Supreme Court

Supreme Court Decision On Sales Tax Potential Big Impact On Local Businesses

April 21, 2018 Olivia Lavecchia, Ilsr.org Create! Small Business, Supreme Court, Taxes

On April 17, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case on sales tax collection that could — long after online commerce has transformed the retail sector in the United States — finally give states the authority to require online retailers to collect sales tax. For years, state and local governments have watched as sales tax revenues have declined, and local retailers have watched as their online competitors have been allowed to play by a different set of rules. States’ options, however, have been limited by a 1992 Supreme Court decision — and subsequent inaction from Congress — that ruled that states can only require businesses with a physical presence in the state to collect state and local sales taxes.

Supreme Court: Will US Abide By Treaties With Indigenous?

April 17, 2018 By Monte Mills, Theconversation.com Educate! Indigenous Peoples, Supreme Court, Treaty

On April 18, the United States Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Washington v. United States, which pits the state of Washington against the United States and 21 Indian tribes. The main question in the case is narrow – whether the state must quickly replace hundreds of culverts that allow the flow of water under roads but also block salmon migration. Yet the underlying issue is far broader. At stake in the case is the Supreme Court’s ongoing role as the nation’s highest arbiter of justice. Despite immense changes, that role remains grounded in a 229-year-old Constitution premised on the supremacy of federal treaties and individual rights. In previous cases, the Supreme Court upheld the tribes’ rights to fish salmon, spelled out by various treaties entered in the 1850s. But, having insulated those rights from destruction previously, the court must now decide their meaning for the 21st century and beyond.

Brazil’s Supreme Court Votes To Jail Former President Lula

April 5, 2018 Staff, Telesurtv.net Resist! Brazil, Electoral Politics, Supreme Court

The president of the Supreme Court broke what had been a tied vote, potentially ending Lula's bid for re-election and sending him to jail. Brazil's Supreme Court has voted 6-5 to deny former President Luiz Inacio 'Lula' da Silva habeas corpus while he appeals his corruption conviction, potentially bringing an end to his re-election campaign. The popular leftist leader must now begin serving his 12-year prison sentence for taking bribes, denying his plea to remain free until he has exhausted all possible appeals. Lula is still Brazil's most popular politician, despite his conviction and fighting six separate pending corruption trials. He is the front-runner in all opinion polls for the presidential election in October, but his sentence will likely bar him from running. The Supreme Court Justices deliberated for more than 10 hours before reaching their final verdict.

New Brandeis Movement: Principles Of Antimonopoly Debate

March 30, 2018 Lina Khan, Academic.oup.com Strategize! Monopoly, New Economy, Supreme Court

Over the last two years, a growing number in America have concluded that the United States has a monopoly problem. The Obama Administration’s Council of Economic Advisers linked rising market power with inequality and other ills, top Senators have called for reinvigorating competition policy, and the Democratic Party has identified antitrust enforcement as a key pillar of its economic agenda. This recognition is important because seeing and understanding the problem is the first step to addressing it. In some ways the renewed attention in the USA echoes conversations in Europe, where the antitrust community is debating whether and to what degree competition law should embody values of fairness.

Mijente Chains Session Effigy At Supreme Court To Protest Attempt To Bring Back Shackling Federal Defendants

March 27, 2018 Staff, Dcdirectactionnews.wordpress.com Resist! Prisoner rights, Protests, Supreme Court

On the 26th of March, Mijente and No Justice No Pride showed up in front of the Supreme Court with a Confederate statue style effigy of Jeff Sessions. As people lined up outside the court watched, they put leg irons, chains, and handcuffs on the effigy. Inside, Attorney General Jeff Sessions was arguing the Supreme Court should overturn a 9th Circuit case that found shackling Federal defendants to be unconstitutional. If racist, white supremacist Jeff Sessions’s arguments prevail, once again all immigration defendants and other Federal defendants will have to appear in court in leg irons, handcuffs, and belly chains that can interfere with breathing. In addition to the severe physical discomfort associated with shackles, judges and juries tend to assume anyone in shackles must be guilty.

The Radical Roots Of Janus

March 3, 2018 Joseph A. McCartin, Prospect.org Educate! Class Struggle, Labor, Supreme Court, Unions

The attorney whose arguments were heard in the Supreme Court yesterday—a decade after his death—actually wanted all unions outlawed. As the Supreme Court heard the pivotal union case, Janus v. AFSCME, on Monday, an unacknowledged presence haunted its chambers: that of Sylvester Petro, who conceived the argument on which the case turns. Although he died in 2007, this ideologically driven, anti-union law professor originated the legal strategy behind this case. His radical vision illuminates Janus’s profound implications. Petro was the first to contend that public-sector collective bargaining was simply a form of politics, and that therefore, any effort to require government workers to pay “agency fees” to a union in return for its representational work amounted to compelled political speech that infringed on their First Amendment rights—the argument that Illinois public employee Mark Janus embraced in this case.

