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Supreme Court refuses to hear Kentucky foster care case
Attorney Interview |
2017/09/30 00:13
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The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear a case involving a growing number of Kentucky relatives providing free foster care for children.
The result is that Kentucky must begin paying those relatives the same as they do licensed foster families, news outlets report.
The nation's high court on Tuesday refused to hear an appeal from the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services. The cabinet was seeking to overturn a ruling earlier this year by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that said the state must pay relatives who take in foster children.
The case revolved around a lawsuit filed by Lexington lawyer Richard Dawahare on behalf of a great-aunt who took in two young boys but was denied foster payments from the state.
"We have won, our clients have won and it's a big deal," Dawahare said. "Right now, the relatives are entitled and they need to make their claim."
A cabinet spokesman didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
The news will be celebrated by many relatives across Kentucky caring for children but not eligible for daily payments even as licensed foster parents are paid a base rate of about $25 a day or $750 a month.
Among them is Kimberly Guffy of Russellville, Kentucky, who said she and her husband have been caring for two small grandchildren for more than three years with no foster care help from the cabinet.
"The days of the cabinet's reliance on relatives to balance its budget are over," she told The Courier-Journal.
Guffy said she didn't hesitate to take in the children, one a newborn and the other a 16-month-old, but it has been a struggle, especially for the first year when child care costs reached $10,000.
The cabinet has since agreed to assist with child care costs but refused foster payments. Social workers at one point told her that if the family couldn't afford to care for the children, they would be placed in a foster home.
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Australia's High Court to consider fate of 7 lawmakers
Legal World News |
2017/09/25 00:13
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Australia's prime minister said Monday that he was confident that government lawmakers would win a court challenge this week that threatens his administration's slender majority.
Seven High Court judges will decide whether seven lawmakers should be disqualified from Parliament because of a constitutional ban on dual citizens being elected. The three-day hearing begins Tuesday.
The fate of Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce is most crucial to the government in an unprecedented political crisis.
If the court rules that he was illegally elected in July last year due to New Zealand citizenship he unknowingly inherited from his father, the ruling conservative coalition could lose its single-seat majority in the House of Representatives, where governments are formed.
Joyce could stand in a by-election, having renounced his Kiwi citizenship. But with the government unpopular in opinion polls, voters in his rural electoral division could take the opportunity to throw both the deputy prime minister and his administration out of office.
Two of the six senators under a cloud are government ministers. Fiona Nash inherited British citizenship from her father and Matt Canavan became an Italian through an Australian-born mother with Italian parents. Disqualified senators can be replaced by members of the same party without need for an election.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has given no indication of what his government would do if the court rules against any of the three ministers.
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Court: Utility, not gov't responsible for Fukushima disaster
State Law Issues |
2017/09/22 08:57
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A Japanese court has ruled that a utility, not the government, should pay compensation to dozens of former residents of Fukushima for losses to their livelihood caused by meltdowns at a nuclear plant after a massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011.
Chiba District Court ordered Tokyo Electric Power Co. on Friday to pay a total of 376 million yen ($3.4 million) to most of the 45 plaintiffs who sought compensation over the loss of their livelihoods and communities because of radiation contamination.
The court dismissed the plaintiffs' claim the government should also be held responsible for its failure to enforce tsunami safety measures.
About 30 other compensation suits filed by tens of thousands of former Fukushima residents are still pending.
The wrecked Fukushima plant's decommissioning is expected to take decades.
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Ohio court sets 2022 execution date for Cleveland killer
Attorney Interview |
2017/09/22 08:57
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The Ohio Supreme Court has set a 2022 execution date for a man sentenced to die for fatally shooting a man in an argument over a sewing machine.
Death row inmate Percy Hutton, of Cleveland, was sentenced to die for the 1985 slaying of Derek Mitchell.
Hutton's attorney, Michael Benza, argues the execution date shouldn't be scheduled because the 63-year-old Hutton still has federal appeals pending.
The court on Friday scheduled Hutton to die on June 22, 2022.
Court records show Hutton accused Mitchell of stealing tires and a sewing machine from him, and shot him after recovering the sewing machine. Records say Hutton also shot a second man who survived. |
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