NewsHere’s the domestic legal news we covered this week:
Abdulmutallab, who attempted to detonate an underwear bomb [JURIST report] in an airplane bathroom on Christmas Day, 2009, argues that his First, Fifth and Eighth Amendment rights are being violated at the Administrative Maximum facility (ADX) [NYT backgrounder] in Florence, Colorado.
At ADX Abdulmutallab is placed in solitary restrictive confinement due to special administrative measures (SAMs) and is not allowed contact with other individuals.
The monument, erected in 1925 to honor 49 Prince George’s County men who died during World War I, was challenged [complaint, PDF] by the American Humanist Association [advocacy website] in February 2014.
The bill is co-sponsored by 24 senators, evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, and the draft currently proposed would stabilize funding of cost-sharing reduction (CSR) subsidies.
The plaintiffs in the case included the League of United Latin American Citizens and Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council [advocacy websites] who claimed that the FCC violated § 1 of the Federal Communications Act (§ 1) [text, PDF], which states the purpose of the agency in relevant part as follows:
regulating interstate and foreign commerce in communication by wire and radio so as to make available, so far as possible, to all the people of the United States, without discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, or sex, a rapid, efficient, Nationwide, and world-wide wire and radio communication service with adequate facilities at reasonable charges …
letters, memoranda, notes, media items, opinions and other materials directly or indirectly
considered in the final agency decision to rescind [press release] the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) [USCIS materials] program.
The plaintiffs successfully illustrated that defendants excluded highly relevant materials from the administrative record, rebutting the presumption that the record is complete.
The court cited a Supreme Court case [JURIST report] that “non-resident[s] must establish an independent basis for specific personal jurisdiction over the defendant in the state.” J&J is headquartered in New Jersey.
The proclamation, which was issued in September, bans travelers from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, Chad, North Korea, and Venezuela; six of which are majority-Muslim countries.
Chuang ultimately found the administration’s argument to be pretext:
Plaintiffs would likely face irreparable harm in the absence of an injunction and would plainly benefit from an injunction, Defendants are not directly harmed by a preliminary injunction preventing them from enforcing a Proclamation likely to be found unconstitutional.
Al-Nashiri made his first court appearance [JURIST report] in November 2011 after he was captured in Dubai in 2002.
