Suits and Litigation (Civil)

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      Democratic Attorneys General Sue Over Gutting of Education Department

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      A coalition of 21 Democratic attorneys general sued the Trump administration on Thursday, two days after the Education Department fired more than 1,300 workers, purging people who administer grants and track student achievement across America.The group, led by New York’s Letitia James, sued the administration in a Massachusetts federal court, saying that the dismissals were “illegal and unconstitutional.”“Firing half of the Department of Education’s work force will hurt students throughout New York and the nation, especially low-income students and those with disabilities who rely on federal funding,” Ms. James said in a news release. “This outrageous effort to leave students behind and deprive them of a quality education is reckless and illegal.”The cuts to the department’s staff will cause a delay in “nearly every aspect” of the K-12 education in their states, the attorneys general said in their suit. Therefore, the coalition is seeking a court order to stop what it called “policies to dismantle” the agency, arguing that the layoffs are just a first step toward its destruction.“All of President Trump’s executive actions are lawful, constitutional and intended to deliver on the promises he made to the American people,” a White House spokesman, Harrison Fields, said. “Partisan elected officials and judicial activists who seek to legally obstruct President Trump’s agenda are defying the will of 77 million Americans who overwhelmingly re-elected President Trump, and their efforts will fail.”Linda McMahon, the education secretary, has said that the layoffs will help the department deliver services more efficiently and that the changes will not affect student loans, like Pell Grants, or funding for special-needs students.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

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      Bumble Bee Foods Is Accused of Tolerating Forced Labor in Supply Chain

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      In a lawsuit filed in California, the plaintiffs said that Bumble Bee Foods was aware of and benefited from abuse by suppliers. The company declined to comment.On a ship that caught tuna for American consumers, fishermen said they were fed so little that they resorted to eating the bait. On another, a worker said he was beaten repeatedly by the captain, sometimes with a metal hook. On a third, a man who experienced severe burns in a kitchen accident said he was denied medical care and survived only by treating himself with Vaseline.All three boats offloaded their catch to other vessels, remaining at sea for months. For those who wanted to leave, there was little hope.These accusations are central to a new lawsuit filed by four Indonesian fishermen. They say they want to right a wrong that, according to them, was tolerated by one of America’s oldest tuna brands, Bumble Bee Foods.They are suing the company in federal court in California, accusing it of being aware of and benefiting from forced labor on ships operated by its suppliers. Bumble Bee, which is based in San Diego, said it would not comment on pending litigation.“I want justice,” Muhammad Syafi’i, one of the plaintiffs, said in a Zoom interview from his home in the Indonesian city of Yogyakarta. “For myself, for my fate. And for my friends who are still out there.”In 2021, he was employed as a cook on a boat that caught tuna that was sold to Bumble Bee (but also had to help with the fishing). He was forced to fork over nearly half of his $320 monthly salary for months. That July, he was severely burned when hot oil from his wok spilled onto the lower half of his body. He said the captain refused to get him medical care for months. Eventually, he was allowed to return home.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

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      Jury Awards $120 Million to Illinois Men Wrongfully Convicted of Murder

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      John Fulton and Anthony Mitchell were teenagers when they were coerced into giving false confessions in a 2003 murder in Chicago.A federal jury in Chicago awarded $120 million on Monday to two Illinois men who spent more than 16 years behind bars for a 2003 murder they did not commit.John Fulton and Anthony Mitchell were teenagers when they were convicted in 2006 for the murder of Christopher Collazo, whose body was found bound and partly burned in an alley on the South Side of Chicago in the early hours of March 10, 2003. Their convictions were vacated in 2019.Mr. Fulton and Mr. Mitchell each filed a federal lawsuit in 2020 against the City of Chicago, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office and several Chicago police officers, arguing that the men had been framed and were coerced into giving false confessions.After a month of testimony, a federal jury deliberated for two days before finding that the men had been railroaded into giving false confessions and that detectives had fabricated evidence against them, according to court records. Mr. Fulton and Mr. Mitchell were each awarded $60 million in damages.Mr. Fulton said in a phone interview on Tuesday that he knew his day of justice would come.“It was a sense of relief,” he said of the verdict. Referring to others still serving time for crimes they did not commit, he added, “I also thought about all the others who haven’t gotten a chance to see this day for themselves.”Jon Loevy, a lawyer for Mr. Fulton and Mr. Mitchell, described the moment the jury read its verdict as “very emotional.”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

