The NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund (LDF) filed an amicus brief on Tuesday with the US Supreme Court urging it to find that the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of a unanimous jury verdict applies to the states through the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The LDF submitted the brief in support of the [...]
Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed bipartisan legislation on Friday that protects patients from paying for surprise out-of-network medical bills. Surprise medical bills most often arise during medical emergencies when a patient with insurance receives treatment outside of his or her provider network. Frequently, when the insurance company and healthcare provider cannot agree on a fair [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled on Friday that the Trump administration must stop denying abortion care to undocumented minors in federal custody. Beginning in 2017, the Trump administration directed shelters not to facilitate abortions for the undocumented immigrant children in their custody. In October 2017, the ACLU challenged [...]
The Supreme Court of Alaska ruled on Friday that Alaska’s sex offender registration statute violated the due process rights of out of state offenders by requiring them to register as sex offenders without allowing them to be heard. The court addressed the question of whether Alaska Sexual Offender Registration Act (ASORA) registration requirements violated due [...]
UN Secretary-General António Guterres spoke (video and transcript) to parties of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea on Monday, marking the 25th anniversary of the convention by urging greater conservation of the world’s oceans. The Secretary-General emphasized the current decline of the world’s oceans providing statistics and stating: Today, the oceans are [...]
On Monday, the Supreme Court of the United States decided that the Atomic Energy Act (AEA) does not preempt Virginia Law from prohibiting the mining of Uranium. The Supreme Court, in a 6-to-3 plurality judgment, sided with the State of Virginia’s right to regulate the Uranium industry. “But both courts found missing from the AEA [...]
The United States Supreme Court held on Monday that criminal defendants may be prosecuted for the same offenses in both federal and state court, upholding a long-standing exception to the Constitution’s Double Jeopardy Clause. The case concerned Terance Gamble who has been convicted by Alabama for possessing a firearm as a felon and now faces [...]
The Supreme Court ruled against the Virginia House of Delegates in a new racial gerrymandering case. The case began in 2011 when a group of citizens in twelve districts sued the State asserting that the districts had been created with intentional racial disparities. The District Court ordered the House of Delegates to draw up a [...]
The US Supreme Court ruled Monday that a public access television provider is not a state actor. The case, Manhattan Community Access Corp. v. Halleck, was brought by two producers who alleged that a Manhattan public access television station violated their First Amendment rights. They claimed that the news station restricted their access after an [...]
A Commonwealth Court judge ruled Friday that the agreement between two Pittsburgh health systems, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) and Highmark Health (Highmark) cannot be extended past its June 30, 2019 expiration date. As a result, Highmark insurance members will no longer have discounted access to UPMC facilities and network; triggering higher costs [...]
