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Tag: appeals (legal)

  • Justice Kagan order: Apple doesn’t have to change app store terms while battling Epic in court | CNN Business

    Justice Kagan order: Apple doesn’t have to change app store terms while battling Epic in court | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    A judicial order forcing Apple to change some of its app store terms will not need to take immediate effect while litigation over the decision plays out, Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan said on Wednesday, handing a temporary defeat to opponents of the company.

    The order is a setback for “Fortnite”-maker Epic Games as Apple appeals a lower-court ruling that found the iPhone-maker had violated California competition law.

    Epic Games declined to comment on Kagan’s decision, which occurred in the Supreme Court’s so-called “shadow docket” and was not referred to the full court.

    Apple didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

    Apple had previously been ordered not to interfere with efforts by iOS app developers to inform their users within their apps about alternatives to Apple’s in-app payment system, which allows Apple to take a commission.

    In April, a federal appeals court upheld the order that, if allowed to take effect, would prevent Apple from intervening when developers include “buttons, external links or other calls to action that direct customers to purchasing mechanisms” apart from Apple’s own channels.

    The appeals court temporarily paused enforcement of the injunction while Apple appeals the ruling to the Supreme Court. But last month, Epic Games filed an emergency request to the court calling for the order to be put into effect immediately, saying the public would otherwise be harmed by Apple’s practices.

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  • Former Trump adviser Peter Navarro convicted of contempt of Congress | CNN Politics

    Former Trump adviser Peter Navarro convicted of contempt of Congress | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Former Donald Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro has been convicted of contempt of Congress for not complying to a subpoena from the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

    Navarro is the second ex-aide to the former president to be prosecuted for his lack of cooperation with the committee. Steve Bannon was convicted last year on two contempt counts. Bannon’s case is currently on appeal.

    Navarro pledged to appeal based on executive privilege issues.

    “We knew going in what the verdict was going to be. That is why this is going to the appeals court,” he told reporters outside the courthouse. “And we feel – look, I said from the beginning this is going to the Supreme Court. I said from the beginning I’m willing to go to prison to settle this issue, I’m willing to do that.”

    Hear from ex-Trump aide after guilty of contempt verdict

    Asked by CNN if he’s spoken with the former president or reached out for help on legal bills, Navarro called Trump “a rock,” but did not elaborate on any communications.

    “President Trump has been a rock in terms of assistance. We talk when we need to talk,” Navarro said. “He will win the presidential race in 2024, in November. You know why? Because the people are tired of Joe Biden weaponizing courts like this and the Department of Justice.”

    After the verdict was read, Navarro’s lawyers sought a mistrial, raising concerns about any influence alleged protestors may have had when jurors took a break outdoors Thursday afternoon. US District Judge Amit Mehta did not immediately rule on the motion.

    The judge scheduled Navarro’s sentencing for January 12, 2024.

    Tim Mulvey, former spokesperson for House January 6 committee, celebrated the verdict.

    “His defiance of the committee was brazen. Like the other witnesses who attempted to stonewall the committee, he thought he was above the law. He isn’t. That’s a good thing for the rule of law. I imagine that those under indictment right now are getting a good reminder of that right now,” Mulvey told CNN in a statement.

    Prosecutors told the jury during closing arguments Thursday that Navarro “made a choice” not to comply with a February 2022 subpoena.

    Justice Department attorney Elizabeth Aloi said that government only works if people play by the rules and are held accountable if they don’t.

    “The subpoena – it is not hard to understand,” she said, adding that Navarro knew “what he was required to do and when he was required to do it.”

    Navarro’s attorney Stanley Woodward contested the idea that the subpoena was simple, staying that the subpoena did not specify where in the Capitol complex Navarro was supposed to show up for his deposition.

    He also said that prosecutors failed to prove that Navarro was willful in his failure to comply with the subpoena, arguing that prosecutors hadn’t established that his non-compliance with the demand for testimony was not the result of a mistake or accident.

    “Why didn’t the government present evidence to you about where Dr. Navarro was or what he was doing” on the day of the scheduled deposition, Woodward asked the jury. “Something stinks.”

    Prosecutor John Crabb responded: “Who cares where he was. What matters is where he wasn’t.”

    Crabb repeatedly referred to Navarro as “that man’ while pointing to him, telling the jury at one point, “that man thinks he is above the law.”

    The gestures elicited strong reactions from Navarro, who at times threw up his hand, shook his head or laughed. Woodward eventually jumped up and whispered to his client, and the two stood quietly together for the remainder of the proceeding.

    The jury was attentive during closing arguments, watching carefully as lawyers presented their final case. Navarro stood directly across the room with his hands clasped and stared at jurors intently.

    After the jury was dismissed, Woodward told the judge that the defense was seeking a mistrial because they had learned the jury had taken an outdoor break shortly before rendering the verdict and that during that break, they were around a “number” of January 6-related protestors demonstrating and chanting outside of the court.

    “It’s obvious the jury would have heard those protestors,” Woodward said. “It’s impossible for us to know what influence that would have” on their verdict.

    Crabb challenged the idea that there were protestors in the park next to the courthouse where the jurors took their break. Woodward countered that Navarro himself had been “accosted” earlier in the day by a protestor when he was coming through that park.

    Mehta said he knew that jurors had asked to take their break outside, where they were accompanied by a court security officer, but that he was not aware that protestors were in the park. He told Woodward that he was not going to rule on the mistrial request without receiving more briefing and evidence.

    Navarro was briefly interrupted by protesters when he left the courthouse after the verdict was read Thursday.

    It’s a “sad day for America, not ‘cause … they were guilty verdicts, because I can’t come out and have an honest, decent conversation with the people of America,” Navarro said.

    “People of America, I want you to understand that this is the problem we have right here – this kind of divide in our country between the woke Marxist left and everybody else here. And this is nuts,” he added.

    Navarro joined the Trump White House to advise on trade and became a well-known face of the Trump administration, while earning a reputation for sparring behind the scenes with his White House colleagues.

    He played a prominent role in the administration’s Covid-19 response as well. He led some of the efforts to speed up the deployment of medical supplies and also was a defender of fringe Trump views about the virus, including the former president’s advocacy of the controversial drug hydroxychloroquine.

    Navarro was still working at the White House in the period after the 2020 election and lost a pre-trial fight to argue to the jury that Trump asserted an executive privilege that shielded him from the subpoena, and he and his attorneys have signaled that, if convicted, he will raise that and other legal issues on appeal.

    “So today’s ‘Judgment Day,’” Navarro told reporters as he walked into the courthouse Thursday.

    “I have been stripped, stripped of virtually every defense by the court and yet there is some defense left and the reality here is the government has not proved his case,” he said. “Please understand that the Biden-weaponized Department of Justice is the biggest law firm in the world. That’s what I’m fighting against.”

    The trial itself moved forward this week with notable speed and simplicity. It took less than a day for the jury to hear all the evidence in the case.

    Prosecutors put just three witnesses on the stand, all former staff members of the House January 6 committee. The Justice Department used their testimony to make the case that the committee had good reason to subpoena Navarro and that he was informed repeatedly of its demands.

