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Supreme Court allows Ohio, other state voter purges
U.S. Court News |
2018/06/12 00:15
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The Supreme Court ruled Monday that states can clean up their voting rolls by targeting people who haven't cast ballots in a while.
The justices rejected, by a 5-4 vote Monday, arguments in a case from Ohio that the practice violates a federal law intended to increase the ranks of registered voters. A handful of other states also use voters' inactivity to trigger a process that could lead to their removal from the voting rolls.
Justice Samuel Alito said for the court that Ohio is complying with the 1993 National Voter Registration Act. He was joined by his four conservative colleagues. The four liberal justices dissented.
Partisan fights over ballot access are being fought across the country. Democrats have accused Republicans of trying to suppress votes from minorities and poorer people who tend to vote for Democrats. Republicans have argued that they are trying to promote ballot integrity and prevent voter fraud.
Under Ohio rules, registered voters who fail to vote in a two-year period are targeted for eventual removal from registration rolls, even if they haven't moved and remain eligible. The state said it only uses the disputed process after first comparing its voter lists with a U.S. postal service list of people who have reported a change of address. But not everyone who moves notifies the post office, the state said.
So the state asks people who haven't voted in two years to confirm their eligibility. If they do, or if they show up to vote over the next four years, voters remain registered. If they do nothing, their names eventually fall off the list of registered voters.
"Combined with the two years of nonvoting before notice is sent, that makes a total of six years of nonvoting before removal," Alito wrote.
Justice Stephen Breyer, writing in dissent, said the 1993 law prohibits removing someone from the voting rolls "by reason of the person's failure to vote. In my view, Ohio's program does just that."
In a separate dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said Congress enacted the voter registration law "against the backdrop of substantial efforts by states to disenfranchise low-income and minority voters." The court's decision essentially endorses "the very purging that Congress expressly sought to protect against," Sotomayor wrote.
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Supreme Court won't get involved in Wrigley Field dispute
U.S. Court News |
2018/06/11 00:15
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The Supreme Court is leaving in place a court decision dismissing a lawsuit filed against the Chicago Cubs by the owners of rooftop clubs adjacent to Wrigley Field.
Skybox on Sheffield and Lakeview Baseball Club sued the Cubs in 2015, arguing in part that a right-field video board the team was adding would block their views of the ballpark and violate terms of a 2004 revenue-sharing agreement.
A federal judge dismissed the case. Judge Virginia Kendall said the board was allowed because the agreement allowed "any expansion of Wrigley Field approved by governmental authorities."
A three-judge panel of the 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in September upheld the decision to dismiss the case. The Supreme Court declined Monday to hear the case, leaving the lower court decisions in place.
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Swedish court: Ghana international to be jailed, deported
U.S. Court News |
2018/06/08 16:43
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A Swedish court has sentenced a Ghana international to 32 months in prison after Kingsley Sarfo was found guilty of two cases of rape of an under-aged girl.
The Malmo District Court says the 23-year old Sarfo, a midfielder with top Swedish club Malmo FF, had sexual intercourse with a 14-year-old girl in an apartment and in a public toilet.
The court on Friday also ordered Sarfo to pay 150,000 kronor ($17,260) in compensation to the girl, adding he should be deported after jail and banned from returning to Sweden for a 10-year period.
Safro has said his contract with Malmo FF, which he joined in 2016, would be terminated if found guilty. The club said it would comment after next week's board meeting. |
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Man run down, 50 years after killing girl in hit-and-run
U.S. Court News |
2018/06/01 16:45
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A Vietnam War veteran who confessed five years ago to killing a 4-year-old girl in a 1968 hit-and-run was trying to protect children when a woman drove her car onto a baseball field in Maine during a game, striking and killing him.
Screaming bystanders and ballplayers fled as Carol Sharrow, of Sanford, Maine, drove through an open gate onto the field Friday night, police said. Video shows the car driving around the infield, turning over home plate and then heading toward the stands behind third base.
Douglas Parkhurst, of West Newfield, was near the park's main gate before he was hit and Sharrow sped away, police said. Parkhurst died on the way to the hospital and no one else was hurt.
"It was awful," said Sanford resident, Karyn Bean, who said she saw Parkhurst being struck. "A car driving through the gate hitting a man who was pushing kids out of the way, then her driving up the road easily doing 50 to 60 miles per hour past us.
"It felt awful because we couldn't do anything."
Sharrow was scheduled to appear in court later Monday to face a manslaughter charge. She was to have an attorney appointed to represent her then.
Sharrow has two previous drunken driving convictions in Maine and New Hampshire, according to Sanford police Det. Sgt. Matthew Jones. Authorities have declined to say whether alcohol was involved on Friday.
Parkhurst was never charged in the hit-and-run death that killed Carolee Ashby on Halloween night in 1968. The statute of limitations had long run out when Parkhurst walked into a police station in 2013 and confessed after two interviews with investigators.
In his four-page confession obtained by the Syracuse Post-Standard during its reporting about the case, Parkhurst said he and his brother had been drinking before he hit the girl. He said his brother was passed out in the back seat. |
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