Damian Lillard is being traded from the Trail Blazers to the Bucks, ending long saga

(AP) — Damian Lillard is being traded by Portland to play alongside Giannis Antetokounmpo in Milwaukee, a person with knowledge of the agreement said Wednesday, a deal that ends his 11-year run with the Trail Blazers and a three-month saga surrounding his wish to be moved elsewhere in hopes of winning an NBA title.

The seven-time All-Star — a player so elite that he was selected to the NBA’s 75th anniversary team — goes from the Trail Blazers to the Bucks in a three-team deal that sends Jrue Holiday from the Bucks to Portland, Deandre Ayton from Phoenix to Portland and Jusuf Nurkic from the Blazers to the Suns, according to the person who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because none of the involved teams had announced the agreement.

As with all trades, it cannot be finalized until NBA attorneys review the terms and approve the deal.

It became known on July 1 that Lillard asked the Trail Blazers for a trade, which he was long speculated to be considering given his desire to play for a contender and Portland not seeming to have much of a chance with its current roster.

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He wanted to go to Miami and made that clear. Portland decided not to accommodate that request, and instead, it’s the Bucks who now have an incredibly strong 1-2 punch of Lillard and Antetokounmpo heading into the new season.

The trade continues the Bucks’ dramatic offseason makeover in response to their surprising first-round playoff loss to Miami.

They followed up that playoff loss by firing coach Mike Budenholzer and replacing him with Adrian Griffin, who spent the last five seasons as a Toronto Raptors assistant. Now they trade away the two-time All-Star Holiday to acquire Lillard, a seven-time All-NBA selection.

The acquisition of Lillard comes after Antetokounmpo, a two-time MVP, told The New York Times over the summer that he wanted to see how committed the Bucks are toward winning another championship before deciding whether to sign a long-term deal to stay in Milwaukee.

Antetokounmpo’s contract runs through the 2024-25 season, with a player option for 2025-26.

Bringing Lillard to Milwaukee certainly suggests the commitment is there. It also keeps the high-scoring guard away from Miami, one of the Bucks’ biggest Eastern Conference challengers.

When Lillard’s request was made public by the Blazers, general manager Joe Cronin said he would do “what’s best for the team” while grudgingly seeking to facilitate his wishes.

In the end, the deal with Bucks is what Cronin and the Blazers deemed best for all involved. It took a massive package to make the trade happen, especially because Lillard is owed a ransom over the next four years. He will make almost $46 million this coming season and could make as much as $216 million over the next four years if he exercises his option for the 2026-27 season.

It will be a large, and possibly very worthwhile, investment because acquiring Lillard figures to make the Bucks even more of a title contender. He averaged 32.2 points per game this past season, has averaged at least 24 points per game in each of the last eight seasons and has an offensive ignitability that few players in the NBA possess.

He became just the seventh player in NBA history to score more than 70 points in a game when he finished with 71 against the Houston Rockets on Feb. 26. The other names on that list are Wilt Chamberlain (who did it five times), Kobe Bryant, David Thompson, David Robinson, Elgin Baylor and Donovan Mitchell.

All six of the other players on that list were between 23 and 28 when they had their games of 71 points or more; Lillard was 32, a clear indicator that — even after 11 NBA seasons — he’s far from past his prime.

He has been great. The Blazers have not. And evidently, he didn’t see that changing anytime soon.

Lillard was beloved in Portland, but the speculation about his future with the team only intensified when the Blazers took point guard Scoot Henderson with the No. 3 overall pick in the June draft rather than package the pick for a proven commodity that could immediately help transform the team into a contender.

Portland won only four playoff series in Lillard’s 11 seasons, getting to the Western Conference Finals once. The team went 33-49 this past season, the second consecutive year of finishing well outside the playoff picture.

That’s not Lillard’s fault. His career average of 25.2 points per game ranks 11th among all players in NBA history who have appeared in at least 500 games. He’s had 17 games of at least 50 points in his career — two of them in the playoffs — and is a past rookie of the year, teammate of the year and winner of the NBA’s citizenship award.

He’s been an Olympic gold medalist, was the unanimous selection as MVP of the seeding games when the “bubble” season resumed at Walt Disney World during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and even won the 3-point contest at All-Star weekend in February.

And he has an absolute flair for drama. His series-winning shot to eliminate Oklahoma City from the 2019 NBA playoffs — a stepback 3-pointer over Paul George from nearly 40 feet as time expired — is one of the iconic postseason moments in not just Portland history but NBA history as well.

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By TIM REYNOLDS AP Basketball Writer

AP Sports Writer Steve Megargee in Milwaukee contributed.

from Courthouse News

FTC hits Amazon with antitrust suit

WASHINGTON (CN) — The Federal Trade Commission and 17 state attorneys general sued Amazon on Tuesday, accusing it of forming monopolies and hiking prices for shoppers, and seeking to reign in the tech giant’s power.

“Our complaint lays out how Amazon has used a set of punitive and coercive tactics to unlawfully maintain its monopolies,” FTC Chair Lina Khan said in a press release. “Today’s lawsuit seeks to hold Amazon to account for these monopolistic practices and restore the lost promise of free and fair competition.”

Amazon is the second-largest private employer in the United States. On top of its online retail business, the company has expanded into myriad industries, including health care, food and movies. In recent years, the company has purchased Whole Foods, MGM and One Medical.

David Zapolsky, Amazon’s senior vice president of global public policy and general counsel, said the lawsuit means the FTC has “radically departed from its mission of protecting consumers and competition.”

He said the challenged actions drive competition and innovation.

