Decisions and Verdicts

Subterms

    More stories

    • 88 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Supreme Court Curbs Scope of Environmental Reviews

      by

      The question for the justices was whether an agency had complied with a federal law by issuing a 3,600-page report on the impact of a proposed railway in Utah.The Supreme Court unanimously ruled on Thursday that a federal agency had done enough to consider the environmental impact of a proposed 88-mile railway in Utah. The ruling limits the scope of environmental reviews required by federal law in all sorts of settings.The proposed railway would connect oil fields in the Uinta Basin in northeast Utah to a national rail network that runs next to the Colorado River and then to refineries on the Gulf Coast.“An agency may weigh environmental consequences as the agency reasonably sees fit,” Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh wrote for five justices. The court’s three liberal members agreed with the decision’s bottom line but on narrower grounds. Justice Neil M. Gorsuch was recused.The Surface Transportation Board, a federal agency that regulates rail transportation, approved the Utah project in 2021 after conducting a review that yielded a 3,600-page report. Environmental groups and a Colorado county sued, saying the report had not taken account of some ways in which the railway could do harm to the environment.The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled for the challengers.The environmental impact statements required by a 1970 federal law, the National Environmental Policy Act, can be quite elaborate. Paul D. Clement, a lawyer representing seven Utah counties that support the project, told the justices when the case was argued in December that the law was “the single most litigated environmental statute.”He added that the board had acted responsibly.“It consulted with dozens of agencies, considered every proximate effect and ordered 91 mitigation measures,” he said, referring to measures intended to, among other things, dampen noise pollution and protect wildlife. “Eighty-eight miles of track should not require more than 3,600 pages of environmental analysis.”William M. Jay, a lawyer for the challengers, said at the argument that the report did not consider all the reasonably foreseeable results of the project, like oil spills and sparks that can cause wildfires, as required by the federal law.The case, Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, Colo., No. 23-975, was argued before an eight-member court after Justice Gorsuch recused himself, apparently over concerns that his ties to Philip F. Anschutz gave rise to a conflict of interest. Neither Mr. Anschutz, a billionaire and Republican donor, nor his companies are parties to the case, and the letter announcing Justice Gorsuch’s recusal gave no reasons.But the proposed railway could benefit companies in which Mr. Anschutz has an interest. Justice Gorsuch represented Mr. Anschutz and his companies as a lawyer, benefited from his support when he was being considered for a seat on an appeals court and once served as a keynote speaker at an annual party at his ranch. More

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Judge Blocks Shutdown of Biden-Era Migrant Entry Programs

      by

      The sweeping order applied to hundreds of thousands of people legally in the country through programs put in place for Ukrainians, Afghans and others.A federal judge on Wednesday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from pulling legal protections from hundreds of thousands of people who entered the United States through Biden-era programs, ordering the government to restart processing applications for migrants who are renewing their status.In a sweeping order that extended to Ukrainians and Afghans, as well as military members and their relatives, the judge, Indira Talwani of Federal District Court in Massachusetts, wrote that the Trump administration’s categorical termination of legal pathways for those groups was probably unlawful and had the potential to sow discord across the country.The decision is a major victory for civil and immigrant rights groups that had sued to stop the administration amid a wider campaign by President Trump to strip legal status from a variety of groups living, working and studying in the country on a temporary basis.Judge Talwani wrote that the overarching campaign to strip the protections from those who had already been granted them represented a major escalation by the Trump administration that would cause chaos once the programs were wound down.In April, she had issued a similar order that applied more narrowly to hundreds of thousands of Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans with temporary legal status through another program. The government is seeking a reversal of that decision before the Supreme Court.“This court emphasizes, as it did in its prior order, that it is not in the public interest to manufacture a circumstance in which hundreds of thousands of individuals will, over the course of several months, become unlawfully present in the country, such that these individuals cannot legally work in their communities or provide for themselves and their families,” Judge Talwani wrote. “Nor is it in the public interest for individuals who enlisted and are currently serving in the United States military to face family separation, particularly where some of these individuals joined the military in part to help their loved ones obtain lawful status.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares109 Views