Tribal Treaty Rights Dispute Looms On Supreme Court’s Docket

January 18, 2018 Staff, Indianz.com Resist! Indigenous Peoples, Supreme Court, Treaty

The U.S. Supreme Court could soon be delivering another jolt to Indian Country, as another treaty rights case is looming on the horizon. Clayvin Herrera, a citizen of the Crow Tribe, was prosecuted by Wyoming for a hunt that took place in the Bighorn Mountains. He argues that the state lacked jurisdiction because the area, despite being off the reservation, is covered by an 1868 treaty with the federal government. "This case presents an important question of federal law that has divided the lower courts and affects the livelihoods of thousands of Native Americans," Herrera's attorney wrote in petition to the Supreme Court last October. The petition in Herrera v. Wyoming has indeed attracted significant attention. The Crow Tribe is supporting the appeal and so are a group of Indian law professors, along with Crow citizens and experts in Montana.

Union-busters Set Themselves Up For Janus Backfire

January 15, 2018 IUOE Local 150, Portside.org Strategize! Labor Unions, Supreme Court, union busting

Unfortunately, for the special interest groups that are pushing this agenda, the ramifications of a win will have the opposite of the desired effect. If not bargaining is protected free speech, then bargaining will conversely be protected free speech, giving union workers new protections that we’ve never enjoyed before. In the coming months, the United States Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments and rule upon a case that could mean nationwide “right-to-work” for all public sector workers. Union busters are beating their chests over the prospects of Janus v. AFSCME Council 31 changing federal labor law, but based on their own arguments, we believe that they have left themselves open to some unintended consequences.

Ohio Overturns Ban On Cities Keeping Them From Voting Against Fracking

November 4, 2017 Ruth Milka, nationofchange.org Resist! Ban, Fracking, Ohio, Supreme Court

By Ruth Milka for Nation of Change - In a great victory for environmentalists and the people of Ohio, the Ohio Supreme Court struck down a provision that restricted citizen’s efforts to vote locally on banning fracking. The ruling is a turn around from earlier rulings that prevented residents from placing county charters and a city ordinance to ban fracking from appearing on ballots. In 2015, after the movement against fracking had progressed enough to include new county charters to elevate the rights of local residents and ecosystems, the Supreme Court ruled that the state has “exclusive authority” over oil and gas drilling. This meant cities and counties no longer had the right to ban or regulate fracking through any restrictions. Ohio’s Secretary of State Jon Husted supported the ruling, claiming he had “unfettered authority” to remove county charters from ballots, even if the people had gathered enough signatures. And it’s no wonder, as Husted is deeply tied to the Ohio Oil & Gas Association, who fundraise for him. Since 2015, Husted and his team of appointed county boards of elections, along with the state Supreme Court, have removed 10 proposed fracking-related county charters from Ohio ballots. Earlier this year, the city of Youngstown, Ohio spent $185,000 promoting anti-hydraulic fracking ballot measures, regardless of the state’s law. Even though city lawyers deemed that any regulation or ban that was passed with a vote would “not be enforceable,” the environmentalist group Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, are pushing on.

Supreme Court Rules Against Private Prisons

October 11, 2017 Staff, www.ccrjustice.org Resist! Corporations, Private Prisons, Supreme Court, Transparency

By Staff of CCRJustice - October 10, 2017, New York, NY – Today, the Supreme Court denied a petition by private prison corporations seeking to block the release of government documents about their immigration detention practices. In a case brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and Detention Watch Network (DWN), under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), a federal district court ruled in July 2016, that the government must release details of its contracts with private prison corporations. The government chose not to appeal; instead, the country’s two largest private prison corporations, GEO Group and Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), recently rebranded as “CoreCivic,” intervened to appeal the decision to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which dismissed their petition in February. GEO then petitioned the Supreme Court for a full review of the case, asking for the right to prevent the government from releasing information under the FOIA. The Supreme Court’s decision lets stand the February ruling by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which rejected the private contractors’ unusual attempt to fight for government secrecy when the government itself had acceded to the court’s ruling.

