Congress Votes to Take Away Protections for 4 Million People Who Rely on Title X The House of Representatives is poised to vote today to overturn a rule that protects health care for more than 4 million people who rely on Title X, the nation's family planning program, first established more than 40 years ago under President Nixon. The rule reinforces that it is against the law for state politicians to block people from accessing care under Title X at their preferred health center - including Planned Parenthood and other reproductive healthcare providers - because the ... PPAO Statement on Supreme Court Nominee Gorsuch: Opposition to Roe v. Wade is a Disqualifier On Tuesday, Donald Trump announced Judge Neil Gorsuch as his nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court. Here is a statement from Mary Nolan, Executive Director of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Oregon: "We have a message for U.S. Senators on Judge Gorsuch: Opposing Roe v. Wade is a disqualifier. The right to safe and legal abortion has been the law of the land for more than 40 years.
Nominees to the highest court in the land must make clear ... >> See all news from Planned Parenthood Advocates of Oregon. Oregonians for Reproductive Health! Every woman in Oregon should be able to make decisions about whether and when to be a parent based on what’s best for her. Planned Parenthood Advocates of Oregon is working hard to ensure that health insurance — whether paid for by individuals, employers or government funds — covers the full range of reproductive health services: preconception care, contraception, abortion, prenatal care, childbirth and postpartum care. Please take action today to add your voice to the chorus! >>View more in our Action Center. • Bio-Foam-utilizing a percentage of natural plant oil and infused with green tea extract• Hemp blended fabric with wool and fiberfill• No VOCs or PBDEs• 12-year non-prorated warranty• Compressed mattress shipping in 100% recyclable boxes Free shipping on all Keetsa products.
Keetsa products are drop-shipped directly from Keetsa and typically arrive within two weeks of purchase. The Keetsa Pillow PlusTexas’ 2017 State of the State How Texas will preserve liberty and forge a path to prosperity for all Texans. Today the court returns from its February break to hear oral argument in two cases. First up is Hernández v. Mesa, a case that stems from the cross-border shooting of a Mexican teenager by a U.S. Border Patrol agent. Amy Howe previewed the case for this blog. Another preview comes from Laurel Hopkins and Eugene Temchenko at Cornell University Law School’s Legal Information Institute. The George Washington Law Review’s On the Docket also previews Hernández, along with all the cases in the February sitting. In USA Today, Richard Wolf reports on Hernández, remarking on its possible effect on already fraught “U.S.-Mexico relations.” Additional coverage comes from Mark Sherman for the Associated Press, who observes that the “legal issues are different, but the Supreme Court case resembles the court battle over President Donald Trump’s ban on travelers from seven majority Muslim nations in at least one sense”: “Courts examining both issues are weighing whether foreigners can have their day in U.S. courts.”
David Gans in The New Republic argues that Hernández offers the court “an important opportunity to reaffirm its core constitutional role of keeping the political branches in check, vindicating individual rights, and ensuring that no one is above the law,” and predicts that this “Supreme Court case will come down, as so many do, to Justice Anthony Kennedy.” Petition of the day The petition of the day is: Issue: Whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit erred in this case by holding that it had no jurisdiction to review the denial of a motion to reopen by the Board of Immigration Appeals, where the review sought was limited to assessing the legal framework upon which the sua sponte request was made. This week at the court We expect orders from the February 17 conference on Tuesday at 9:30 a.m. There is a possibility of opinions on Wednesday at 10 a.m. The court will also hear oral arguments on Tuesday and Wednesday, beginning at 10 a.m. each day.
The calendar for the February sitting is available on the court’s website. On Friday the justices will meet for their February 24 conference; our list of “petitions to watch” for that conference will be available soon. Merit Management Group, LP v. FTI Consulting, Inc. Issue: Whether the safe harbor of Section 546(e) of the Bankruptcy Code prohibits avoidance of a transfer made by or to a financial institution, without regard to whether the institution has a beneficial interest in the property transferred, consistent with decisions from the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the 2nd, 3rd, 6th, 8th, and 10th Circuits, but contrary to the decisions from the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the 7th and 11th Circuits. Court releases April calendar Yesterday the Senate Judiciary Committee announced that the confirmation hearing for Judge Neil Gorsuch will begin on March 20, creating at least the possibility that, if confirmed, Gorsuch could join the court’s current eight justices in time for the April sitting, which begins on April 17.
Today the justices released the calendar for the April sitting, during which the court will hear 13 arguments – including an important religious liberty case that had been granted in January 2016, nearly one month before the February 13, 2016, death of Justice Antonin Scalia, whom Gorsuch would succeed on the court. The justices agreed to review Trinity Lutheran Church v. Pauley on January 15, 2016. Under the court’s normal procedures, the case – in which a Missouri church is arguing that its exclusion from a state program that provides funds to nonprofits to resurface their playgrounds with rubber from recycled tires violates the Constitution – would have been argued in either April or fall of 2016. But the case (along with Murr v. Wisconsin and Microsoft v. Baker, two others granted that day) remained conspicuously absent from oral argument calendars through the end of 2016 and into the beginning of 2017. Although there is no way to know with certainty what accounted for the delay, one possibility was that the justices were hoping to avoid a 4-4 tie, in the absence of a ninth justice.
On February 3, three days after President Donald Trump announced the Gorsuch nomination, the court released its March calendar, which included Murr and Microsoft but not Trinity Lutheran. , reporters “canvassed prominent lawyers from around the country for what questions they would like to see asked” at Gorsuch’s Senate confirmation hearing, which begins on March 20. At the Election Law Blog, Rick Hasen cites a report that Gorsuch disavowed statements in a 2005 National Review article in which the judge asserted that liberals’ “’overweening addiction to the courtroom as the place to debate social policy is bad for the country and bad for the judiciary,’” depriving us of “’the benefit of the give-and-take of the political process and the flexibility of social experimentation that only the elected branches can provide’”; Hasen urges senators to ask Gorsuch how his views have changed, noting that the “answer would be illuminating as to the judge’s approach to access to the courts and constitutional rights.”
Rutgerson v. United States Issues: (1) Whether a defendant “induce[s]” the assent of another person, within the meaning of 18 U.S.C. § 2422, where the defendant accepts the request of the other person, who has already assented to the course of conduct prior to and independent of any action by the defendant; and (2) whether the court of appeals correctly applied the harmless-error doctrine to the exclusion of evidence of a government investigation showing the petitioner’s lack of interest in sex involving any underage person prior to contact with the government, where the petitioner’s lack of predisposition was essential to his entrapment defense. SCOTUS for law students: Predicting Supreme Court justices The nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch has moved into a phase that is unique to the Supreme Court confirmation process: trying to predict how a justice will vote on particular issues and cases in the future. This predictive process may occur in two phases.
The first is well underway – vast amounts of commentary and analysis about how Gorsuch may handle everything from employment-law cases to white-collar-crime issues. The second phase will take place in just over a month, when the 20 members of the Senate Judiciary Committee try to figure out what kind of questions to ask the nominee that will actually shed any light on his views. Last weekend, Judge Neil Gorsuch submitted his Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire. Amy Howe reports on the submission for this blog. Advice and Consent (podcast) features a discussion of the judge’s responses, focusing on his “record on siding with corporate interests.” At LegalWritingPro, Ross Guberman offers two posts on Gorsuch’s vaunted writing style: In the first, Guberman identifies four of Gorsuch’s gifts as a writer, but concludes that “he has yet to settle on a consistently confident voice”; the second post enumerates what Guberman views as five weaknesses in Gorsuch’s writing.