News you can use
News you can use
Sorted by date Results 1 - 19 of 19
WASHINGTON — Concluding two days of intense debate, the Supreme Court signaled Wednesday it could give a boost to same-sex marriage by striking down the federal law that denies legally married gay spouses a wide range of benefits offered to other couples. As the court wrapped up its remarkable arguments over gay marriage in America, a majority of the justices indicated they will invalidate part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act — if they can get past procedural problems similar to those that appeared to mark Tue...
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the individual insurance requirement at the heart of President Barack Obama's historic health care overhaul. The decision means the huge overhaul, still only partly in effect, will proceed and pick up momentum over the next several years, affecting the way that countless Americans receive and pay for their personal medical care. The ruling also hands Obama a campaign-season victory in rejecting arguments that Congress went too far in requiring most Americans to have health i...
AP Photo/Charles Dharapak Supporters of the health care reform law signed by President Obama gather in front of the Supreme Court in Washington, Monday as the court begins three days of arguments on health care. WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court plunged into debate Monday on the fate of the Obama administration's overhaul of the nation's health care system, and the justices gave every indication they will not allow an obscure tax law to derail the case. A decision is expected by late June, in the midst of a presidential e...
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court today reaffirmed its 2-year-old decision allowing corporations to spend freely to influence elections. The justices struck down a Montana law limiting corporate campaign spending. By a 5-4 vote, the court's conservative justices said the decision in the Citizens United case in 2010 applies to state campaign finance laws and guarantees corporate and labor union interests the right to spend freely to advocate for or against candidates for state and local offices. The majority turned away pleas f...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Bucking the Obama administration, Supreme Court justices seemed to find little trouble Wednesday with major parts of Arizona's tough immigration law that require police to check the legal status of people they stop for other reasons. But the fate of other provisions that make Arizona state crimes out of immigration violations was unclear in the court's final argument of the term. AP Photo/Dana Verkouteren This artist rendering shows PaulClement, arguing for Arizona, before the Supreme Court in Washington, W...
WASHINGTON — The monumental fight over a health care law that touches all Americans and divides them sharply comes before the Supreme Court on Monday. The justices will decide whether to kill or keep the largest expansion in the nation's social safety net in more than four decades. Two years and three days after President Barack Obama signed into law a health care overhaul aimed at extending medical insurance to more than 30 million Americans, the high court begins three days of hearings over the law's validity. AP P...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court sided with a power company Wednesday in a dispute with Montana over who owns the riverbeds beneath 10 dams sitting on three Montana rivers. In a case that reached back to the travels of Lewis and Clark more than 200 years ago, the court voted unanimously to throw out a state court ruling that could have cost the company, PPL Montana, more than $50 million. The power company had appealed a Montana Supreme Court ruling that the state owns the submerged land beneath the dams on the M...
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court is setting an election-season review of racial preference in college admissions, agreeing Tuesday to consider new limits on the contentious issue of affirmative action programs. A challenge from a white student who was denied admission to the University of Texas flagship campus will be the high court's first look at affirmative action in higher education since its 2003 decision endorsing the use of race as a factor. AP Photo/Paul Sakuma Demonstrators Sid Jacobo, left, and Jazel Flores, right, bo...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Xavier Alvarez was in good company when he stood up at a public meeting and called himself a wounded war veteran who had received the top military award, the Medal of Honor. Alvarez was lying about his medal, his wounds and his military service, but he wasn't the first man to invent war exploits. AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster Doug and Pam Sterner are in their home in Alexandria, Va. Pam is the author of a college paper that led to the drafting of a federal law in 2006, the Stolen Valor Act, aimed at curbing f...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Friday blocked a Montana court ruling upholding limits on corporate campaign spending. The state court ruling appears to be at odds with the high court's 2010 decision striking down a federal ban on those campaign expenditures. The justices put the Montana ruling on hold while they consider an appeal from corporations seeking to be free of spending limits. The state argues, and the Montana Supreme Court agreed, that political corruption gave rise to the century-old ban on corporate c...
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court will take up California's ban on same-sex marriage, a case that could give the justices the chance to rule on whether gay Americans have the same constitutional right to marry as heterosexuals. The justices said Friday they will review a federal appeals court ruling that struck down the state's gay marriage ban, though on narrow grounds. The San Francisco-based appeals court said the state could not take away the same-sex marriage right that had been granted by California's Supreme Court. AP P...
WASHINGTON — Jailers may perform invasive strip searches on people arrested even for minor offenses, an ideologically divided Supreme Court ruled Monday, the conservative majority declaring that security trumps privacy in an often dangerous environment. In a 5-4 decision, the court ruled against a New Jersey man who was strip searched in two county jails following his arrest on a warrant for an unpaid fine that he had, in reality, paid. The decision resolved a conflict among lower courts about how to balance security and p...
Supreme Court term is in the wdc/scotus1011 folder. With AP Photos. Wal-Mart sex-bias case hits possible court block MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court appears ready to block a massive sex discrimination lawsuit against Wal-Mart on behalf of up to 1.6 million women, and that could make it harder for other workers nationwide to bring class-action claims against large employers. The 10-year-old lawsuit, argued in lively exchanges at the court Tuesday, claims that Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the w...
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday struck down a provision of a campaign financing system in Arizona that gives extra cash to publicly funded candidates who face privately funded rivals and independent groups. The 5-4 ruling is the latest in a series of decisions by the court's conservative majority upending campaign finance laws. The Arizona law was passed in the wake of a public corruption scandal and was intended to reward candidates who forgo raising campaign cash, even in the face of opponents' heavy spending fuele...
Court to take up huge sex bias claim vs. Wal-Mart MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press WASHINGTON — Christine Kwapnoski hasn't done too badly in nearly 25 years in the Wal-Mart family, making more than $60,000 a year in a job she enjoys most days. But Kwapnoski says she faced obstacles at Wal-Mart-owned Sam's Club stores in both Missouri and California: Men making more than women and getting promoted faster. Supervisor told her to 'doll up' She never heard a supervisor tell a man, as she says one told her, to "doll up" or "blow t...
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday narrowly endorsed reducing California's cramped prison population by more than 30,000 inmates to fix sometimes deadly problems in medical care, ruling that federal judges retain enormous power to oversee troubled state prisons. The court said in a 5-4 decision that the reduction is "required by the Constitution" to correct longstanding violations of inmates' rights. The order mandates a prison population of no more than 110,000 inmates, still far above the system's designed c...
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday blocked a massive sex discrimination lawsuit against Wal-Mart on behalf of female employees in a decision that makes it harder to mount large-scale bias claims against the biggest U.S. companies. The justices all agreed that the lawsuit against Wal-Mart Stores Inc. cannot proceed as a class action in its current form, reversing a decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. By a 5-4 vote along ideological lines, the court said there too many women in too many j...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court seemed ready Wednesday to endorse a jail policy that forces even people arrested on minor charges to undress and shower while being watched by guards. Less clear was whether justices would decide jailers need a reason to suspect someone may be hiding a weapon or drugs before undertaking a more invasive strip search. The court heard arguments in a case weighing the privacy rights of people in jail against authorities' need to maintain safety. AP Photo/Mel Evans Albert Florence sits at his h...
Supreme Court: Anti-gay funeral picketers allowed MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that a grieving father's pain over mocking protests at his Marine son's funeral must yield to First Amendment protections for free speech. All but one justice sided with a fundamentalist church that has stirred outrage with raucous demonstrations contending God is punishing the military for the nation's tolerance of homosexuality. The 8-1 decision in favor of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, K...
