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Nebraska high court to decide if residents with felony records can vote
Law Firm Press Release |
2024/10/15 06:28
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Thousands of Nebraska residents with felony records will learn Wednesday whether they’ll be able to vote in next month’s hotly contested elections after the state Supreme Court issues its ruling on a lawsuit seeking to restore their voting rights.
The state’s high court heard arguments in August on a lawsuit challenging a decision by the state’s top election officials to ignore a new state law restoring the voting rights of those who have been convicted of a felony.
The decision comes just days ahead of state deadlines to register to vote in the Nov. 5 general election.
Brad Christian-Sallis, a director at the nonprofit civic engagement organization Nebraska Table, said he has heard from those with felony criminal records who were looking forward to voting not just in the presidential race, but on state and local races that affect their neighborhoods and schools.
“It’s absolutely caused a lot of anxiety and frustration,” he said.
Secretary of State Bob Evnen ordered county election officials not to register those with felony convictions for the November election after the state’s attorney general, Mike Hilgers, said in July that the new law was unconstitutional. Evnen had sought that opinion from Hilgers.
The American Civil Liberties Union sued on behalf of several Nebraska residents who would be denied the right to vote under Evnen’s directive. Because Evnen’s move came only weeks ahead of the November election, the ACLU asked to take the lawsuit directly to the Nebraska Supreme Court, and the high court agreed.
Evnen’s order could keep more than 7,000 Nebraska residents from voting in the upcoming election, the ACLU has said. Many of them reside in Nebraska’s Omaha-centered 2nd Congressional District, where both the race for president and Congress could be in play. In an otherwise reliably Republican state that, unlike most others, splits its electoral votes, the district has twice awarded an electoral vote to Democratic presidential candidates — once to Barack Obama in 2008 and again to Joe Biden in 2020.
Civic Nebraska, a voting rights advocacy group, is a plaintiff in the lawsuit seeking to force state officials to enact the new law.
“Whenever the decision comes, we have a plan to run registration drives and get the word out,” the group’s voting rights restoration coordinator, Noah Rhoades, said in an open letter to voters last week.
The law, passed by the Nebraska Legislature this year and often referred to by its bill number, LB20, immediately restores the voting rights of people who have successfully completed the terms of their felony sentences.
The attorney general’s opinion says the new law violates the state constitution’s separation of powers because he believes only the Nebraska Board of Pardons has the authority to restore a person’s voting rights through a pardon.
Pardons are hard to get in Nebraska, which requires those convicted of felonies to wait 10 years after their terms to even file an application for a pardon, and are rarely granted. The Pardons Board is made up three members: Evnen, Hilgers and Gov. Jim Pillen. All three are Republicans who have been vocal about their opposition to restoring the voting rights of those with felony records.
Hilgers’ opinion also found unconstitutional a 2005 state law that restored the voting rights of people with felony convictions two years after they complete the terms of their sentences. If that law is upheld as unconstitutional, it could disenfranchise tens of thousands of Nebraskans who have been eligible to vote for the last 19 years.
Evnen has said he has not taken steps to remove from the voter rolls those with felony convictions who had legally registered to vote under the 2005 law. But that has done little to assuage the concern of people who have been able to legally voted for years, Christian-Sallis said.
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Supreme Court grapples with governor’s 400-year veto, calling it ‘crazy’
State Law Issues |
2024/10/12 11:48
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Justices on the Wisconsin Supreme Court said Wednesday that Gov. Tony Evers’ creative use of his expansive veto power in an attempt to lock in a school funding increase for 400 years appeared to be “extreme” and “crazy” but questioned whether and how it should be reined in.
“It does feel like the sky is the limit, the stratosphere is the limit,” Justice Jill Karofsky said during oral arguments, referring to the governor’s veto powers. “Perhaps today we are at the fork in the road ... I think we’re trying to think should we, today in 2024, start to look at this differently.”
The case, supported by the Republican-controlled Legislature, is the latest flashpoint in a decades-long fight over just how broad Wisconsin’s governor’s partial veto powers should be. The issue has crossed party lines, with Republicans and Democrats pushing for more limitations on the governor’s veto over the years.
In this case, Evers made the veto in question in 2023. His partial veto increased how much revenue K-12 public schools can raise per student by $325 a year until 2425. Evers took language that originally applied the $325 increase for the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years and instead vetoed the “20” and the hyphen to make the end date 2425, more than four centuries from now.
“The veto here approaches the absurd and exceeds any reasonable understanding of legislative or voter intent in adopting the partial veto or subsequent limits,” attorneys for legal scholar Richard Briffault, of Columbia Law School, said in a filing with the court ahead of arguments.
That argument was cited throughout the oral arguments by justices and Scott Rosenow, attorney for Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce Litigation Center, which handles lawsuits for the state’s largest business lobbying group and brought the case.
The court should strike down Evers’ partial veto and declare that the state constitution forbids the governor from striking digits to create a new year or to remove language to create a longer duration than the one approved by the Legislature, Rosenow argued.
Finding otherwise would give governors unlimited power to alter numbers in a budget bill, Rosenow argued.
Justices appeared to agree that limits were needed, but they grappled with where to draw the line.
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US court to review civil rights lawsuit alleging environmental racism
Legal Information |
2024/10/07 13:31
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A federal appellate court is set to hear oral arguments Monday in a civil rights lawsuit alleging a south Louisiana parish engaged in racist land-use policies to place polluting industries in majority-Black communities.
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans is reviewing a lawsuit filed by community groups claiming St. James Parish “intentionally discriminated against Black residents” by encouraging industrial facilities to be built in areas with predominantly Black populations “while explicitly sparing White residents from the risk of environmental harm.”
