Delaware can’t inherit windfall just because MoneyGram lives there

WASHINGTON (CN) — Determining the fate of hundreds of millions of dollars in a unanimous opinion, the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that Delaware does not have first dibs on the unclaimed property of the 1.8 million businesses registered in its corporate-friendly state.

“In the context of tangible property, the escheatment rule is straightforward: The State in which the abandoned property is located has the power to take custody of it,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote for the court.

MoneyGram is headquartered in Dallas, Texas, but chose to incorporate in Delaware like some 1.8 million other companies that are drawn by the state’s business-friendly laws and reputation. Unclaimed property currently makes up 8% of Delaware’s revenue, part of a doctrine called escheatment that gives states the right to take over certain unclaimed property.

As one might expect for the world’s second-largest money-transfer company, meanwhile, the unclaimed MoneyGram checks that Delaware escheated were sold all over the United States.

Thirty states led by Pennsylvania and Wisconsin had faced off against Delaware at the high court in October, saying that they held a superior claim to these forgotten checks under the Disposition of Abandoned Money Orders and Traveler’s Checks Act. Passed in 1974, the law says sums “payable on a money order, traveler’s check, or other similar written instrument (other than a third party bank check)” would escheat to the state where the instrument was purchased, not the state of incorporation. 

Congress did not define the terms “money order,” “traveler’s check” or “third-party bank check” in that statute at issue, however, teeing up the Supreme Court to determine whether a MoneyGram was technically money orders under federal law.

On behalf of the challenging states, Nicholas Bronni with the Office of the Arkansas Attorney General argued before the justices that, because MoneyGram does not keep addresses of its check purchasers, its instrument is like a money order. And because addresses for payees aren’t typically kept for money orders, those instruments escheat to the state of purchase.

Neal Katyal with Hogan Lovells argued for Delaware, explaining that the term money order referred to specific commercial products “typically sold to unbanked consumers to pay small debts” when Congress adopted the language of the law at issue in 1974. He said the term MoneyGram official checks would have been seen in 1974 as “third-party bank checks,” and thus exempt under the statute.

Like a bank check, MoneyGrams are signed by bank employees, and not purchasers. Katyal said this meant that uncashed checks would fall within the third-party bank check exception. The lawyer also emphasized that the MoneyGram checks are sold only at a bank, while money orders are sold typically at retailers like CVS or Walmart.

In the process of buying an official MoneyGram check, purchasers pay the value of the check to a selling bank, which then forwards the sum to MoneyGram. The buyer can then give the check to their intended payee, who can cash the check at their bank, which will then charge the sum from MoneyGram. If the payee never cashes the check, the money becomes unclaimed. 

Bronni meanwhile maintained that MoneyGram checks “function precisely like other money orders but are marketed differently.” A marketing strategy wouldn’t justify a $250 million windfall, he’d added.

As an interstate dispute, this case fits under the narrow jurisdiction of cases that fall under the Supreme Court’s original jurisdiction.

Leading up to arguments in the case, the justices appointed an independent arbiter to conduct a review and issue recommendations. The special master’s report, by Senior Judge Pierre Leval of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, sided with the 30 states. Leval noted that federal law aimed to prevent one state from receiving a large amount of cash because an issuer of certain instruments is incorporated there, “at the expense of many States which then receive no benefit from essentially local transactions.” Leval urged the court not to adopt a firm definition of the term “money order” since doing so could have indirectly ended up affecting other types of financial instruments not at issue in the case.

The other states that sued Delaware in the dispute were Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia and Wyoming.

Neither Katyal nor Bronni immediately responded to a request for comment on the ruling.

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This story is developing and will be updated…

from Courthouse News

Trans youth care ban headed to Tennessee governor’s desk

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Transgender youth in Tennessee would be banned from receiving gender-affirming care under legislation currently headed to the desk of Republican Gov. Bill Lee, who has voiced support for the bill.

House lawmakers voted 77-16 on Thursday, with three Democrats joining their Republican colleagues to pass the bill.

Civil rights groups have vowed an immediate lawsuit if and when the bill becomes law — setting up the potential for a lengthy legal battle over the coming months.