SCOTUS Is On The Verge Of Decimating Public-Sector Unions

September 30, 2017 Shaun Richman, www.inthesetimes.com Organize! Labor, Supreme Court, Unions, Workers

By Shaun Richman for In These Times - On Thursday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear Janus vs. AFSCME, the case that will likely turn the entire public sector labor movement into a “right-to-work” zone. Like a lazy Hollywood remake, the case has all the big money behind it that last year’s Friedrichs v. CTA did, with none of the creativity. In Friedrichs, the plaintiffs argued that interactions between public sector unions and government employers are inherently political. Therefore, the argument went, mandatory agency fees to reimburse the union for the expenses of representation and bargaining were forced political speech, violating employees’ purported First Amendment right to not pay dues. The case ended in a 4-4 deadlock in March 2016, following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, who had appeared poised to vote against the unions’ interests. Much like Friedrichs, the Janus case has rocketed through the federal courts. The National Right to Work Foundation, which represents the plaintiffs, petitioned the Supreme Court to hear the case in early June. All briefs will likely be submitted by mid-January 2018, meaning SCOTUS could hold hearings almost exactly a year to the date that the Court last heard the same arguments. The defendants may argue for procedural delays, which could potentially kick the decision into the following court term in 2018-2019.

If Supreme Court Upholds Muslim Ban, We’ll Need Civil Resistance

June 30, 2017 Rob Hunter, www.theguardian.com Resist! Civil Resistance, Muslim Ban, Supreme Court

By Rob Hunter for The Guardian, The US supreme court announced on Monday that it will decide on the legality of Donald Trump’s travel ban. It also partially stayed injunctions against the ban, meaning that the administration can impose 90-day bans on people traveling from six Muslim-majority countries (unless they have a “bona fide relationship” with someone in the US), and that it can bar refugees from entering the US for up to 120 days. It’s likely that the court will eventually uphold all or part of the ban as an appropriate exercise of the president’s powers. Only mass confrontational politics can prevent that from happening, or undo it if it does happen. It was direct action, not legal argument, that stopped the administration from implementing the travel ban in its entirety earlier this year. The original ban quickly faced stiff protest in January. Rapid mass mobilization, combined with the organizing skills of activists and immigration advocates, produced the thrilling spectacle of large-scale direct action in some of the most heavily policed spaces in the country: airports. Federal judges responded to the pressure by issuing orders blocking removals under the ban, and later preventing enforcement of the ban’s provisions. Injunctions were also later issued against a revised ban that was reworded to be less transparently Islamophobic.

The Supreme Court Just Made Messed Up Immigration Law Even Uglier

June 14, 2017 Ian Millhiser, www.thinkprogress.org Educate! Immigration, Supreme Court

By Ian Millhiser for Think Progress - Sessions v. Morales-Santana is an unfortunate case, revealing that sometimes the Constitution demands truly harsh results. The holding of Morales-Santana is that a federal citizenship law that gives preferential treatment to the children of unwed U.S. citizen mothers — and only to unwed mothers, not to unwed fathers — is unconstitutional. This is a natural conclusion from the Court’s previous decisions holding that gender discrimination must be viewed with skepticism. But the practical consequence of Monday’s decision in Morales-Santana is that fewer children of U.S. citizens will themselves gain citizenship, and that more people will be subject to deportation. It also means that the individual at the heart of this case, Luis Ramón Morales-Santana, is now set to be deported to a nation he has not lived in since 1975. In this context, it’s easy to imagine the kind of click-bait headlines that conservative outlets could append to their write-ups of the decision. Headlines like “Immigrants suffer because of feminism” or “How do you like the Notorious RBG now, liberals?” come to mind.

Join A ‘People’s Filibuster’ Against Neil Gorsuch

April 1, 2017 Staff, www.thenation.com Resist! Protests, Supreme Court

By Staff of The Nation - At his confirmation hearing last week, Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch avoided giving a straight answer on his positions for many key issues likely to come before the court. As The Nation’s Ari Berman pointed out, this strategy echoed that of Chief Justice John Roberts who once stressed that his role as a judge was that of an “umpire” unencumbered by politics, but who later “aggressively pushed the Court to the right” on issues ranging from school integration to voting rights to corporate spending on elections. In fact, Gorsuch is likely to hold even more damaging beliefs than Roberts; a recent review of his opinions found them to be more conservative than all current Supreme Court justices except Justice Clarence Thomas.

Meet Neil Gorsuch, The New Antonin Scalia

February 1, 2017 Bill Blum, www.truthdig.com Educate! Donald Trump, Supreme Court, Trump Administration

By Bill Blum for Truth Dig - Just when we might have thought we’d seen Donald Trump at his zaniest (say, in the first presidential debate) and most dangerous (say, in his executive order on immigration last week), he outdid himself with the nomination of Neil Gorsuch, 49, a judge from the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (headquartered in Denver), to fill the late Antonin Scalia’s empty chair on the Supreme Court. The zany part is the way our narcissist in chief introduced Gorsuch as his pick. The dangerous part is that Gorsuch is exactly the sort of Scalia-in-waiting we would expect from an extremist right-wing administration that aims to roll back constitutional rights...

«1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 »

assetto corsa mods

Daily movement news and resources