The groups, Inclusive Louisiana, Rise St. James and Mt. Triumph Baptist Church, seek a halt to future industrial development in the parish.
The plaintiffs note that 20 of the 24 industrial facilities were in two sections of the parish with majority-Black populations when they filed the complaint in March 2023.
The parish is located along a heavily industrialized stretch of the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, known as the Chemical Corridor, often referred to by environmental groups as “Cancer Alley” because of the high levels of suspected cancer-causing pollution emitted there.
The lawsuit comes as the federal government has taken steps during the Biden administration to address the legacy of environmental racism. Federal officials have written stricter environmental protections and committed tens of billions of dollars in funding.
In the Louisiana case, U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier of the Eastern District of Louisiana in November 2023 dismissed the lawsuit largely on procedural grounds, ruling the plaintiffs had filed their complaint too late. But he added, “this Court cannot say that their claims lack a basis in fact or rely on a meritless legal theory.”
Barbier said the lawsuit hinged primarily on the parish’s 2014 land-use plan, which generally shielded white neighborhoods from industrial development and left majority-Black neighborhoods, schools and churches without the same protections. The plan also described largely Black sections of the parish as “future industrial” sites. The plaintiffs missed the legal window to sue the parish, the judge ruled.
Yet the parish’s land-use plan is just one piece of evidence among many revealing ongoing discrimination against Black residents in the parish, said Pamela Spees, a lawyer for the Center of Constitutional Rights representing the plaintiffs. They are challenging Barbier’s ruling under the “continuing violations” doctrine on the grounds that discriminatory parish governance persists, allowing for industrial expansion in primarily Black areas.
The lawsuit highlights the parish’s decision in August 2022 to impose a moratorium on large solar complexes after a proposed 3,900-acre (1,580-hectare) solar project upset residents of the mostly white neighborhood of Vacherie, who expressed concerns about lowering property values and debris from storms. The parish did not take up a request for a moratorium on heavy industrial expansion raised by the plaintiffs, the lawsuit states.
These community members “have tried at every turn to simply have their humanity and dignity be seen and acknowledged,” Spees said. “That’s just been completely disregarded by the local government and has been for generations.”
Another part of the complaint argues the parish failed to identify and protect the likely hundreds of burial sites of enslaved people by allowing industrial facilities to build on and limit access to the areas, preventing the descendants of slaves from memorializing the sites. The federal judge tossed out that part of the lawsuit, noting the sites were on private property not owned by the parish.
At its core, the complaint alleges civil rights violations under the 13th and 14th amendments, stating the land-use system in the parish allowing for industrial buildout primarily in majority-Black communities remains shaped by the history of slavery, white supremacy and Jim Crow laws and governance.
Lawyers for St. James Parish said the lawsuit employed overreaching claims and “inflammatory rhetoric.” St. James Parish did not respond to a request for comment.
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Karen Read seeks to delay wrongful death suit until after murder trial
Law Firm Press Release |
2024/10/03 13:31
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Karen Read is seeking to delay a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the family of her Boston police officer boyfriend until her criminal trial in connection with his death is done.
Karen Read sits in court
The lawsuit filed last month blames the death of John O’Keefe on Read, and also on what it describes as negligence by bars that continued to serve drinks to her despite signs she was drunk. It says the first bar served her seven alcoholic drinks in about 90 minutes the night of Jan. 28, 2022, and that Read carried the last drink into the second bar, where she was served a shot and a mixed alcoholic drink within an hour.
Read’s attorneys on Wednesday filed a motion to delay a trial on the lawsuit until after her criminal trial. Read is accused of ramming into John O’Keefe with her SUV and leaving him for dead in a January 2022 snowstorm. Her two-month trial ended in July when a judge declared a mistrial, and a second trial is scheduled for Jan. 27.
“A stay is appropriate here, where proceeding with this civil action at the same time as the criminal action will adversely affect Ms. Read’s Fifth Amendment rights and her ability to vigorously defend herself from criminal prosecution,” her lawyers wrote in the motion, adding that her requested stay is “minimal and not prejudicial” since the wrongful death lawsuit is not expected to be finished until at least August 2027.
But an attorney for O’Keefe’s brother, Paul, and other relatives who filed the lawsuit oppose any delays and suggested the reliance on the Fifth Amendment ignored the fact she has has spoken publicly about her case several times to the media and will be subject of at least one upcoming documentary.
The lawsuit filed in Plymouth Superior Court in Massachusetts by Paul O’Keefe on behalf of his family and his brother’s estate names Read, the Waterfall Bar & Grill and C.F. McCarthy’s as defendants. It asks for a jury trial.
Read has pleaded not guilty and awaits a Jan. 27 retrial on charges of second-degree murder, manslaughter while operating a motor vehicle under the influence and leaving the scene of a fatal accident. Her two-month criminal trial ended in July when the judge declared a mistrial after jurors said they were deadlocked. The judge dismissed arguments that jurors later said they had unanimously agreed Read wasn’t guilty on the charges of murder and leaving the scene.
After the bar-hopping, Read — a former adjunct professor at Bentley College — dropped off O’Keefe, a 16-year member of the Boston police, outside the Canton home of another police officer. His body was found in the front yard. An autopsy found O’Keefe died of hypothermia and blunt force trauma.
Read’s lawyers argued that O’Keefe was killed inside the home and that those involved chose to frame her because she was a “convenient outsider.”
The lawsuit says Read and O’Keefe had been arguing and that she knew she had hit him with her SUV before returning to his home. It alleges that she woke up his 14-year-old niece several hours later saying that something had happened to O’Keefe and that he might have been hit by her or a snow plow.
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