    In her closing argument, prosecutor Aloi told the jury that Navarro “had knowledge about a plan to delay the activities of Congress on January 6.”

    “The defendant was more than happy to share that knowledge” in television interviews and in other public remarks, Aloi said, “except to the congressional committee that could do something about” preventing a future attack.

    Woodward sought to paint the mention about the attack on the Capitol and the disruption of the peaceful transfer of power as a distraction.

    “This case is not about what happened on January 6,” Woodward said in his closing argument.

    Navarro’s defense team engaged in only brief cross examination, questioning just one of the government’s witnesses. His lawyers were focused on the element of the charge that requires a showing that Navarro was willful and deliberate in his decision not to comply with the subpoena – meaning that his lack of compliance was not the result of an inadvertent mistake or accident.

    The defense did not put on any witnesses of their own, having abandoned a plan to call an FBI agent who worked on the Justice Department probe into Navarro for questioning on the lack of DOJ investigating into Navarro’s whereabouts on the day his committee deposition was scheduled.

    Navarro’s service as a Trump White House aide has generated continuing legal troubles for the former trade adviser – troubles that go beyond the criminal case.

    The Justice Department brought a civil lawsuit against him to obtain government records from Navarro’s personal email account that were withheld from the National Archives upon his departure from government. He has appealed the ruling against him in that case.

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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  • Appeals court says Biden admin likely violated First Amendment but narrows order blocking officials from communicating with social media companies | CNN Politics

    Appeals court says Biden admin likely violated First Amendment but narrows order blocking officials from communicating with social media companies | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A federal appeals court on Friday said the Biden administration likely violated the First Amendment in some of its communications with social media companies, but also narrowed a lower court judge’s order on the matter.

    The US 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that certain administration officials – namely in the White House, the surgeon general, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation – likely “coerced or significantly encouraged social media platforms to moderate content” in violation of the First Amendment in its efforts to combat Covid-19 disinformation.

    But the three-judge panel said the preliminary injunction issued by US District Judge Terry Doughty in July, which ordered some Biden administration agencies and top officials not to communicate with social media companies about certain content, was “both vague and broader than necessary to remedy the Plaintiffs’ injuries, as shown at this preliminary juncture.”

    The Biden administration had previously argued in the lawsuit brought by Republican attorneys general claiming unconstitutional censorship that channels with social media companies must stay open so that the federal government can help protect the public from threats to election security, Covid-19 misinformation and other dangers.

    In briefs submitted earlier this summer, the administration wrote, “There is a categorical, well-settled distinction between persuasion and coercion,” adding that Doughty had “equated legitimate efforts at persuasion with illicit efforts to coerce.”

    The 5th Circuit left in place part of the injunction that barred certain Biden administration officials from “threatening, pressuring, or coercing social-media companies in any manner to remove, delete, suppress, or reduce posted content of postings containing protected free speech.”

    “But,” the appeals court said, “those terms could also capture otherwise legal speech. So, the injunction’s language must be further tailored to exclusively target illegal conduct and provide the officials with additional guidance or instruction on what behavior is prohibited.”

    The appeals court reversed several aspects of Doughty’s sweeping order, concluding that those pieces of it risked blocking the federal government “from engaging in legal conduct.”

    The 5th circuit left the order, which had been temporarily blocked earlier in the summer, on pause for 10 days so that the case can be appealed to the Supreme Court.

    The opinion was handed down jointly by Circuit Judges Edith Clement, Jennifer Walker Elrod and Don Willett – all appointees of Republican presidents.

    The conservative appeals court sided with many of the arguments put forward by the plaintiffs, which included private individuals as well Missouri and Louisiana, but also narrowed the injunction’s scope so that it only applied to the White House, the surgeon general, the CDC and the FBI. Doughty had included other agencies in his July order.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • Federal appeals court extends limits on Biden administration communications with social media companies to top US cybersecurity agency | CNN Business

    Federal appeals court extends limits on Biden administration communications with social media companies to top US cybersecurity agency | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    A federal appeals court has expanded the scope of a ruling that limits the Biden administration’s communications with social media companies, saying it now also applies to a top US cybersecurity agency.

    The ruling last month from the conservative 5th Circuit US Court of Appeals severely limits the ability of the White House, the surgeon general, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the FBI to communicate with social media companies about content related to Covid-19 and elections that the government views as misinformation.

    The preliminary injunction had been on pause and a recent procedural snafu over a request from the plaintiffs in the case to broaden its scope led the court on Tuesday to withdraw its earlier opinion and issue a new one that now includes the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. That agency is charged with protecting non-military networks from hacking and other homeland security threats.

    Similar to the ruling last month, in which the appeals court said the federal government had “likely violated the First Amendment” when it leaned on platforms to moderate some content, the new ruling says CISA violates the Constitution.

    “CISA used its frequent interactions with social media platforms to push them to adopt more restrictive policies on censoring election-related speech,” the three-judge panel wrote.

    “The platforms’ censorship decisions were made under policies that CISA has pressured them into adopting and based on CISA’s determination of the veracity of the flagged information,” they continued. “Thus, CISA likely significantly encouraged the platforms’ content-moderation decisions and thereby violated the First Amendment.”

    The plaintiffs in the suit, which include Missouri and Louisiana’s attorneys general, as well as several individual plaintiffs, had also asked the court to expand the scope in other ways, including by making it apply to some State Department officials. But the court’s new ruling was only modified to add CISA as an enjoined entity.

    The judges said they were pausing their new injunction for 10 days, and the Biden administration has the option of asking the Supreme Court to issue a more lasting pause on the modified ruling.

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  • Alabama death row inmate cannot be executed due to intellectual disability, appeals court rules | CNN

    Alabama death row inmate cannot be executed due to intellectual disability, appeals court rules | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    An appeals court has ruled the state of Alabama cannot execute man with an intellectual disability who was sentenced to death for murdering a man in 1997, upholding a lower court’s decision.

    The US Eleventh Court of Appeals’ decision on Friday means that 53-year-old Joseph Clifton Smith cannot be executed unless the decision is overturned by the US Supreme Court.

    In a statement released after the appeals court decision, Amanda Priest, communications director for Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, said, “Smith’s IQ scores have consistently placed his IQ above that of someone who is intellectually disabled. The Attorney General thinks his death sentence was both just and constitutional.”

    “The Attorney General disagrees with the Eleventh Circuit’s ruling, and will seek review from the United States Supreme Court,” the statement concluded

    In 2021, a US District Court judge ruled that due to his intellectual disability, Smith could not “constitutionally be executed,” and vacated his death sentence.

    The judge referenced the district court’s finding that Smith’s “intellectual and adaptive functioning issues clearly arose before he was 18 years of age,” according to the 2021 appeals court ruling, which agreed with the lower court.

    Smith confessed to murdering Durk Van Dam, whose body was found “in an isolated area near his pick-up truck” in Mobile County in southwest Alabama, according to the court’s Friday ruling. Smith “offered two conflicting versions of the crime,” the ruling says – first admitting he watched Van Dam’s murder and then saying he participated but didn’t intend to kill the man.

