New Hampshire-Massachusetts tax dispute rejected
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday refused to allow New Hampshire to sue neighboring Massachusetts over an income tax dispute involving people who have been working from home during the coronavirus pandemic.
The justices rejected New Hampshire's complaint without comment. The state objects to Massachusetts' collection of income tax from roughly 80,000 New Hampshire residents who are employed by Massachusetts companies, but who have been working remotely.
New Hampshire wanted the justices to declare Massachusetts' collections unconstitutional and order a refund to people who are paying taxes of just over 5%.
New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu said Monday that the court was "setting a costly precedent."
"This decision will have lasting ramifications for thousands of Granite State residents," he said in a statement.
The issue is especially sensitive in New Hampshire, which lacks a state income tax. New Hampshire also drew support from New Jersey and Connecticut, among others.
Residents of those states who are employed by New York businesses also generally pay state income tax to New York.
The Biden administration recommended the justices stay out of the dispute. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas said they would have allowed the lawsuit to go forward.
Members of New Hampshire's Democratic Congressional delegation also criticized the decision. Sens. Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan, who last month introduced legislation to address the issue, said they would continue to pursue solutions to prevent workers for being penalized for putting the safety of their families and communities first.
"This decision is particularly brutal for those who fought to keep their heads above water amid the financial fallout of the pandemic – every action should be taken to make things easier for our working families as we recover from COVID-19, not harder," said Shaheen.
Hassan said declining to hear the case was disappointing and short-sighted.
"What is happening to New Hampshire residents goes beyond New England and has a far-reaching impact on citizens across this country who are being forced to pay taxes for a state where they don't even work or live," she said.
Court won't revive school's transgender bathroom ban
By Denise Lavoie
and Mark Sherman
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected a Virginia school board's appeal to reinstate its transgender bathroom ban, handing a victory to transgender rights groups and a former high school student who fought in court for six years to overturn the ban.
After learning that the high court refused to hear the board's appeal, Gavin Grimm, now 22, said that his long battle is over. "We won," he tweeted. "Honored to have been part of this victory," he added.
Grimm was a 15-year-old student at Gloucester High School when he was banned from using the boys bathroom. The Gloucester County School Board's policy required Grimm to use restrooms that corresponded with his biological sex — female — or private bathrooms. Grimm filed a federal lawsuit that wound its way through the courts for six years.
Grimm said that being forced to use the nurse's room, a private bathroom and the girl's restroom was humiliating and severely interfered with his education. He said he is heartened by his victory in court because "a win in Virginia is a win everywhere."
"This is a national conversation because trans people are everywhere and because we have to fight for our rights in like most of the states in our nation still who have
not passed affirming policies," he told The Associated Press.
The Supreme Court left in place lower court rulings that found the policy unconstitutional. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas voted to hear the board's appeal.
The American Civil Liberties Union said the high court's decision to let stand the lower court rulings supporting transgender rights is a significant victory for Grimm and transgender students across the country.
"This is is the third time in recent years that the Supreme Court has allowed appeals of court decisions in support of transgender students to stand," said Josh Block, senior staff attorney with the ACLU's LGBTQ & HIV Project.
"Our work is not yet done, and the ACLU is continuing to fight against anti-trans laws targeting trans youth in states around the country," Block added.
David Corrigan, an attorney for the school board, declined to comment on the decision.
In its petition asking the Supreme Court to hear the case, the school board argued that its bathroom policy poses a "pressing federal question of national importance."
The board argued previously that federal laws protect against discrimination based on sex, not gender identity. Because Grimm had not undergone sex-reassignment surgery and still had female genitalia, the board's position has been that he remained anatomically a female.
The ACLU, which represented Grimm in the lawsuit, argued that federal law makes it clear transgender students are protected from discrimination. A U.S. District Court judge and the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals both ruled that the board's policy violated Title IX, a federal civil rights law barring sex-based discrimination in any school that receives federal money. They also found it violated the U.S. Constitution's Equal Protection Clause by prohibiting Grimm from using the same restrooms as other boys and forcing him to use separate restrooms.
The Supreme Court was scheduled to hear Grimm's case in 2017, but it was sent back to the lower courts after the Trump administration withdrew the government's support for Grimm's claims.
GLAAD, the world's largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) media advocacy organization, hailed the decision to leave in place lower court rulings that found the bathroom ban was unconstitutional.
"This is a victory for transgender students, who simply want to be themselves without worrying about being rejected or refused access to basic dignities," GLAAD President and Chief Executive Officer Sarah Kate Ellis said in a statement.
Paul D. Castillo, an attorney for the LGBT rights group Lambda Legal, said Monday that five states are technically bound by the 4th Circuit decision: Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia.
But he said that it "would be hard to imagine a court that would not take this victory into account."
"Importantly, decisions of federal appellate courts, particularly when denied review by the U.S. Supreme Court, are often cited in subsequent decisions for their persuasive value in analyzing the legal issues," Castillo wrote in an email.
–––
Lavoie reported from Richmond, Virginia. AP writer Ben Finley contributed from Norfolk, Virginia.
St. Louis police in-custody death case revived
By Jessica Gresko
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday revived claims of excessive force against St. Louis police officers in a case in which a homeless man died after being restrained in handcuffs and leg shackles.