“If the FTC gets its way, the result would be fewer products to choose from, higher prices, slower deliveries for consumers, and reduced options for small businesses — the opposite of what antitrust law is designed to do,” Zapolsky said in a statement. “The lawsuit filed by the FTC today is wrong on the facts and the law, and we look forward to making that case in court.”

In the antitrust lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, the government stops short of seeking to break up Amazon, but it accuses the company of using “a set of interlocking anticompetitive and unfair strategies to illegally maintain its monopoly power.” 

Amazon stifles competition, overcharges sellers and degrades quality for shoppers through actions that affect a massive portion of the online economy, said John Newman, deputy director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition.

“Amazon is a monopolist that uses its power to hike prices on American shoppers and charge sky-high fees on hundreds of thousands of online sellers,” Newman said in a press release. “Seldom in the history of U.S. antitrust law has one case had the potential to do so much good for so many people.”

The lawsuit accuses Amazon of anticompetitive conduct in its online market serving shoppers and its marketplace where sellers purchase services.

For sellers, the FTC claims Amazon suppresses listings for lower-priced goods so they “become effectively invisible.”

The federal and state authorities filing suit also say the company requires sellers to use Amazon’s fulfillment service to qualify for Prime eligibility, which regulators say is a necessity for conducting business on the site. The requirement makes it “substantially more expensive” for sellers to use other platforms.

Combined with other fees, sellers could be forced to pay close to 50% of their revenue to Amazon, according to the lawsuit.

Shoppers pay their own price in turn, the suit says, as searches are biased toward favoring Amazon’s products over others that might be of better quality. Searches also replace organic results with paid advertisements.

The FTC is joined in the lawsuit by Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Nevada, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Wisconsin.

from Courthouse News

DC Circuit rejects Utah effort to block ‘good neighbor’ emissions rule

WASHINGTON (CN) — A D.C. Circuit panel ruled on Monday against an effort by Utah and industry groups to block an Environmental Protection Agency rule that seeks to limit emissions across state lines, also known as the “good neighbor rule.” 

The challenge, brought by Utah Governor Spencer Cox and state Attorney General Sean Reyes, with support from the Energy Infrastructure Council and the Chamber of Commerce of the United States of America, argues that the rule wrongly intrudes on the state’s sovereignty. 

A three-judge panel made up of U.S. Circuit Judges Cornelia Pillard, Justin Walker and J. Michelle Childs ruled 2-1 to block the challenge, finding that Utah did not satisfy the “stringent requirements for a stay pending court review.” Walker, a Donald Trump appointee, was the sole dissenter. 

The rule, also known as the Ozone Transfer Rule, was established in 2015 to target “ozone-forming emissions of nitrogen oxides” from power plants and industrial facilities that travel downwind into neighboring states and affect those states’ air quality standards.

According to the EPA’s findings, nitrogen oxide from coal-fired power plants in northeast Utah has drifted into the state’s eastern neighbor, Colorado, and has partially caused the Denver metro area to not meet federal ozone standards. 

Utah has disputed those findings, leading the EPA to reject Utah’s State Implementation Plan for cutting ozone in February, instructing the state to prepare for more cuts. The state began its preparations at the statehouse, setting aside $2 million for legal fees to sue the EPA.  

In its petition for review, the state argued that when the EPA decided to expand the rule from 12 Eastern states to 23, adding Utah along with states in the South and the Southwest, the agency wrongly applied a four-step test that was still geared toward Eastern states and did “not properly account for conditions in the West.” 

The state went further in its statement of issues, claiming the rule wrongfully singled out certain industries that emit above the agency’s standards while excluding other similar industries and that the agency did the same for states, forcing some states to follow “draconian reductions” while going easier on other states that pollute at the same levels. 

Eastern states were the first required to follow the rule for both power plants and other polluting industries in 2015, based on a four-step test used to determine which states should be regulated under the rule. 

Included under the initial rule were Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia.

The test requires the EPA to determine which downwind states are being affected by outside emissions, where the emissions are coming from and if they can be linked, the specific source of the emissions and what measures can be taken to reduce those emissions. 

The agency announced an expansion of applicable states in March 2022, raising the total number included to 23. Southern states like Arkansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas were added as states required to follow the rule for both power plants and other industries, while Utah, Minnesota and Nevada were the three newly added states. Minnesota, Wisconsin and Alabama are the only three states where the rule applies to just power plants. 

California was also added in the 2022 expansion, but only for non-power plant emissions. The agency is also considering whether to add states like Arizona, Iowa, Kansas, New Mexico, Tennessee and Wyoming.

When Utah filed its challenge in June, Governor Cox, Attorney General Reyes, the state’s congressional delegation and legislative leadership all filed a joint statement framing the challenge as a fight against government overreach. 

“As Utah’s elected state leaders, we stand united in pushing back against the administration’s egregious power grab that harms Utahns,” the officials said in the statement. “We will fight for a responsible energy policy that embraces efficiency and is based in reality because keeping the lights on is the only option.” 

The Attorney General’s office did not reply to a request for comment. 

A coalition of environmental groups filed amicus briefs in support of the rule, including the Environmental Defense Fund, Clean Air Council, the Center for Biological Diversity, Downwinders at Risk, the Sierra Club and more. 

Following the panel’s decision, the coalition applauded the decision in a statement.

“The court’s refusal to block this protective air rule serves as a critical step towards holding upwind polluters accountable for their contribution to cross-state smog,” the coalition said on Monday.

from Courthouse News

Oklahoma man executed after Supreme Court denies new lawyer more time

WASHINGTON (CN) — The Supreme Court refused on Thursday to stop the execution of an Oklahoma man to give his new attorney more time to review his case. 

