Unanimous Supreme Court gives transgender woman from Guatemala new to fight deportation
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court ruled Thursday in favor of a transgender Guatemalan woman who is fighting deportation on the grounds that she would face persecution if returned to her native country.
The court’s unanimous decision in favor of Estrella Santos-Zacaria gives her another chance to argue that immigration officials were wrong to reject her bid to remain in the United States.
Lawyers for Santos-Zacaria, now in her mid-30s, said she first fled to the United States after being raped as a young teenager and threatened with death because of her gender identity in a country that has targeted the LGBTQ community.
But a U.S. immigration judge found that she did not make a strong enough case that she would face persecution if sent back to Guatemala.
The issue at the Supreme Court was more technical, whether federal immigration law was flexible enough to allow her another day in court. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled against her on that point, but other appellate courts had ruled in favor of immigrants on the same issue.
The Supreme Court ruled in an opinion by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson that the 5th Circuit was wrong.
After leaving Guatemala as a teenager, Santos-Zacaria had once before made it to the United States, but her stay was brief and she was deported in 2008, Jackson wrote.
Ten years later, she again entered the U.S. and was quickly taken into custody by immigration authorities.
Santos-Zacaria had testified that she was raped by a neighbor in the small town in which she was born and that townspeople said they would kill her because of her gender identity and her attraction to men.
She spent most of her time between 2008 and 2018 in Mexico, but decided to try to return to the U.S. after a Mexican gang also raped and assaulted her.
The State Department has found that Guatemala has done little to protect LGBTQ people and that transgender women are subject to frequent threats of violence.
Supreme Court sides with ex-Cuomo aide
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled for a onetime top aide to ex-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and for others who were convicted of corruption related to an economic development project known as the “Buffalo Billion.”
In two cases before the court, both liberal and conservative justices were unanimous in saying there were problems with the convictions. The cases are the latest in a line stretching back years that criticize federal prosecutors for overreaching in public corruption cases against state and local officials, as well as people doing business with government.
In 2020, the high court threw out the convictions of political allies of former Gov. Chris Christie, R-N.J., over the “Bridgegate” scandal that involved four days of traffic jams on the George Washington Bridge. In 2016, the Supreme Court threw out the bribery conviction of former Gov. Bob McDonnell, R-Va.
The current cases grew out of the “Buffalo Billion” development project, which was intended to revitalize parts of Buffalo and other areas in upstate New York. But the project was a multiyear black cloud over the Cuomo administration and was frequently cited by critics as proof that the Democrat failed to address chronic corruption in state government, even within his own administration. Cuomo resigned in 2021 amid sexual harassment allegations.
In one case, the justices ruled for Joseph Percoco, a former aide so close to Cuomo that he was considered like a brother. Percoco was convicted of accepting money from companies seeking to influence the Cuomo administration as it worked on the “Buffalo Billion” project.
Percoco was ultimately sentenced to six years in prison, a conviction upheld on appeal. The case also involved Syracuse real estate executive Steven Aiello who paid Percoco for his assistance.
But the Supreme Court, in an opinion by Justice Samuel Alito, said the jury in Percoco’s case was given improper instructions when it found him guilty of a wire fraud conspiracy count. Percoco was convicted “based on instructions that required the jury to determine whether he had a ‘special relationship’ with the government and had ‘dominated and controlled’ government business ... We conclude that this is not the proper test,” Alito wrote.
In a statement, Percoco’s lawyer, Yaakov Roth, said his client’s prosecution was “an abuse of the federal fraud statutes.” He added: “We are gratified that the court agreed with our position that he was not a public official during the relevant time period, and so he did not violate federal law by acting on behalf of private clients.”
Roth said a lower court will have to determine whether his client’s two remaining convictions can survive after the Supreme Court’s ruling. But Percoco has finished serving his sentence, so the question is just whether the remaining convictions will stay on his record.
In the second case, which also involved Aiello, the court ruled for him and for developers Louis Ciminelli and Joseph Gerardi and Alain Kaloyeros, formerly one of Cuomo’s top economic development advisers. The court in an opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas said that the basis for their fraud convictions was faulty.
The group’s prison terms had been put on hold while their case was appealed and the decision makes it more likely that this is the end of the case.
Supreme Court rejects challenge to California pork law mandating more space for pigs
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a challenge to a California animal cruelty law that affects the pork industry, ruling that the case was properly dismissed by lower courts. Pork producers had said that the law could force industry-wide changes and raise the cost of bacon and other pork products nationwide.
California’s law requires more space for breeding pigs, and producers say it would force the $26 billion-a-year industry to change its practices even though pork is produced almost entirely outside California.
The justices upheld lower court rulings dismissing the pork producers’ case.
During arguments in the case in October, liberal and conservative justices underscored the potential reach of the case.
Some worried whether greenlighting the animal cruelty law would give state legislators a license to pass laws targeting practices they disapprove of, such as a law that says a product cannot be sold in the state if workers who made it are not vaccinated or are not in the country legally. They also worried about the reverse: How many state laws would be called into question if California’s law were not permitted?
The case before the court involved California’s Proposition 12, which voters passed in 2018. It said that pork sold in the state needs to come from pigs whose mothers were raised with at least 24 square feet of space, with the ability to lie down and turn around. That rules out confined “gestation crates,” metal enclosures that are common in the pork industry.
The Iowa-based National Pork Producers Council and the American Farm Bureau Federation sued. They said that while Californians consume 13% of the pork eaten in the United States, nearly 100% of it comes from hogs raised outside the state, mostly in the Midwest and North Carolina. The vast majority of sows, meanwhile, are not raised under conditions that would meet Proposition 12’s standards.
The Biden administration had urged the justices to side with pork producers, telling the court in written filings that Proposition 12 would be a “wholesale change in how pork is raised and marketed in this country” and that it has “thrown a giant wrench” into the nation’s pork market.
Pork producers argue that 72% of farmers use individual pens for sows that do not allow them to turn around and that even farmers who house sows in larger group pens do not provide the space California would require.
They also say that the way the pork market works, with cuts of meat from various producers being combined before sale, it is likely all pork would have to meet California standards, regardless of where it is sold. Complying with Proposition 12 could cost the industry $290 million to $350 million, they said.