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“These children do not need these medical procedures to be able to flourish as adults,” said House Majority Leader William Lamberth. “They need mental health treatment. They need love and support, and many of them need to be able to grow up to become the individuals that they were intended to be.”

Across the United States, state lawmakers have introduced legislation attacking gender-affirming medical care for young people even as such services have been available in the U.S. for more than a decade and are endorsed by major medical associations.

Similar bills have advanced in Nebraska, Mississippi, Oklahoma and South Dakota. In Utah, the Republican governor recently signed a transgender medical ban into law. Meanwhile, a federal judge who blocked Arkansas’ ban on gender-affirming care for minors is now considering whether to strike down the law as unconstitutional. A similar ban in Alabama has also been temporarily blocked by a federal judge.

If enacted in Tennessee, doctors would be prohibited from providing gender-affirming care to anyone under the age of 18, including prescribing puberty blockers and hormones — and could even be penalized.

However, the legislation spells out exceptions, including allowing doctors to perform these medical services if the patient’s care had begun prior to July 1, 2023 — which is when the ban is proposed to go into effect. The bill then states that that care must end by March 31, 2024.

The bill then allows the attorney general to investigate health care providers who may violate the statute, which carries a $25,000 penalty.

“We have taken away a woman’s right to determine her health care and her health outcomes — and now we’ve gone to children,” said Democratic Rep. Gloria Johnson, referencing the state’s strict abortion ban that was allowed to go into effect last year.

“If a doctor and a family feels that taking hormone blockers is going to be healthy and productive and life-saving for these children, that’s a decision that should be made,” she added.

Tennessee in particular has been caught in the center of the conflict over transgender youth medical care — ever since video surfaced on social media last year of a Nashville doctor touting that gender-affirming procedures are “huge money makers” for hospitals.

The video prompted calls by Tennessee’s Republican leaders for an investigation into Vanderbilt University Medical Center, but to date, it’s unknown if any authorities have done so. The private nonprofit hospital said it had provided only a handful of gender-affirming surgeries to minors over the years but has put a temporary pause on the procedures to review its policies.

On average, Vanderbilt University Medical Center says it provided five gender-affirming surgeries to minors every year since its transgender clinic opened in 2018. All were over the age of 16 and had parental consent, and none received genital procedures.

But not every red state has enacted such bans with gusto.

In Wyoming, a bill stalled in a legislative committee earlier this week amid worries that health insurers would run afoul of federal law by denying coverage for gender-conforming procedures.

The bill, which had passed the state Senate, failed 5-2 in a House committee after lawmakers removed the insurance coverage prohibition. To succeed now, it would need to be revived on the state House floor before a Monday deadline — a challenging prospect.

Wyoming, despite having one of the most Republican-dominated legislatures, has a long tradition of skepticism toward culture war bills.

“It’s a bill that seeks to demonize, it’s a bill that already knows who its enemies are. And it’s not a bill that’s about solving a Wyoming problem,” Sara Burlingame, director of the LGBTQ+ advocacy group Wyoming Equality and a former state lawmaker herself, told the committee.

Meanwhile, Tennessee’s House Republicans on Thursday also advanced legislation that would severely limit where drag shows can take place. A slightly different version had passed the GOP-led Senate chamber earlier this month, meaning lawmakers must wrestle out the difference before it can go to Gov. Lee’s desk.

Similar to the gender-affirming medical youth care bill, Lee is expected to sign the legislation.

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By JONATHAN MATTISE and KIMBERLEE KRUESI Associated Press

Associated Press writer Mead Gruver contributed to this report from Cheyenne, Wyoming.

from Courthouse News

Tulsa attorney disbarred following spousal abuse sentencing

Read the ruling here.

from Courthouse News

Arkansas officer involved in violent arrest back on the job

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — An Arkansas law enforcement officer who held down a man while two others beat him during an arrest recorded on video is back on the job after he did not face any criminal charges.

Mulberry Police Officer Thell Riddle was reinstated and returned to work Friday, Chief Shannon Gregory confirmed Tuesday. The decision came after a state prosecutor last week said she wouldn’t be charging him and a federal grand jury earlier declined to indict him.

