Supreme Courts (State)

Subterms

    Latest story

    125 Shares139 Views

    N.C. Elections Board Rejects G.O.P. Effort to Toss 60,000 Ballots

    by

    The ruling comes in a dispute over a State Supreme Court race that the Democratic incumbent won by 734 votes.The North Carolina State Board of Elections rejected on Wednesday a Republican bid to throw out more than 60,000 votes in a closely contested election for a State Supreme Court seat that an incumbent Democrat won by 734 votes.Two recounts showed that Associate Justice Allison Riggs, the incumbent, had eked out a slim victory out of some 5.5 million ballots that were cast. The losing judge, Jefferson Griffin, a Republican, argued that the state’s failure to enforce technical aspects of registration and election laws should disqualify scores of thousands of voters, most or all of whom cast otherwise legal ballots.The Democrat-controlled elections board disagreed, in a series of votes that went largely along party lines. Republicans on the board called for further hearings to gather more evidence on the issues.“The idea that someone could have been registered to vote, came to vote and then has their vote discarded is anathema to the democratic system,” the board’s Democratic chairman, Allan Hirsch, said at the meeting.The chairman of the state Republican Party denounced the decision, saying that “the board’s continued efforts to engineer political outcomes for Democrats is shameful.”Judge Griffin, who currently sits on the State Court of Appeals, could appeal the ruling to a State Superior Court, kicking off a legal process that could end at the same State Supreme Court where Justice Riggs sits. Republicans hold a 5-to-2 majority on the court, which has been bitterly divided along partisan lines in recent years.The ruling on Wednesday also rejected attempts by three Republican state legislators to overturn their narrow losses on the same grounds.In a protest against the election results filed last month, Judge Griffin argued that upward of 60,000 voters should be disqualified because the state failed to enact one part of a 2004 law requiring new voters to provide a driver’s license or Social Security number when applying to vote. Voters who failed to list numbers should be ineligible, he said, even if they were unaware of the requirement.His complaint also sought to disqualify overseas voters who failed to submit a photo ID with their ballots in accordance with a new voter ID law. Those overseas voters also were not told of the requirement.Lawyers for Justice Riggs, as well as the state Democratic Party, argued that federal law bars throwing out votes for lack of a driver’s license or Social Security numbers. They also said that state law setting out the rules for overseas votes does not require a photo ID. More

    More stories

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Mississippi Supreme Court District 1, Position 3 Runoff Election Results 2024

      by

      Source: Election results are from The Associated Press.By The New York Times election results team: Michael Andre, Emma Baker, Neil Berg, Andrew Chavez, Michael Beswetherick, Matthew Bloch, Lily Boyce, Irineo Cabreros, Nico Chilla, Nate Cohn, Alastair Coote, Annie Daniel, Saurabh Datar, Leo Dominguez, Tiff Fehr, Andrew Fischer, Martín González Gómez, Joyce Ho, Will Houp, Jon Huang, Junghye Kim, K.K. Rebecca Lai, Jasmine C. Lee, Joey K. Lee, Vivian Li, Alex Lemonides, Ilana Marcus, Alicia Parlapiano, Jaymin Patel, Dan Simmons-Ritchie, Charlie Smart, Jonah Smith, Urvashi Uberoy, Isaac White and Christine Zhang
      Additional contributions by Grace Ashford, Luke Broadwater, Mathew Brownstein, Amanda Cordero Kenan Davis, Karoun Demirjian, Robert Draper, Catie Edmondson, Nick Fandos, Lalena Fisher, Patrick Hays, Robert Jimison, Annie Karni, Maya Miller, Julie Walton Shaver, Tracey Tully, Lisa Waananen Jones and Jessica White
      Edited by Wilson Andrews, Lindsey Rogers Cook, William P. Davis, Jonathan Ellis, Thomas Gaffney, Amy Hughes, Ben Koski, Allison McCartney and Rachel Shorey
      Source: Election results are from The Associated Press. More

