Tag Archives: legal challenge

U.S. Supreme Court allows challenge to Texas six-week abortion ban

By Lawrence Hurley and Andrew Chung

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday allowed abortion providers to pursue a legal challenge to a ban on most abortions in Texas, with the fate of the Republican-backed measure that allows private citizens to enforce it now hanging in the balance.

The justices, who heard arguments on the case on Nov. 1, lifted a block on lower court proceedings, likely paving the way for a federal judge to formally block the law. The conservative-majority court on Sept. 1 had declined to halt the law. The court in a separate case dismissed a separate challenge brought by President Joe Biden’s administration.

The Supreme Court has yet to decide another major abortion rights case from Mississippi that could lead to the overturning of the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized the procedure nationwide.

The court in the Texas case ruled 8-1 that the challenge was allowed under a 1908 Supreme Court ruling that said state laws can be challenged in federal court by suing state government officials. Texas had sought to exploit a loophole in that earlier ruling by saying no state officials could enforce it, but the Supreme Court said the challengers could pursue their case by naming state licensing officials as defendants.

Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas dissented on that part of the ruling, saying he would have dismissed the lawsuit altogether.

The Texas measure is the nation’s most restrictive abortion law. It bans abortions at around six weeks, a point in time when many women do not yet realize they are pregnant, and has no exception for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest. It is one of a series of restrictive abortion laws passed by Republicans at the state level in recent years.

The Texas law enables private citizens to sue anyone who performs or assists a woman in getting an abortion after cardiac activity is detected in the embryo. Individual citizens can be awarded a minimum of $10,000 for bringing successful lawsuits under the law. Biden’s administration has called it a “bounty.”

That feature made it more difficult to directly sue the state to challenge the law’s legality, helping shield the measure from being immediately blocked.

Abortion providers and the Biden administration in separate legal challenges argued that the law violates a woman’s constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy recognized in the Roe v. Wade ruling and is impermissibly designed to evade federal judicial review.

The Mississippi law – blocked by lower courts – bans abortions starting at 15 weeks of pregnancy. The court’s conservative justices during oral arguments in the Mississippi case on Dec. 1 indicated sympathy toward the Mississippi measure and potential support for overturning Roe.

How the conservative justices voted in the Texas case may not guide how they vote on the Mississippi law because the legal issues differed, particularly relating to its unusual enforcement mechanism.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)

U.S. appeals court hears challenge to FCC net neutrality repeal

A federal appeals court was hearing arguments on Friday over whether the Trump administration acted legally when it repealed landmark net neutrality rules governing internet providers in December 2017.

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A federal appeals court was hearing arguments on Friday over whether the Trump administration acted legally when it repealed landmark net neutrality rules governing internet providers in December 2017.

The panel, which set aside 2-1/2 hours to hear the case, is made up of Judges Robert Wilkins and Patricia Millett, two appointees of Democratic former President Barack Obama, and Stephen Williams, an appointee of Republican Ronald Reagan.

It was the first hearing in court on the Federal Communication Commission’s controversial decision to repeal the 2015 Obama administration’s net neutrality rules.

The arguments focus on how internet providers should be classified under law – either as information service providers as the Trump administration decided or as a public utility, which subjects companies to more rigorous regulations – and whether the FCC adhered to procedural rules.

The Republican-led FCC voted 3-2 along party lines to reverse the net neutrality rules, which barred internet service providers from blocking or throttling traffic, or offering paid fast lanes, also known as paid prioritization. The FCC said providers must disclose any changes in users internet access as it repealed what it termed “unnecessary, heavy-handed regulations.”

Kevin Russell, a lawyer for the challengers, told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia that hypothetically an internet provider could now block the Daily Caller website or graphic animal abuse videos as long as they disclosed it.

“We never get a straight answer from the commission whether it thinks blocking and throttling must always be prohibited” or only if it applies to punishing a competitor, Russell said, arguing that the FCC failed to engage in a reasoned analysis and did not properly assess consumer complaints.

Judge Williams suggested users could simply choose another provider if some content was blocked.

The FCC repeal was a win for providers like Comcast Corp, AT&T Inc and Verizon Communications Inc, but was opposed by internet companies like Facebook Inc, Amazon.com Inc and Alphabet Inc.

A group of 22 state attorneys general and the District of Columbia asked the appeals court to reinstate the Obama-era internet rules and to block the FCC’s effort to pre-empt states from imposing their own rules guaranteeing an open internet.

Several internet companies are also part of the legal challenge, including Mozilla Corp, Vimeo Inc and Etsy Inc (ETSY.O), as well as numerous media and technology advocacy groups and major cities, including New York and San Francisco.

Major providers have not made any changes in how Americans access the internet since the repeal.

In October, California agreed not to enforce its own state net neutrality law until the appeals court’s decision on the 2017 repeal, and any potential review by the U.S. Supreme Court.

A decision is expected by this summer.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Frances Kerry)