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      Judge Orders U.S.A.I.D. and State Dept. to Pay Funds ‘Unlawfully’ Withheld

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      A federal judge barred the Trump administration on Monday from “unlawfully impounding congressionally appropriated foreign aid funds” that the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development owed to grant recipients and contractors, requiring it to pay for work completed in the first several weeks of President Trump’s term.The ruling, handed down by Judge Amir H. Ali of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, was the latest step in a winding dispute over foreign aid payments since Mr. Trump has tried to vastly shrink the nation’s foreign assistance. While forcing the administration to pay for work completed before Feb. 13, Judge Ali said the limits of the case prevented him from ordering payments on future work or restoring canceled contracts.But he left no doubt that he believed that the administration had exceeded its authority in trying to block funding, a warning that could echo through a deluge of lawsuits over Mr. Trump’s efforts to unilaterally halt spending.“Here, the executive has unilaterally deemed that funds Congress appropriated for foreign aid will not be spent,” he wrote. “The executive not only claims his constitutional authority to determine how to spend appropriated funds, but usurps Congress’s exclusive authority to dictate whether the funds should be spent in the first place.”The order on Monday prohibited the State Department and U.S.A.I.D. from implementing much of a Jan. 24 memorandum outlining plans to reorient and shrink U.S. foreign aid. It further required them to pay out hundreds of millions of dollars still owed to a constellation of groups for work completed before Feb. 13, as Judge Ali had ordered last month.The order dealt with a broad freeze on foreign aid funding that Mr. Trump put into effect the day he took office. It stopped short of the much more significant step of invalidating the Trump administration’s decision to cancel thousands of contracts through what it described as an expedited line-by-line review, after the lawsuit was already underway. Judge Ali found that the court was restrained to addressing the specific harms laid out in the lawsuit, not “supervision of discrete or ongoing executive decisions.”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

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      Supreme Court to Hear Challenge to Law Banning Conversion Therapy

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      Colorado, like more than 20 other states, bars licensed therapists from trying to change the sexual orientation or gender identity of minors in their care.The Supreme Court said on Monday that it will hear a First Amendment challenge to a Colorado law banning professional counseling services engaged in conversion therapy intended to change a minor’s gender identity or sexual orientation.More than 20 states have similar laws, which are supported by leading medical groups. Kaley Chiles, a licensed professional counselor, challenged the constitutionality of the Colorado law in federal court, saying it violated her rights to free speech and the free exercise of religion.The challenged law prohibits licensed therapists in Colorado from performing conversion therapy, which it defines to include efforts “to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity.” That includes trying “to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attraction or feelings toward individuals of the same sex.”The law, adopted in 2019, allow treatments that provide “acceptance, support and understanding.” It exempts therapists “engaged in the practice of religious ministry.”Ms. Chiles’s lawyers told the justices in her petition seeking review that as “a practicing Christian, Chiles believes that people flourish when they live consistently with God’s design, including their biological sex.”In her lawsuit, Ms. Chiles said she wanted to help her clients achieve their goals, which can include “seeking to reduce or eliminate unwanted sexual attractions, change sexual behaviors or grow in the experience of harmony with one’s physical body.”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

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      Tribes and Students Sue Trump Administration Over Firings at Native Schools