A bystander used a cellphone to record Riddle and two former Crawford County sheriff’s deputies during the Aug. 21 arrest of Randal Worcester in the small town of Mulberry, about 140 miles (220 kilometers) northwest of Little Rock, near the border with Oklahoma.

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A federal grand jury last month charged King and White with civil rights violations. The video shows one of the deputies repeatedly punching and kneeing Worcester in the head before grabbing his hair and slamming him against the pavement. The other kneed him repeatedly. The grand jury did not charge Riddle, who has been with the Mulberry Police Department since 2017.

The state also has been investigating, but special prosecutor Emily White said in a letter dated Feb. 15 that she would not pursue any charges against Riddle. White said the investigation against former deputies Zack King and Levi White remained open.

“Please understand, by making this formal declaration regarding Officer Riddle, I am not making a formal statement regarding the other two involved law enforcement officers,” she wrote.

In federal court, King and White have pleaded not guilty to using excessive force by hitting Worcester multiple times as he lay on the ground. They are scheduled to go to trial in April.

Former Crawford County Sheriff Jimmy Damante fired both deputies in October.

Damante has said Worcester, 27, of Goose Creek, South Carolina, was being questioned for threatening a clerk at a nearby convenience store and that he attacked one of the deputies. The deputy suffered a concussion, Damante has said.

The three officers were suspended after the video came to light. Television station KHBS/KHOG first reported Riddle’s reinstatement over the weekend.

Policing experts have said the video raises red flags, saying that blows to the head amount to a potentially deadly use of force that’s justified only when someone poses a current and serious threat.

Worcester, who has filed a federal lawsuit against the three officers, was treated at a hospital then jailed on charges including second-degree battery and resisting arrest. He was released the following day on a $15,000 bond. Worcester’s lawsuit said he has permanent injuries and will need continued medical treatment.

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By ANDREW DeMILLO Associated Press

from Courthouse News

Twenty US governors join coalition to strengthen reproductive rights

(CN) — Twenty governors have joined a nonpartisan coalition launched to protect and expand reproductive rights throughout the U.S.

The Reproductive Freedom Alliance is the largest multistate coalition of its kind, where governors are expected to work together to strengthen reproductive freedom “in the face of an unprecedented assault on abortion access and other forms of reproductive health care by states hostile to abortion rights and judges who are advancing their ideological agenda,” according to the announcement.

States officially represented in the coalition include California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawai’i, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Washington state and Wisconsin.

The launch of the alliance comes nearly eight months after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and on the heels of several state law reforms that have outlawed abortion, such as in Idaho, South Dakota, Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri and Alabama.

More recently, an anti-abortion group in Texas asked a federal judge to revoke the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone — one of two drugs used in medication abortions that has been safely used by 5.6 million women for over two decades — claiming the agency rushed the process and ignored evidence of the drug being more dangerous than surgical abortions. Should the judge rule in favor of the group, access to abortions could be drastically altered through the U.S.

In an email, Laura Briggs, professor of women, gender and sexuality studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, applauded the creation of the coalition. “This is good news and speaks to the unhappy consequences of the Dobbs decision — not only dangerous and inadequate miscarriage and other reproductive health care in anti-abortion states but exacerbating the very problem the Supreme Court claimed it was going to remedy with Dobbs: A nation disrupted and divided over abortion care,” Briggs wrote.

Briggs said she hopes the governors in the alliance can help address some of the questions currently being raised about telemedicine and what happens when doctors prescribe misoprostol or mifepristone to patients who “they believe in good faith are in their states, if instead they turn out to be in an anti-abortion state.”

“The governors’ work in assembling a reproductive freedom alliance is welcome and appreciated. Yet it also underscores the dismal state we are in — efforts to limit the mobility of reproductive-aged women, reduced access to safe abortion care, threats to birth control, women going to ICUs for the aftermath of mismanaged miscarriage care and effort by more than half the states in the U.S. to impose a conservative Christian view of sexuality, family and reproduction on its population, whatever their religious beliefs,” Briggs wrote.