Anthony Castillo Sanchez, 44, was pronounced dead at 10:19 a.m. following a three-drug injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester.

Sanchez was sentenced to death for the 1996 murder of Juli Busken. The University of Oklahoma dance student was 21 years old when she was abducted from her apartment complex. Busken’s body was later found at Lake Stanley Draper. She had been bound, sexually assaulted and shot in the head. 

The high court declined Sanchez’s emergency application and certiorari petition asking for more time for his new attorney to review his case. Justice Neil Gorsuch did not participate in the case. 

Despite DNA found at the crime scene, Busken’s murder went unsolved for eight years. However, in 2004, investigators got a break in the case. Sanchez’s DNA would match sperm found on Busken’s clothing at the crime scene after he was sent to prison for a burglary conviction. 

Sanchez was convicted of Busken’s murder in 2006 and sentenced to death. 

Despite the DNA evidence, Sanchez claimed he was innocent. Sanchez challenged his conviction on direct appeal, four post-conviction proceedings and federal habeas review but came up short. In June 2022, Sanchez lost his fight against the state’s execution protocol. His execution was then scheduled for Sept. 21. 

After facing another loss in proving his innocence in February, Sanchez moved for new counsel. A court found that his representation had been appropriate despite Sanchez’s claims that they had abandoned him. 

Sanchez’s new attorney, who was representing him pro bono, argued the execution needed to be put on pause in order for him to get up to date on the case. 

“Clemency or post-conviction counsel under the standards provided by the ABA Guidelines must investigate claims,” Eric Allen, an attorney from Ohio, wrote in Sanchez’s emergency application before the court. “This cannot be done. Counsel only took possession of the file last Friday.” 

Allen told the court he would have had to review 50 boxes full of paperwork prior to submitting an appeal to the district court — a task he says is impossible. 

“Mr. Sanchez has diligently pursued relief for the alleged Constitutional violations every step of the way in the District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma, in the Tenth Circuit, and in the United States Supreme Court, only to be stymied by his own counsel when they refused to provide Mr. Sanchez’s own file to him,” Allen wrote. “What is more, any delays in resolving this litigation fall solely on that same counsel when they failed to visit or communicate with him for years.” 

Sanchez alleged that his counsel’s refusal to speak with him left him unable to participate in his defense or even review his files. 

“Under these circumstances and this timeline, Mr. Sanchez did not unnecessarily delay this litigation,” Allen wrote. “The District Court and the Circuit Court both denied applications for a stay. The boxes of information have not been reviewed in total and the questions remains, is Petitioner guilty of killing the victim in this case.” 

Following the court’s order, Allen continued to advocate for the state to pause Sanchez’s execution.

“I am deeply saddened by the court’s denial of our petition for certiorari and the application for stay,” Allen said in an email. “The state of Oklahoma should stay this execution to review and investigate the innocence claim showing it was Sanchez’s father who committed this crime.”  

Oklahoma argued that Sanchez replaced attorneys who represented him for decades four months before his execution even though he did not have any open cases challenging his conviction or sentence. 

“Petitioner now wants this Court to stop a lawful execution that has survived nearly twenty years of scrutiny so that he can start over from scratch,”’ Jennifer Crabb, Oklahoma’s assistant attorney general, wrote in a brief before the court. “The petition is frivolous.” 

Crabb declined to comment on the justices’ order prior to Thursday’s execution. 

from Courthouse News

Network of ancient American Indian earthworks in Ohio named as UNESCO World Heritage sites

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A network of ancient American Indian ceremonial and burial mounds in Ohio described as “part cathedral, part cemetery and part astronomical observatory” was added Tuesday to the list of UNESCO World Heritage sites.

Preservationists, led by the Ohio History Connection, and indigenous tribes, many with ancestral ties to the state, pushed to recognize the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks for their good condition, distinct style and cultural significance — describing them as “masterpieces of human genius.”

UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee approved the application during a meeting in Saudi Arabia.

The massive earthworks comprise eight ancient sites spread across 150 kilometers (90 miles) of what is present-day southern Ohio, including one located on the grounds of a private golf course and country club. The designation puts the spot in the same category as wonders of the world including Greece’s Acropolis, Peru’s Machu Picchu and the Great Wall of China.

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“Pure excitement and exhilaration” were the immediate reactions of Chief Glenna Wallace of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma.

“Tears came to my eyes, and exhilaration turned into reflection, knowing that the world will now see and recognize the commitment, spirituality, imaginative artistry and knowledge of complex architecture to produce magnificent earthworks,” she said in a statement. “Our ancestors were true geniuses.”

Constructed by American Indians between 2,000 and 1,600 years ago along central tributaries of the Ohio River, the earthworks were host to ceremonies that drew people from across the continent, based on archeological discoveries of raw materials from as far west as the Rocky Mountains.

Elaborate ceremonialism linked to “the order and rhythms of the cosmos” is evident in the “beautiful ritual objects, spectacular offerings of religious icons and regalia” found at the sites, the application said.

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said the designation is a “tremendous” recognition of America’s Indigenous people.

“World Heritage designation is an opportunity for the United States to share the whole story of America and the remarkable diversity of our cultural heritage, as well as the beauty of our land,” she said in a statement.

The eight Hopewell sites are noteworthy for their enormous scale, geometric precision and astronomical breadth and accuracy — such as encoding all eight lunar standstills over an 18.6-year cycle.

UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay said the earthworks’ inclusion on the heritage list “will make this important part of American history known around the world.”