    • 63 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Mississippi Runoff Election Results 2024

      by

      Source: Election results and race calls are from The Associated Press.By The New York Times election results team: Michael Andre, Emma Baker, Neil Berg, Andrew Chavez, Michael Beswetherick, Matthew Bloch, Lily Boyce, Irineo Cabreros, Nico Chilla, Nate Cohn, Alastair Coote, Annie Daniel, Saurabh Datar, Leo Dominguez, Tiff Fehr, Andrew Fischer, Martín González Gómez, Joyce Ho, Will Houp, Jon Huang, Junghye Kim, K.K. Rebecca Lai, Jasmine C. Lee, Joey K. Lee, Vivian Li, Alex Lemonides, Ilana Marcus, Alicia Parlapiano, Jaymin Patel, Dan Simmons-Ritchie, Charlie Smart, Jonah Smith, Urvashi Uberoy, Isaac White and Christine Zhang
      Additional contributions by Grace Ashford, Luke Broadwater, Mathew Brownstein, Amanda Cordero Kenan Davis, Karoun Demirjian, Robert Draper, Catie Edmondson, Nick Fandos, Lalena Fisher, Patrick Hays, Robert Jimison, Annie Karni, Maya Miller, Julie Walton Shaver, Tracey Tully, Lisa Waananen Jones and Jessica White
      Edited by Wilson Andrews, Lindsey Rogers Cook, William P. Davis, Jonathan Ellis, Thomas Gaffney, Amy Hughes, Ben Koski, Allison McCartney and Rachel Shorey
      Source: Election results and race calls are from The Associated Press. More

    • 100 Shares109 Views

      in Elections

      Nebraska Supreme Court Upholds Voting Rights for Felons

      by

      The Nebraska Supreme Court ordered the secretary of state on Wednesday to allow people with felony convictions to vote after finishing their sentences, resolving confusion about who can participate in this year’s election and rejecting an argument by the state attorney general that lawmakers overstepped in extending voting rights to those with convictions.The ruling, issued with early balloting in the state already underway and voter registration deadlines approaching quickly, will help shape the state’s electorate, which can carry special importance in presidential races because of the way Nebraska splits its Electoral College votes by congressional district rather than using the winner-takes-all approach of most states. Nebraska also has a competitive U.S. Senate race this year, as well as a tightly contested U.S. House race in the Omaha area. The ruling on Wednesday was expected to affect thousands of potential voters.Nebraska, which usually votes Republican in statewide races, was part of a national trend in loosening voting rules for people with criminal records. In 2005, lawmakers in the state abolished a lifetime voting ban for people convicted of felonies, but continued to require people to wait two years to vote after finishing their sentences. This year, in a bipartisan vote, lawmakers got rid of that waiting period, clearing the way for people to cast ballots immediately after finishing prison and parole terms.Gov. Jim Pillen, a Republican, allowed the bill to become law without his signature, but the measure attracted skepticism from Attorney General Mike Hilgers and Secretary of State Bob Evnen, both Republicans.Just before the new measure was set to take effect this summer, Mr. Hilgers released a written opinion saying that both the new law and the 2005 law were improper. He argued that under the Nebraska Constitution, only the state’s Board of Pardons could restore voting rights to someone with a felony conviction. Mr. Evnen then instructed county election officials to stop registering voters with felony convictions. The Board of Pardons is made up of Mr. Pillen, Mr. Hilgers and Mr. Evnen.Reached on Wednesday morning, Cindi Allen, a deputy secretary of state, said Mr. Evnen’s office planned to comment on the ruling on Wednesday afternoon. A spokeswoman for Mr. Hilgers said they were reviewing the ruling.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 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      In Retrial, Man Convicted of Murder of Transgender Woman

      by

      Rasheen Everett strangled Amanda Gonzalez-Andujar in her Queens apartment. His 2013 conviction was thrown out because of a judge’s error.For the second time, a Manhattan man has been found guilty in the 2010 murder of a transgender woman.The man, Rasheen Everett, was first convicted in 2013 of murdering Amanda Gonzalez-Andujar, 29, but a mistake by the judge overseeing the case led an appeals court to toss the conviction in 2021, forcing prosecutors to retry the case.On Thursday, a jury in Queens found Mr. Everett, 43, guilty of second-degree murder and of tampering with evidence. The killing was just one example of what the American Medical Association has declared an “epidemic” of violence against people who are transgender.In a statement, the Queens district attorney, Melinda Katz, said that prosecutors had been determined to pursue the case regardless of the years that had passed since Ms. Gonzalez-Andujar’s killing.“Upon a reversal of a conviction through no fault of the prosecutors, my office built a strong case against this individual once again, and we successfully proved that he callously murdered a young woman 14 years ago,” Ms. Katz wrote.On a March morning in 2010, Mr. Everett strangled Ms. Gonzalez-Andujar, who had advertised her services as a prostitute, in her apartment in Glendale, Queens. Then, prosecutors said, he doused her body in bleach in an attempt to destroy evidence of his crime and stayed in her apartment for more than a dozen hours. He also stole a camera, a laptop, a coat, a cellphone and keys from her apartment and fled to Las Vegas, according to prosecutors, where he was arrested days later. Prosecutors said that his DNA was found under Ms. Gonzalez-Andujar’s fingernails.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 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Utah Supreme Court Upholds a Block on a Strict Abortion Ban

