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Tag: appeals court
Appeals Court To Hear Arguments On Trump’s Travel Ban

Appeals Court To Hear Arguments On Trump’s Travel Ban

SAN FRANCISCO/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department will face off with opponents in a federal appeals court on Tuesday over the fate of President Donald Trump’s temporary travel ban on people from seven Muslim-majority countries, his most controversial act since taking office last month.

Last Friday, U.S. District Judge James Robart suspended Trump’s ban, opening a window for people from the seven affected countries to enter the country.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco will hear arguments over whether to restore the ban from Justice Department lawyers and opposing attorneys for the states of Minnesota and Washington at 3 p.m. PST.

In a tweet on Monday night, Trump said: “The threat from radical Islamic terrorism is very real, just look at what is happening in Europe and the Middle-East. Courts must act fast!”

Trump has said the travel measures are designed to protect the country against the threat of terrorism. He has derided Robart, appointed by Republican President George W. Bush, as a “so-called judge.”

In a brief filed on Monday, the Justice Department said the suspension of Trump’s order was too broad and “at most” should be limited to people who were already granted entry to the country and were temporarily abroad, or to those who want to leave and return to the United States.

Opponents say the 90-day ban barring entry for citizens from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen and imposing a 120-day halt to all refugees, is illegal. The state of Washington argues it has suffered harm, saying some students and faculty at state universities had been stranded overseas because of the ban.

The Republican president’s Jan. 27 executive order sparked protests and chaos at U.S. and overseas airports in the weekend that followed.

All the people who had carried out fatal attacks inspired by Islamist militancy in the United States since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks had been U.S. citizens or legal residents, the New America think tank said. None came to the United States or were from a family that emigrated from one of the countries listed in the travel ban, it said.

UPHILL FIGHT?

Trump faces an uphill battle in the liberal-leaning San Francisco court. Two members of three-judge panel that will hear the arguments were appointed by former Democratic Presidents Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama, and one was appointed by Bush.

Appeals courts are generally leery of upending the status quo, which in this case is the lower court’s suspension of the ban.

Opponents of the ban received far more filings in support of their position than the Department of Justice. Washington state’s challenge was backed by about a dozen friends-of-the- court briefs submitted by at least 17 state attorneys general, more than 100 companies, and about a dozen labor and civil rights groups. About a dozen conservative groups supported the government in three such briefs.

The appeals court was focusing on the narrow question of whether the district court had grounds to put the order on hold. The bigger legal fight over whether Trump had authority to issue the order will be addressed later in the litigation.

(Additional reporting by Peter Henderson in San Francisco)

IMAGE: Najmia Abdishakur (R), a Somali national who was delayed entry to the U.S. because of the recent travel ban, is greeted by her mother Zahra Warsma (L) at Washington Dulles International Airport in Chantilly, Virginia, U.S. February 6, 2017.  REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Two Appellate Courts Differ On Key Tax Plank In Health Care Law

Two Appellate Courts Differ On Key Tax Plank In Health Care Law

By Michael Doyle and Tony Pugh, McClatchy Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — Two appeals courts on Tuesday split over the Affordable Care Act, reaching different conclusions about whether tax credits can help consumers buy coverage in the 36 states that use the federal health insurance marketplace.

The conflicting and nearly simultaneous rulings potentially tee up for the Supreme Court its next landmark health care case, and leave in limbo the Obama administration’s health care ambitions.

In a 2-1 ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit concluded the Obama administration stretched the law too far in extending the subsidies through the HealthCare.gov website.

“We reach this conclusion, frankly, with reluctance,” Judge Thomas Griffith wrote, noting that “our ruling will likely have significant consequences both for the millions of individuals receiving tax credits through federal exchanges and for health insurance markets more broadly.”

More bluntly, Senior Judge Harry Edwards called the challenge in his dissent a “not-so-veiled attempt to gut” the health care law. The one thing all sides agreed on was the significance of the case.

From the right, Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz cheered the ruling as “a repudiation of Obamacare and all the lawlessness that has come with it. From the left, Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, called the D.C. court’s decision “the high-water mark for Affordable Care Act opponents.”

But while the D.C.-based court struck down the tax credit, the Richmond, Virginia-based U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals reached a different conclusion about the same set of facts.

In its unanimous decision, the three-judge panel of the Richmond-based appellate court called extension of the tax credits by the Internal Revenue Service a “permissible exercise of the agency’s discretion.”

“It is … clear that widely available tax credits are essential to fulfilling the Act’s primary goals and that Congress was aware of their importance when drafting the bill,”‘ Judge Roger Gregory wrote, adding that “the economic framework supporting the Act would crumble if the credits were unavailable on federal exchanges.”

The disagreement between the two circuit courts is a recipe for eventual Supreme Court action, as resolving so-called circuit splits is one of the high court’s top priorities. Two other federal courts are still considering similar challenges.

The challengers argue that the health law doesn’t allow the federal government to provide subsidies — which help people purchase health coverage — in states that use the federal marketplace.

A section of the health care law says the tax credits can only be applied to coverage purchased “through an exchange established by the state.”

Conservative scholars Jonathan Adler and Michael Cannon, who first touted the loophole in the law, have said it was intentionally written in order to coerce states into running their own marketplaces.

The federal government argued the language was merely a drafting error, which could easily be fixed if not for the polarized state of Congress, which has made it nearly impossible to make any legislative fixes to the law.

The government maintained that other aspects of the law makes clear Congress intended to provide the tax credits in all states.

AFP Photo/Jewel Samad

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Signature-Drive Sponsors Can Remain Anonymous, Appeals Court Says

Signature-Drive Sponsors Can Remain Anonymous, Appeals Court Says

By Maura Dolan, Los Angeles Times

SAN FRANCISCO — A federal appeals court struck down California election requirements that require backers of proposed ballot measures to reveal their identities on signature-gathering petitions.

In a 2-1 decision, a U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel ruled Monday that the First Amendment permits initiative sponsors to remain anonymous while contacting voters.

“Voters who wish to know the identities of official proponents need only make a trip to the City Clerk’s office or search for the publication of the petition in their newspapers of general circulation,” Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain, a Reagan appointee, wrote for the majority.

The case stemmed from attempts by the construction industry to put a measure on the Chula Vista ballot prohibiting the city from using funds for projects that required union labor. The initiative eventually made the ballot and passed, but the litigation over earlier technical violations continued.

Backers of the proposal argued they should not have been required to disclose their names on petitions, as required by California law. An initial attempt by the proponents to obtain signatures was thrown out because the petitions did not contain the sponsors’ names.

The majority said that by requiring sponsors to disclose their identities, the government was unconstitutionally regulating their speech.

In the context of political speech, it is important that a writer be permitted to be anonymous to prevent others from prejudging the writer’s message based on personal dislike, the majority said.

Judge Susan Graber, a Clinton appointee, dissented.

“The government has an essential interest in preserving an electoral process that allows voters to know to whom they are delegating lawmaking power when signing a particular petition,” she wrote.

Photo: Joe Shlabotnik via Flickr