Hazleton, Pa. has lost another round in federal court as they try to enforce ordinances that crack down on illegal immigrants.

The U.S. Court of Appeals has reaffirmed that the town’s law is unconstitutional because it preempts the federal government’s jurisdiction over immigration. The law, initially blocked in 2007 by a district court, would punish landlords for renting to illegal immigrants and penalize the employers who hire them.

The case reached the U.S. Supreme Court after the Third Circuit in Philadelphia, but was originally ruled against in 2010. In 2011, the Supreme Court ordered the Third Circuit to review Hazleton’s ordinances again after the Supreme Court upheld a similar – but narrower – law in Arizona.

[Philly.com]

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Davis Truslow

Davis Truslow is a founding member of Law Street Media and a graduate of The George Washington University. Contact Davis at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Although it has already passed the Senate, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) says there is still a lot of work left to do in order to sell the immigration reform bill that he co-authored.

At an event hosted by the AFL-CIO, McCain announced that he will be traveling all over Arizona speaking with groups in the influential coalition of Latino organizations, evangelicals and business leaders who want to see reform passed.

“So far — I have to give you some straight talk — we haven’t done as effective a job as we’re going to have to between now and the spring,” McCain said while addressing his constituents in an attempt to gain support for the bill.

[Huffington Post]

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Featured image courtesy of [Medill DC via Flickr]

Davis Truslow

Davis Truslow is a founding member of Law Street Media and a graduate of The George Washington University. Contact Davis at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Growing concerns about climate change and recognition of environmental hazards has lead to the development of many new markets. Environmental consulting is becoming a lucrative, expanding business. Firms in the industry assist other companies to reduce the damage done to surrounding environments while operating.

These services include environmental assessments, audits, natural resource and waste management, environmental policy development and licensing and permitting assistance. Environmental consulting firms help their customers understand regulatory processes and help to ensure that these regulations are met at low cost to companies.

Rising environmental concerns and the large mining sector in Canada have helped the Environmental Consulting industry over the past five years.

[PR Web]

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Featured image courtesy of [Mohamed Malik via Flickr]

Davis Truslow

Davis Truslow is a founding member of Law Street Media and a graduate of The George Washington University. Contact Davis at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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As congressional gridlock persists, companies have started targeting sympathetic Republican leaders in the house to fight California’s notoriously strict workplace, consumer protection, and environmental laws.  Officials are worried that many of these landmark laws may be in danger. New legislation to strengthen federal environmental laws on toxic chemicals would come at the price of invalidating an extremely strong California law that protects people against the most dangerous toxins.

The new law would give the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) authority to screen chemicals for safety rather than only being able to regulate chemicals that have already been proven dangerous; however, it could also prevent states from implementing their own regulations.  This is not the only instance in which strong state laws have been threatened by federal ones.  Just last year, a law that would have prevented California from enforcing its state water protections for endangered species made it through the house but failed in the senate.

[Latimes]

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Featured image courtesy of [Steve Rhodes via Flickr]

Davis Truslow

Davis Truslow is a founding member of Law Street Media and a graduate of The George Washington University. Contact Davis at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Landmark California Regulations Under Attack appeared first on Law Street.

Congress by The Sunlight Foundation

The Sunlight Foundation is an educational organization with the mission of increasing transparency in the U.S. government and shining light on the information that, though readily available to the public, is over overlooked.

The Sunlight Foundation’s newest release, Congress for iPhone and Android, is a user-friendly law and bill tracker that allows users to view bills in their real-time process. Congress offers all of its features for free, with the mission of educating and informing the public about governmental activities that often do not receive enough attention.

Features:

• Track and view bills as they happen
• View legislator profiles in the house and senate
• Connect with legislators through Facebook, Youtube, Twitter and their respective governmental websites
• View how legislators have voted on bills and see what they have sponsored
• Follow bills to receive activity updates as they happen

You may also be interested in The Sunlight Foundation’s many other apps including:

Sitegeist

Sitegeist combines open data in a way that allows users to learn more about the area around them. Using publicly available APIs, the app presents infographics with statistics on the people, housing, events, environment and history of a location.

Ad Hawk

Ad Hawk  helps identify political ads as they air. Ad Hawk makes an acoustic fingerprint based on audio recorded while a television or radio ad plays and compares it against a central database for a match. The application will then display information about the candidate, organizations, issues and other relevant information.

Sunlight Health

Sunlight Health is an application to look up healthcare services, medical suppliers and prescription drugs. Using data from government and nonprofit institutions, the app shows government ratings of hospitals and nursing homes, nearby locations to purchase home medical supplies and research on various prescription drug options.