      by

      Utah cannot enforce its near-total ban on abortion while a challenge to the law proceeds in the courts, the State Supreme Court ruled on Thursday. The Utah Supreme Court upheld on Thursday a suspension of the state’s near-total ban on abortion, meaning the procedure remains legal while a court challenge to the law proceeds. When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to overturn Roe v. Wade, it cleared the way for two Utah laws to come into force: a ban on most abortions after the 18th week of pregnancy, which was passed in 2019 and is currently in effect, and a near-total abortion ban passed in 2020 that would prohibit the procedure at any time during pregnancy, with very limited exceptions, including for cases of rape or incest or to save the life of the mother.The near-total abortion ban took effect in 2022, but the Planned Parenthood Association of Utah almost immediately filed a lawsuit in the state seeking to block the ban. The organization argued that the ban violated several provisions in the State Constitution, including those that guarantee a right to determine family composition and a right to gender equality.A trial court issued a preliminary injunction in July 2022 blocking the state from enforcing the near-total ban while the case proceeded. Utah state officials appealed, but the State Supreme Court ruled against them on Thursday and left the injunction in place. Camila Vega, a staff attorney for Planned Parenthood Federation of America and one of the litigators on the case, said after the state’s appeal was filed last August that the organization would “once again make the case that the trigger ban violates the Utah constitution, which protects pregnant Utahns’ ability to make their own medical decisions and their right to determine when and whether to have a family.”In court filings, the state argued that the Utah constitution does not protect a right to abortion, and that the injunction imposed “severe irreparable harm on the State side of the balance, given the profound state and public interest at stake — the preservation of human life, both the mother’s and the unborn child’s.” The state challenged Planned Parenthood Association of Utah’s standing to file the lawsuit, and argued that the trial court had abused its discretion and erred in issuing the injunction. The State Supreme Court rejected those arguments on Thursday. Whether abortion up to 18 weeks will remain permanently legal in the state of Utah depends on the outcome of Planned Parenthood Association of Utah’s lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the near-total ban. The ruling on Thursday did not decide that question; rather, it said that the lower courts were right to let the case proceed and to keep the state from enforcing the ban in the meantime. More

    • 138 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Wisconsin Supreme Court Says Ballot Drop Boxes Can Again Be Used

      by

      The decision by the court’s liberal majority, delivered four months before the November election, reverses a ruling by conservative jurists two years ago.The Wisconsin Supreme Court’s new liberal majority said on Friday that ballot drop boxes can once again be used widely in the state, reversing a ruling issued two years ago when the court had a conservative majority.On a practical level, the ruling changes how Wisconsin, a closely divided state that could tip the Electoral College, will carry out an election that is just four months away. On a symbolic level, the judicial U-turn is likely to fuel Republican claims that the court has become a nakedly partisan force — claims that Democrats made themselves not long ago, when most of the justices were conservatives.Drop boxes were used in Wisconsin for years as one of several ways, along with early in-person and mail-in voting, for voters to submit ballots before Election Day. The widespread use of drop boxes in 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic, drew the ire of Republicans and prompted a lawsuit that the court’s previous majority decided by mostly banning their use.“Our decision today does not force or require that any municipal clerks use drop boxes,” Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, a liberal, wrote for the four-justice majority on Friday. “It merely acknowledges,” she added, what Wisconsin law “has always meant: that clerks may lawfully utilize secure drop boxes in an exercise of their statutorily conferred discretion.”Her conservative colleague, Justice Rebecca Bradley, disagreed, writing in a dissent that “the majority again forsakes the rule of law in an attempt to advance its political agenda.”The ruling on Friday is part of a broader push by Democrats and progressive groups to have the Wisconsin Supreme Court weigh in on some of the state’s thorniest policy issues. After liberals won a 4-to-3 majority last year, the court ordered the redrawing of state legislative district boundaries, which had long been gerrymandered to benefit Republicans. Earlier this week, the justices announced that they would hear a case that asks them to consider whether the State Constitution includes a right to abortion. 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