“Just three months after rejoining UNESCO, the United States has its twenty-fifth site inscribed on the World Heritage List, which illustrates the richness and diversity of the country’s cultural and natural heritage,” she said. “This inscription on the World Heritage List highlights the important work of American archaeologists, who discovered here remains dating back 2000 years, constituting one of the largest earthwork constructions in the world.”

The National Congress of American Indians, the Inter-Tribal Council representing tribes living in Northeast Oklahoma and the Seneca Nation of New York State were among tribes that supported the UNESCO designation.

The application process was slowed by a protracted court battle to restore public access to one of the earthworks leased to the Moundbuilders Country Club, whose members-only golf course sits inside it. A ruling of the Ohio Supreme Court in December allowed Ohio History Connection, the state’s historical society, to proceed with an ongoing effort to gain control of the Octagon Earthworks in Newark, one of eight sites recognized.

History Connection CEO and Executive Director Megan Wood said that Tuesday’s inscription of the site was the culmination of more than a decade of work by her organization and its partners, including tribes and the National Park Service.

“We are beyond excited to share these sites with more and more Ohioans, Americans and world travelers,” she said.

Other sites included under the new designation are: Fort Ancient Earthworks in Oregonia and Great Circle Earthworks in Heath; and five sites within the Hopewell Culture National Historical Park in Chillicothe: Mound City Group, Hopewell Mound Group, Seip Earthworks, High Bank Earthworks and Hopeton Earthworks.

Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said he anticipates that Ohio’s first World Heritage site will draw “even more visitors to see these amazing places” to “experience the awe-inspiring earthworks that are such a special part of Ohio’s history.”

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By JULIE CARR SMYTH Associated Press

from Courthouse News

Baylor settles yearslong federal lawsuit in sexual assault scandal that rocked Baptist school

(AP) — Baylor University has settled a yearslong federal lawsuit brought by 15 women who alleged they were sexually assaulted at the nation’s biggest Baptist school, ending the largest case brought in a wide-ranging scandal that led to the ouster of the university president and its football coach, and tainted the school’s reputation.

Notification of the settlement was filed in online court records Monday. The lawsuit was first filed in June 2016.

The lawsuit was one of several that were filed that alleged staff and administrators ignored or stifled reports from women who said they were assaulted on or near campus.

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Among the early claims from some women in the lawsuit was that school officials sometimes used the campus conduct code that banned alcohol, drugs and premarital sex to pressure women not to report being attacked. Another previously settled lawsuit alleged Baylor fostered a “hunting ground for sexual predators.”

The terms of the settlement announced Monday were not disclosed.

“We are deeply sorry for anyone connected with the Baylor community who has been harmed by sexual violence. While we can never erase the reprehensible acts of the past, we pray that this agreement will allow these 15 survivors to move forward in a supportive manner,” Baylor University said in a statement.

The scandal erupted in 2015 and 2016 with assault allegations made against football players. The school hired Philadelphia law firm Pepper Hamilton to investigate how it handled those assaults and others.

The law firm’s report determined that under the leadership of school President Ken Starr, Baylor did little to respond to accusations of sexual assault involving football players over several years. It also raised broader questions of how the school responded to sexual assault claims across campus.

Starr, the former prosecutor who led the investigation of the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal, was removed as president and later left the university. Starr died in 2022.

Also fired was football coach Art Briles, who denied he covered up sexual violence in his program. Briles had led the program to a Big 12 conference championship, but he has not returned to major-college coaching.

Baylor officials have said the school has made sweeping changes to how it addresses sexual assault claims and victims in response to the Pepper Hamilton report. That report has never been fully released publicly, despite efforts by the women suing the school to force it into the open.

Chad Dunn, an attorney for the women who settled Monday, said the lawsuit and scandal went far beyond the problems in the football program that captured early attention.

“Their bravery and strength has created legal precedents that empower others to gain relief from the injuries inflicted by their universities, while also securing safer education environments for future generations,” Dunn said.

“Baylor’s focus of media attention on football tried to misdirect attention from institutional failures of the Baylor administration. Our clients would have none of that,” Dunn said. “Their determination brought the focus on officials in the ivory tower and ‘the Baylor way.’ ”

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By JIM VERTUNO Associated Press

from Courthouse News

Kansas will no longer change trans people’s birth certificates to reflect their gender identities

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas will no longer change transgender people’s birth certificates to reflect their gender identities, the state health department said Friday, citing a new law that prevents the state from legally recognizing those identities.

The decision from the state Department of Health and Environment makes Kansas one of a handful of states that won’t change transgender people’s birth certificates. It already was among the few states that don’t change the gender marker on transgender people’s driver’s licenses.

Those decisions reverse policies that Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s administration set when she took office in 2019. They came in response to court filings by conservative Republican state Attorney General Kris Kobach to enforce the new state law. Enacted by the GOP-controlled Legislature over Kelly’s veto, it took effect July 1 and defines male and female based only on the sex assigned to a person at birth.

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Jaelynn Abegg, a 38-year-old Wichita resident, said her heart breaks for fellow transgender Kansas residents who won’t be able to experience the joy she felt when her new birth certificate, affirming her female identity, arrived in the mail in 2021. She said the change gave her “a feeling completeness.”

“This is something that I’ve been grappling with my entire life. As far back as I can remember, I have wished that I was that I was a woman,” Abegg said. “And being able to embrace that and take that for myself has been has been life changing.”

Trangender Kansas residents also have said repeatedly in interviews that having ID documents that conflict with their identities makes traveling by airplane, interacting with police and even using a credit card in stores more complicated. Also, studies show that transgender people who don’t have their identities affirmed, especially youth, generally are more prone to depression and at a higher risk of suicide.