    The case went to trial and the jury found Smith guilty, the order states. During his sentencing proceedings, Smith’s mother and sister testified that his father was “an abusive alcoholic,” according to the ruling.

    Smith had struggled in school since as early as the first grade, the order says, which led to his teacher labeling him as an “underachiever” before he underwent an “intellectual evaluation,” which gave him an IQ score of 75, the court said. When he was in fourth grade, Smith was tested again and placed in a learning-disability class – at the same time as his parents were going through a divorce, the court said.

    “After that placement, Smith developed an unpredictable temper and often fought with classmates. His behavior became so troublesome that his school placed him in an ‘emotionally conflicted classroom,’” the ruling states.

    Smith then failed the seventh and eighth grades before dropping out of school entirely, the ruling says, and he then spent “much of the next fifteen years in prison” for burglary and receiving stolen property.

    One of the witnesses in Smith’s evidentiary hearing held by the district court to determine whether he has an intellectual disability was Dr. Daniel Reschly, a certified school psychologist, the ruling says.

    The court ultimately determined that Smith “has significant deficits in social/interpersonal skills, self-direction, independent home living, and functional academics,” the ruling says.

    In its conclusion, the appeals court wrote: “We hold that the district court did not clearly err in finding that Smith is intellectually disabled and, as a result, that his sentence violates the Eighth Amendment. Accordingly, we affirm the district court’s judgment vacating Smith’s death sentence.”

    “This case is an example of why process is so important in habeas cases and why we should not rush to enforce death sentences—the only form of punishment that can’t be undone,” the office of Smith’s federal public defender said in a statement after the appeals court decision.

    “Originally, this same District Court denied Mr. Smith the opportunity to be heard, and it was an Eleventh Circuit decision that allowed a hearing that created this avenue for relief,” the statement said.

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  • Supreme Court clears way for Texas death row inmate Rodney Reed to try to use DNA to prove innocence | CNN Politics

    Supreme Court clears way for Texas death row inmate Rodney Reed to try to use DNA to prove innocence | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The Supreme Court cleared the way on Wednesday for Texas death row inmate Rodney Reed to seek post-conviction DNA evidence to try to prove his innocence.

    Reed claims an all-White jury wrongly convicted him of killing of Stacey Stites, a 19-year-old White woman, in Texas in 1998.

    Texas had argued that he had waited too long to bring his challenge to the state’s DNA procedures in federal court, but the Supreme Court disagreed. Now, he can go to a federal court to make his claim.

    The ruling was 6-3. Justice Brett Kavanaugh delivered the opinion of the court and was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

    Since Reed’s conviction, Texas courts had rejected his various appeals. Celebrities such as Kim Kardashian and Rihanna have expressed support, signing a petition asking the state to halt his eventual execution.

    The case puts a new focus on the testing of DNA crime-scene evidence and when an inmate can make a claim to access the technology in a plea of innocence. To date, 375 people in the United States have been exonerated by DNA testing, including 21 who served time on death row, according to the Innocence Project, a group that represents Reed and other clients seeking post-conviction DNA testing to prove their innocence.

    Kavanaugh, in his opinion Wednesday, said that the court agreed to hear the case because federal appeals courts have disagreed about when inmates can make such claims without running afoul of the statute of limitations. Kavanaugh said Reed could make the claim after the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ultimately denied his request for rehearing, rejecting an earlier date set out by the appeals court.

    “Significant systemic benefits ensue from starting the statute of limitations clock when the state litigation in DNA testing cases like Reed’s has concluded,” Kavanaugh said.

    He noted that if any problems with a defendant’s right to due process “lurk in the DNA testing law” the case can proceed through the appellate process, which could ultimately render a federal lawsuit unnecessary.

    Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch dissented.

    Alito, joined by Gorsuch in his dissent, said Reed should have acted more quickly to bring his appeal. “Instead,” Alito wrote, “he waited until an execution date was set.”

    Alito charged Reed with making the “basic mistake of missing a statute of limitations.”

    Reed has been on death row for the murder of Stites.

    A passerby found Stites’ body near a shirt and a torn piece of belt. Investigators targeted Reed because his sperm was found inside her. Reed acknowledged the two were having an affair, but says that her fiancé, a local police officer named Jimmy Fennell, was the last to see her alive.

    Reed claims that over the last two decades he has discovered a “considerable body of evidence” demonstrating his innocence. Reed claims that the DNA testing would point to Fennell as the murder suspect. Fennell was later jailed for sexually assaulting a woman in his custody and Reed claims that numerous witnesses said he had threatened to strangle Stites with a belt if he ever caught her cheating on him. Reed seeks to test the belt found at the scene that was used to strangle Stites.

    The Texas law at issue allows a convicted person to obtain post-conviction DNA testing of biological material if the court finds that certain conditions are met. Reed was denied. He came to the Supreme Court in 2018 and was denied again. Now he is challenging the constitutionality of the Texas law arguing that the denial of the DNA testing violates his due process rights. 

    But the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals held that he waited too long to bring the claim. “An injury accrues when a plaintiff first becomes aware, or should have become aware, that his right had been violated.” The court said that he became aware of that in 2014 and that his current claim is “time barred.” 

    Reed’s lawyers argued that he could only bring the claim once the state appeals court had ruled, at the end of state court litigation. In court, Parker Rider-Longmaid said that the “clock doesn’t start ticking” until state court proceedings come to an end. He said Texas’ reading of the law would mean that other procedures in the appellate process are “irrelevant.”

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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  • Supreme Court seems sympathetic to postal worker who didn’t work Sundays in dispute over religious accommodations | CNN Politics

    Supreme Court seems sympathetic to postal worker who didn’t work Sundays in dispute over religious accommodations | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The Supreme Court seemed to side with a former mail carrier, an evangelical Christian, who says the US Postal Service failed to accommodate his request to not work on Sundays.

    A lower court had ruled against the worker, Gerald Groff, holding that his request would cause an “undue burden” on the USPS and lead to low morale at the workplace when other employees had to pick up his shifts.

    But during oral arguments on Tuesday, there appeared to be consensus, after almost two hours of oral arguments, that the appeals court had been too quick to rule against Groff.

    There seemed to be, as Justice Elena Kagan put it, some level of “kumbaya-ing” between the justices on the bench at times.

    But as justices sought to land on a test that lower courts could use to clarify how far employers must go to accommodate their employees’ religious beliefs, differences arose when a lawyer for Groff suggested that the court overturn decades-old precedent. Conservative Justice Samuel Alito seemed open to the prospect.

    Critically, however, Justice Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh were sympathetic to arguments made by the Postal Service that granting Groff’s request might cause morale to plummet among the other employees. Kavanaugh noted that “morale” among employers is critical to the success of any business. And several justices nodded to the financial difficulties the USPS has faced over the years.

    Groff, who lives in Pennsylvania, served in 2012 as a rural carrier associate at the United States Postal Service, a position that provides coverage for absent career employees who have earned the ability to take off weekends. Rural carrier associates are told they need flexibility.

