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Judge blocks parts of Trump’s overhaul of US elections
Law Firm News |
2025/04/25 07:49
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A judge on Thursday blocked the Trump administration from immediately enacting certain changes to how federal elections are run, including adding a proof-of-citizenship requirement to the federal voter registration form.
The decision is a setback for President Donald Trump, who has argued the requirement is needed to restore public confidence in elections. But the judge allowed other parts of Trump’s sweeping executive order on U.S. elections to go forward for now, including a directive to tighten mail ballot deadlines around the country.
Trump’s March executive order overhauling how U.S. elections are run prompted swift lawsuits from the League of United Latin American Citizens, the League of Women Voters Education Fund, the Democratic National Committee and others, who called it unconstitutional.
U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in Washington sided with voting rights groups and Democrats, saying that the Constitution gives the power to regulate federal elections to states and Congress — not the president. She noted federal lawmakers are currently working on their own legislation to require proof of citizenship to vote.
In a 120-page decision on Thursday, she said the plaintiffs had proven that the proof-of-citizenship requirement would cause their clients irreparable harm and go against the public interest, while the government had offered “almost no defense of the President’s order on the merits.”
Accordingly, she granted a preliminary injunction to stop the citizenship requirement from moving forward while the lawsuit plays out.
The judge also blocked part of the Republican president’s order requiring public assistance enrollees to have their citizenship assessed before getting access to the federal voter registration form.
But she denied other requests from a group of Democratic plaintiffs, including refusing to block Trump’s order to require all mailed ballots to be received by Election Day nationwide. She also did not touch Trump’s order to open certain databases to billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to allow it to review state voter lists to search for noncitizens. The judge said those arguments brought by Democrats were either premature or should be brought by states instead.
The plaintiffs had argued Trump’s proof-of-citizenship requirement violated the Constitution’s so-called Elections Clause, which gives states and Congress the authority to determine how elections are run.
They also argued that Trump’s order asserts power that he does not have over an independent agency. That agency, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, sets voluntary voting system guidelines and maintains the federal voter registration form. |
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Man accused of stalking Caitlin Clark proclaims himself ‘guilty as charged’
Law Firm News |
2025/01/21 18:00
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One day after Michael Thomas Lewis was charged with felony stalking of Indiana Fever star and WNBA rookie of the year Caitlin Clark, the 55-year-old Texas man shouted “guilty as charged” as soon as he sat down in a courtroom Tuesday.
Lewis is accused of repeated and continued harassment of the 22-year-old Clark beginning on Dec. 16, the Marion County prosecutor’s office wrote in a court filing.
WISH-TV of Indianapolis reported that Lewis behaved “very erratically” in his first court appearance and, at times, appeared to be laughing and joking while noting he had not been taking his medication while jailed or while living out of his car.
Prosecutors said they were seeking a higher than standard bond because Lewis traveled from his home in Texas to Indianapolis “with the intent to be in close proximity to the victim.” Lewis was ordered held on a $50,000 bond, and if the bond is posted, he will be required to wear an ankle monitor and remain in Indiana.
The court also filed a not guilty plea on Lewis’ behalf, and Judge Angela Davis suggested Lewis “remain silent” in jail and only speak with his attorney.
Lewis received a no-contact order and the stay-away order sought by prosecutors that bars him from being within 500 feet of either of the two arenas where the Fever play their home games.
His pretrial hearing will be held remotely on March 31.
In one post on X, Lewis said he had been repeatedly been driving by Gainbridge Fieldhouse, the Indiana Pacers’ home arena where the Fever also play. In another, he said he had “one foot on a banana peel and the other on a stalking charge.” Other messages directed at Clark were sexually explicit.
The social media posts “actually caused Caitlin Clark to feel terrorized, frightened, intimidated, or threatened” and an implicit or explicit threat also was made “with the intent to place Caitlin Clark in reasonable fear of sexual battery,” prosecutors wrote in the Marion County Superior Court filing.