Kobach publicly chastised Kelly when she initially said that her administration could continue to change transgender people’s birth certificates and driver’s licenses despite the new law. He said it was her duty to administer the law even though she opposes it.

Kelly said in a statement Friday: “As I’ve said before, the state should not discriminate or encroach into Kansans’ personal lives -– it’s wrong, it’s bad for business.”

She added: “However, I am committed to following the law.”

Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, an attorney for Lambda Legal, which represents LGBTQ+ people in lawsuits, said Kelly’s administration was forced to act as it did, though he expects the courts to find the law unconstitutional.

“People with a myopic view or a misunderstanding or misapprehension about trans people want to ensure that trans people are not seen by government and the world at large,” he said.

Kobach and other supporters of the new law have argued that a birth certificate is a record of a historical event and therefore shouldn’t change even when a person’s gender identity does. Also, some supporters of the law have acknowledged that they don’t see transgender girls and women as girls and women.

Kobach said Friday he is pleased that Kelly’s administration is complying with the new law, adding in a statement, “The intent of Kansas legislators was clear.”

The new Kansas law was based on a proposal from several national anti-trans groups and part of a wave of measures rolling back transgender rights in Republican-controlled statehouses across the U.S. Montana, Oklahoma and Tennessee also don’t allow transgender residents to change their birth certificates, and Montana and Tennessee don’t allow driver’s licenses changes.

From 2019 through June 2023, more than 900 Kansas residents changed the gender markers on their birth certificates and nearly 400 changed their driver’s licenses. Both documents list a person’s “sex.”

Kobach issued a legal opinion in late June saying that not only does the new law prevent such changes, it requires the state to reverse previous changes to its records. The Department of Health and Environment said Friday a transgender person can keep a changed birth certificate and it remains valid, but if another copy is issued in the future, it will revert to listing the sex assigned at birth.

For weeks before the new law took effect,LGBTQ-rights advocates urged trans people to change their driver’s licenses and birth certificates before it took effect. Requests for changes surged in the weeks before the law took effect.

Under the conservative Republicans who were governor before Kelly, transgender residents also couldn’t change their birth certificates.

Four trangender residents represented by Lambda Legal sued the state in 2018 over that policy, and months after taking office, Kelly settled that lawsuit. A federal judge signed off on a settlement agreement requiring the state to change transgender people’s birth certificates.

In late June, Kobach filed a request with the same federal judge, asking him to lift the requirement because it conflicted with the new state law. The judge granted the request last month, saying he was leaving it to Kansas courts to determine how the law must be enforced.

Kobach also filed a separate state-court lawsuit in July to prevent transgender people from changing their driver’s licenses. A state district court judge ordered that such changes cease, at least through early January.

In that state-court case, five transgender people argue that the new law violates their rights under the Kansas Constitution.

That issue appears likely to go to the Kansas Supreme Court, which ruled in 2019 that the state’s Bill of Rights grants people a right to bodily autonomy.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas has set up a website for people to report that they’ve been harmed by the new state law rolling back trans rights.

“Accurate, affirming identity documents are crucial for the health, safety, and well-being of trans people,” said D.C. Heigert, LGBTQ+ legal fellow for the group.

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By JOHN HANNA and HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH Associated Press

Hollingsworth reported from Mission, Kansas.

from Courthouse News

DC Circuit rounds out trio of hearings on emission standards

WASHINGTON (CN) — A D.C. Circuit panel heard from a group of conservative states and business groups Friday as they argued against a caveat that allows California to restrict fuel emissions beyond the federal government’s rules. it was the third hearing at the appellate court this week centered on emissions standards.

The exception, known as the California Waiver, was enacted in the 1970s so the state could address smog over Los Angeles. It has since evolved to make the state a “laboratory of innovation” where automakers can test new technology. 

The states argued the exception for the largest car market in the country is effectively pushing the car industry to adopt electric vehicles faster than they otherwise would have, if California’s standards matched those set by the federal government. 

Friday’s arguments before U.S. Circuit Judges J. Michelle Childs, Bradley Garcia and Robert Wilkins follow a pair of similar cases argued before another panel of judges on Thursday, targeting emission standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. 

The challengers in one case, 15 conservative states and industry groups, found a surprising ally in the other suit’s plaintiff, the National Resources Defense Council, which also argued that the standards were a veiled attempt to phase out traditional liquid-fuel vehicles in favor of their electric counterparts. 

Car manufacturing companies sided with the federal government in all three of the cases. 

On Friday attorney Jeffrey Wall, of Sullivan & Cromwell, represented the intervening the Valero Renewable Fuels Company. He brought up the so-called “major questions doctrine” — as he did Thursday morning over the EPA rule — saying California’s role as both a testing ground and the leading consumer of cars gives the state power over the rest of the nation. 

The three-judge panel seemed less receptive to the major questions argument compared with Thursday’s panel — Chief U.S. Circuit Judge Sri Srinivasan and U.S. Circuit Judges Gregory Katsas and Florence Pan — and spent little time on the topic. 

In September 2022, the state’s powerful Air Resources Board passed a new set of regulations that essentially require all vehicles sold in the state to be either electric, hydrogen-fueled or at least plug-in hybrid by 2035. Soon after, 17 states adopted similar rules, showing the influential role the state has. 

Ohio led the challenge, along with Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and West Virginia.

Wall argued that by maintaining the California Waiver, the EPA has given the state a regulatory power unequal to the rest of the states and even comparable with the federal government. In his view that’s particularly problematic if, apart from its smog, California faces the same climate change issues as the rest of the country.