    • 100 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      Georgia Supreme Court Justice Andrew Pinson Wins Re-election

      by

      The incumbent in the lone competitive race for a seat on the Georgia Supreme Court won re-election on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press, fending off a challenge from a former Democratic congressman who had built his campaign in the nonpartisan contest on protecting abortion rights.Elections for the Supreme Court in Georgia are typically subdued affairs, drawing little attention, much less stirring controversy, as justices rarely face any serious opposition. Such was the case for the three other justices on the ballot on Tuesday, whose elections were uncontested.But Justice Andrew A. Pinson was in the unusual position of having to fight to defend his seat after John Barrow, who represented Georgia in Congress as a Democrat from 2005 to 2015, entered the race.During the campaign, Mr. Barrow said that Georgia’s Constitution guaranteed the right to an abortion, which, he argued, was not a political position but simply his interpretation of the law. Last year, the State Supreme Court upheld Georgia’s law banning abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, though a legal fight is ongoing.The challenge from Mr. Barrow pushed Justice Pinson and his supporters to mobilize an effort that was costly and high-profile, at least by the standards of a State Supreme Court race. Justice Pinson sought to portray Mr. Barrow as a threat to an independent judiciary, arguing that voting for his opponent was tantamount to endorsing “a system of partisan politicians in black robes.”“I have upheld my oath to defend our Constitution,” Justice Pinson said in a news conference on Monday. “I have approached every case that comes before us with an open mind, fairly and impartially,” he added. “And I’ve applied the law as it’s written, not as it should be, not as we want it to be.”Justice Pinson was appointed to the court by Gov. Brian Kemp in 2022 to serve out the remainder of his predecessor’s term, and he has now won his own six-year term. Before he joined the State Supreme Court, Justice Pinson served on the State Court of Appeals, and was also appointed to that post by Mr. Kemp, a Republican.He had been the state’s solicitor general and worked for Attorney General Christopher M. Carr, a Republican. Earlier in his career, Justice Pinson was a U.S. Supreme Court clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas.Mr. Barrow challenged the depiction of him as a partisan operator, noting that Justice Pinson had surrounded himself with Republican elected officials, like Mr. Kemp, and conservative political groups in his re-election effort.“It’s not a partisan race, so I have not sought the endorsement of partisan politicians,” Mr. Barrow told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Though I see that doesn’t apply to my opponent. He is obviously trying to make it a partisan race.” More

    • 88 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      The History Behind Arizona’s 160-Year-Old Abortion Ban

      by

      The state’s Supreme Court ruled that the 1864 law is enforceable today. Here is what led to its enactment.The 160-year-old Arizona abortion ban that was upheld on Tuesday by the state’s highest court was among a wave of anti-abortion laws propelled by some historical twists and turns that might seem surprising.For decades after the United States became a nation, abortion was legal until fetal movement could be felt, usually well into the second trimester. Movement, known as quickening, was the threshold because, in a time before pregnancy tests or ultrasounds, it was the clearest sign that a woman was pregnant.Before that point, “women could try to obtain an abortion without having to fear that it was illegal,” said Johanna Schoen, a professor of history at Rutgers University. After quickening, abortion providers could be charged with a misdemeanor.“I don’t think it was particularly stigmatized,” Dr. Schoen said. “I think what was stigmatized was maybe this idea that you were having sex outside of marriage, but of course, married women also ended their pregnancies.”Women would terminate pregnancies in several different ways, such as ingesting herbs or medicinal potions that were thought to induce a miscarriage, Dr. Schoen said. The herbs commonly used included pennyroyal and tansy. Another method involved inserting an object in the cervix to try to interrupt a pregnancy or terminate it by causing an infection, Dr. Schoen said.Since tools to determine early pregnancy did not yet exist, many women could honestly say that they were not sure if they were pregnant and were simply taking herbs to restore their menstrual period.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