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A court in Argentina orders the arrest of Venezuela’s president
Law Firm News |
2024/09/24 06:41
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A federal court in Argentina on Monday ordered the “immediate” arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello for alleged crimes against humanity committed against dissidents.
The court order came in response to an appeal by Argentine prosecutor Carlos Stornelli after a previous ruling dismissed the complaint against both Venezuelan leaders.
Federal court members Pablo Bertuzzi, Leopoldo Bruglia and Mariano Llorens ordered that “the arrest warrants for Nicolás Maduro and Diosdado Cabello be executed immediately, and that their international arrest should be ordered via Interpol for the purposes of extradition to the Argentine Republic,” according to the resolution.
The order comes hours after Venezuela’s Supreme Court issued an arrest warrant for Argentina’s President Javier Milei amid a controversy between the two countries over the detention in Argentine territory — and delivery to the United States — of a cargo plane that Washington says was sold by a sanctioned Iranian airline to a Venezuelan state-owned company.
The tit-for-tat heightens the tensions between Venezuela and Argentina that have been brewing since far-right Milei assumed power in December and that has led to a breakdown in diplomatic relations.
The case against Maduro and his right-hand man was brought before the Argentine courts by the Argentine Forum for Democracy in the Region, FADER, in early 2023, taking into account Argentina’s jurisprudence on human rights and the principle of universal jurisdiction that allows action to be taken against crimes against humanity, even if they have been committed outside its borders.
According to the plaintiffs, a systematic plan of repression, forced disappearance of persons, torture, homicides and persecution against dissidents has been in place in Venezuela since 2014. |
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Supreme Court rebuffs plea to restore multibllliou-dollar student debt plan
Law Firm News |
2024/08/31 13:44
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The Supreme Court on Wednesday kept on hold the latest multibillion-dollar plan from the Biden administration that would have lowered payments for millions of borrowers, while lawsuits make their way through lower courts.
The justices rejected an administration request to put most of it back into effect. It was blocked by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
In an unsigned order, the court said it expects the appeals court to issue a fuller decision on the plan “with appropriate dispatch.”
The Education Department is seeking to provide a faster path to loan cancellation, and reduce monthly income-based repayments from 10% to 5% of a borrower’s discretionary income. The plan also wouldn’t require borrowers to make payments if they earn less than 225% of the federal poverty line — $32,800 a year for a single person.
Last year, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority rejected an earlier plan that would have wiped away more than $400 billion in student loan debt.
Cost estimates of the new SAVE plan vary. The Republican-led states challenging the plan peg the cost at $475 billion over 10 years. The administration cites a Congressional Budget Office estimate of $276 billion.
Two separate legal challenges to the SAVE plan have been making their way through federal courts. In June, judges in Kansas and Missouri issued separate rulings that blocked much of the administration’s plan. Debt that already had been forgiven under the plan was unaffected.
The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling that allowed the department to proceed with a provision allowing for lower monthly payments. Republican-led states had asked the high court to undo that ruling.
But after the 8th Circuit blocked the entire plan, the states had no need for the Supreme Court to intervene, the justices noted in a separate order issued Wednesday.
The Justice Department had suggested the Supreme Court could take up the legal fight over the new plan now, as it did with the earlier debt forgiveness plan. But the justices declined to do so.
“This is a recipe for chaos across the student loan system,” said Mike Pierce, executive director of the Student Borrower Protection Center, an advocacy group.
“No court has decided on the merits here, but despite all of that borrowers are left in this limbo state where their rights don’t exist for them,” Pierce said.
Eight million people were already enrolled in the SAVE program when it was paused by the lower court, and more than 10 million more people are looking for ways to afford monthly payments, he said.
Sheng Li, litigation counsel with the New Civil Liberties Alliance, a legal group funded by conservative donors, applauded the order. “There was no basis to lift the injunction because the Department of Education’s newest loan-cancellation program is just as unlawful as the one the Court struck down a year ago,” he said in a statement. |
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