    In 2013, Groff’s life changed when the USPS contracted with Amazon to deliver packages on Sundays. Groff’s Christian religious beliefs bar him from working on Sundays.

    The post office contemplated some accommodations to Groff such as offering to adjust his schedule so he could come to work after religious services, or telling him he should see if other workers could pick up his shifts. At some point, the postmaster himself did the deliveries because it was difficult to find employees willing to work on Sunday. Finally, the USPS suggested Groff choose a different day to observe the Sabbath.

    The atmosphere with his co-workers was tense and Groff said he faced progressive discipline. In response, he filed complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which is charged with enforcing federal laws that make it illegal to discriminate against an employee because of religion.

    Groff ultimately left in 2019. In a resignation letter, he said he had been unable to find an “accommodating employment atmosphere with the USPS that would honor his religious beliefs.”

    Groff sued arguing that the USPS violated Title VII – a federal law that makes it unlawful to discriminate against an employee based on his religion. To make a claim under the law, an employee must show that he holds a sincere religious belief that conflicts with a job requirement, he must inform his employer and has to have been disciplined for failing to comply.

    Under the law, the burden then shifts to the employer. The employer must show that they made a good faith effort to “reasonably accommodate” the employee’s belief or demonstrate that such an accommodation would cause an “undue hardship” upon the employer.

    District Judge Jeffrey Schmehl, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, ruled against Groff, holding that that his request to not work on Sundays would cause an “undue hardship” for the USPS.

    The 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the ruling in a 2-1 opinion.

    “Exempting Groff from working on Sundays caused more than a de minimis cost on USPS because it actually imposed on his coworkers, disrupted the workplace and workflow, and diminished employee morale,” the 3rd Circuit wrote in its opinion last year.

    “The accommodation Groff sought (exemption from Sunday work)” the court added, “would cause an undue hardship on USPS.”

    A dissenting judge, Thomas Hardiman, offered a road map for justices seeking to rule in favor of Groff. The main thrust of his dissent was that the law requires the USPS to show how the proposed accommodation would harm “business” – not Groff’s coworkers.

    “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stayed Gerald Groff from the completion of his appointed rounds,” wrote Hardiman, a George W. Bush nominee who was on a shortlist for the Supreme Court nomination that went to Justice Neil Gorsuch in 2017. “But his sincerely held religious belief precluded him from working on Sundays.”

    Groff’s lawyer, Aaron Streett, told the high court that the USPS could have done more and was wrong to claim that “respecting Groff’s belief was too onerous.” He urged the justices to cut back or invalidate precedent and allow an accommodation that would allow the worker to “serve both his employer and his God.”

    “Sunday’s a day where we get together and almost taste heaven,” Groff told The New York Times recently. “We come together as believers. We celebrate who we are, together. We worship God. And so to be asked to deliver Amazon parcels and give all that up, it’s just really kind of sad.”

    The Biden administration has urged the high court to simply clarify the law to make clear that an employer is not required to accommodate an employee’s Sabbath observance by “operating shorthanded or regularly paying overtime to secure replacement workers.”

    Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar acknowledged, however, that employer could still be required to bear other costs such as administrative expenses associated with rearranging schedules.

    This story has been updated with additional details.

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  • Tokyo High Court acquits three former Tepco executives over 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident: NHK | CNN

    Tokyo High Court acquits three former Tepco executives over 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident: NHK | CNN

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    Tokyo
    CNN
     — 

    The Tokyo High Court on Wednesday acquitted three former Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) executives, finding them not guilty of manslaughter over the 2011 triple reactor meltdown at its Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, Japan’s public broadcaster NHK reported Wednesday.

    The High Court’s ruling was a decision on an appeal against a 2019 judgment by the Tokyo district court that found former Tepco chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata and former executive vice presidents Ichiro Takekuro and Sakae Muto were not guilty of professional negligence on the grounds they could not have foreseen the tsunami that wrecked the plant.

    On March 11, 2011, an earthquake off Japan’s northeastern coast triggered the tsunami that flooded the plant’s reactors, causing the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl and forcing hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes.

    The High Court case focused on whether the tsunami could have been predicted and whether the accident at the nuclear plant could have been prevented.

    The criminal case against the executives follows a civil case in which a Tokyo court in July 2022 ordered the three men – along with Tepco’s former President Masataka Shimizuto – to pay 13 trillion yen ($95 billion) in damages to the operator of the wrecked plant.

    That ruling, which came after shareholders filed a lawsuit in 2012, was the first to find former Tepco executives legally responsible for the nuclear plant disaster.

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  • Biden struggles to confirm judges in the South and thwart Trump’s impact | CNN Politics

    Biden struggles to confirm judges in the South and thwart Trump’s impact | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden and Senate Democrats have moved quickly to appoint scores of judges during the past two years, outpacing former President Donald Trump, but they have stalled in the South.

    The dearth of nominees offered in southern states, notably where both US senators are Republican, threatens to undercut Biden’s large-scale effort to counteract Trump’s effect on the federal judiciary, particularly to bolster civil rights and ensure voter protections.

    The Biden team’s well-documented diversification of the courts – nominees have been overwhelmingly women and people of color, such as Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, and offered professional diversity, including public defenders and civil rights lawyers – has withered when it comes to district courts in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana and Texas, where more than a dozen such court vacancies exist.

    “That is where the entrenchment of hyper-conservatism is real and difficult to uproot,” said Janai Nelson, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

    The pattern of vacancies, particularly in the South, is not lost on the Biden selection team, led by political veterans with deep experience in judicial selection and confirmation. (Biden, himself, as a senator from Delaware, once led the Senate Judiciary Committee.)

    “All of these seats are deeply important to us. We care about all of these vacancies,” Paige Herwig, senior counsel to the President, told CNN. “It’s not a secret that a large number of vacancies are in states with two Republican senators. But we are always here in good faith. We are here to work with home state senators.”

    Many states beyond the South with two GOP senators, such as Idaho, Oklahoma and Utah, lack nominees for court vacancies, but the South is disproportionately affected because of its sheer population and number of open seats. The South also endures as a battleground for intense litigation over civil rights and liberties.

    Federal judges are appointed for life and can become a president’s most enduring legacy. Judges’ effect on American life is clear, from the top at the Supreme Court, down to district court judges who decide which litigants even get to trial.

    District courts are “the gateway to access to justice,” Nelson said.

    District court judges have also shown their muscle in recent years by blocking executive branch policy with nationwide injunctions. Biden’s early initiatives, notably over immigration and student-debt relief, were first thwarted in lower courts by Republican-appointed judges.

    During Biden’s first two years, the White House and Senate Democrats plainly prioritized judicial vacancies in blue states, where they could make swift and immediate progress.

    Overall, Biden won confirmations for 97 appointments to the US district courts, appellate bench and Supreme Court over the past two years.

    For the comparable two-year period, Trump, who set out to transform the federal courts the help of White House counsel Don McGahn and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, had named 85 judges. They scouted out likeminded conservative ideologues and then accelerated appointments in the following years by openly encouraging judges to retire to generate more vacancies.