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      A group of Native American tribes and students is suing the Trump administration to reverse its recent firing of federal workers at Native schools that they said has severely lowered their quality of education.The firings, part of the series of layoffs led by the Department of Government Efficiency that have cut thousands of federal jobs since January, included nearly one quarter of the staff members at the only two federally run colleges for Native people in the country: Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kan., and Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute in Albuquerque.Instructors, a basketball coach, and security and maintenance workers were among those who were fired or forced to resign in February. Although the total number of layoffs was not clear on Sunday, the reductions also included employees at the central and regional offices of the Bureau of Indian Education, a federal agency. Some staff members, but not all, have been rehired, according to a statement from the Native American Rights Fund, which filed the suit on Friday in federal court in Washington. About 45,000 children are enrolled in bureau-funded schools in 23 states.As a result of the cuts, dozens of courses at the two colleges lost instructors, according to the lawsuit. And because of the loss of support staff and maintenance workers, school dorms were quickly overrun with garbage, students reported undrinkable brown water, dining halls failed to adequately feed students, and widespread power outages hampered students’ ability to study.“Unfortunately, these firings were done without preparation and without regard to the health and safety of the students, and that is a continuation of a history of neglect and disrespect,” Jacqueline De León, a lawyer for the tribes and students, said. “We are here to fight to make sure that it doesn’t continue.”Lawyers with the Native American Rights Fund filed the suit against the heads of the Department of the Interior, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Office of Indian Education Programs.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

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      U.S. Judge Finds China Liable for Covid Missteps, Imposes $24 Billion Penalty

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      The judgment was issued in a case brought by the Missouri attorney general. The Chinese government did not respond to the claims in court.A federal judge in Missouri found the Chinese government responsible for covering up the start of the Covid-19 pandemic and hoarding protective equipment in a ruling on Friday. He entered a judgment of more than $24 billion that Missouri officials vowed to enforce by seizing Chinese assets.The lawsuit, filed by the Missouri attorney general’s office in April 2020, during the early months of the pandemic, accused the Chinese government of withholding information about the existence and spread of the virus and then of cutting off the supply of personal protective equipment, or P.P.E., from the rest of the world. China did not respond to the allegations in court, and officials at the country’s embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.In his ruling, Judge Stephen N. Limbaugh Jr. wrote that “China was misleading the world about the dangers and scope of the Covid-19 pandemic” and had “engaged in monopolistic actions to hoard P.P.E.” Those actions, he said, hampered the early response to the pandemic in the United States and made it impossible to purchase enough equipment for medical providers responding to the virus.Judge Limbaugh, of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, imposed the judgment against China, its governing Communist Party, local governments in China, as well as a health agency and a laboratory in the country.Missouri’s attorney general, Andrew Bailey, said in a statement that the ruling held China accountable for its actions.“China refused to show up to court, but that doesn’t mean they get away with causing untold suffering and economic devastation,” said Mr. Bailey, a Republican. “We intend to collect every penny by seizing Chinese-owned assets, including Missouri farmland.”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

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      Judge Blocks Trump’s Funding Freeze, Saying White House Put Itself ‘Above Congress’

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      A federal judge on Thursday continued to bar the Trump administration from withholding billions in congressionally approved funds to 22 states and the District of Columbia.The ruling, which builds on the judge’s temporary order instructing the government to keep the money flowing, sets up a broader clash between Democratic states’ attorneys general over the Trump administration’s efforts to overhaul spending to align with the president’s agenda.In an opinion handed down on Thursday morning, Judge John J. McConnell Jr. of the Federal District Court for the District of Rhode Island said the lawsuit came down to a case of executive overreach, in which top administration officials had required agencies to withhold funds authorized by Congress.A memo from the White House budget office had demanded a pause on billions in grants until the administration could determine that the funding complied with Mr. Trump’s priorities, setting off days of confusion and alarm.Judge McConnell wrote that without the injunction, “the funding that the states are due and owed creates an indefinite limbo.”“Here, the executive put itself above Congress,” he wrote. “It imposed a categorical mandate on the spending of congressionally appropriated and obligated funds without regard to Congress’s authority to control spending.”The coalition of states had sued over the suspension of funding available from several agencies, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which they said put them in danger.The states suing filed a second motion last week to enforce the previous order, noting “significant obstacles to accessing federal funds” even after Judge McConnell had ordered agencies to let funding flow.“Moreover, the delays prompted by FEMA’s manual review process are significant and indefinite,” the states wrote, noting that some had requested disbursements since Feb. 7.In his order on Thursday, Judge McConnell appeared to agree that the prospect of states not having access in a disaster to emergency funds paused by the Trump administration was salient.“In an evident and acute harm, with floods and fires wreaking havoc across the country, federal funding for emergency management and preparedness would be impacted,” he wrote.The judge ordered that FEMA detail steps it had taken to unfreeze funds by March 14. More