Major funding for the alliance will come from California Wellness Foundation and the Rosenberg Foundation, which did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

from Courthouse News

Eighth Circuit weighs tribal authority in parental kidnapping case

ST. PAUL, Minn. (CN) — A custody dispute over the children of a South Dakota Sioux woman who took them to a reservation brought a test of tribal sovereignty to the Eighth Circuit on Wednesday.

That test involved the federal Parental Kidnapping Prevention Act, enacted in 1980 in an effort to prevent parents from countering adverse custody decisions by fleeing across state lines and seeking a better result from another state’s courts, a practice known as forum shopping. Under the law, custody decrees from a child’s home state are given preference, and other states’ courts can modify them only under a few set conditions. 

At issue Wednesday morning was whether that rule applied to tribal courts, along with the fate of the two children of Tricia Taylor, a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe. 

Taylor fled Fargo, North Dakota, with her children in 2014, bringing them to the tribe’s reservation after the younger child’s father, Aarin Nygaard, filed a suit seeking custody of his then-1-year-old daughter. She was arrested by the FBI a few months later in connection with the kidnapping, but the children remained on the reservation in the custody of Taylor’s brother, Ted Taylor Jr. Tricia was later convicted of parental kidnapping,

Both Nygaard and the older child’s father, Terrance Stanley, soon obtained custody of their respective children from North Dakota state courts. Ted Taylor, meanwhile, sought a custody decree from a tribal court, which ultimately awarded custody of both children to Tricia Taylor’s sister, Jessica Ducheneaux. 

At the Eighth Circuit, attorneys for Nygaard and Stanley argued to overturn that ruling before a panel of two George W. Bush appointees – U.S. Circuit Judges Steven Colloton and Duane Benton – and a Barack Obama appointee, U.S. Circuit Judge Jane Kelly.

Nygaard’s attorney, Stacy Hegge of the South Dakota firm Gunderson, Palmer, Nelson and Ashmore, argued that while the Parental Kidnapping Prevention Act doesn’t mention tribal reservations, they should be included in its definition of “state,” which includes “a territory or possession of the United States.” 

“To conclude otherwise would conflict directly with the act’s stated purpose,” Hegge said.

Pressed by Benton for her “best Supreme Court case,” she cited Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta, a 2022 decision which counted reservations as part of a state’s “territory” in its finding that Oklahoma had jurisdiction over crimes committed by non-tribe members against tribe members in that state’s Indian Country. 

“A general-applicability statute applies to everyone,” she added, “unless you say it doesn’t apply to tribes.” 

Steven Gunn, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis, argued on behalf of the Taylors and tribal authorities.

“We’re not talking about geographic areas,” he said of Hegge’s territories argument. “We’re talking about political entities.” 

Benton prodded Gunn with a question about an 1855 decision by the Supreme Court, Mackey v. Coxe. In that ruling, the court found that Cherokee Nation courts were courts of a “territory,” and should thus be recognized as such. Benton noted that while Native American-related policy from that era has largely been cast aside, he wasn’t certain whether Mackey was ever explicitly overturned. 

Gunn conceded that point, but noted several aspects of the case had been rewritten, including the idea that tribal sovereignty derives from the constitution rather than from treaties – in this case, the two Fort Laramie treaties of 1851 and 1868. 

After the arguments, Stanley and members of the Nygaard family spoke briefly on the case. Rita Nygaard, Aarin Nygaard’s mother, pointed out that the temporary custody granted to Taylor family members had lasted nearly 10 years, with no visitation from the fathers. She said the wrangling over jurisdiction obscured the day-to-day parenting struggles. Tribal police, she said, had refused to enforce orders requiring the Taylors to allow visitation. 

“They ain’t got time for this,’” she said. “That’s what they said.” 

Stanley, too, was distraught.

“I just want to bring my daughter home safely,” he said. “All that I’ve ever wanted was to be a dad, and that’s been stripped from me.”

from Courthouse News

‘Everybody’s tired’: South Dakota tribe sues US over crime

(AP) — Holly Wilson had just left to pick up soda for a steak dinner for her nine grandchildren last May, when a barrage of bullets was fired into her home on the largest Native American reservation in South Dakota.

