Maitland Family Lawyer – Supreme Court a millionaire’s club

Source      : Public Integrity News
By               : Dave Levinthal, Lateshia Beachum, Carrie Levineemail
Category  : Maitland Foreclosure Defense Lawyer , Maitland Family Lawyer

Supreme Court a millionaire’s club

At least six — and possibly all nine — Supreme Court justices are millionaires, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of new personal financial disclosures released Thursday. Associate Justice Stephen Breyer leads all justices with a minimum reportable net worth of $6.15 million in 2016 — almost unchanged from the year before. Breyer’s portfolio as of Dec. 31 could, however, be worth more than $16 million. Authorship padded Breyer’s income: He reported $45,000 in royalties from Penguin Random House, which last year released the paperback edition of his book, “The Court and the World.”

Chief Justice John Roberts is similarly wealthy, with a minimum reportable net worth of more than $5 million — and a maximum of nearly $11 million. Mutual funds and education savings plans comprise the bulk of Roberts’ assets, which appear to have grown from 2015, when his minimum reportable assets were valued at about $4.24 million, to 2016. He also reported several sizable individual stock holdings, including at least $500,000 each in media and entertainment giant Time Warner Inc. and Texas Instruments, and at least $100,001 in Sirius XM Radio and medical research supply company Thermo Fisher Scientific. Roberts furthermore owns part of a cottage in Limerick, Ireland, worth up to $50,000.

Associate Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Samuel Alito, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan are also members of the seven-figures club. Sotomayor saw her minimum net worth jump from about $1 million in 2015 to more than $1.5 million in 2016. Only Associate Justices Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas, who both reported a minimum net worth just south of $600,000, aren’t guaranteed millionaires. (Their maximum net worth is more than $1 million.) Assets and liabilities listed on the disclosure forms, which justices file annually, are reported in broad ranges. This makes it impossible to say precisely how much each justice is worth. Justices are also exempt from disclosing the value of their homes, making a precise calculation even more difficult.

Justice Neil Gorsuch, a nominee of President Donald Trump who joined the high court in April after previously serving as a federal appellate judge, has not yet filed a 2016 personal financial disclosure, having received an extension, Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg confirmed. Gorsuch’s 2015 personal financial disclosure indicated his investment portfolio was worth at least $3.1 million and as much as $7.2 million. Breyer proved to be the most jet-setting Supreme Court justice of 2016, reporting 19 separate trips during which some entity — Harvard Law School, the American Psychiatric Association and the Pritzker Foundation, for three — paid for at least some of his travel or accommodations. Several of the events involved Breyer’s book, and four events took him to France, Spain or the United Kingdom.

Ginsburg — at 84, the oldest member of the court — is nevertheless a notorious traveler herself, making 12 paid trips in 2016, including three in Europe. One took her to Loyola University Chicago, which in September hosted a “Tribute to Justice Scalia program.” Although Ginsberg and the late Justice Antonin Scalia were ideological foils — he a rock-ribbed conservative, she an unabashed liberal — the two also were best of friends, reveling in a shared love of opera, travel and general socializing.

Sotomayor and Alito each took 11 paid trips.
In August 2016, Sotomayor attended several events at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks that were co-sponsored by Alaska Airlines. Her travel was paid for through vouchers donated by Alaska Airlines to the university. Most of Alito’s reimbursable travel appears to involve teaching stints, according to his disclosure. Kagan (six trips), Thomas (six) and Kennedy (five) also benefitted last year from subsidized travel. None of the justices are required to disclose the value of their trips. That’s no matter for Roberts, who reported no paid trips at all. Thomas, who almost never speaks during open Supreme Court proceedings, nevertheless derived family income from a decidedly vocal publication, the conservative Daily Caller, where his wife, Ginni Thomas, is a contributor.