      in Elections

      Four Former VW Managers Found Guilty in Emissions Trial

      by

      The men were accused of conspiring to conceal excess diesel emissions from regulators, helping to provoke a costly scandal.Four former Volkswagen executives were found guilty of fraud charges Monday for their role in an emissions-cheating scandal that shook the auto industry a decade ago and hastened a shift from fossil fuels to battery-powered cars.The four executives held high-ranking positions at the carmaker and were responsible for engine technology. A panel of judges in Braunschweig, Germany, a city near Volkswagen’s headquarters in Wolfsburg, reached the verdict after a trial lasting more than three years. The reading of the sentences lasted almost four hours.Two of the managers received multiyear prison sentences, and two received suspended sentences. Jens Hadler, who oversaw diesel engine development, received the longest prison sentence, at four and a half years. Another ex-manager who worked in engine electronics, Hanno Jelden, received two years and seven months. The two men given suspended sentences were Heinz-Jakob Neusser, who was responsible for components development and was sentenced to one year and three months, and a man identified as Thorsten D., an emissions specialist who received one year and 10 months.The chairman of the panel of judges, Christian Schütz, said that the ex-managers were found guilty of “particularly serious” fraud, referring to them at one point as a “gang.” According to Mr. Schütz, Mr. Hadler knew about the test results of the manipulated software since at least September 2007. Emails between managers suggested that these results were only intended to be known by a small group within the company.The verdict can be appealed within one week, and Philipp Gehrmann, who represents Mr. Jelden, told reporters that he believed the verdict was “wrong,” mainly because his client was cooperative.Volkswagen has admitted that some of its engineers installed software in diesel-powered vehicles that allowed the cars to recognize when they were being tested for emissions. If so, the cars increased their emission controls to be compliant with air-quality regulations. At other times, the cars were more polluting than long-haul trucks. The cars were not capable of consistently adhering to emissions rules.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 188 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Texas Doctor Who Filed $118 Million in Fraudulent Medical Claims Gets 10 Years in Prison

      by

      Jorge Zamora-Quezada falsely diagnosed patients with a chronic disease and subjected them to unnecessary treatments to help fund his lavish lifestyle, officials said.For nearly 20 years, a Texas doctor falsely diagnosed patients as having a chronic disease, administered unnecessary, toxic treatments and filed more than $118 million in fraudulent health insurance claims to fund his lavish lifestyle, which included a private jet, luxury cars and high-end properties, prosecutors said.The doctor, Jorge Zamora-Quezada, 68, of Mission, Texas, was sentenced to 10 years in prison this week, according to the Justice Department.From 2000 to 2018, he falsely diagnosed patients with rheumatoid arthritis and administered dangerous, medically unnecessary treatments to defraud federal and private health insurance companies, the Justice Department said.Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic disease that causes a person’s immune system to attack healthy tissue. Some of Mr. Zamora-Quezada’s patients were as young as 13, the Justice Department said.Mr. Zamora-Quezada’s medical license was canceled in 2021, according to Texas Medical Board records.His scheme funded what prosecutors described in court documents as his “lavish and opulent lifestyle,” with properties across the United States and Mexico, as well as a private jet and a Maserati that he used to travel between his offices in the Rio Grande Valley and San Antonio.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      Why Is This Supreme Court Handing Trump More and More Power?

      by

      Since taking his second oath of office, President Trump has been on a firing spree. In violation of numerous laws or longstanding presidential practice (or both), he has ordered the removal of many high-level officials who normally retain their positions regardless of who is in the Oval Office.Some of these high-level officials have successfully challenged their removal in the lower courts. But on Thursday, in a case involving members of the National Labor Relations and Merit Systems Protection Boards, the Supreme Court quietly blessed some or all of these firings. In doing so, the court effectively allowed the president to neutralize some of the last remaining sites of independent expertise and authority inside the executive branch.The court sought to cast its intervention as temporary, procedural and grounded in considerations of stability, with the unsigned order noting concerns about the “disruptive effect of the repeated removal and reinstatement of officers during the pendency of this litigation.”In truth, the decision was radical. Whatever one thinks about the underlying question of presidential authority, the court should not have disposed of the case this way. It effectively overruled an important and nearly century-old precedent central to the structure of the federal government without full briefing or argument. And it did so in a thinly reasoned, unsigned, two-page order handing the president underspecified but considerable new authority.Over the last four months, the legal world — and the country — has been plunged into chaos, and the Supreme Court bears a heavy dose of responsibility. Many of it decisions involving the presidency — including last year’s on presidential immunity — have enabled the president to declare himself above the law. The court’s latest order both enables the consolidation of additional power in the presidency and risks assimilating a “move fast and break things” ethos into constitutional law.No modern president has ever come close to the large-scale personnel purges that we have seen under Mr. Trump, and for good reason: Many of the officials in question are protected by law from being fired at will by the president. Mr. Trump maintains that laws limiting the president’s ability to fire high-level officials are unconstitutional. In making that argument, he is drawing on a series of recent Supreme Court opinions emphasizing the importance of presidential control over subordinate officials and invalidating removal limitations at agencies like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      U.S. Fights to Keep Mahmoud Khalil From Holding His Month-Old Child

