially Albuquerque, account for a sizable portion of reported crimes in the state.
- Complex Influences: Economic conditions, substance abuse, and changes in policing policies all play important roles in shaping crime rates.
[Image credit: Pexel]
by breakinglegalnews.com
A Texas man, Michael Thomas Lewis, 55, faces felony stalking charges for allegedly harassing Caitlin Clark, the WNBA rookie of the year and Indiana Fever star. During his initial court appearance on Tuesday, Lewis shouted, "guilty as charged," before exhibiting erratic behavior, including laughing and joking, as reported by WISH-TV Indianapolis. He also disclosed he had not been taking his medication while in custody or living in his car.
Prosecutors allege Lewis began harassing Clark on December 16, repeatedly contacting her and posting disturbing messages on social media. Some posts were sexually explicit and included threats, which authorities say caused Clark to feel terrorized and intimidated. In one post, Lewis mentioned driving by Gainbridge Fieldhouse, where the Fever play, and joked about being close to a stalking charge.
Lewis allegedly traveled from Texas to Indianapolis to be near Clark, prompting prosecutors to request a higher bond. The court set his bond at $50,000, with conditions requiring him to wear an ankle monitor and stay in Indiana if released. He is also barred from coming within 500 feet of the Fever’s home arenas.
The court entered a not guilty plea on his behalf, with Judge Angela Davis advising him to remain silent and communicate only with his attorney. A remote pretrial hearing is scheduled for March 31.
Five Massachusetts college students made their first appearances in court Thursday, accused of plotting to lure a man to their campus through a dating app and then seizing him as part of a “Catch a Predator” trend on TikTok.
The students, all teens at Assumption University, a private, Roman Catholic school in Worcester, were arraigned on conspiracy and kidnapping charges in Worcester District Court. Automatic not guilty pleas were entered for all of them, and they are due back in court March 28 for a pre-trial conference.
The defendants in the case are Kelsy Brainard, 18; Easton Randall, 19; Kevin Carroll, 18; Isabella Trudeau, 18; and Joaquin Smith, 18. There is a sixth defendant who is a juvenile who was expected to be arraigned separately.
Police said Brainard’s Tinder account was used to correspond with the man. She faces an additional charge of witness intimidation. A male student in the group also faces a charge of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon.
The target — a 22-year-old active-duty military service member — told police that he was in town for his grandmother’s funeral in October and “just wanted to be around people that were happy,” according to a campus police report. He said a student whose Tinder profile said she was 18 invited him over and led him into a basement lounge.
A few minutes later, “a group of people came out of nowhere and started calling him a pedophile,” accusing him of wanting sex with 17-year-old girls, according to the report.
The man told police that he broke free and was chased by at least 25 people to his car, where he was punched in the head and his car door was slammed on him. He fled and called city police.
Campus surveillance video shows a large group of students, including the woman, “all with their cellphones out in what seems to be a recording of the whole episode,” the police statement said. They are seen “laughing and high fiving with each other” in what appeared to be “a deliberately staged event,” and there was no evidence to indicate the man was seeking sexual relations with underage girls, the police report said.
After the assault, Brainard reported the man to police as a sexual predator and said she was frightened by him. She said he had come to campus uninvited and that she texted a male friend who chased him away. All of this was false, campus police concluded after reviewing surveillance recordings and finding that “first person perspective videos” were being circulated among students.
The teens were ordered in court to have no contact with the targeted man. A lawyer for Brainard, Christopher Todd, said, “We’re just looking forward to having the process play out.” The lawyer for Trudeau, Robert Iacovelli, said afterward his client is innocent and he filed a motion seeking dismissal of the charges against her. Other attorneys were not immediately reached for comment about their pleas.
Faced with the never-before-seen dilemma of how, when or even whether to sentence a former and future U.S. president, the judge in President-elect Donald Trump ‘s hush money case made a dramatic decision that could nevertheless bring the case to a muted end.
In a ruling Friday, Manhattan Judge Juan M. Merchan scheduled the sentencing for 10 days before Trump’s inauguration — but the judge indicated that he’s leaning toward a sentence that would amount to just closing the case without any real punishment. He said Trump could attend the Jan. 10 proceeding remotely because of his transition duties.