    U.S. Supreme Court says Trump-era border policy to remain in effect while legal challenges play out


    10:08

    – Source:
    CNN

    Like other progressive leaders, Nelson praises the Biden focus on a more diverse bench. Yet she said the White House could step up the pace of nominations and the Senate can move faster on the nominees it has received.

    “Nancy Abudu is an excellent example of someone whose nomination has been stalled,” Nelson said. Abudu, a litigation director at the Southern Poverty Law Center, would, if confirmed, be the first Black woman on the US appeals court for the 11th Circuit, covering Alabama, Georgia and Florida. She was designated for an open Georgia seat and endorsed by the state’s two senators, both of whom are Democrats.

    The Senate Judiciary Committee, which had been evenly split between Democrats and Republicans last year, deadlocked in May on Abudu’s nomination, and she had been awaiting a procedural vote by the full Senate that then would have allowed an up-or-down vote on confirmation. Biden has renominated her for the new Congress.

    The question now is whether the White House will be able to ramp up negotiations with red-state senators and whether the Senate Judiciary Committee, led by Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, will ease the practice of requiring district court nominees to have the backing of home-state senators.

    By the terms of the Constitution, a president seeks the “advice and consent” of the Senate judicial appointments. Senators traditionally have influenced the selection of nominations to district and appellate courts in their home states, even to the point of blocking a disfavored candidate. In recent years, however, presidents have been able to wield more latitude for appeals court nominations.

    The Judiciary Committee, however, will not hold a hearing on a district court nomination unless both home-state senators have signed off, in what’s referred to as the “blue slip” process. These blue slips of paper, as they are relayed to the committee, are intended to signify that a home-state senator has been consulted in the president’s choice. For Biden’s judicial selections, that process poses significant roadblocks.

    Herwig, overseeing the judicial selection machinery, stresses that Biden is trying to generate consensus and says appointments for a Louisiana-based seat on the US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit (Judge Dana Douglas) and Indiana-based seat on the 7th Circuit (Judge Doris Pryor), which arose from some dealings with GOP senators, “demonstrate that there are possibilities to work together.” The Senate confirmed Douglas and Pryor, both former US magistrate judges, in December.

    A second seat on the powerful 5th Circuit appellate court, covering Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, is open with no nominee. Judge Gregg Costa, based in Texas, had announced about a year ago that he would be resigning in August 2022.

    While a good portion of the open seats can be chalked up to Democratic and Republican differences, another notable appellate vacancy – for a Maryland seat on the US Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit – rests in Democratic hands.

    Judge Diana Gribbon Motz, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton, announced her retirement more than a year ago, and made it effective in September 2022. But Biden and Sen. Ben Cardin, Maryland’s senior senator, have been at odds over a successor, and the White House apparently does not want to more forward without Cardin’s backing. Herwig would not comment on that vacancy, and a Cardin spokeswoman said the senator was awaiting word from the White House on his suggested nominees.

    In the meantime, the 4th Circuit, resolving appeals from Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia district courts, remains closely divided with seven Democratic and six Republican appointees.

    Biden’s team signaled from the start its priority for the judiciary, and White House chief of staff Ron Klain, a former Supreme Court law clerk, has been fixated on filling the bench. Klain worked with then-Sen. Biden on the Judiciary Committee and separately helped evaluate judicial candidates in the Clinton and Obama administrations.

    Herwig is a product of the Senate, too, previously serving two Democratic senators who sit on the Judiciary Committee, Dianne Feinstein and Amy Klobuchar.

    In the South, however, where voting rights and immigration disputes rage, change has been slow. Going forward, as Democrats gained one more seat in the November midterm elections toward their Senate majority, southern states are likely to become a critical arena for an administration determined to reshape the bench.

    The Administrative Office of the US Courts reports that as of January 6, there were 82 vacancies on federal district and appellate courts. Biden has designated nominees for only about half of those vacancies. (There are a total 677 authorized judgeships at the trial-level US district courts, 179 on the US courts of appeals and nine on the Supreme Court.)

    The South has a disproportionate share of those vacancies without nominations.

    Of all 50 states, Florida and Louisiana have the most openings with no nominees pending, 4 apiece. Texas has three vacancies with no nominees pending, and Alabama two (one dating to mid-2020) with no nominees offered.

    It is plain, given the number of vacancies and how long some have existed, that it will not be easy to fill them. And it is unclear whether the Democratic White House and Republican senators are truly talking to each other, or actually talking past each other.

    Press secretaries for Texas Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, both members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, deeply invested in the ideology of the bench, and regularly opposing Biden appointees, said the senators were working with the administration on judges.

    In Louisiana, the communications director to Sen. John Kennedy, another member of the Judiciary Committee, said Kennedy’s office had no information to provide on possible appointments in Louisiana.

    Ryann DuRant, press secretary to Alabama Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville, said the White House reached out to Tuberville soon after he became a senator in 2021 to address the courts, but that since then, “there has been radio silence from the White House.”

    “When the White House is ready to move forward on Alabama judicial nominees,” DuRant added in a statement, “Senator Tuberville welcomes the opportunity to discuss as a part of his role to provide advice and consent.”

    McKinley Lewis, communications director for Florida Sen. Rick Scott, said the senator welcomed “an open, good faith dialogue with the White House to ensure any nominees to serve on Florida’s federal courts will respect the limited role of the judiciary and will not legislate from the bench.”

    Herwig declined to detail any conservations yet stressed that there was no senator with whom her team would not work.

    It’s unclear whether the Senate Judiciary Committee will feel increased pressure, from its Democratic ranks or from outside liberal interests, to amend the “blue slip” process.

    Trump’s total appointments in four years reached 231, a figure that might be hard for Biden to match, if stalemates continue in Republican-dominated locales.

    There are at least another 20 vacancies expected in 2023, based on information gathered by the Administrative Office of the US Courts. About a third of those are in southern locales.

    At some point, judges weighing retirement, and equally concerned about whether Biden could successfully tap a replacement, may simply opt against stepping down during his remaining presidency.

    In the Trump years, his GOP allies openly encouraged judges thinking about retirement to just do it. It was a sign of how vigorously Republican leaders wanted to shape the courts.

    Speaking specifically of Supreme Court justices, former Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley said in a 2018 radio interview, “If you’re thinking about quitting this year, do it yesterday.”

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  • Federal appeals court pauses Texas social media law’s enforcement amid looming Supreme Court petition | CNN Business

    Federal appeals court pauses Texas social media law’s enforcement amid looming Supreme Court petition | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN Business
     — 

    A federal appeals court has agreed to suspend enforcement of Texas’ social media law restricting content moderation, in the face of a looming request by tech industry groups for the Supreme Court to review the case.

    In an order on Wednesday, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals granted a stay of its earlier mandate that had paved the way for the Texas law, known as HB 20, to take effect.

    HB 20 aims to expose social media platforms including Meta, YouTube and Twitter to new private lawsuits, as well as suits by the state’s attorney general, over the companies’ decisions to remove or reduce the visibility of user content they deem objectionable.