Her 6-year-old grandson, Logan Warrior Goings, jumped from the family’s loveseat and raced across the room to his grandfather — and was shot in the head. It took at least 15 minutes for a single tribal law enforcement officer to arrive, but by then, the drive-by shooters were gone, and Logan — a “kind and gentle” boy who loved Xbox and his Siamese cat, Simon — was dead.

“He was the sweetest little boy,” said Wilson, 62. “He was so helpful for grandma. He was my best partner.”

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Months later, a father and son who live near Wilson on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, home to the Oglala Sioux Tribe, were shot and killed by an intruder, and their bodies weren’t found for six days, she said. Just a few nights ago, Wilson’s oldest son was held at gunpoint in his home.

These types of crimes have become increasingly common on the 5,400-square-mile (14,000-square-kilometer) reservation. Only 33 officers and eight criminal investigators are responsible for over 100,000 emergency calls each year across the reservation, which is about the size of the state of Connecticut, tribal officials said. The officers and investigators are all federally funded — and the tribe says it’s just not enough.

The tribe sued the Bureau of Indian Affairs and some high-level officials in July, alleging the U.S. is not complying with its treaty obligations nor its trust responsibility by failing to provide adequate law enforcement to address the “public safety crisis” on the reservation. The federal government countered in court documents that the tribe can’t prove treaties force the U.S. to provide the tribe with its “preferred level of staffing or funding for law enforcement.” After two days of court proceedings this week, a judge said he would take the case under advisement.

“We need change. Everybody’s tired of the same old talk. It’s all talk, talk, talk every year after year, and our people have suffered for decades,” Oglala Sioux Tribe President Frank Star Comes Out told The Associated Press. “We believe now is the time to take that stand.”

The federal government has a trust duty to Indigenous nations and has made promises to tribes under treaty agreements, which should be read liberally and in favor of Native American tribes, explained Robert Miller, law professor at Arizona State University and an enrolled citizen of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe in Oklahoma.

“If federal law enforcement is woefully weak, which it is on most reservations, it’s not carrying out its duty as the trustee, as the guardian of Indian nations,” he said.

Indigenous nations have increasingly advocated for treaty rights, including hunting, fishing and education, in the courtroom, with some success. In 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court made its landmark McGirt decision, ruling that a large portion of eastern Oklahoma, promised in treaties to the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, would remain a reservation.

In court documents in this case, the Oglala Sioux Tribe points to treaties such as the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie, which states that if someone commits a crime against Native Americans, the U.S. will “proceed at once to cause the offender to be arrested and punished according to the laws of the United States, and also reimburse the injured person for the loss sustained.”

Star Comes Out said he hopes Oglala Sioux’s lawsuit, which was filed just days after the Northern Cheyenne Tribe in Montana filed a similar one, will help to serve as an example for other tribes in the Great Plains and beyond who are facing similar situations.

The South Dakota reservation, about 80 miles (130 kilometers) southeast of Rapid City, is located between the Nebraska border and the Bakken oil fields.

The location has made it convenient for both human and drug trafficking, explained Patricia Marks, an attorney with the tribe, while its lack of police has meant it’s known as a “lawless area.”

“We’ve had a radical increase in guns, gun violence,” she said. “We’ve had a radical increase in hard narcotics. It is heroin. It’s fentanyl. It’s meth. It is things that are life threatening.”

Between January and June 2022, tribal law enforcement received 285 reports of missing persons, 308 gun-related calls and 49 reports of rape, Oglala Sioux officials said. There are typically only five tribal officers on any given shift, and response time for weapon-related calls can be anywhere from 40 minutes to an hour, Marks said.

In 2020, there were 155 more violent crimes reported by the Oglala Sioux tribal law enforcement compared to 2017, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Criminal jurisdiction in Indian Country is complicated and depends on whether the suspect, victim or both are Native American, and where the crime occurs.

The federal government, tribes and counties have tried to bolster public safety on reservations — where, in some locations, Native women are killed at a rate more than 10 times the national average — with approaches that include cross-commissioning agreements, expanding sentencing authority for tribes and programs that allow tribal prosecutors to try cases in federal court.

