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PHOENIX (AP) — A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that Arizona doesn’t have to give voters who forget to sign their mail ballot time after the election to resolve the issue, rejecting a lawsuit filed by Democrats. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 decision, overturned a lower-court ruling that found it’s unconstitutional for Arizona to give voters time after an election to resolve mismatched signatures but not missing signatures. The appellate judges said Arizona’s interest in reducing the burden on busy poll workers justifies the disparity. The overwhelming majority of Arizona voters cast mail ballots, which...

A federal appeals court ruled against Tennessee’s abortion restrictions on Friday, nine days after another pro-life “heartbeat” law went into effect in Texas. In July 2020, Tennessee enacted a law restricting abortions at several stages in pregnancy, including abortions conducted after detection of a fetal heartbeat which can occur as early as six weeks post gestation. The law also prohibited abortions conducted because of the race or sex of the baby, or because of a Down syndrome diagnosis. On Friday, a three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit ruled against both provisions, upholding a lower court’s ruling that halted them from...

The Supreme Court struck down a California regulation granting union organizers access to farmworkers on agricultural fields, ruling Wednesday that the 1975 measure violated growers’ private-property rights. The decision, by a 6-3 vote along the court’s conservative-liberal divide, erases a major victory that Cesar Chavez’s farmworker movement achieved in the 1970s, when they argued the nature of agricultural labor made it too difficult to reach workers outside the fields.

A federal appeals court on Friday ruled that ordinances in Florida banning the licensed counseling of people with unwanted same-sex attractions are unconstitutional violations of the freedom of speech. "We hold that the challenged ordinances violate the First Amendment because they are content-based regulations of speech that cannot survive strict scrutiny," the ruling from the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said. The decision was the first from a federal appeals court laws against so-called "conversion therapy" – a term rejected by proponents – since a 2018 U.S. Supreme Court ruling. In NIFLA v. Becerra, the high court ruled the...

In Agudath Israel of America v. Cuomo, (2d Cir., Nov. 9, 2020), the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in a 2-1 decision refused to grant an injunction pending appeal to a group of Jewish synagogues and to the Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn in a case challenging New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's restrictions on spots in which clusters of COVD-19 cases have broken out. (See prior posting.) The majority said in part: The Court fully understands the impact the executive order has had on houses of worship throughout the affected zones. Nevertheless, the Appellants cannot clear the high bar necessary...

State has 14 days to ask full 5th Circuit to hear caseTexas Right to Life responded yesterday to the 2-1 decision: The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled against the Texas Dismemberment Abortion Ban, upholding the district court ruling that blocked enforcement of the Pro-Life law. After a three-year wait, the decision by the three-judge panel is disappointing and demonstrates the need for judges who follow the strictest interpretation of the Constitution. However, Texas must continue the legal battle to force a federal circuit court split, pressuring the Supreme Court of the United States to evaluate...

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday ruled that President Trump’s use of emergency powers to allocate millions of dollars in funding for the construction of a southern border wall was illegal, the latest blow to the Trump administration’s effort to limit immigration. In the 2-1 decision, the court upheld a December 2019 district court summary judgment in favor of a request from the advocacy groups the Sierra Club and the Southern Border Communities Coalition against Defense Secretary Mark Esper, acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf and “all persons acting under their direction ... from using military construction funds...

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A federal appeals court on Thursday blocked a decision to extend the deadline for counting absentee ballots in battleground Wisconsin, in a win for Republicans who have fought attempts to expand voting across the country. If the ruling stands, absentee ballots will have to be delivered to Wisconsin election clerks by 8 p.m. on Election Day if they are to be counted. Results of the presidential race in the pivotal swing state would be known within hours of polls closing. Democrats almost certainly will appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.

New polling data out from Pew Research Center finds President Obama with a double-digit lead over Mitt Romney nationally: Currently, 51% say they support Obama or lean toward him, while 41% support or lean toward Romney. This is largely unchanged from earlier in July and consistent with polling over the course of this year. Across eight Pew Research Center surveys since January, Obama has led Romney by between four and 12 percentage points. Obama holds only a four-point edge (48% to 44%) across 12 of this year’s key battleground states. While the data does not allow a state-by-state analysis, the...

President Barack Obama has one of the biggest leads we've seen for him in quite a long time in a new Pew Research Poll: He's up 10 points over Mitt Romney. Don't take much from it, though. Pew's sample of registered voters is highly skewed, oversampling Democrats by almost 20 points. Pew surveyed 1,956 registered voters. Of those, 42 percent were Democrats and just 23 percent were Republicans. We can't remember a poll being that imbalanced. Pew's poll in June also slightly oversampled Democrats and gave Obama a 7-point lead. So what we can take from this is that Independents...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - More than twice as many Californians believe the state is on the wrong track as opposed to headed in the right direction, a new poll found. According to a Field Poll released Tuesday, 59 percent of Californians surveyed said the state is "seriously off on the wrong track," up from 51 percent in February. The percentage of people who believed the state was "generally going in the right direction" fell from 40 percent in February to 28 percent. Republicans were most optimistic with 46 percent believing the state was on the right track, while just 18...