    The law is viewed as a challenge to decades of First Amendment precedent, which holds the government may not compel private entities to host speech.

    In a filing leading up to Wednesday’s order, the technology groups challenging the Texas law said they planned to ask for the Supreme Court to rule on HB 20, and that Texas did not oppose the motion for a stay.

    The Supreme Court has already indicated it is open to regulating social media platforms, agreeing this month to hear two cases that could indirectly narrow the scope of the tech industry’s all-important liability shield, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

    Some justices, including conservatives Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, have explicitly cited the role and power of social media platforms as reasons the Court should step in.

    Last month, Florida’s attorney general called on the Supreme Court to review a social media law in that state that is similar to Texas’ legislation. The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals had earlier blocked Florida’s law, saying it was likely unconstitutional.

    That finding created a split with the Fifth Circuit’s decision to uphold Texas’ law, making it even more likely for the Supreme Court to take up the matter.

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  • Supreme Court to take critical eye to Andy Warhol’s silkscreens of Prince | CNN Politics

    Supreme Court to take critical eye to Andy Warhol’s silkscreens of Prince | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The Supreme Court will consider Wednesday whether the late Andy Warhol infringed on a photographer’s copyright when he created a series of silkscreens of the musician Prince.

    The case marks a rare foray for the court into the world of visual arts and has attracted the attention of those in the art world who say an appeals court decision against Warhol calls into question the legitimacy of generations of artists who have drawn inspiration from preexisting works.

    Museums, galleries, collectors, and experts have also weighed in asking the justices to balance copyright law with the First Amendment in a way that will protect artistic freedom.

    Central to the case is the so called “fair use” doctrine in copyright law that permits the unlicensed use of copyright-protected works in certain circumstances.

    In the case at hand, a district court ruled in favor of Warhol, basing its decision on the fact that the two works in question had a different meaning and message. But an appeals court reversed – ruling that a new meaning or message is not enough to qualify for fair use.

    Now the Supreme Court must come up with the proper test.

    “Fair Use protects the First Amendment rights of both speakers and listeners by ensuring that those whose speech involves dialogue with preexisting copyrighted works are not prevented from sharing that speech with the world,” a group of art law professors who support the Andy Warhol Foundation told the justices in court papers.

    Lawyers for the Warhol Foundation contend that the artist created the “Prince Series” – a set of portraits that transformed a preexisting photograph of the musician Prince– in order to comment on “celebrity and consumerism.”

    They said that in 1984, after Prince became a superstar, Vanity Fair commissioned Warhol to create an image of Prince for an article called “Purple Fame.”

    At the time, Vanity Fair licensed a black and white photo that had been taken by Lynn Goldsmith in 1981 when Prince was not well known. Goldsmith’s picture was to be used by Warhol as an artist reference.

    Goldsmith – who specializes in celebrity portraits and earns money on licensing – had taken the picture initially while on assignment for Newsweek. Her photos of Mick Jagger, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan and Bob Marley are all a part of the court’s record.

    Vanity Fair published the illustration based on her photo – once as a full page and once as a quarter page – accompanied by an attribution to her. She was unaware that Warhol was the artist for whom her work would serve as a reference, but she was paid a $400 licensing fee. The license stated “no other usage rights granted.”

    Unbeknownst to Goldsmith, Warhol went on to create 15 additional works based on her photograph. At some point after Warhol’s death in 1987, the Warhol Foundation acquired title to and copyright of the so-called “Prince Series.”

    Fans pay tribute to Prince

    In 2016, after Prince died, Conde Nast, Vanity Fair’s parent company, published a tribute using one of Warhol’s Prince Series works on the cover. Goldsmith was not given any credit or attribution for the image. And she received no payment.

    Upon learning about the series, Goldsmith recognized her work and contacted the Warhol Foundation advising it of copyright infringement. She registered her photo with the US Copyright Office.

    The Warhol Foundation – believing that Goldsmith would sue – sought a “declaration of noninfringement” from the courts. Goldsmith countersued with a claim of copyright infringement.

    A district court ruled in favor of the Warhol Foundation, concluding that the use of the photograph with no permission and no fee constituted fair use.

    Warhol’s work was “transformative,” the court said, because it communicated a different message from Goldsmith’s original work. It held that the Prince Series can “reasonably be perceived to have transformed Prince from a vulnerable, uncomfortable person to an iconic, larger-than-life figure.”

    The 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals however, reversed and said that the use of the pictures did not necessarily fall under fair use.

    The appeals court said the district court was wrong to assume the “role of art critic” and base its test for fair use on the meaning of the artistic work. Instead, the court should have looked at the degree of visual similarity between the two works.

    Under that standard, the court said, the Prince Series was not transformative, but instead “substantially similar” to the Goldsmith photograph and therefore not protected by fair use.

    It based its ruling on the fact that a secondary work, even if it adds “new expression” to a source material, can be excluded from fair use. The appeals court said the secondary work’s use of the original source material has to have a “fundamentally different and new” artistic purpose and character “such that the secondary work stands apart from the raw material used to create it.” The court emphasized that the primary work does not have to be barely recognizable within the secondary work, but that at a minimum it must ” comprise something more than the imposition of another artist’s style on the primary work.”

    The court said that the “overarching purpose and function” of the Goldsmith photo and the Warhol prints is identical because they are “portraits of the same person.”

    “Critically, the Prince Series retains the essential elements of the Goldsmith Photograph without significantly adding to or altering those elements, ” the court concluded.

    In appealing the case on behalf of the Warhol Foundation, lawyer Roman Martinez argued that the appeals court had gone badly wrong by forbidding courts from considering the meaning of the work as a part of a fair use analysis.

    He warned the court that if it were to embrace the reasoning of the appeals court, it would upend settled copyright principles and chill creativity and expression “at the heart of the First Amendment.”

    According to Martinez, copyright law is designed to foster innovation and sometimes builds on the achievements of others.

    Martinez stressed that the fair use doctrine – “which dates back at least to the 19th century” – reflects the recognition that a rigid application of the copyright statute would “stifle the very creativity which that laws was designed to foster.”

    He noted that Warhol’s works are currently found in collections across the world, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Smithsonian collection and the Tate Modern in London. From 2004 through 2014 Warhol auction sales exceeded $3 billion.

    Martinez said Warhol made substantial changes by cropping Goldsmith’s image, resizing it, altering the angle of Prince’s face while changing tones, lighting and detail.

    “While Goldsmith portrayed Prince as a vulnerable human, Warhol made significant alterations that erased the humanity from the image, as a way of commenting on society’s conception of celebrities as products, not people,” Martinez argued and added, “the Prince series is thus transformative.”

    Lisa Blatt, a lawyer for Goldsmith, told the justices a very different story.

    “To all creators, the 1976 Copyright Act enshrines a longstanding promise: Create innovative works, and copyright law guarantees your right to control if, when and how your works are viewed, distributed, reproduced or adapted,” she wrote.

    She said that creators and multibillion-dollar licensing industries “rely on that premise.”

    She said that the Andy Warhol Foundation should have paid Goldsmith’s copyright fees. Blatt argued that Warhol’s work was almost identical to Goldsmith’s own.