The landmark Tribal Law and Order Act of 2010, for example, expanded sentencing authority of tribal courts under certain conditions.

The Justice Department has also worked to increase funding given to tribes to address crime, including last year when officials announced it would award over $246 million in grants to Native communities to improve public safety and help crime victims.

But the tribe says none of this has been enough.

On the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, the FBI has jurisdiction over a set of major crimes. But its closest office is in Rapid City, so it can take more than two hours for agents to arrive, explained Marks.

“For all practical purposes, it is the tribal police who are the first responders regardless of the type of crime,” she said. “They’re the ones that have to get out there and answer the call.”

The tribe would need over 140 more police officers on the reservation to fight the rampant crime, according to court documents.

JoAnn Sierra, 79, a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, said two of her sons and two of her grandsons were killed on or near the reservation. The most recent case involved her grandson, Justin Little Hawk, 40, who in November 2020 was ambushed by a man he did not recognize while driving two of Sierra’s teenage grandchildren, she said.

The man got in the backseat of Sierra’s car and shot Little Hawk after the other grandchildren ran out. He died shortly before Christmas, and the person responsible was never convicted, Sierra said.

“It just makes me feel like I’m lost … Why does this have to happen here?” Sierra asked. “Why didn’t I move?”

Since the death of Logan, who was given the Lakota name Petá Zi Hoksila, meaning Yellow Fire Boy, Wilson has plastered the reservation with signs that say things like, “Justice for Logan” and “Who killed grandma’s baby?” in hopes of bringing attention to his death.

She said after Logan was shot, she waited months to hear from the FBI, and when she tried to talk with tribal law enforcement, they were limited in what they could say due to jurisdictional issues.

Wilson said she believes if there had been more law enforcement responding quickly, her grandson’s case could have been solved.

“It’s sad that we had to take those measures as a tribe to get the help that should have been there,” she said through tears. “It should have been there according to the treaties. And yet we all had to live like this. Lose people; lose loved ones.”

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By HALLIE GOLDEN Associated Press

Associated Press writer Felicia Fonseca contributed from Flagstaff, Arizona.

from Courthouse News

25 states join to sue feds over gun brace regulations

(CN) — More than 20 states, a disabled veteran and two gun accessories manufacturers joined The Firearms Regulatory Accountability Coalition Inc, a gun rights and trade association, in a lawsuit on Thursday against the federal government to try to stop the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives from enacting a new rule restricting the use of gun braces.

Gun braces are an accessory that attaches a gun to the shooter’s forearm, stabilizing the gun when it’s fired. It was originally intended for people with physical disabilities to shoot guns, but it’s since been used by beginning shooters, and shooters who don’t have the physical strength to stabilize a gun on their own, and by law enforcement officers, according to the lawsuit.

Millions of people across the country have braces, the lawsuit says, “to achieve safer and more accurate firing.”

After two mass shootings where the gunmen used a gun brace, one in Dayton, Ohio in 2019 that left nine people dead, and one in a grocery store in Boulder, Colorado that left 10 people dead in 2021, the Biden administration moved to pass tighter restrictions on gun braces. 

The shooter in Colorado used a Ruger AR-556 pistol, a type of AR-15 pistol modified with an arm brace that made the pistol fire like an AR-15 rifle, with more accuracy and more firepower, and more deadly.  

In January of 2023, the ATF enacted a rule that classifies guns with braces that are designed to be shot from the shoulder, like a rifle, as “short-barrel rifles,” which are subject to more taxes and more regulation under the National Firearms Act of 1934.   

“This rule does not affect “stabilizing braces” that are objectively designed and intended as a “stabilizing brace” for use by individuals with disabilities, and not for shouldering the weapon as a rifle,” a statement by the ATF reads. “Such stabilizing braces are designed to conform to the arm and not as a buttstock. However, if the firearm with the “stabilizing brace” is a short-barreled rifle, it needs to be registered no later than May 31, 2023,” or, gun owners can permanently remove the brace so that it can’t be reattached, destroy the gun, or turn it into their local ATF office.  

