Federal Appeals Court

Lest there be any doubt about the importance of federal courts, consider the role courts are now playing in prodding the federal government toward a more practical approach to energy and the environment. The most recent example came last week with a federal appeals court ruling adopting the view of Maryland, California and other states that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases should be considered by the federal government when regulating vehicle fuel-efficiency standards. But that was only the last in a series of decisions that have injected a healthy dose of common sense into a debate that has been wildly politicized.

PHILADELPHIA -- The NCAA has regained at least temporarily the use of minimum test scores to determine whether freshmen are eligible to play intercollegiate sports.A federal appeals court yesterday issued a stay of a lower court ruling that had invalidated the NCAA's freshman-eligibility standards on the grounds that they are racially discriminatory.The stay, which will remain in effect until an appeal of the lower ruling can be heard, will leave the standards in place as NCAA member schools approach the April 7 national signing date for a number of sports, including basketball.

WASHINGTON -- Supreme Court justices, worried about creation of a national code of conduct for schoolchildren, openly resisted yesterday the idea that federal law against sexual harassment should apply when one student taunts or molests another.Justice Anthony M. Kennedy summed up the reaction of the doubting members of the court, saying the "necessary consequence" of extending "Title IX" to student misbehavior "will be a federal code of conduct in every classroom in the country."His reaction seemed to be shared by, among others, Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Stephen G. Breyer.

WASHINGTON -- Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens blocked two states yesterday from enforcing laws that make it a crime to perform a specific type of late-term abortion.His action marked the first time that the court or any of its members had barred a state from enforcing laws -- growing rapidly in number across the nation -- that ban a procedure known by those who oppose it as "partial-birth" abortion.In separate orders in two cases, Stevens temporarily blocked Illinois and Wisconsin laws until the Supreme Court rules on forthcoming appeals that have challenged the laws.

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court turned aside yesterday a constitutional challenge to a 3-year-old law designed to keep sexually explicit magazines out of federal prisons.Acting on a variety of issues as the court finished its annual term, the justices offered no comment as they denied review of an appeal by three inmates, Playboy Enterprises Inc., the publisher of Penthouse and a publishing trade organization in a free-speech challenge to the ban.In 1996, Congress, at the urging of a first-year congressman, Nevada Republican John Ensign, barred federal prisons from using any of their budgeted funds to distribute sex-oriented publications to prisoners.

Here is an edited excerpt of an editorial from the Boston Globe, which was published Wednesday.The Supreme Court should back President Clinton's call to protect the Miranda rights of suspects. To some eyes, Miranda is an escape hatch for criminals.But this spin ignores a distinguished history. In 1966 the Supreme Court, in Miranda vs. Arizona, pointed to case law that has repeatedly endorsed the right, embodied in the Fifth Amendment, of individuals not to incriminate themselves.In 1968 Congress passed a law that muddied the issue.

A federal appeals court has reversed the decision of a Baltimore judge and reinstated a $5 million defamation lawsuit against Watergate conspirator G. Gordon Liddy for saying a woman procured prostitutes for Democratic politicians.Ida Maxwell Wells is a private figure and therefore is entitled to a trial on her claim that Liddy's remarks damaged her reputation, a unanimous three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday.The decision reversed a ruling by U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz, who said last year that Wells was an involuntary public figure.

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court, rebuffing the Justice Department, refused yesterday to consider cutting back on the privacy people enjoy at work.Without comment, the justices voted to leave intact a federal appeals court ruling that threw out evidence in a child pornography case that federal agents had seized without a search warrant in a room near the office of a Georgia man.The lower court ruled that an employee's constitutional right to privacy is...

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court cleared the way yesterday for investors to sue brokers who fail to obtain the best price available when they buy and sell stocks for their customers on the Nasdaq.In a brief order with no explanation, the court declined to review a federal appeals court ruling that allowed a securities-fraud lawsuit to go forward against three brokerage firms. The case potentially involves millions of small transactions worth billions of dollars.The three brokers -- Merrill Lynch & Co., PaineWebber andMorgan Stanley Dean Witter -- unsuccessfully asked the Supreme Court to overturn the lower court and block such lawsuits.

WASHINGTON -- Giving opponents of affirmative action a major boost, the Supreme Court yesterday turned back a constitutional challenge to Proposition 209, California's ban on race and sex preferences in state education, employment and contracts.The court's three-sentence order did not directly endorse Proposition 209, and it set no precedent. But the action had the practical effect of giving supporters of similar measures elsewhere at least a year to dismantle other affirmative action plans.