Read More : publicintegrity.org/2017/06/08/20908/supreme-court-millionaires-club

Family Lawyer Maitland – U.S. Supreme Court upholds ruling that Houston bail system is unfair

Source 　 : StatesMan News
By 　　　　: Michael Graczyk Associated Press
Category  : Family Lawyer Maitland , Foreclosure Defense Lawyer Maitland

U.S. Supreme Court upholds ruling that Houston bail system is unfair

Dozens of inmates who couldn’t afford bail were released from a Houston jail this week after a federal appeals court upheld a ruling that the county’s bail system unfairly discriminates against the poor. Harris County officials had asked the U.S. Supreme Court for an emergency order blocking the original ruling, which the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld on Tuesday. But Justice Clarence Thomas, without referring the case to the full court and without comment, rejected the county’s request on Wednesday. The county could still ask the Supreme Court to consider the case. Harris County will comply with a court ruling by U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal that has allowed dozens of inmates who can’t afford their bail to be freed, said First Assistant County Attorney Robert Soard. However, the county will continue its appeal of the lower-court ruling to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. He said the county’s appeals court brief is due early next month.

Rosenthal ruled in April that the inmates could be released on personal bond. In her ruling, which was stayed pending Tuesday’s decision, Rosenthal said the bail system violated equal protection rights against wealth-based discrimination and violated due process protections against pretrial detention without proper procedures or an opportunity to be heard. The county jail began releasing eligible inmates late Tuesday and was expected to release about 100 others on Wednesday, said Jason Spencer, a spokesman for the county sheriff’s office. Before being released, inmates had to fill out an affidavit swearing to their financial situations. “I think some people were expecting a massive release, but it’s really just sort of steady,” Spencer said. The 100 releases represent just over 1 percent of the jail’s population and would become a daily occurrence unless the Supreme Court stayed the lower court ruling. “We’re going to operate under whatever the latest order is,” Spencer said. Similar legal challenges have been brought in at least 10 states, and other courts have struck down such bail policies.

In a Georgia case that is under federal court review, a man who couldn’t come up with $160 bond was held for six days. The U.S. Justice Department argued last year that the practice was unconstitutional and cited Supreme Court case law that jailing people just because they can’t pay a fine or fee, without considering some other alternative, “effectively denies equal protection to one class of people within the criminal justice system.” Another federal court struck down a similar bail policy in Moss Point, Mississippi, in 2015. “It’s a huge problem all over the country,” said Alec Karakatsanis, a Washington-based attorney for Civil Rights Corps, a group involved in bail lawsuits. “It got to the point where 450,000 human beings are in American jail cells every night just because they can’t make a payment. It’s terrible abuse to subject someone to that inhumane treatment.” Meanwhile, Travis County’s pretrial bond system is considered the gold standard in Texas. In the recent Legislative session, state lawmakers praised the county’s use of the Ohio Risk Assessment System while knocking the financial-based system used by Tarrant and other counties. Whereas Tarrant’s system places emphasis on a defendant’s ability to afford bail, people charged with crimes in Travis County are assigned a risk-assessment score that removes finances from the equation and assigns a score based on their perceived flight risk and danger to the community. And research shows it comes at a lower cost to taxpayers, who pay $2,134 per defendant in Travis County compared to $3,038 per defendant in Tarrant County.

Read More : statesman.com/news/supreme-court-upholds-ruling-that-houston-bail-system-unfair/it77HglJmJwtdU5ynxvIYM/

Foreclosure Defense Lawyer Maitland – U.S. Supreme Court justice denies Harris County request in bail case

Source    : Chron News
By              : Mihir Zaveri
Category : Maitland Business Lawyer , Foreclosure Defense Lawyer Maitland

U.S. Supreme Court justice denies Harris County request in bail case

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has denied Harris County’s request to stop the release of misdemeanor inmates who can’t afford to post cash bail. The county had appealed late Tuesday to halt Chief U.S. District Judge Lee H. Rosenthal’s directive that it begin releasing some inmates accused of misdemeanor crimes who cannot afford bail. That order had gone into effect Tuesday, and continued Wednesday, while Thomas considered the county’s application. Thomas’s denial means some inmates will continue to be released on personal recognizance ahead of their trials if they cannot afford bail. The county still has the option to ask another justice or the full Supreme Court to reconsider Thomas’s denial. Often follow-up requests to other justices are referred to the full court, according to the public information office for the Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, an appeals court is also considering the county’s appeal of Rosenthal’s full order. Edward Gonzales says the fence was already down when he arrived to help his friend move. But sheriff’s deputies didn’t take it that way, and the 38-year-old construction worker was arrested Monday on misdemeanor charges of criminal mischief and trespassing.

