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Pakistani court orders probe into ex-minister’s arrest
Court News |
2022/05/23 09:46
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A court in Pakistan’s capital has ordered an investigation into the controversial arrest of a former human rights minister over a decades-old land dispute.
Chief Justice Ather Minallah of the Islamabad High Court late Saturday ordered the probe in response to a petition from the daughter of former minister Shireen Mazari.
Minallah questioned the decision by officials in Islamabad to allow police from a Punjab provincial district to make the arrest in the capital.
Mazari, who served in the Cabinet-level position under former Prime Minister Imran Khan, had been detained by police near her Islamabad home earlier in the day.
Fawad Chaudhry, former information minister in Khan’s administration, alleged that Mazari — the senior leader in Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party — had been politically targeted by the new administration of Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif under the guise of a land dispute dating back to 1972.
Hours after Mazari’s arrest, Chief Minister of Punjab province Hamza Shahbaz ordered her release and late Saturday she was brought to the Islamabad court for an urgent hearing. She was then released.
Mazari has been critical of Sharif’s government on Twitter since Khan’s government was toppled in a no-confidence vote in Parliament last month. Khan’s party lawmakers resigned from the body’s lower house in protest and Khan is mobilizing supporters through public rallies across the country to pressure the government into an early election.
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Kansas Supreme Court upholds Republican congressional map
Legal News |
2022/05/18 12:46
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Kansas’ highest court on Wednesday upheld a Republican redistricting law that makes it harder for the only Democrat in the state’s congressional delegation to win reelection in a big victory for the GOP.
The state Supreme Court declined for now to declare that overly partisan gerrymandering violates the Kansas Constitution. The ruling sets district boundaries less than a month before the state’s June 10 filing deadline for congressional candidates.
The court’s opinion was two paragraphs long, saying only that the voters and voting rights group challenging the map “have not prevailed on their claims” that the map violated the state constitution and that a full opinion would come later.
The brief decision was written by Justice Caleb Stegall, who is seen as the most conservative of the court’s seven justices, five of whom were appointed by Democratic governors. During arguments from attorneys on Monday, he questioned whether anyone could clearly define improper partisan gerrymandering.
Lawsuits over new congressional district lines have proliferated across the U.S., with Republicans looking to recapture a U.S. House majority in this year’s midterm elections. Congressional maps in at least 17 states have inspired lawsuits, according to the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice.
In the past, congressional district lines have been reviewed by federal judges and not the state Supreme Court. The conservative-leaning U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision in 2019 that complaints about partisan gerrymandering are political issues and not for the federal courts to resolve.
The state’s Republican-appointed solicitor general argued in defending the GOP-drawn map that because the state constitution doesn’t specifically mention gerrymandering or congressional redistricting, the Kansas Supreme Court should reject the legal challenges. He and other state officials said that the justices had no guidance on how to define improper political gerrymandering.
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Georgian wants Congress to decry prosecution of abortions
Court News |
2022/05/12 09:28
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A Georgia representative is proposing that Congress condemn attempts to criminally prosecute people who perform abortions, have abortions or experience miscarriages.
Rep. Nikema Willams, an Atlanta Democrat who formerly lobbied for Planned Parenthood in the southeast, is introducing her resolution Thursday, and has already collected 115 co-sponsors, all Democrats, her spokesman said.
The resolution also supports keeping contraceptives and abortion pills available, and using puberty blockers, hormones and other procedures when medically necessary to treat transgender people.
“Someone you know, someone in your family, or someone you love currently relies on or will need these services,” the congresswoman said in a statement.
The move comes after a Democratic effort in the U.S. Senate to enshrine abortion access into federal law fell far short of breaking a filibuster on Wednesday. Williams’ effort and the Senate debate follow a leaked draft U.S. Supreme Court opinion suggesting that justices will overturn the 50-year-old Roe v. Wade decision that created a nationwide right to abortion, leaving states to decide such questions.
The resolution would not have the force of law, but would help Democrats highlight what they see as Republican overreach. Some women have already been prosecuted for fetal harm due to alcohol and drug use during pregnancy. Louisiana lawmakers, despite opposition from anti-abortion groups who say it goes too far, are debating a bill that would make women who get abortions subject to prosecution for murder. And several states recently banned certain medical treatments for transgender youth. |
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Tennessee, South Carolina extend health care for new moms
Law Firm News |
2022/05/06 12:17
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Tennessee and South Carolina are joining five other states in extending health care coverage to women with low-to-modest incomes for a full year after childbirth, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra announced on Friday.
The expansion of Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program comes as the U.S. Supreme Court could be poised to overturn women’s constitutional right to abortion. That could make the coverage more urgently needed than ever if more women, especially older women or those in poorer health, end up carrying pregnancies to term. In Tennessee, a trigger law would outlaw abortion in the state if Roe v. Wade were overturned. South Carolina has a law banning abortions after six weeks.
States are currently required to provide 60 days of coverage after childbirth, but medical experts say women can die from pregnancy-related conditions up to a year after giving birth and that most pregnancy-related deaths are preventable. Maternal mortality is particularly serious for Black women, whose pregnancy-related death rate is three times that of white women.
Asked about the effect of an abortion ban on Tennessee women at a Thursday news conference, Republican Gov. Bill Lee, who opposes abortion, pointed to the extension.
“It’s important that we recognize that women in crisis need support and assistance through this process. For example, that’s why we’ve expanded our postpartum coverage for women in TennCare,” Lee said.
TennCare is Tennessee’s version of Medicaid, the federal-state program covering about one in five Americans, from many newborns, to low-income adults and frail nursing home residents. The program pays for about four out of every 10 births in the United States.
About 700 U.S. women die annually because of pregnancy-related problems, a little over half after the woman has given birth, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nearly 12% of maternal deaths occur 43 to 365 days after delivery.
The expanded coverage is made possible by a provision in the COVID-19 relief bill that will expire after five years unless Congress reapproves it or makes it permanent.
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