    “Fame is not a ticket to trample other artists’ copyrights,” she said.

    The Biden administration is supporting Goldsmith in the case.

    Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar noted, for example, that book-to-film adaptations often introduce new meanings or messages, “but that has never been viewed as an independently sufficient justification for unauthorized copying.” She said that Goldsmith’s ability to license her photograph and earn fees has been “undermined” by the Warhol Foundation.

    The Art Institute of Chicago and other museums told the court that the appeals court decision has caused uncertainty not only for the work of arts themselves but the market for copies of works the museum creates through catalogues, documentaries and websites.

    Smokey Robinson on Prince: ‘He was a genius’

    Lawyers for the museums also noted that the lower court opinion “failed to consider” longstanding artistic traditions of using elements of pre-existing works in new works and asked the Supreme Court to revisit the appeals court ruling.

    In the Baroque era, for example, Giovanni Panini painted modern Rome (pictured in court papers) depicting a gallery showing famous art. Included are copies of preexisting works including Michelangelo’s Moses, Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s statutes of Constantine, David, Apollo and Daphne and his fountains of Piazza Navona. Contemporary artists also continue to leverage preexisting artwork, the museums argued. The street artist Banksy, for example, painted a piece, “Girl with a Pierced Eardrum” onto a building in Bristol. It was in reference to Johannes Vermeer’s masterpiece, “Girl with a Pearl Earring” from 1665.

    “All of these works would not be considered transformative under the Second’s circuit’s” approach, the museums argued.

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  • Federal appeals court tosses state antitrust suit seeking to break up Meta | CNN Business

    Federal appeals court tosses state antitrust suit seeking to break up Meta | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    A group of states that sued to break up Facebook-parent Meta in 2020 were years too late to file their challenge and failed to make a persuasive case that the company’s data policies harmed competition, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday in a sweeping victory for the tech giant.

    In siding with Meta, the decision by a three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit upheld a lower-court decision tossing out the suit initially filed by New York and dozens of other states.

    The decision is a blow to regulators who have cited Meta as a prime example of the way tech giants have allegedly abused their dominance. And it casts a shadow over a parallel antitrust case against Meta that was brought by the Federal Trade Commission at around the same time.

    The states’ original complaint had sought to unwind Meta’s past acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp, accusing the company of a “buy-or-bury” approach that violated antitrust laws.

    In 2021, a federal judge dismissed the complaint, saying that the lawsuit came long after the acquisitions had been completed in 2012 and 2014. Thursday’s appellate decision agreed.

    “An injunction breaking up Facebook, ordering it to divest itself of Instagram and WhatsApp under court supervision, would have severe consequences, consequences that would not have existed if the States had timely brought their suit and prevailed,” wrote Senior Circuit Judge Raymond Randolph.

    In addition, Randolph wrote, state allegations claiming that Meta’s — then Facebook’s — policies placing restrictions on app developers were anticompetitive didn’t hold up.

    The policies in question, Randolph wrote, simply told app developers they could not use Facebook’s platform “to duplicate Facebook’s core products,” and did not rise to the level of an antitrust violation under federal law.

    Although the states argued that Facebook’s policies at the time — which have since been removed — discouraged innovation by the company’s rivals, the complaint failed to establish how widely the policies affected Facebook’s third-party developers.

    “The States thus have not adequately alleged that this policy substantially foreclosed Facebook’s competitors, giving us an additional reason to reject their exclusive dealing theory,” the court held.

    A spokesperson for New York Attorney General Letitia James didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

    In a statement, Meta said the state’s case reflected a mischaracterization of “the vibrant competitive ecosystem in which we operate.”

    “In affirming the dismissal of this case, the court noted that this enforcement action was ‘odd’ because we compete in an industry that is experiencing ‘rapid growth and innovation with no end in sight,’ Meta said. “Moving forward, Meta will defend itself vigorously against the FTC’s distortion of antitrust laws and attacks on an American success story that are contrary to the interests of people and businesses who value our services.”

    In spite of Thursday’s decision, Meta must still face a similar lawsuit by the FTC, which also seeks to break up the company in connection with its Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions.

    Last year, the same federal judge who dismissed the state suit, James Boasberg, allowed the federal suit to proceed. Boasberg had tossed out the FTC suit as well in 2021, saying the agency had failed to make an initial showing that Meta holds a monopoly in personal social networking. But he permitted the FTC to re-file its complaint with changes.

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  • Federal appeals court upholds Justice Department’s use of key obstruction law in January 6 cases | CNN Politics

    Federal appeals court upholds Justice Department’s use of key obstruction law in January 6 cases | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    The federal appeals court in Washington, DC, has upheld the Justice Department’s use of a key criminal charge against hundreds of January 6 rioters, saying they can be charged with obstructing Congress.

    The appeals court said obstruction can include a “wide range of conduct” when a defendant has a corrupt intent and is targeting an official proceeding, such as the congressional certification of the presidential election on January 6, 2021.

    The major ruling affects more than 300 criminal cases brought in the wake of the Capitol riot. The Justice Department has used the charge – obstructing on official proceeding – as the cornerstone of many of the more serious Capitol riot cases, where defendants were outspoken about their desire to stop Congress’ certification of President Joe Biden’s Electoral College win or were instrumental in the physical breach of the Capitol building.

    In the cases that prompted the appeal, the defendants had allegedly assaulted law enforcement at the Capitol, which overwhelmed the protection around members of Congress in the building and caused the Electoral College certification to stop for hours.

    The statute makes it a felony to alter, destroy or mutilate a record, document or other object with the intent of making it unavailable in an official proceeding, or to “otherwise” obstruct, influence, or impede any official proceeding.

    The ruling has been hotly anticipated in the January 6 investigation, and a loss for the Justice Department would have imperiled hundreds of cases against individual rioters.

    But the three judges on the panel weren’t united in their interpretation of the law, with each writing separately about how the obstruction statute should be interpreted.

    “The broad interpretation of the statute – encompassing all forms of obstructive acts – is unambiguous and natural,” Judge Florence Pan of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit wrote Friday in the 2-1 majority opinion.

    The holding from Pan also lays out how prosecutors may use the obstruction charge, which carries a 20-year maximum prison sentence, when weighing defendants’ actions on January 6.

    The circuit court’s opinion – which is now binding precedent in DC federal courts, unless additional appeals change the ruling – could potentially be used against future defendants in January 6-related cases, including ones being looked at by special counsel Jack Smith’s office, which is investigating former President Donald Trump and his allies.

    Yet their opinions on Friday left unsettled a key question on how the Justice Department could use the charge against others with potentially less clear corrupt actions.

    Pan’s majority opinion didn’t decide how the courts should define corrupt action taken by rioters – potentially putting limits around how the Justice Department could use the charge in the future.

    Pan and Walker split on whether the definition of “corruptly” would mean that prosecutors would have to prove a defendants’ actions were to benefit themselves or others people, if they charge obstruction related to January 6.

    That question could arise again in future appeals, and the judges weren’t clear which interpretation may be the controlling law now in DC.