He’s sat in jail ever since because he couldn’t make the $500 cash bond – until Wednesday morning, when a court-ordered new bail system allowed him to be released on a personal bond for promising to appear in court. “It feels good to come out,” he said. The new no-cash bail system, “helps a lot.” Gonzales – no relation to Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez – was among more than dozens of people released on personal bonds since late Tuesday, according to the sheriff’s office.

Overall, about 100 misdemeanor defendants are expected to be released by the end of the day Wednesday, assuming they have no holds or detainers, such as mental health orders, or in certain family violence cases, officials said. The new bail rules followed a decision by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Tuesday rejecting an appeal by Harris County to stop a judge’s order that the county begin releasing indigent low-level defendants on personal bonds. The county has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, but local officials will begin releasing inmates anyway to comply with the order from Chief U.S. District Judge Lee H. Rosenthal in Houston.

Andre Medina, 17, a high school senior, waited outside the Harris County jail Wednesday for his grandmother. He had been in jail for two days after being arrested on a criminal trespass charge in Pasadena. Late Tuesday night, he’d finally been released on a personal bond after promising to appear in court. “Right before I saw the TV judge, I prayed I could get out,” Medina said, referring to the hearing officer who read his charges via a television link. “It feels good. I’m going to go home and shower.”

Read More : chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Dozens-of-low-level-inmates-being-released-from-11202130.php

Maitland Foreclosure Defense Lawyer – Supreme Court signals deference to religious nonprofit groups

Source     : Washington Times News
By              :  Alex Swoyer
Category :  Maitland Foreclosure Defense Lawyer , Maitland Family Attorney

Supreme Court signals deference to religious nonprofit groups

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Monday that faith-based nonprofits can be treated the same as churches under federal retirement laws, in a decision signaling broad deference to religious institutions. Houses of worship are allowed greater freedom to structure their retirement plans than most corporations under the Employee Retirement Security Act (ERISA), but it was unclear whether religiously affiliated nonprofits such as parochial schools and church-run hospitals would be afforded the same flexibility. In an 8-0 ruling, the high court said Congress, in a 1980 amendment to the law, did intend for religious nonprofits to be considered a “church plan,” making them exempt from some of ERISA’s strict requirements. “The question presented here is whether a church must have originally established such a plan for it to so qualify. ERISA, we hold, does not impose that requirement,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in the court’s opinion.

The court’s newest member, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, didn’t participate in the ruling. Analysts had been watching the case to see if it would give a hint as to how the court sees another legal battle involving religiously affiliated nonprofits: the Obamacare contraceptive mandate. In that case, houses of worship don’t have to purchase insurance plans that cover contraceptives, but charities do. Some high-profile nonprofits such as the Little Sisters of the Poor, an order of Catholic nuns, have sued, arguing requiring them to be involved in any way with their employees obtaining contraceptives violates their religious beliefs. The justices have sent the contraceptive case back to lower courts to sort out, looking for an accommodation both sides can live with.

Monday’s retirement ruling was narrow and based on ERISA, but analysts said it did signal a deference to churches that could affect future religious liberty cases. “It’s fair to say that the court’s approach to interpreting the statute is one which is favorable to religious organizations and could help in other kinds of cases where an interpretation of regulations or statute may be required,” said Stuart Lark, a partner at Sherman & Howard. Monday’s ruling overturns an appeals court decision that had sided with employees and against Advocate Health Care Network, a church-affiliated operation. Justice Kagan said in her ruling that the government needed to be careful about inserting itself into decisions of faith.

“A church-establishment requirement necessarily puts the IRS in the business of deciding just what a church is and is not,” she wrote. She cited the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s book, “Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts,” in saying judges needed to defer to the way Congress wrote the law. Jordan Lorence, an attorney at Alliance Defending Freedom, said Justice Kagan’s opinion shows “the textualist approach is very strong and alive at the Supreme Court.”“It grants a very broad view of church autonomy, which I think is great,” he said. “It pushes back government regulation of internal church affairs.”