The lawsuit calls the new rule “arbitrary and capricious on multiple counts,” and that the rule could affect any gun owner with any kind of brace, contradictory to a decade of prior ATF rules around arm braces, a change in which means that after millions of braces have been sold, millions of Americans will automatically become felons if they don’t turn them in or destroy them. 

“The reversal will require millions of Americans to choose between the loss of their lawful (and lawfully acquired) firearms, the loss of their privacy, and the risk of criminal penalties,” the lawsuit states.

The state governments of 25 states, including West Virginia, North Dakota, Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, and Wyoming all signed on to the lawsuit, as well as brace manufacturer SB Tactical, another gun accessory manufacturer, B&T USA, and Richard Cicero, a a retired police firearms instructor and “wounded warrior,” as the lawsuit describes, who lost an arm and a leg while serving in Afghanistan.

The ATF said they were unable to comment on the case and instead pointed towards a press statement on their website.

from Courthouse News

Biden, McCarthy meet at White House on debt crisis worries

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy met face-to-face for high-level budget talks Wednesday at the White House, but expectations were low for significant progress as the new Republican leader tried to negotiate steep federal spending cuts in a broader deal to prevent a national debt limit crisis.

Biden has resisted direct negotiations over raising the nation’s legal debt ceiling, warning against potentially throwing the economy into chaos. McCarthy all but invited himself to the White House, pushing to start the conversation before a summer debt deadline.

The House speaker arrived for the afternoon session carrying no formal GOP budget proposal, but he is laden with the promises he made to far-right and other conservative Republican lawmakers during his difficult campaign to become House speaker. He vowed then to work to return federal spending to 2022 levels — an 8% reduction. He also promised to take steps to balance the budget within the decade — an ambitious, if politically unattainable goal.

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The political and economic stakes were high for both leaders, who have a cordial relationship, and for the nation as they worked to prevent a debt default. But it was doubtful that this first meeting since the embattled McCarthy won the speaker’s gavel would yield quick results.

“Everyone is asking the same question of Speaker McCarthy: Show us your plan. Where is your plan, Republicans?” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., ahead of the afternoon meeting.

“For days, Speaker McCarthy has heralded this sitdown as some kind of major win in his debt ceiling talks,” Schumer said. But he added, “Speaker McCarthy showing up at the White House without a plan is like sitting down at the table without cards in your hand.”

The nation is heading toward a fiscal showdown over raising the debt ceiling, a once-routine vote in Congress that has taken on oversized significance over the past decade as the nation’s debt toll mounts. Newly empowered in the majority, House Republicans want to force Biden and Senate Democrats into budget cuts as part of a deal to raise the limit.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen notified Congress last month that the government was reaching the limit of its borrowing capacity, $31 trillion, with congressional approval needed to raise the ceiling to allow more debt to pay off the nation’s already accrued bills. While Yellen was able to launch “extraordinary measures” to cover the bills temporarily, that funding is to run out in June.

Ahead of the White House meeting, House Republicans met in private early Wednesday to discuss policies. McCarthy met with Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday at the Capitol.

McConnell has a history of dealmaking with Biden during the last debt ceiling showdown a decade ago. But the GOP leader of the Senate, in the minority party, says it’s up to McCarthy and the president to come up with a deal that would be acceptable to the new House majority.

Still, McConnell is doing his part to influence the process from afar, and nudging Biden to negotiate.

“The president of the United States does not get to walk away from the table,” McConnell said in Senate remarks. “The American people changed control of the House because the voters wanted to constrain Democrats’ runaway, reckless, party-line spending.”

Slashing the federal budget is often easier said than done, as past budget deals have shown.

After a 2011 debt ceiling standoff during the Obama era, Republicans and Democrats agreed to across-the-board federal budget caps on domestic and defense spending that were supposed to be in place for 10 years but ultimately proved too much to bear.

After initial cuts, both parties agreed in subsequent years to alter the budget caps to protect priority programs. The caps recently expired anyway, and last year Congress agreed to a $1.7 trillion federal spending bill that sparked new outrage among fiscal hawks.

McCarthy said over the weekend he would not be proposing any reductions to the Social Security and Medicare programs that are primarily for older Americans, but other Republicans want cuts to those as part of overall belt-tightening.