Still, that would leave Trump headed back to the White House with a felony conviction.
Will it come to that? Trump wants the conviction thrown out and the case dismissed, and communications director Steven Cheung said the president-elect will “keep fighting.” But it’s tough to predict just what will unfold in this unprecedented, unpredictable case. Here are some key questions and what we know about the answers:
Trump was convicted in May of 34 felony counts of falsifying his business’ records. They pertained to a $130,000 payment, made through his former personal lawyer in 2016, to keep porn actor Stormy Daniels from publicizing her story of having had sex with Trump a decade earlier. He denies her claim and says he’s done nothing wrong.
Trump’s sentencing was initially set for July 11. But at his lawyers’ request, the proceeding was postponed twice, eventually landing on a date in late November, after the presidential election. Then Trump won, and Merchan put everything on hold to consider what to do.
That won’t be final until the judge pronounces it, and he noted that by law, he has to give prosecutors and Trump an opportunity to weigh in. The charges carry potential penalties ranging from a fine or probation to up to four years in prison.
But the judge wrote that “the most viable option” appears to be what’s called an unconditional discharge. It wraps up a case without imprisonment, a fine or probation. But an unconditional discharge leaves a defendant’s conviction on the books.
And by law, every person convicted of a felony in New York must provide a DNA sample for the state’s crime databank, even in cases of an unconditional discharge.
Can Trump appeal to stop the sentencing from happening?
It’s murky. Appealing a conviction or sentence is one thing, but the ins and outs of challenging other types of decisions during a case are complicated.
Former Manhattan Judge Diane Kiesel said that under New York law, Friday’s ruling can’t be appealed, but that “doesn’t mean he’s not going to try.”
Meanwhile, Trump’s lawyers have been trying to get a federal court to take control of the case. Prosecutors are due to file a response with the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals by Jan. 13, three days after Trump now is to be sentenced.
The defense also has suggested it would seek the U.S. Supreme Court’s intervention if Merchan didn’t throw out the case. In a Nov. 25 letter to the judge, Trump’s attorneys contended that the U.S. Constitution permits an appeal to the high court because the defense is making arguments about presidential immunity.
Much of their argument concerns the Supreme Court’s July ruling on that topic, which afforded considerable legal protections to presidents. Trump’s attorneys might try to convince the Supreme Court that it needs to follow up by getting involved now in the hush money case.
A Trump spokesperson said no decision had been made on whether to challenge Merchan’s ruling.
Attorneys for Adnan Syed, whose complex legal case was chronicled in the hit podcast “Serial,” are seeking to have his prison sentence reduced as he awaits further court decisions. Syed was released from prison in 2022 and has remained free ever since, though his court case is ongoing. His lawyers are seeking to reduce his sentence under a Maryland law that allows people who have been imprisoned for at least 20 years for crimes committed when they were minors to seek a change in sentence.
Syed was released when a Baltimore judge overturned his conviction in response to a request from prosecutors who said they found flaws in the evidence. But in August, Maryland’s Supreme Court upheld a lower court decision that reinstated Syed’s conviction while allowing him to remain free pending a new hearing about whether he should have been released.
The court said the victim’s family didn’t receive adequate notice to allow them to attend the original hearing in person.
The defense attorneys’ filing on Friday seeks to maintain Syed’s freedom until the new hearing.
“This filing is a small step toward ensuring that Adnan’s custody status is stabilized and his freedom is safeguarded,” said Erica Suter, Syed’s attorney and an assistant public defender who directs the Innocence Project Clinic at University of Baltimore Law School.
“We maintain his innocence and our mission of proving that hasn’t changed,” Suter said in a statement.
She also said Syed’s accomplishments and good conduct, both during his incarceration and since release, support reducing his sentence. Since his release, Syed has been working at Georgetown University’s Prisons and Justice Initiative. His lawyers, including Brian Zavin, who is chief attorney of the Maryland Office of the Public Defender’s Appellate Division, also noted in Friday’s filing in Baltimore City Circuit Court that Syed has been caring for his elderly parents since his release and that his father recently died.