Mayor Brown, one of the nation’s largest law firms, said the ruling saved religiously affiliated hospitals from serious compliance costs. “The hospitals at issue in the case decided today would have faced a $4 billion shortfall in funding the pensions of 300,000 workers if the Court had ruled differently,” the law firm said in a statement. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, while ultimately agreeing with her fellow justices’ read of the law, signaled she was uncomfortable with the implications. Despite having a relationship with churches, nonprofits — like the hospitals in this case — operate for-profit subsidiaries that earn billions of dollars and employ thousands of people, Justice Sotomayor argued.

Read More : washingtontimes.com/news/2017/jun/5/supreme-court-signals-deference-to-religious-nonpr/

Maitland Foreclosure Defense Attorney – Medical records case goes to US Supreme Court

Source     : News 4 JAX
By              : Jim Saunders
Category : Maitland Foreclosure Defense Attorney , Maitland Business Attorney

Medical records case goes to US Supreme Court

Arguing that a Florida Supreme Court ruling “undermines” a federal patient-safety law, a Jacksonville hospital system is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to take up a legal battle about the disclosure of medical records. Southern Baptist Hospital of Florida, Inc., which operates as the Baptist Health System in the Jacksonville area, filed a petition last week asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear an appeal of a Jan. 31 ruling by the Florida Supreme Court. The case could have implications for medical-malpractice lawsuits across Florida and deals with interplay between a 2005 federal patient-safety law and a 2004 Florida constitutional amendment that was designed to expand access to health-care providers’ records in malpractice cases.

The 2004 constitutional amendment, backed by plaintiffs’ attorneys, was intended to provide access to what are known in the health-care industry as “adverse medical incident” reports. But in a malpractice case involving a woman who suffered a neurological injury, Baptist argued it shouldn’t have to turn over some documents because of the federal 2005 Patient Safety Act. The law allows hospitals to voluntarily submit information about medical errors to what are known as “patient safety organizations” — and offers certain confidentiality protections. The law was aimed, at least in part, at encouraging health providers to submit information that could be analyzed and used to prevent future medical errors. The Florida Supreme Court, in a 5-2 decision, ruled against the hospital system. But the petition filed last week in the U.S. Supreme Court contends that the state justices’ ruling undermines the purpose of the federal law and violates the legal concept of federal “preemption” of conflicting state laws.

“The effect of this backwards ruling (by the Florida Supreme Court) is to leave in place the patchwork of inconsistent state laws that Congress deemed inadequate to permit the candid sharing and analysis of medical-error information,” the petition said. “Indeed, given the breadth of the state laws at issue, the privilege is now all but nugatory in Florida, leaving health-care providers with the dilemma of eschewing valuable patient-safety activities altogether or creating work product that may be used against them in litigation. That is not what Congress envisioned when it enacted a uniform federal privilege.” But the majority of the Florida Supreme Court in January disputed such an interpretation of the federal law. “The federal act was intended by Congress to improve the overall health care in this system, not to act as a shield to providers, thereby dismantling an important right afforded to Florida citizens through Amendment 7 (the 2004 amendment),” said the opinion, written by Justice Barbara Pariente and joined by Chief Justice Jorge Labarga, justices R. Fred Lewis and Peggy Quince and retired Justice James E.C. Perry. “Moreover, health care providers should not be able to unilaterally decide which documents will be discoverable and which will not in medical malpractice cases.”

It is unclear whether the U.S. Supreme Court will hear the case. Justices receive thousands of petitions a year and agree to take up relatively few cases. The underlying lawsuit was filed against the Baptist system by the family of patient Marie Charles and alleged that negligence in her care caused a severe neurological injury, according to court documents. The family and Baptist reached a settlement on the eve of Florida Supreme Court arguments on the records issue. But a majority of the court said the records issue needed to be decided, pointing to its broader implications.

Read More : news4jax.com/news/local/jacksonville/medical-records-case-goes-to-us-supreme-court

Foreclosure Defense Attorney Maitland – New Supreme Court challenge to labor unions follows 4-4 split

Source     : Chicago Business News
By              : AP
Category : Foreclosure Defense Attorney Maitland , Business Attorney Maitland

New Supreme Court challenge to labor unions follows 4-4 split

Conservative groups are wasting little time in trying to deal a crippling blow to labor unions now that Justice Neil Gorsuch has joined the Supreme Court. A First Amendment clash over public sector unions left the justices deadlocked last year after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. But union opponents have quickly steered a new case through federal courts in Illinois and they plan to appeal it to the high court on Tuesday. The groups say unions representing government employees violate the free speech rights of workers by collecting money from people who don’t want to join. If the high court agrees, it could threaten the financial viability of unions and reduce the clout of labor, one of the biggest contributors to Democratic political campaigns.