The murder and carjacking convictions against Leeander Jerome Blake, who helped steal a Jeep Cherokee from an Annapolis man killed during the crime, will stand, a federal appeals court ruled last week. Blake, who was 17 at the time of the 2002 carjacking, avoided prosecution at the state level by successfully arguing that police illegally interrogated him. After the U.S. Supreme Court declined to rule on the state's appeal, federal prosecutors took up the case, indicting Blake in 2006 on murder, carjacking and gun charges.

Maryland's U.S. District Court judges already handle an average of 250 cases apiece, and the caseload is about to get heavier, with the U.S. Senate expected soon to confirm Andre Davis to a new position on the region's federal appeals court. With one judge's seat already vacant, that would leave eight full-time judges out of 10 possible positions on one of the country's busiest courts. The shortage could hold up case processing and put a greater strain on already-strapped judges, who oversee complicated cases involving everything from antitrust issues to witness murders and gang activity.

President Bush has the legal power to order the indefinite military detentions of civilians captured in the United States, the federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., ruled yesterday in a fractured 5-4 decision. But a second, overlapping 5-4 majority of the court, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, ruled that Ali al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar now in military custody in Charleston, S.C., must be given an additional opportunity to challenge his detention in federal court there. An earlier court proceeding, in which the government had presented only a sworn statement from a defense intelligence official, was inadequate, the second majority ruled.

"Islamic terrorists have constitutional rights," lamented one conservative blog, when the Supreme Court said Guantanamo inmates can challenge their detention in court. "These are enemy combatants," railed Sen. John McCain. The court, charged former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy of National Review, sided with foreigners "whose only connection with our body politic is their bloody jihad against Americans." The operating assumption here is that the prisoners are terrorists who were captured while fighting a vicious war against the United States.

W.R. Grace & Co. and executives criminally charged in 2005 with the deadly asbestos contamination of a Montana town lost a bid this week to challenge an earlier court ruling that allowed one of the government's charges to stand. The move would have further delayed the trial, which has undergone a series of postponements and legal appeals. On Wednesday, a San Francisco federal appeals court declined to reconsider an earlier decision by three of its judges upholding the government charge of "knowing endangerment" against the Columbia-based chemical manufacturer.

Lest there be any doubt about the importance of federal courts, consider the role courts are now playing in prodding the federal government toward a more practical approach to energy and the environment. The most recent example came last week with a federal appeals court ruling adopting the view of Maryland, California and other states that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases should be considered by the federal government when regulating vehicle fuel-efficiency standards. But that was only the last in a series of decisions that have injected a healthy dose of common sense into a debate that has been wildly politicized.

CINCINNATI -- A lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union urged a federal appeals court yesterday to affirm a lower court decision that the Bush administration's Terrorist Surveillance Program is illegal and that "the president has to obey the law." But a Justice Department lawyer insisted the program is legal and called on the judges to overturn the ruling, while also arguing that the case is now moot. A three-judge panel of the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals peppered them with questions about broad constitutional principles as well as the issue of whether the ACLU's clients have standing to challenge the program.

CINCINNATI -- One of the Bush administration's most controversial initiatives in the war on terrorism is set for its first hearing in a federal appeals court today, but if government lawyers have their way the case will quickly be dismissed. Justice Department attorneys contend that the challenge by the American Civil Liberties Union to the government's warrantless domestic surveillance program is moot since the program is now being monitored by a special court. They are asking that the ruling that the program is unconstitutional be thrown out. But ACLU lawyers maintain that the case is still viable and are calling on the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals to affirm Judge Ella Diggs Taylor's ruling in August that the Terrorist Surveillance Program violated the First and Fourth Amendments to the Constitution and ran afoul of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Each side has described the case in stark terms.

The Supreme Court, clearing up an ambiguity in the law, ruled yesterday in favor of limiting class action lawsuits filed by investors who allege that they were misled into holding on to risky stocks that they otherwise would have sold. Stockholders tricked into holding their shares are subject to the same rules that govern those who were duped into buying or selling stocks, the court ruled. The ruling, which favors defendant Merrill Lynch, "is of great significance to all publicly traded companies and financial services firms," said Merrill attorney Jay Kasner, because it "closes an enormous loophole" in the laws covering such litigation.

The Justice Department, which secured an indictment of alleged al-Qaida sympathizer Jose Padilla on criminal charges and announced plans this week to transfer him out of military custody, appears to be trying to avoid a showdown in the U.S. Supreme Court over the rights of suspected terrorists, constitutional lawyers and legal analysts said yesterday. But if that strategy fails and the Supreme Court chooses to review whether "enemy combatants," as Padilla has been designated, are entitled to court hearings and access to a lawyer, the result could alter the way the Bush administration must treat terrorism suspects worldwide - possibly including those reportedly detained in secret prisons overseas.