The filing also said Syed has cared for his spouse’s aging parents.
The Maryland Supreme Court’s 4-3 ruling in August came about 11 months after it heard arguments in a case that has been fraught with legal twists and divided court rulings since Syed was convicted in 2000 of killing his high school ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee.
She was found strangled to death and buried in an unmarked grave in 1999. Syed was 17 at the time and was sentenced to life in prison, plus 30 years.
David Sanford, an attorney who represents Lee’s family, said in a statement Monday that “if there is new and compelling evidence to support vacating the conviction of Adnan Syed, we will be the first to call for Mr. Syed’s freedom.”
However, he said the state has not “presented a shred of new, let alone compelling, evidence which would warrant overturning a murder conviction that has withstood appeals for over two decades.”
“The State of Maryland engaged in a charade in 2022: it recycled old evidence and, in the process, bamboozled the trial court and the public into believing that Mr. Syed was likely innocent,” Sanford said, adding that attorneys will confer with the family and present their position in court in the days ahead.
Syed, who is now 43, has maintained his innocence.
Baltimore State’s Attorney Ivan Bates is weighing how to proceed given the Maryland Supreme Court’s decision.
Syed’s case was chronicled in the “Serial” podcast, which debuted in 2014 and drew millions of listeners who became armchair detectives. The show, hosted by veteran radio producer Sarah Koenig, transformed the true-crime genre as it shattered podcast-streaming and downloading records, revealing little-known evidence and raising new questions about the case.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday said it will hear arguments next month over the constitutionality of the federal law that could ban TikTok in the United States if its Chinese parent company doesn’t sell it.
The justices will hear arguments Jan. 10 about whether the law impermissibly restricts speech in violation of the First Amendment.
The law, enacted in April, set a Jan. 19 deadline for TikTok to be sold or else face a ban in the United States. The popular social media platform has more than 170 million users in the U.S.
It’s unclear how quickly a decision might come. But the high court still could act after the arguments to keep the law from taking effect pending a final ruling, if at least five of the nine justices think it’s unconstitutional.
Lawyers for the company and China-based ByteDance had urged the justices to step in before Jan. 19. The high court also will hear arguments from content creators who rely on the platform for income and some TikTok users.
The timing of the arguments means that the outgoing Biden administration’s Justice Department will make the case in defense of the law that passed Congress with bipartisan support and was signed by Democratic President Joe Biden in April.
The incoming Republican administration might not have the same view of the law.
President-elect Donald Trump, who once supported a ban but then pledged during the campaign to “save TikTok,” has said his administration would take a look at the situation. Trump met with TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida on Monday.
The companies have said that a shutdown lasting just a month would cause TikTok to lose about one-third of its daily users in the U.S. and significant advertising revenue.
The case pits free speech rights against the government’s stated aims of protecting national security, while raising novel issues about social media platforms.
“We believe the Court will find the TikTok ban unconstitutional so the over 170 million Americans on our platform can continue to exercise their free speech rights,” TikTok spokesman Michael Hughes said in a statement.
Free-speech advocates also praised the court’s decision to step in.
The government should not be able to restrict speech “without proving with evidence that the tools are presently seriously harmful. But in this case, Congress has required and the DC Circuit approved TikTok’s forced divestiture based only upon fears of future potential harm. This greatly lowers well-established standards for restricting freedom of speech in the U.S.,” David Greene, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said in a statement.
A panel of federal judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit unanimously upheld the law on Dec. 6, then denied an emergency plea to delay the law’s implementation.
Without court action, the law would take effect Jan. 19 and expose app stores that offer TikTok and internet hosting services that support it to potential fines.
A federal appeals court scrutinized the impact of Idaho’s strict abortion ban on emergency medical care on Tuesday, weighing whether the ban criminalizing abortions should be enforceable in life- and health-threatening situations.
John Bursch, an attorney with the Alliance Defending Freedom representing Idaho, asked the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel of 11 judges to urgently lift the injunction preventing the state from enforcing its abortion ban in emergency room settings, saying it “harms Idaho sovereignty, harms women, (and) harms unborn children.”