      by

      A judge ordered the Trump administration to let Mr. Khalil meet with his wife and infant son before a hearing on his immigration case. It was unclear whether they would be separated by plexiglass.On Wednesday evening, hours before the latest immigration hearing in the case of Mahmoud Khalil, the Trump administration was in the midst of pitched battle to prevent Mr. Khalil from holding his 1-month-old son.Lawyers for Mr. Khalil, a Columbia University graduate who was a leading figure in pro-Palestinian protests on the campus, have been fighting for days to win him what is known as a “contact visit” with his wife and child. Mr. Khalil, who is being detained in Louisiana, has not seen his wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, in person since he was arrested in March, and has never met their son, Deen, who was born on April 21.On Wednesday, a New Jersey judge, Michael E. Farbiarz, ordered the administration to allow Mr. Khalil to hold a single joint meeting with his wife and his lawyers. But it was unclear whether the judge’s order would permit Mr. Khalil to meet his son, given Trump officials’ reluctance to allow such a visit.“Granting Khalil this relief of family visitation would effectively grant him a privilege that no other detainee receives,” Justice Department officials wrote in a court filing on Wednesday. “Allowing Dr. Abdalla and a newborn to attend a legal meeting would turn a legal visitation into a family one.”Their filing also included an affidavit from Brian Acuna, the acting director of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in New Orleans.“Because the facility does not house female detainees or minors, it is unsafe to allow Mr. Khalil’s wife and newborn child into a secured part of the facility,” Mr. Acuna wrote, adding that a contact visit had “never been offered to any other detainee.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares109 Views

      in Elections

      Chris Brown Released on $6 Million Bail by London Court

      by

      The R&B singer was charged last week with grievous bodily harm over a 2023 incident in England. His release from custody means he can proceed with a world tour.Chris Brown, the R&B singer, has been freed from custody by a London judge as he awaits a court case over accusations of an assault in a nightclub.Mr. Brown, 36, was arrested last week at a hotel in Manchester, England, and charged with grievous bodily harm.The singer is accused of attacking a music producer with a tequila bottle at Tape London, a nightclub in the Mayfair district, on Feb. 19, 2023.Lawyers representing Mr. Brown applied for him to be bailed at a hearing at Southwark Crown Court in South London on Wednesday, and London’s Metropolitan Police said the application had been granted.The judge’s decision means that Mr. Brown will be able to perform on an international tour that is scheduled to begin in Amsterdam on June 8. He is then set to visit European countries including Germany, Britain, Ireland, France and Portugal before traveling to the United States.The BBC reported that the judge, Tony Baumgartner, imposed a series of conditions on Mr. Brown, including that he must surrender his passport when not on tour and stay away from Tape London.Mr. Brown’s representatives agreed to pay into the court a security fee of five million pounds ($6.7 million), which can be forfeited if any of the conditions are breached.He has not yet been asked to enter a plea in the case, and British law bans the reporting of any details that could prejudice a jury at a future trial.Omololu Akinlolu, 38, an American rapper who performs under the name HoodyBaby, was charged with grievous bodily harm two days after Mr. Brown, in relation to the same incident.Mr. Brown and Mr. Akinlolu are scheduled to appear at a hearing at Southwark Crown Court on June 20. More

    • 163 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      My Father Was a Nazi Hunter. Then He Died in the Lockerbie Bombing.

      by

      On an early summer day in 1986 in a federal building in Newark, my father, Michael Bernstein, sat across a conference table from an elderly man named Stefan Leili. Then a young prosecutor at the Department of Justice, my father spent the previous day and a half deposing Leili, who emigrated to the United States from Germany three decades earlier. While applying for an entry visa, the U.S. government claimed, Leili concealed his service in the Totenkopfverbände — the infamous Death’s Head units of the SS, which ran the Nazi concentration and extermination camps. In 1981, the Supreme Court ruled that such an omission was sufficient grounds for denaturalization and deportation. If my father could prove that Leili lied, the United States could strip him of his citizenship and kick him out of the country.Listen to this article, read by Robert PetkoffIn an earlier interview, Leili repeatedly denied guarding prisoners at Mauthausen, one of a cluster of work camps in Austria, notorious for a stone quarry where slave laborers spent 11-hour days hauling slabs of granite up a steep rock staircase. But my father and a colleague sensed that this time around, the weight of hundreds of detailed queries might finally be causing Leili to buckle. Leili had begun to concede, bit by grudging bit, that he was more involved than he first said. My father had been waiting for such a moment, because he had a piece of evidence he was holding back. Now he decided that it was finally time to use it.Leili sat next to his college-age granddaughter and a German interpreter. Earlier in the deposition, the young woman said her grandfather was a sweet man, who couldn’t possibly have done anything wrong. Indeed, it would have been hard to look at this unremarkable 77-year-old — bald, with a sagging paunch — and perceive a villain.Certainly, the story Leili first told my father was far from villainous. Born in a small town in 1909 in Austria-Hungary, present-day Romania, Leili was an ethnic German peasant, who like millions of others had been tossed from place to place by the forces convulsing Europe. In 1944, Leili said, the Red Army was advancing toward his village. He had to choose whether to join the Hungarian Army or, like many ethnic Germans from his region, the SS. The Schutzstaffel promised better pay and German citizenship, plus money for his family if he was killed. And besides, if he hadn’t gone along with what the SS wanted, Leili said, he would “have been put against the wall and shot.”Leili told my father he spent much of his time in the SS pretending to be ill so he wouldn’t have to serve. Then he guarded some prisoners working in a Daimler munitions factory. These were soldiers, not civilians. They had friendly relations, he told my father. They worked short days. They were well fed, even “plump.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More