The Supreme Court seemed all but certain to rule against the unions in a similar case argued before Scalia died. That case, involving a California teachers’ union, was the first of several to split 4-4 while the court was short-handed. The deadlock left in place a four-decade-old practice that lets public-sector unions collect fees from non-members to cover the costs of collective bargaining. “Our hope is that a year from now, the Supreme Court will end this injustice and free every public school teacher, safety officer and other government worker to decide for themselves whether or not to financially support a union with their hard-earned money,” said a joint statement from the two organizations backing the case — the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation and Liberty Justice Center. The Supreme Court won’t consider taking up the case until September at the earliest. The latest appeal comes as union membership in the U.S. hit new lows last year, sinking to just 10.7 percent of the workforce. As private union membership has steadily declined, about half of all union members now work for federal, state and local government. Most of them are in states like Illinois, New York, and California that are largely Democratic and seen as friendly toward unions.

The Illinois case involves Mark Janus, a state employee who says Illinois law violates his free speech rights by requiring him to pay fees subsidizing a union he doesn’t support, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. About half the states have similar laws covering so-called “fair share” fees that cover bargaining costs for nonmembers. Janus is seeking to overturn a 1977 Supreme Court case that said public workers who refuse to join a union can still be required to pay for bargaining costs, as long as the fees don’t go toward political purposes. The arrangement was supposed to prevent nonmembers from “free riding,” since the union has a legal duty to represent all workers. A federal appeals court in Chicago rejected Janus’ claim in March, ruling that the fees were constitutional under the 1977 case, Abood v. Detroit Board of Education. AFSCME President Lee Saunders called the case an effort to chip away at the power of unions “to negotiate a fair return on our work, provide for our families, and lift up the concerns of all working families.”

Last year, the issue split the court’s liberal and conservative members during oral arguments in the California case. Several conservative justices, including Scalia, seemed ready to scrap Abood. They said bargaining issues like teacher salaries, merit promotions and class sizes are all intertwined with political issues involving the size of state budgets and how taxpayer dollars should be spent. While unions avoided a loss after Scalia’s death, Gorsuch is seen as equally conservative, though he has not expressed views on the issue of fair share union fees. For unions, the loss of millions in fees would reduce their power to bargain for higher wages and benefits for government employees. “This is an aggressive litigation campaign aimed at undermining unions’ ability to operate by forcing them to represent people for free,” said Benjamin Sachs, a professor at Harvard Law School specializing in labor law.

Read More : chicagobusiness.com/article/20170606/NEWS02/170609923/new-high-court-challenge-to-labor-unions-follows-4-4-split

Foreclosure Defense Attorney Maitland – High Court ticks off unregulated legal business for not being clearer

Source    : Legal Futures News
By              : Neil Rose
Category : Foreclosure Defense Attorney Maitland , Business Attorney Maitland

High Court ticks off unregulated legal business for not being clearer

The High Court has criticised an unregulated legal business run by a unregistered barrister for “sailing too close to the wind” by failing to be clear in correspondence that it was not a solicitors’ firm. However, Mr Justice Coulson ruled that service of a claim by CSD Legal, run by Alexander Dain, on behalf of a litigant in person was not invalid because it was acting under the litigant’s delegated authority. In Ndole Assets Ltd v Designer M&E Services UK Ltd [2017] EWHC 1148 (TCC), it was argued that CSD Legal had no entitlement to carry on a reserved legal activity and so could not conduct the proceedings on behalf of the claimant.

The Legal Services Act 2007 defines the conduct of litigation – a reserved activity – as including the commencement, prosecution and defence of any proceedings. Coulson J ruled that this covered the vital step of service of the claim form and particulars: “If service is not effected, or if it is effected in the wrong way, then the proceedings might be fatally flawed. Correct service is therefore a prerequisite for the successful prosecution of an action.” It was pointed out that solicitors regularly use process-servers, who have no right to conduct litigation either. The judge ruled that they have the solicitors’ delegated authority to serve the documents.