    “Because the task of defining ‘corruptly’ is not before us and I am satisfied that the government has alleged conduct by appellees sufficient to meet that element, I leave the exact contours of ‘corrupt’ intent for another day,” Pan wrote. She noted that the rioter cases that prompted the appeal left no room for disputing corrupt intent, seeing as the defendants were alleged to have assaulted police.

    In his concurring opinion, Circuit Court Judge Justin Walker took a narrower approach to the obstruction law, finding that it requires a defendant to act “with an intent to procure an unlawful benefit either for himself or for some other person.”

    Even so, Walker found that the obstruction law that the DOJ has charged rioters with applies in this case.

    “True, the Defendants were allegedly trying to secure the presidency for Donald Trump, not for themselves or their close associates,” Walker wrote. “But the beneficiary of an unlawful benefit need not be the defendant or his friends. Few would doubt that a defendant could be convicted of corruptly bribing a presidential elector if he paid the elector to cast a vote in favor of a preferred candidate – even if the defendant had never met the candidate and was not associated with him.”

    DC Circuit Judge Greg Katsas disagreed with his colleagues in the 2-1 decision. Katsas sided with a lower-court judge, who had thrown out obstruction charges against some January 6 rioters because the actions during the insurrection didn’t deal specifically with the mutilation of documents or evidence in an official proceeding.

    Katsas argued that his colleagues’ interpretation of the obstruction law was too broad and would allow for aggressive criminal prosecutions any time a protester knew they may be breaking the law. He contended that the law requires that a defendant was trying to “seek an unlawful financial, professional, or exculpatory advantage” while the January 6 cases in question involve “the much more diffuse, intangible benefit of having a preferred candidate remain President.”

    Walker, however, wrote in his opinion that that law applied even under Katsas’ reading.

    “The dissenting opinion says a defendant can act ‘corruptly’ only if the benefit he intends to procure is a ‘financial, professional, or exculpatory advantage.’ I am not so sure,” Walker wrote. “Besides, this case may involve a professional benefit. The Defendants’ conduct may have been an attempt to help Donald Trump unlawfully secure a professional advantage – the presidency.”

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • Elizabeth Holmes must report to prison this month while waiting out her appeal, judge rules | CNN Business

    Elizabeth Holmes must report to prison this month while waiting out her appeal, judge rules | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    A judge on Monday denied Elizabeth Holmes’ request to remain free while she appeals her conviction, setting the stage for the disgraced Theranos founder to report to prison later this month.

    In his order, Judge Edward Davila of the Northern District of California said Holmes does not pose a danger to the community or a flight risk, but he cast doubt on her appeal. Even if Homes won her appeal, he said, it is unlikely to result in a reversal, or an order for a new trial, for all of the counts on which she was found guilty.

    Davila previously ordered Holmes to turn herself into custody on April 27, 2023.

    Holmes was sentenced to more than 11 years in prison last November, after she was convicted months earlier on multiple charges of defrauding investors while running the failed blood testing startup Theranos. Attorneys for Holmes did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment on the ruling.

    Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, Holmes’ ex-boyfriend and the former chief operating officer at Theranos, was also found guilty on multiple counts of fraud in a separate trial. He was sentenced to nearly 13 years in prison last December. Balwani’s request to remain out of prison during his appeal was also denied, and he has been ordered by Davila to surrender to prison on April 20.

    Once valued at $9 billion, Theranos attracted top investors and retail partners with claims that it had developed technology to test for a wide range of conditions using just a few drops of blood. The company began to unravel after a Wall Street Journal investigation in 2015 reported that Theranos had only ever performed roughly a dozen of the hundreds of tests it offered using its proprietary technology, and with questionable accuracy.

    Holmes’ trial was initially delayed multiple times, due to the onset of the coronavirus pandemic and then because of her pregnancy. Following her sentencing in November, Holmes sought to delay the start of her prison term after giving birth to her second child.

    While Davila denied Holmes represented a flight risk, he also addressed the fact that she had previously booked a one-way ticket to Mexico in January 2022.

    “Booking international travel plans for a criminal defendant in anticipation of a complete defense victory is a bold move, and the failure to promptly cancel those plans after a guilty verdict is a perilously careless oversight,” Davila wrote in the court filing.

    Holmes’ attorneys had previously claimed that Holmes had hoped the verdict would be different when booking the travel plans and that she wanted to make this trip to attend the wedding of friends in Mexico. Davila wrote in court documents that the court accepts Holmes’ “representation that the oneway flight ticket—while ill-advised—was not an attempt to flee the country.”

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  • Appeals court can rule at any time in dispute over suspending FDA approval of medication abortion drug | CNN Politics

    Appeals court can rule at any time in dispute over suspending FDA approval of medication abortion drug | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The Justice Department and a manufacturer of abortion pills have submitted the final round of court briefs in the emergency dispute over whether an appeals court should freeze a judge’s ruling that would suspend the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of medication abortion drugs.

    Now that the filings have been submitted, the US 5th Circuit Court of Appeals Court could rule at any time on whether to put a hold on the order from US District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk.

    Kacsmaryk on Friday night said he was halting the FDA’s approval of the drug mifepristone but that he was delaying the order by seven days to give the pill’s defenders time to appeal the case. The Justice Department has asked the appeals court to act by 12 p.m. CT Thursday on its request that Kacsmaryk’s ruling be paused, to give the government time to seek a Supreme Court intervention if need be. The 5th Circuit is not obligated to meet that deadline.

    The Justice Department wrote in its new filing that Kacsmaryk purported “to be acting in a restrained manner … but there is nothing modest about upending the decades-long status quo by blocking access nationwide to a safe and effective drug.”

    “Effectively requiring Danco Laboratories and GenBioPro to cease distribution of mifepristone after more than two decades would upend the status quo, severely harming women, healthcare systems, and the public,” the Justice Department said, referring to the two US manufacturers of mifepristone.

    The Justice Department filing pushed back on the assertions by the challengers, made in their filing overnight in the emergency dispute, that the 5th Circuit did not have the authority to hear the appeal of Kacsmaryk’s ruling. The Justice Department also called out Kacsmaryk and the challengers for relying on anonymous blog posts to claim mifepristone is unsafe.

    Danco Labroratories, which intervened in the case to defend mifepristone’s approval, wrote in its new filing with the appeals court that if the ruling is not frozen, “women across the nation will face serious, unnecessary health risks from the elimination of access to a drug FDA has repeatedly deemed safe and effective and that is the standard of care.”

    In an overnight filing, the anti-abortion doctors who sued to ban medication abortion drugs told a federal appeals court that it should leave in place the ruling that will halt the drug’s FDA approval.

    The anti-abortion doctors defended Kacsmaryk’s ruling called it a “meticulously considered” ruling that “paints an alarming picture of decades-long agency lawlessness – all to the detriment of the women and girls FDA is charged to protect.”

    Mifepristone has been approved by the FDA for terminating pregnancies for nearly 23 years. Leading medical associations have rebuked the claims by the approval’s legal challengers and by the judge that the drug is unsafe.

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