In an unsigned opinion, a majority of the court agreed to send the case back to a lower court for further review. Amid an ongoing national conversation on police practices, however, three justices said their colleagues were taking the "easy out" by not hearing arguments in the case.
The unsigned opinion recounted how officers put the man in a "prone position, face down on the floor" with three officers holding his "limbs down at the shoulders, biceps, and legs" and at least one placing pressure on his back and torso.
Attorneys for the homeless man's parents had argued that the facts of the case mirror the circumstances of the killing of George Floyd, who died after Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee on Floyd's neck for more than nine minutes on a city street. Filmed by a teenage bystander, Floyd's death launched nationwide protests, and Chauvin was sentenced last Friday to 22 1/2 years in prison.
St. Louis officials, however, told the justices that the only similarities between the two cases are "drug use and heart disease," saying that their case involved a man under the influence of methamphetamine and that "little or no force" was applied on his back. An autopsy showed Floyd, who was Black, had drugs in his system and heart disease. The St. Louis case involved a white man, happened inside a jail and was not recorded on video.
The justices do not typically take cases only to review the specific facts of an individual case. Instead, the limited number of cases they take each year are intended to resolve broader questions and guide lower courts nationwide. But Justice Samuel Alito wrote that in his view the court is not "above occasionally digging into the type of factbound questions that make up much of the work of the lower courts, and a decision by this Court on the question presented here could be instructive."
"We have two respectable options: deny review of the factbound question that the case presents or grant the petition, have the case briefed and argued, roll up our sleeves, and decide the real issue. I favor the latter course, but what we should not do is take the easy out that the Court has chosen," Alito wrote for himself and two other conservative justices, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch.
The case the justices sent back to a lower court involves Nicholas Gilbert, a 27-year-old homeless man. In 2015, he was arrested by St. Louis City police for misdemeanors including trespassing and occupying a condemned building. Officials say that at the jail, officers observed Gilbert tying clothing around his neck and attaching it to cell bars in an apparent effort to kill himself.
Officers ultimately entered the cell and struggled with Gilbert, putting him in handcuffs and leg shackles. He died as a result of the 15-minute struggle, during which his head hit a concrete bench. Gilbert's parents sued both the city and the officers, alleging the officers had used excessive force, but lower courts said the case should be dismissed.
Alito wrote that the appeals court said dismissing the case was appropriate after concluding "a reasonable jury would necessarily find that the police officers used reasonable force." The court applied the correct legal standard and "made a judgment call on a sensitive question," he said. But a majority of the justices disagreed, saying that it was unclear whether the correct legal standard was used in concluding that the officers' actions did not amount to excessive force and that the appeals court should be given an opportunity to clarify its opinion.
"We express no view as to whether the officers used unconstitutionally excessive force," the unsigned opinion said in sending the case back to the appeals court.
In a statement, attorney Jonathan Taylor, who represents Gilbert's parents, said it was a "huge victory not only for our clients, but for police-reform advocates across the country and for the rule of law" to have the case sent back for further review.
The court's action sends "a powerful message to lower courts and law enforcement" to follow the "well-known police guidance recommending that officers get a subject off his stomach as soon as he is handcuffed," Taylor said.
Nick Dunne, a spokesperson for St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones, said in an emailed statement that the case "has been ongoing for many years, and as party to the suit, the City has no comment."
The case is Lombardo v. St. Louis, 20-391.
Justices deny Wyoming, Montana coal suit against Washington
By Mead Gruver
Associated Press
CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court decided Monday that it won't allow Wyoming and Montana to sue Washington state for denying a key permit to build a coal export dock that would have sent coal to Asia.
Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito voted in the minority in the ruling against letting the two states sue the third in a case that would have gone directly before the high court.
The two major coal mining states have sought to boost exports to prop up an industry in decline for a decade as U.S. utilities switch to gas-fired power and renewable energy.
The Washington state Department of Ecology in 2017 denied a permit for the export dock, saying the facility on the Columbia River would cause "irreparable and unavoidable" environmental harm.
Denying the permit violated the U.S. Constitution's prohibition against trade protectionism between states, the coal states argued in 2020.
Washington state officials were not trying to block Wyoming and Montana coal but acted because of "valid environmental concerns" about the dock, attorneys for the state argued in a court filing later that year.
In any event, the developer of the Millennium Bulk Terminal project went bankrupt and the project wouldn't proceed, U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar argued in May.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat, welcomed the Supreme Court decision, spokeswoman Tara Lee said Monday.
"We are glad to today mark the end of a long chapter in the debate over coal export in Washington state," Lee said by email.
Republican Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon in a statement Monday called the ruling "extremely frustrating."
"This case was never about a single permit or product. It was about the ability of one state to engage in lawful interstate commerce without the interference of another state," Gordon said.
Wyoming this year set aside $1 million to help Gordon's office pursue the lawsuit and potentially file others against states with policies leading to the early shutdown of Wyoming coal-fired power plants.
––––––––––––––––––––
Subscribe to the Legal News!
http://legalnews.com/subscriptions
Full access to public notices, articles, columns, archives, statistics, calendar and more
Day Pass Only $4.95!
One-County $80/year
Three-County & Full Pass also available