By extension, he said, “it would be nonsensical to conclude that, whilst a solicitor can delegate the carrying out of this task to a third party, a litigant in person cannot do so”. Therefore, the service here was valid. Coulson J added: “Even if I had found that service was unlawful, I would have taken some persuading that the consequence of that was that the proceedings should be struck out. “Service was effected, and there is no dispute that the relevant documents were served upon and received by Designer at the relevant time. “In those circumstances, whilst the penal nature of the provision in the 2007 Act might have necessitated a variety of sanctions if I had concluded that it was unlawful, I would have been very reluctant to penalise Ndole by striking out their claim, particularly in circumstances where… real limitation issues may arise in respect of any fresh claim.”

But he added that a number of the letters written by Mr Dain, including to the defendant’s solicitors, Clarke Willmott, “were at least potentially misleading, because he did not make it clear that CSD Legal were not a firm of solicitors and were not authorised to carry out reserved legal activity”. Coulson J added: “Although I consider that he did not act in breach of the 2007 Act, and I conclude that these letters were irrelevant to the service issue in any event, I do find that Mr Dain sailed too close to the wind on a number of occasions. “It would have been much better if he had set out CSD Legal’s true position at the outset, both to Designer and to the TCC Registry. I hope that he will heed that advice for the future.”

Read More : legalfutures.co.uk/latest-news/high-court-ticks-off-unregulated-legal-business-not-clearer-status

Maitland Business Attorney – Philippines’ Duterte faces martial law legal challenge

Source     : Yahoo News
By              : AFP
Category : Maitland Foreclosure Defense Attorney , Maitland Business Attorney

Philippines Duterte faces martial law legal challenge

Philippine opposition lawmakers on Monday asked the Supreme Court to reject President Rodrigo Duterte’s imposition of martial law in the south of the country, branding it unconstitutional. Duterte declared military rule across the region of Mindanao, home to about 20 million people, on May 23 to quell what he said was a fast-growing threat from the Islamic State (IS) group there. Duterte made the declaration a few hours after militants flying black IS flags rampaged through the southern city of Marawi, triggering clashes with security forces that are still ongoing and have left at least 178 people dead.

The petition filed with the Supreme Court on Monday said martial law should be struck down for “utter lack of sufficient factual basis”, as it drew parallels with ex-dictator Ferdinand Marcos’s military rule a generation ago. “The grim specter of repression, atrocities, injustice and corruption again bedevils the Filipino people with the unwarranted, precipitate and unconstitutional declaration of martial law,” said the petition, filed by six congressmen. Marcos’s two-decade rule ended in 1986 when millions of people took to the streets in a “People Power” revolution.

Thousands of critics, suspected insurgents and their alleged supporters were jailed, tortured or killed during the dictatorship, according to historians. Shortly after Duterte declared martial law, he praised Marcos’s version and vowed his own would be “harsh”. The 1987 constitution imposes limits on martial law to prevent a repeat of abuses under Marcos, including allowing the Supreme Court to review its factual basis.

However Duterte vowed five days after declaring martial law he would ignore the Supreme Court on the issue, and only listen to the police and military. “The Supreme Court will say they will examine into the factual (basis). Why, I don’t know. They are not soldiers. They do not know what is happening on the ground,” Duterte said then. The petition stated that Duterte’s reasons for declaring martial law were “mostly inaccurate, simulated, false and/or hyperbolic”.

It highlighted one of Duterte’s statements to justify martial law that the militants had beheaded a local police chief. National police chief Ronald Dela Rosa later said the officer was not beheaded. The constitution allows martial law to be imposed only in the event of invasion or rebellion. The petitioners said the unrest in Marawi did not amount to rebellion, as stated by Duterte.