The Trump administration revoked the exception in 2019 as part of its wide-reaching rollback of efforts to fight climate change. Then-EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said the rule worked against the idea of federalism by allowing a single state dictate standards for the nation.

President Joe Biden reinstated the rule in March 2022.

Eric Hostetler, a Justice Department attorney representing the EPA, argued that the rule has nothing to do with federalism, rather it enhances the state’s authority, and likened it to Texas’s power to maintain its own electrical grid. 

“The states’ theory would undermine that exception,” Hostetler said. 

Judge Garcia, a Biden appointee, noted that states like Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas each have special authority over their coastal seabed in the Gulf of Mexico, a form of enhanced sovereignty that other states do not.

When other states brought the Supreme Court challenge United States v. Louisiana, the justices denied the challenge and affirmed the coastal state’s sovereignty.

Judge Wilkins, a Barack Obama appointee, seemed to be the most receptive to the idea that the exception gave California unnecessary special rights, using an analogy to characterize the state’s stricter emission limits to soldiers.

He said if a state needs protection, it really only needs as many soldiers as any other state, “that doesn’t mean they need to have a million more soldiers.” 

Chloe Kolman, another Justice Department attorney for the EPA, pointed out that car manufacturers make their plans years in advance and many base their decisions off California’s standards. 

If the exception were overturned, it could be extremely disruptive for the auto industry, which saw 12,700 United Auto Workers begin striking Thursday night in Michigan, Ohio and Missouri for better wages and working conditions. The industry generated approximately $2.86 trillion in 2021 and employs over 1.7 million people. 

from Courthouse News

At DC Circuit, red states argue federal emission rules will force nation to adopt electric vehicles

WASHINGTON (CN) — A D.C. Circuit panel heard arguments on Thursday over dual challenges to a recent set of federal rules meant to limit the greenhouse gas emissions of “light-duty” motor vehicles — cars, vans, SUVs and pickup trucks — that critics say effectively mandates an extreme transition to electric vehicles. 

Arguments centered on a 2021 Environmental Protection Agency rule that would cut down on pollution from automobile tailpipes, one of the largest sources of planet-warming emissions, and similar emission standards set by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for cars built from 2024 through 2026. 

Transportation accounts for approximately 28% of the United States’ total greenhouse gas emissions, according to a 2021 EPA study. Light-duty trucks, which include SUVs, pickup trucks and minivans, account for most emissions within that group at 37%, followed by medium- and heavy-duty trucks at 23% and passenger cars making up 21% of transportation emissions.

First in the pair of cases combined for arguments on Thursday was a challenge brought by 15 conservative-leaning states and industry groups who say Congress, not the EPA, should sign off on limits that would so significantly shift American life they exceed the federal agency’s authority.

The argument hinges on the “major questions doctrine,” which has come before the Supreme Court in recent years. The high court used the principle, which is a matter of statutory interpretation rather than a written law, to block President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program earlier this summer.  

That made-up doctrine became the focus of the three-judge panel for much of the first set of oral arguments Thursday, as the judges attempted to define clear boundaries as to the extent of the environmental agency’s authority.

Taking the place of Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is in the midst of an impeachment trial, Texas Principal Deputy Solicitor General Lanora Pettit argued EPA set emission standards so stringent that meeting the limits mandates a transition toward electric vehicles.

Jeffrey Wall, of Sullivan & Cromwell, who represents the intervening Renewable Fuels Company, joined Pettit. The two attorneys repeatedly pointed to a section of the EPA rule that they argued revealed the agency’s aim to completely phase out traditional, combustion-engine vehicles. 

“Compliance with the final standards will necessitate greater implementation and pace of technology penetration through 2026 using existing [greenhouse gas] reduction technologies, including further deployment,” of electronic vehicles, the rule states. 

All three judges, including the Trump-appointed U.S. Circuit Judge Gregory Katsas, expressed some doubt as to whether that language or other similar sections indeed show the government intended to set a standard with which only electric vehicles could possibly comply.

U.S. Circuit Judge Florence Pan, a Biden appointee, pointed out that the EPA estimated the standard would only increase electric vehicle use from about 7% to 17% by 2026 — a shift hardly large enough to bring the major questions doctrine into the picture. 

Sue Chen, an environmental attorney for the Department of Justice, argued the standard was by no means a mandate that Americans fully forgo their old cars, but is meant to encourage that process in order to meet the nation’s climate goals. 

Joining the suit were the states of Texas, Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Utah. Arizona was originally part of the group, while Republican former Attorney General Mark Brnovich was in office, but his Democratic successor, Attorney General Kris Mayes, pulled out when she took the office. 

Thursday’s second case centered on a similar standard set by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The Natural Resources Defense Council argued the rule wrongly relies on California’s state emission standards and thus failed to calculate the “maximum feasible average fuel economy standards” based on the current fleet of vehicles on the market today.

Pete Huffman, a staff attorney for the organization, said the rule should not have excluded efficient combustion engine technologies, like so-called high-compression-ratio or “Atkinson-enabled” engines, which can also reduce emissions.

He pointed to the Atkinson engines — which use shorter piston strokes to save on fuel — as a way the agency could have set the standard without focusing solely on electric vehicles.

A third case on Friday will address California’s long-standing authority to set higher emission standards than the federal government’s.

Scott Hochberg, staff attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the intervenors in Friday’s case, said the three challenges pose a considerable threat to climate efforts.