“It’s here before you now, you should decide it,” he said.
Idaho’s law makes it a felony to perform an abortion unless the procedure is necessary to prevent the death of the patient.
President Joe Biden’s administration sued Idaho two years ago, contending the law violates a federal rule called the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTALA, because it prevents doctors from performing abortions that save their patients from serious infections, organ loss or other major medical issues.
The U.S. Supreme Court heard the case earlier this year but bounced it back to the lower court on a procedural issue, leaving unanswered questions about the legality of the state abortion ban. That will be determined at a later date, but the 9th Circuit’s ruling could decide whether the law can be enforced while the lawsuit is still working its way through court.
During Tuesday’s hearing, the judges raised a number of hypothetical situations as they tried to determine whether the ban can coexist with EMTALA.
Judge Lawrence VanDyke raised the hypothetical of a doctor presented with an organ that would save a patient’s life but which was unethically harvested under state law. If a state has outlawed the use of questionably harvested donor organs, he asked, can the federal government require that treatment?
“Do you think a state’s ethical concerns … have any role to play?” asked VanDyke.
Catherine Carroll, an attorney for the U.S. government, said it was difficult to grapple with the hypothetical since organ transplants do not occur in emergency rooms, but said state ethical concerns about medical treatments could come into play only if the treatments did not violate EMTALA.
Judge Salvador Mendoza Jr. said that he lives in eastern Washington, not far from the Idaho border. The only obstetrics department in the nearby city of Sandpoint, Idaho, shut down after the abortion ban was passed, he noted, leaving no available medical services for women who are “bleeding out” from pregnancy complications, he said.
“That’s the very thing that Congress was trying to avoid” by establishing EMTALA, Mendoza said. “They were trying to set a baseline of medical care for the country.”
But Taylor Meehan, an attorney for the Idaho Legislature, said EMTALA is “not the statute to solve that particular circumstance.” She said an Idaho Supreme Court ruling in another lawsuit over the state’s abortion law made clear that abortion is allowed when patients are experiencing catastrophic bleeding.
Harvey Weinstein was hospitalized Monday following an “alarming blood test,” his attorney said, less than a week after the disgraced movie mogul filed a legal claim alleging substandard medical care at New York City’s notorious jail complex.
Weinstein, 72, was sent to Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan for an “emergent treatment due to an alarming blood test result that requires immediate medical attention,” his attorney, Imran Ansari, said in a statement.
“It is expected that he will remain there until his condition stabilizes,” the statement continues. “His deprivation of care is not only medical malpractice, but a violation of his constitutional rights.”
A spokesperson for New York City’s Department of Correction did not immediately respond to an email. The agency’s inmate database confirmed that Weinstein had been transferred from Rikers Island to the Bellevue Hospital Prison Ward in Manhattan.
Weinstein has been in city custody since earlier this year after the New York Court of Appeals overturned his 2020 rape conviction in the state. The case is set to be retried in 2025. Weinstein has denied any wrongdoing.
In a legal filing last week, Weinstein’s attorneys accused the city of providing him with substandard medical care for a litany of medical afflictions, which include chronic myeloid leukemia and diabetes.
“When I last visited him, I found him with blood spatter on his prison garb, possibly from IV’s, clothes that had not been washed for weeks, and he had not even been provided clean underwear — hardly sanitary conditions for someone with severe medical conditions,” Ansari said in a statement that likened Rikers Island to a “gulag.”
The troubled jail complex, located on an island in New York City’s East River, has faced growing scrutiny for its mistreatment of detainees and dangerous conditions. Last week, a federal judge cleared the way for a possible federal takeover of the jail system, finding the city had placed its incarcerated population in “unconstitutional danger.”
A publicist for Weinstein, Juda Engelmayer, echoed the allegation in a statement Monday.
“Mr. Weinstein, who is suffering from a number of illnesses, including leukemia, has been deprived the medical attention that someone in his medical state deserves, prisoner or not,” he said. “In many ways, this mistreatment constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.”
Court Watch - POSTED: 2025/04/25 14:08