Read More : https://www.yahoo.com/news/philippines-duterte-faces-martial-law-legal-challenge-045442747.html

Business Attorney Maitland – Supreme Court asked to let Trump travel ban take effect

Source    : AP News
By              : MARK SHERMAN and SADIE GURMAN
Category : Foreclosure Defense Attorney Maitland , Business Attorney Maitland

Supreme Court asked to let Trump travel ban take effect

The administration is banking on being able to persuade at least five justices, a majority of the nine-member court, that they should defer to the president’s considerable authority over immigration and his responsibility for keeping the nation safe. Trump determined that a 90-day pause on visitors from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen is needed to “safeguard national security,” acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall wrote in the Justice Department’s filings. “The courts below openly second-guessed the president’s finding that those conditions and risks provided the basis for … (the) temporary pause,” Wall wrote. The administration also wants to halt the U.S. refugee program for 120 days.

Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said the justices shouldn’t disturb court rulings that are keeping the travel ban on hold. “The government has not set forth any justification for a stay,” Jadwat said, using the legal term by which the Supreme Court would block lower court rulings. The administration’s Supreme Court filings reflect many of the same arguments that its lawyers have made in the lower courts, including their view that statements President Donald Trump made as a candidate — before he took the presidential oath — should not be considered. Both the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and a federal judge in Hawaii cited Trump’s campaign comments as evidence that religious prejudice undergirds the travel ban. Those court orders blocking the ban are the subject of the administration’s plea to the Supreme Court. “Without campaign materials, the court of appeals’ analysis collapses,” Wall wrote in his high court request for an order to allow the policy to be enforced.

Trump’s recent speech to Middle East leaders in Saudi Arabia provides more evidence that Trump’s policy was not motivated by anti-Muslim prejudice because the president explicitly said the fight against terrorism “‘is not a battle between different faiths,’” Wall wrote. But Jadwat said Trump passed up a clear opportunity in front of many leaders of the Arab world “to explain or retract any of his earlier statements.” The justices will weigh those arguments in the coming weeks.

Justice Neil Gorsuch joined the court in April, giving it a full complement of nine justices for the first time since conservative icon Antonin Scalia died in February 2016. A full bench not only eliminated the prospect of a tie when all the justices are participating, but also restored the court’s conservative tilt. Even with Gorsuch aboard, though, Justice Anthony Kennedy probably will be in the majority whatever the outcome. Kennedy is the conservative justice who is closer to the ideological center of the court than any of his colleagues, and he often casts the decisive vote when the court is otherwise split between conservatives and liberals. A Kennedy opinion from 2015 also has emerged as a key element in the legal fight. The 2015 case, Kerry v. Din, involved an American citizen’s challenge to the denial of a visa for her Afghan husband.

Kennedy sided with the other conservative justices in favor of the Obama administration and against U.S. citizen Fauzia Din. But 4th Circuit Chief Judge Roger Gregory used Kennedy’s opinion to buttress his majority opinion against the Trump travel ban. Judges must “step away from our deferential posture and look behind the stated reason for the challenged action” when a lawsuit makes a strong argument about bad faith motivating the policy, Gregory wrote, citing Kennedy’s opinion. The dissenting judges said Gregory misread Kennedy’s opinion. “Nowhere did the Din Court authorize going behind the government’s notice for the purpose of showing bad faith,” the dissenters said.

Kennedy also has been the focus of speculation that he may soon retire, yet another wild card that could unsettle the court’s consideration of the Trump policy. The administration is asking for quick action from the high court that would freeze the lower court rulings and allow the policy to be put in place. Both sides would file their legal arguments about whether the policy violates the Constitution or federal law over the summer and the justices could hear argument as early as the fall, under the schedule proposed by the administration Thursday. The Supreme Court is almost certain to step into the case because it almost always has the final say when a lower court strikes down a federal law or presidential action. But the initial vote on whether to let the travel ban take effect, even as the court weighs the case, would signal whether the government is likely to win in the end. If at least five justices vote to let the travel ban take effect, there’s a good chance they also would uphold the policy later on.

The temporary nature of the bans means they could well have run their course by the time the case is ready to be argued, unless the court were to schedule an unusual special argument session. There is one other potential wrinkle involving timing. Some critics of the travel policy have said that the policy’s 90-day halt to visitors from the six countries is about to expire in mid-June, even though the ban itself has never taken effect. That’s because the executive order Trump signed in March said the ban would expire 90 days after the order’s effective date, March 16. But the administration’s argument appears to be that the clock wouldn’t start until the policy can take effect.