“We can’t gut clean car standards that have been game changers for consumers, public health, the climate and clean air,” Hochberg said in a statement Wednesday. “I hope the court rejects these short-sighted attempts to weaken and undo fundamental laws that protect us all. Because automakers have time and time again refused to use proven technologies to reduce pollution, we need strong clean car standards to lead the way.”

The final judge on Thursday’s panel was Chief U.S. Circuit Judge Sri Srinivasan, a Barack Obama appointee.

from Courthouse News

First Circuit weighs school policy affirming students’ gender identity against parents’ right to know

BOSTON (CN) — In a nationally watched test case in which 34 states filed amicus briefs, the First Circuit heard arguments Wednesday on whether a school violated parents’ constitutional rights when it actively encouraged their 11-year-old daughter to change her gender while hiding this fact from them.

Parents have no right to know about or interfere with a child’s gender transition because “gender identity is an immutable characteristic” and “you can’t decide to have transgender children or not to have transgender children,” the school’s lawyer, David Lawless of Robinson Donovan in Springfield, Mass., told the court.

If schools had to disclose a child’s gender, there would be “no limiting principle” because “schools have lots of important information about students all the time. You can’t pick and choose what to disclose,” Lawless said.

“I don’t see that,” responded U.S. Circuit Judge Julie Rikelman. “Gender identity is very important to everyone. Are you really saying that there’s no difference between gender identity and who a child played with at recess?”

Lawless stood his ground and said that a school has no duty to tell parents a wide variety of important information about students, including whether they are depressed or suicidal or were raped or had an abortion.

“You seem to be asserting that the right of students to make decisions trumps the right of parents to know what’s going on,” said U.S. Circuit Judge Kermit Lipez, a Clinton appointee.

“We are,” Lawless answered.

The case, Foote v. Ludlow School Committee, arose when Stephen Foote and Marissa Silvestri’s daughter, known in court papers as B.F., expressed interest in becoming a boy. The parents wrote to her teachers and principal as well as the superintendent and school committee members in their town of Ludlow, Mass., saying that they would handle her mental health issues and asking them not to have any private conversations with B.F. about it.

But that’s not what happened. Pursuant to a school board policy, school officials regularly met privately with B.F.; actively affirmed the child’s gender transition; allowed B.F. to use the boys’ bathroom; instructed everyone at the school to use the child’s preferred name and pronouns; and implied to B.F. that Foote and Silvestri weren’t providing a safe environment at home. Officials hid all this from Foote and Silvestri.

When a teacher later bucked the policy and told the parents anyway, she was fired. The superintendent publicly accused families who objected to the policy of “intolerance, prejudice and bigotry … thinly veiled behind a camouflage of what is being asserted as ‘parental rights.’”

Foote and Silvestri sued, claiming the school violated their substantive due process right to direct their child’s upbringing and to make mental health decisions.

In December 2022, a trial judge ruled in favor of the school, finding that while its policy was “flawed” and “disconcerting” and “students and parents would almost certainly be better served” by a different approach, its actions didn’t violate the Constitution.

Simply calling students by their preferred name and pronouns didn’t amount to mental health treatment, the judge said. And while parents have a right to direct their children’s upbringing, interference with that right doesn’t violate due process unless it “shocks the conscience” — and given the newness of the transgender issue and the public controversy surrounding it, the school’s choices didn’t rise to that level.

As an example of something that “shocks the conscience,” the court cited a case where a school lied about whether its drinking water was safe.

But the parents’ lawyer, Mary McAlister of the Child & Parental Rights Campaign in Johns Creek, Georgia, told the First Circuit that this case was analogous to one in which a federal judge in Maine found that it shocked the conscience when a police officer tried to get an 11-year-old girl to snitch on her parents for marijuana use and implied that she wasn’t safe at home.

In B.F.’s case, McAlister said, “an 11-year-old girl was being told that her parents don’t love her, they can’t keep her safe, she can’t trust them and she can only trust the school.”

McAlister also argued that the “shocks the conscience” test is easier to meet in the case of a deliberate policy decision as opposed to a spur-of-the-moment choice by law enforcement.

Lawless responded that much of what the school did, such as letting the child use preferred pronouns and bathrooms, was required by a state educational guideline. But “that’s a guideline, not a law or legal decision,” McAlister said. “You need to look at what other courts have done.”

McAlister faced tougher questioning on whether the school was providing mental health treatment. U.S. Circuit Judge O. Rogeriee Thompson, an Obama appointee, noted that the child was never diagnosed with gender dysphoria.

“Wouldn’t accepting this argument mean that many ordinary people in everyday life are providing mental health treatment when they use preferred pronouns?” asked Rikelman.

McAlister responded that using preferred pronouns and other “social transitioning” is a standard part of mental health protocols; the school behaved as though the child had gender dysphoria; and the situation was different from “everyday life” because the school was acting with governmental authority.

Rikelman is a Biden appointee who joined the court in June after representing the abortion clinic in the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision that overruled Roe v. Wade. Interestingly, in that case she argued that abortion should be considered a substantive due process right.

Even if the parents in this case can persuade the court that the school’s conduct shocks the conscience, the individual defendants might still have qualified immunity if the right they violated wasn’t clearly established at the time.

“Plaintiffs have not identified a single case that establishes a substantive due process right that has been violated,” Lawless insisted.

“Do you need to find a case squarely on point?” Rikelman asked. “Isn’t applying the law to new facts what advocates do all the time?”

“Yes, but there’s nothing that comes close to the rights asserted in this case,” Lawless replied, adding that “just because you might have a flawed policy doesn’t mean the policy shocks the conscience.”