Such mainstay programs, along with the Medicaid health care system, make up the bulk of federal spending and are politically difficult to cut, particularly with a growing population of those in need of services in congressional districts nationwide.

After Wednesday morning’s closed-door House GOP briefing, several Republican lawmakers insisted they would not allow the negotiations to spiral into a debt crisis.

“Obviously, we don’t want to default on our debt. We’re not going to,” said Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio. “But we are going to have to have a discussion about the trajectory that we’re on. Everyone knows that it’s not sustainable.”

Rep. Kevin Hern of Oklahoma, chairman of the Republican Study Committee, held a separate briefing for his group, whose 175 or so members make up most of the House GOP majority.

Hern sent a letter to McCarthy outlining their principles for budget cuts ahead of the White House meeting.

“We’re not out here trying to not pay our debts,” Hern said. “But it’s also a time of reflection of how we change this direction.”

The federal budget’s non-mandatory programs, in defense and domestic accounts, have also proven tough to trim.

Agreeing on the size and scope of the GOP’s proposed cuts will be a tall order for McCarthy as he struggles to build consensus within his House Republican majority and bridge the divide between his conservative and far-right wings of the party.

Biden has been here before, having brokered 2011-12 fiscal deals when he was vice president with McConnell.

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By LISA MASCARO and SEUNG MIN KIM Associated Press

from Courthouse News

Red states warn Walgreens, CVS against mailing abortion pills

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (CN) — Missouri’s new attorney general, leading a coalition of conservative states, on Wednesday sent a warning letter to pharmacy giants Walgreens and CVS saying that a plan to mail abortion pill is both illegal and unsafe.

The letters are in response to the Biden administration’s changes to federal rules designed to give women seeking an abortion more options in the wake of Roe v. Wade being overturned. The biggest change approved in January allowed women to receive abortion pills through the mail. Previously, they had been required to physically pick them up at pharmacies.

Missouri’s Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey, on behalf of 20 states, wrote the states “reject the Biden administration’s bizarre interpretation, and we expect courts will as well.”

Bailey was sworn into office in January after being appointed by Republican Governor Mike Parson to fill the office vacated by Eric Schmitt, who was elected to the U.S. Senate in November.

“As Attorney General, it is my responsibility to enforce the laws as written, and that includes enforcing the very laws that protect Missouri’s women and unborn children,” Bailey said in a statement. “My Office is doing everything in its power to inform these companies of the law, with the promise that we will use every tool at our disposal to uphold the law if broken.”

Walgreens, in a statement, said it is not currently dispensing mifepristone, which is also known as the abortion pill RU-486.

“We intend to become a certified pharmacy under the program, however we fully understand that we may not be able to dispense mifepristone in all locations if we are certified under the program,” Walgreens said.

CVS did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

The nearly identical letters to Walgreens and CVS state that federal law “expressly prohibits using the mail to send or receive any drug that will ‘be used or applied for producing abortion.’”

It further states that “anyone who ‘knowingly takes any such thing from the mails for the purpose of circulating’ is guilty of a federal crime. Obviously, a federal criminal law—especially one that is, as here, enforceable through a private right of action—deserves serious contemplation.”

The letters state that the Biden administration has encouraged the U.S. Postal Service to “disregard this plain text. But the text, not the Biden administration’s view, is what governs. And the Biden administration’s opinion fails to stand up even to the slightest amount of scrutiny.”

The AGs said their state laws prohibiting the mailing of abortion pills reflect their commitment to protecting lives and the dignity of both children and women. They note that the abortion pills are 5.96 times as likely to result in complications in first trimester abortions than surgical methods. These complications by nature occur in the home, away from a medical facility.

“And finally, mail-order abortion pills also invite the horror of an increase in coerced abortions,” the letters state. “When abortion drugs are mailed or consumed outside a regulated medical facility, the risk of coercion is much higher—indeed, guaranteed—because there is no oversight. Outside the regulated medical context, a person can obtain an abortion pill quite easily and then coerce a woman into taking it.”

Missouri was joined by the attorneys general of Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and West Virginia.

from Courthouse News