Read More : apnews.com/40cb796fd3664044adf930a909cbd266

Maitland Business Lawyer – Liberals urge Supreme Court Justice Kennedy to stay

Source      : The Globe and mail News
By               : Lawrence Hurley and Andrew Chung
Category : Maitland Business Lawyer , Foreclosure Defense Lawyer Maitland

Liberals urge Supreme Court Justice Kennedy to stay

Liberal activists are urging U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, a conservative with whom they often disagree, to put off any thought of retirement, fearing President Donald Trump would replace him with a jurist further to the right. The liberal Democrats’ keep-Kennedy campaign, being pursued publicly and privately, reflects how powerless they have become against the Republican president when it comes to high court vacancies since the Senate in April reduced the vote tally needed to confirm a Supreme Court nomination to 51 from 60. It also shows how big the stakes are for both sides in any decision that Kennedy, who turns 81 in July, makes about his future on the court. If he were to retire, Trump would have a historic opportunity to recast the court in a more conservative posture, possibly for decades to come.

Some former Kennedy clerks have said he is thinking about retirement. He has declined to comment on his plans, despite requests from many media outlets including Reuters. Right now, Kennedy “is the most important man in America. He is the vote that swings the court on the most important cases that reach it,” said Elizabeth Wydra, president of the Constitutional Accountability Center, a left-leaning think tank. Nominated by Republican President Ronald Reagan in 1987 to a lifetime court seat, Kennedy has been a crucial swing vote on the nine-member court for more than a decade.

On most issues, such as campaign finance and religious rights, he has voted with fellow conservatives. He also voted with the minority to strike down the 2010 Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare. But on gay rights and abortion, he has sided with the court’s four liberals. If he stays in his post, the court’s long-standing ideological balance will be preserved. If he quits, Trump could replace him with someone who tilts further right, giving conservatives a solid five-vote majority. Wydra and other liberals are lionizing Kennedy and his legacy in the media. Some are reaching out to former Kennedy clerks and others who know him, asking them to urge him not to retire, said Michele Jawando, a legal advocate at the Center for American Progress think tank in Washington. One former Kennedy clerk confirmed being asked to urge him to stay on and said other clerks had asked him to do so. Other clerks said they had not been approached by liberal activists.

SOLE TRIUMPH
Since he took office in January, Trump’s only significant domestic policy achievement has been winning Senate confirmation of his nominee to the high court, Neil Gorsuch, a former Kennedy clerk. Gorsuch replaced a fellow conservative, Antonin Scalia, who died in February 2016. The Gorsuch confirmation did not shift the court’s ideological balance, but it did trigger a change in the Senate rules for considering Supreme Court nominees. To get Gorsuch confirmed, Republicans exercised the “nuclear option,” ending Democrats’ ability to use a procedural maneuver called a filibuster to block a final vote on a Supreme Court nominee. As a result, Republicans, with a 52-48 Senate majority, can now confirm any future nominee without Democratic support.

In another handicap, liberal groups said they lacked the money to sway public opinion via TV and online ads, unlike conservative groups that had $10-million to back Gorsuch. In view of those disadvantages, People for the American Way, another liberal group, issued a report earlier this month outlining the impact of a Kennedy retirement, describing it as a “disaster for the rights of all Americans.” Liberals want in part to protect the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion. As a candidate, Trump said he would appoint court justices who would vote to overturn the decision.

Perhaps seeking to reassure Kennedy that his legacy is in safe hands, Trump has consistently praised the justice. At Gorsuch’s swearing-in in April, Trump called Kennedy a “great man of outstanding accomplishment.” Trump and other Republicans have said they have heard rumors that Kennedy might retire, but have not publicly urged him to. The president has vowed to pick his next nominee the same way he chose Gorsuch, from a list of contenders he made public before the election. Among contenders viewed as possible Kennedy replacements are federal appeals court judges Raymond Kethledge and Thomas Hardiman, conservative lawyer and former Solicitor General Paul Clement and Brett Kavanaugh, a judge on the federal appeals court in Washington, according to a person with knowledge of the nomination process.

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