The case drew briefs from more than 100 amici, including 19 states that support the parents (Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia and West Virginia) and 15 states that support the school (California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington state, plus the District of Columbia).

Ludlow is an unlikely epicenter for a national transgender controversy. The sleepy middle-class suburb of Springfield, once a mill town, has 21,000 people and narrowly voted in favor of President Trump in 2020.

from Courthouse News

New lawsuit in Idaho questions scope of state abortion exemptions

(CN) — A new lawsuit over Idaho’s strict abortion bans filed Monday seeks clarifications on the state’s recent exceptions to the bans that went into effect on July 1.

The abortion bans cited by the lawsuit primarily involve Idaho’s “trigger ban” or “total abortion ban,” which was passed in 2020 and went into effect in August 2022 after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The law initially prohibited abortion at all pregnancy stages while threatening felony criminal sentences of two to five years in state prison.

Another Idaho law not only prohibits abortions after six weeks but allows the family of a fetus or embryo to sue an abortion provider for at least $20,000 while imposing felony penalties and threatens revocation of a doctor’s medical license. Meanwhile, Idaho’s “abortion trafficking law” went into effect in May 2023, making it illegal for adults to assist minors in obtaining legal abortions out of state without the consent of their parents or legal guardians.

The bans have caused doctors to flee the state, fearing prosecution.

“Since Roe was overturned, obstetrician-gynecologists and maternal fetal medicine specialists are resigning and leaving Idaho in droves,” the plaintiffs — four women, two doctors and the Idaho Academy of Family Physicians — say in the complaint, explaining that since Idaho’s trigger ban went into effect, four out of Idaho’s nine fetal medicine specialists have left the state while one other plans to retire this year.

That’s in addition to two rural hospitals that have closed their labor and delivery centers — one of which attributed its closure to physician resignations in response to the laws — and struggles within the state’s major hospitals to hire and retain doctors, according to the complaint.

“Prominent physicians are warning that Idaho’s abortion bans are creating an extensive healthcare desert where both maternal and infant mortality rates will spike,” the plaintiffs say, later adding the Idaho Legislature is covering up the measurable effects of its ban by ending its Maternal Mortality Review Committee — established by lawmakers to review and share data concerning pregnancy mortalities and provide remedies.

Amid tension over the fallout of the bans, the Idaho Legislature recently amended its total abortion ban to exclude instances of ectopic and molar pregnancies and situations in which abortions are necessary to save a mother’s life or prevent a pregnancy caused by reported rape or incest in the first trimester.

The four individual plaintiffs, who could not access medical abortions in Idaho, and the others seek clarity on the scope of the state’s exceptions that went into effect on July 1.

They say it is unclear whether the exceptions protect Idahoans like its patient plaintiffs, “for whom pregnancy poses serious threats” to their health, safety and families.

On Tuesday, Nancy Northup, the president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, issued a statement on how the demise of Roe v. Wade has led to several multi-state abortion bans that affect women when facing serious complications in their pregnancies.

“No one should have to be at death’s door to receive essential health care, but that is exactly what happens when doctors are forced to practice medicine under threat of imprisonment,” Northup said.

The abortion rights advocacy group — which is representing the plaintiffs in addition to attorneys from Nevin, Benjamin and McKay LLP — also helped launch two similar actions in Tennessee and Oklahoma on Monday, claiming the states’ abortion bans prevent women with complicated pregnancies from receiving life-saving care. The lawsuit in Tennessee in particular is more reminiscent of the Idaho lawsuit, as it questions the limited scope of the state ban’s “emergent medical condition” exception.

Together, Monday’s lawsuits follow a series of other actions filed in the last year challenging laws that govern abortion care throughout the U.S., including Arizona, Missouri, Florida, North Carolina and Texas.

from Courthouse News

Texas heat brings the state’s power grid closest it has been to outages since 2021 winter storm

HOUSTON (AP) — Texas’ power grid manager on Thursday again asked residents to cut their electricity use as the state endures another stretch of sizzling summer heat. The request carried fresh urgency, coming the day after the system was pushed to the brink of outages for the first time since a deadly winter blackout in 2021.

The request by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which serves most of the state’s 30 million residents, came a day after low energy reserves prompted the grid operator to issue a level 2 energy emergency alert. Operating reserves fell as demand surged amid the heat, and power from wind and solar energy sources proved insufficient, according to ERCOT.

It was the first time the council entered emergency operations since a deadly 2021 ice storm knocked out power to millions of customers for days and resulted in hundreds of deaths.

The emergency status remained in place for about an hour Wednesday night until grid conditions returned to normal, ERCOT said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

On Thursday, ERCOT asked residents to conserve power from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. CDT as reserves were again expected to be low. Much of Texas was covered by heat advisories on Thursday, with high temperatures above 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8 Celsius) in Austin, Amarillo, Dallas and El Paso.

“We request Texas businesses & residents conserve electricity use, if safe to do so,” ERCOT said in a tweet.

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has said improvements since 2021 have stabilized the grid. Earlier this year, Texas lawmakers passed bills aimed at luring developers to generate more “on-demand” electricity, but the legislation did not extend to renewable sources.

Many Texans remain skeptical of the grid’s reliability.

In June, just before this summer’s heat settled into Texas, Abbott vetoed a bill to strengthen energy efficiency in new construction, saying it wasn’t as important as cutting property taxes.

Texas is not connected to the rest of the country’s power grid, unlike other U.S. states, leaving few options to pull power from elsewhere amid shortages or failures.

In May, regulators warned that demand may outpace supply on the hottest days.

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By JUAN A. LOZANO Associated Press

from Courthouse News