National Roundup

Florida
Attorney Fred Levin, who fought tobacco industry, dies at 83
PENSACOLA, Fla. (AP) — Florida attorney Fred Levin, who won a major legal battle against the tobacco industry in the 1990s, died Tuesday, several days after contracting the coronavirus. He was 83.
Levin’s death from complications of COVID-19 was confirmed by Levin Papantonio Rafferty attorney Mark Proctor.

In the 1990s, Levin was able to get the Florida Legislature to change Florida’s Medicaid law, allowing it to recoup money for the cost of treating lung cancer. That change helped Levin lead an effort to reach a $13 billion settlement with the tobacco industry.

Levin also became boxing manager to fellow Pensacola native Roy Jones Jr. in 1989, leading up to the prizefighter’s heavyweight championship in 2003.

Levin’s career began in 1961 when he joined the Levin and Askew law firm founded by his brother David and Reubin Askew, the Pensacola News Journal reported.

Levin used his success in his law career to pursue philanthropy work, donating more than $35 million. The University of Florida named its law school after Levin in 1999 after he gave $10 million to the school where he earned his undergraduate degree in 1958 and his law degree in 1961.

Levin was investigated by the Florida Bar on four separate occasions for making controversial remarks in public. One investigation in 1990 led to a public reprimand from the bar over his criticism of law enforcement prosecuting gambling crimes.

Virginia
School board member sues police after being pepper-sprayed
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — A Muslim school board member from northern Virginia has filed a federal lawsuit alleging her civil rights were violated after she was pepper-sprayed during a traffic stop and then photographed without her hijab following her arrest.

Abrar Omeish, who was elected in 2019 to the Fairfax County school board, filed the lawsuit Tuesday in federal court in Alexandria against the Fairfax County police officer who arrested her and against Fairfax County Sheriff Stacey Kincaid.

Omeish said she was stopped in March 2019 after an officer said she turned right at a red light without stopping. Omeish says she questioned the stop and the officer responded by demanding her license and registration.

Omeish says that when she didn’t immediately produce her license, the officer ordered her out of the car and threatened her with pepper spray.

By then, Omeish says she told the officer she’d provide her license, but he instead forcibly removed her from her car and pepper-sprayed her.

When she was taken for processing, sheriff’s deputies insisted she remove her head scarf even though she protested her religion required her to wear it.

The lawsuit was filed by lawyers with the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

A police spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday. Police conducted an internal investigation of the traffic stop. A letter from Police Chief Ed Roessler provided to Omeish says he concluded the officer’s use of force was improper and a disproportionate response to Omeish’s actions.

A spokeswoman for the sheriff’s office declined comment. Published procedures governing the sheriff’s office show that policy is for those with religious head coverings to have mugshots taken both with and without the scarf or covering in place. Only deputies of the same gender are to be present when the photographs are taken.

The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages and an injunction barring authorities from requiring removal of religious head coverings for mugshots.

Ohio
District says it shouldn’t have to give employees gun training
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A school district that voted after a deadly shooting to allow employees to be armed argued Tuesday in Ohio’s highest court that they shouldn’t have to first provide police-level training to those workers.

The state Supreme Court heard oral arguments from both sides in the case involving Madison Local Schools in southwestern Ohio but didn’t indicate when it would rule.

The district permitted the arming of its employees after a 2016 shooting in which two students were shot and wounded by a 14-year-old boy. A group of parents sued the district in September 2018 to prevent teachers from being armed without extensive training.

A Butler County judge dismissed the lawsuit, saying that school staffers did not need extensive training because they are not law enforcement officers. The district’s policy requires 24 hours of training for staff carrying concealed weapons.

The parents appealed to the 12th District Court of Appeals, which ruled last March that Ohio law requires anyone who carries firearms in schools to have undergone a minimum of 728 hours of law enforcement training.

Parents maintain the state appeals court made the correct decision, saying state law is clear that schools can’t hire employees who are armed who don’t go through police officer training.

The parents “are concerned about the tragic and fatal accidents that could befall their children when armed school staff have insufficient training and are carrying firearms all day, every day, in their children’s classrooms and on the playground,” attorneys for the parents said in an October court filing.

They noted that the parents don’t oppose gun rights and that several are, in fact, gun owners.

The district maintains current law doesn’t require the extensive training sought by the parents.

If the appeals court ruling is upheld, “no school district can exercise the right to arm its staff unless it turns teachers into police officers, or police officers into teachers,” lawyers for the district argued in a September filing. “This is both entirely impractical and demonstrably wrong as a matter of statutory construction.”

Lawmakers require police training only for officers and left training and qualifications for armed teachers up to school boards, the district lawyers said.

The state Fraternal Order of Police, several gun training and safety experts, and other school districts including Cincinnati and Columbus — Ohio’s largest district — filed arguments in support of the parents’ position.

The law in question “does not apply to employees in non-security positions — like teachers, principals, or other non-security personnel — whose duties are primarily educational or administrative and who do not carry a weapon in their role,” Benjamin Flowers, the Ohio Solicitor General, wrote in a September filing on behalf of Yost.

A Butler County judge ruled Monday that the district’s decision to arm specific employees violated Ohio’s open meetings law because it used a “screening committee” that first identified staff members interested in carrying weapons at work.

But both the district and the parents suing over the training issue agreed the judge’s ruling doesn’t affect the issue before the state Supreme Court.