National Courts Monitor

EPA set to overturn Obama-era vehicle efficiency rules, California sues

Updated: May 1, 2018

Scott Pruitt, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency Photo Credit: Wikipedia

According to the Washington Post, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt will revisit Obama-era vehicle efficiency rules. Obama’s policy to address climate change would raise efficiency requirements on the nation’s automobile fleet to more than 50 miles per gallon by 2025. The Trump-era proposal would freeze the emissions standards at 2021 levels. The new plan would also challenge California’s ability to set its own fuel-efficiency rules.

A lawsuit — filed by California with support from other states and environmental groups – aims to try to block the overturn of Obama’s policy.

New protocol dismisses civil rights cases before Education Department

by NCM Staff

Posted: April 30, 2018

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Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. Photo Credit: Wikipedia

Under Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, hundreds of civil rights complaints before her department are being dismissed, based on a new protocol that seeks to unclog the system, the New York Times reports.

“The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights has begun dismissing hundreds of civil rights complaints under a new protocol that allows investigators to disregard cases that are part of serial filings or that they consider burdensome to the office,” the New York Times reports.

“The changes worry civil rights groups, which point out that Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has already rescinded guidances meant to protect students against sexual assaults on campuses and black and transgender students against bias.”

The department’s Office for Civil Rights responds that it wants to be more efficient and effective than it was under the Obama administration, “which was known for its aggressive enforcement and broad investigations but was also accused of being overzealous and leaving cases languishing for years,” the newspaper reports.

If Supreme Court upholds President Trump’s travel ban, will it rein in district judges who have opposed it?

by NCM Staff

Posted: April 27, 2018

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Photo Credit: Evan Vucci / Associated Press as reported in Los Angeles Times, 4/25/18

A travel ban that limits immigration may secure a key legal victory at the U.S. Supreme Court, based on comments from justices on April 25, a major newspaper predicts.

The L.A. Times reports, “The Supreme Court’s conservative justices sounded ready Wednesday to uphold President Trump’s travel ban, potentially giving the embattled White House a big legal victory after a series of defeats in the lower courts.”

The third version of a travel ban “bars the entry of most immigrants and travelers from Iran, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Libya and North Korea as well as officials from Venezuela,” the L.A. Times reports.

“The justices issued a ruling in June that allowed the second version of the travel ban to take partial effect. Then, in December, with only two dissents, they set aside lower-court rulings to allow the administration to put the third version into practice, a strong indicator of where the majority was headed,” the newspaper reports.

This brings up the question about whether this ruling will override the “increasingly common practice of district judges handing down nationwide orders based on a suit brought by a handful of plaintiffs,” such as the district judge’s order in Hawaii that blocked the travel ban nationwide.

Suit spurs $6.4 million ‘revenge porn’ judgment

by NCM Staff

Posted: April 25, 2018

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Elisa D’Amico, a lawyer with the Cyber Civil Rights Legal Project, as reported in the New York Times, 4/11/18. Photo credit: Jake Naughton for The New York Times.

In a relatively new area of law, a major court verdict has been handed down against a perpetrator of “revenge porn.”

This phenomenon involves the distribution of sexually explicit images or video of someone without their consent. A flurry of legislation across the United States now has culminated in a $6.4 million judgment, considered one of the largest ever.

On April 11, the New York Times reported on the case, which involved a California woman and her boyfriend. They ended their relationship in 2013, but “he began to post sexual photographs and videos of her on pornography websites and to impersonate her in online dating forums, according to court documents,” the New York Times reported. “He threatened to make her life ‘so miserable she would want to kill herself.’ … In 2014, the woman, who was listed as Jane Doe in court documents to protect her identity, sued her former boyfriend, David K. Elam II, in United States District Court in California to get him to stop. Four years passed, until the court awarded her $6.4 million on April 4, in one of the biggest judgments ever in a so-called revenge porn case.”

According to the article, “The California case was one of the first lawsuits filed by the Cyber Civil Rights Legal Project, an initiative started in 2014 by K&L Gates, a Pittsburgh law firm, to litigate against online harassment and the non-consensual posting of explicit material…”

The verdict “highlighted the complex web of state and federal laws that lawyers must navigate in revenge porn cases,” the article noted.

Many Catholic leaders object to revised sex-abuse statute of limitations laws

by NCM Staff

Updated: April 23, 2018

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Cardinal Timothy Dolan. Photo credit: Mark Mulville as reported in The Buffalo News on 3/20/18.

A push in some jurisdictions for a longer statute of limitations for child sex abuse cases has raised concerns among Catholic leaders.

On March 29, America Magazine, the Jesuit Review, wrote about statutes of limitations laws and unease among Catholic leaders about proposed changes.

“Nearly two decades after revelations of sexual abuse by priests were widely reported, legislators in states around the country are considering changes to laws that would give victims of child sex abuse more time to file criminal and civil complaints,” the magazine reported. “Catholic leaders in those places support many of those changes — but some claim provisions in the proposed laws unfairly target private organizations and that they could open them up to lawsuits over abuse that occurred decades ago.”

In New York, lawmakers recently considered a provision that sought to alter the criminal and civil statutes of limitation for sex abuse cases, including a one-year window to allow civil suits to proceed for abuse that occurred decades ago.

“Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York, said enacting the one-year window would be ‘toxic’ to the church, The Buffalo News reported on March 20.