[Sunlight Foundation]

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Featured image courtesy of [sunlightfoundation via Flickr]

Davis Truslow

Davis Truslow is a founding member of Law Street Media and a graduate of The George Washington University. Contact Davis at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post New Mobile App. ‘Congress’ Legislative Bill Tracker appeared first on Law Street.

Detroit’s bankruptcy case will continue without legal challenges. The decision by Judge Steven Rhodes of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court halts all litigation against the city, its emergency manager and Gov. Rick Snyder.

Protests by retired city employees over potential pension cuts and a potential challenge to the city’s Chapter 9 filings will be addressed in upcoming hearings. Judge Rhodes said the Federal Bankruptcy Court has “exclusive jurisdiction” over this case.

Protesters gathered around the downtown Detroit courthouse while the Judge reviewed arguments on whether or not Mr. Snyder had crossed his authoritative boundaries when forcing the city into the largest municipal bankruptcy case in American History.

[NYTimes]

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Featured image courtesy of [Ian Freimuth via Flickr]

Davis Truslow

Davis Truslow is a founding member of Law Street Media and a graduate of The George Washington University. Contact Davis at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Federal Judge Clears Way for Detroit Bankruptcy Case appeared first on Law Street.

The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (MassDEP) has issued a $40,000 penalty to South/Win Ltd. of North Carolina to settle environmental violations discovered following a 12,000-gallon methanol release in Leominster.

The spill occurred at the South/Win’s Nashua Street location where windshield cleaner and other automotive consumer products are produced.

Company employees discovered an apparent leak from a hose line used to transfer methanol from railcars to the building on March 7, 2011. A backflow valve apparently failed, discharging 12,000 gallons of methanol to the rail bed.

For a spill of this magnitude, notification to MassDEP is required within two hours of discovery; assessment and cleanup should begin immediately. The company did not notify MassDEP until March 10, and also did not hire an environmental contractor to conduct the cleanup until that date.

[Banker & Tradesman]

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Featured image courtesy of [Paul-W via Flickr]

Davis Truslow

Davis Truslow is a founding member of Law Street Media and a graduate of The George Washington University. Contact Davis at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post MassDEP Fines N.C. Company $40K for Environmental Violations in Leominster appeared first on Law Street.

Texas Governor Rick Perry signed into law Thursday a bill that  greatly restricts abortion in the state. In his remarks before signing the bill, Perry said that the new law would prevent “reckless doctors performing abortions in horrific conditions” as a part of “our continued commitment to protecting life in the state of Texas.”

The new law makes abortions in Texas illegal after 20 weeks of pregnancy. It enforces surgical center regulations that will likely shut down the majority of abortion clinics as well as severely limit the locations where an abortion can be performed.

“That is reasonable. That is (the) common sense expectation for those caring for the health and safety of the people in the state of Texas,” Perry said in reference to the higher safety requirements.

[KMBZ]

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Featured image courtesy of [Ed Schipul via Flickr]

Davis Truslow

Davis Truslow is a founding member of Law Street Media and a graduate of The George Washington University. Contact Davis at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Texas Sets Further Limits on Abortions appeared first on Law Street.

A new measure passed by Oregon’s state legislature seeks to reduce by two-thirds the number of suction-dredging permits issued in salmon-producing areas. Senate Bill 838 is on Gov. John Kitzhaber’s desk and he plans to sign it, said Tim Raphael, his communications director. Kitzhaber has until Aug. 19 to sign legislatively-approved measures into law.

The bill, widely supported by environmentalists and harshly criticized by the mining industry, was approved by the senate on July 3, followed by the house on July 7.

Suction dredge mining employs a vacuum to suck up gravel from a stream bottom. Materials from the river bottom then go through a sluice to allow miners to strain out gold and other heavy metals.

Beginning in 2014, the law would set a limit of 850 permits for suction dredge mining on Oregon’s salmon-bearing rivers, matching the level allowed in 2009. There are roughly 2,400 permits allowed this year. In addition, the law implements new restrictions on where, when and how dredging can occur.

[Daily Tidings]

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Featured image courtesy of [William Cho via Flickr]

Davis Truslow

Davis Truslow is a founding member of Law Street Media and a graduate of The George Washington University. Contact Davis at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post New Dredging Law to Reduce Permits appeared first on Law Street.

Activists are pushing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to take a drastic regulatory step that could have significant repercussions for the U.S. economy. At issue is the Pebble Mine — a natural resource project in Alaska that could yield more copper than has ever been found in one place anywhere in the world.

With more than 80 billion pounds of copper, Pebble Mine also holds other strategic metals like molybdenum and rhenium, which are essential to countless American manufacturing, high-tech and national-security applications. However, before plans have even started to be developed, the EPA seems to have responded to activist groups, such as the National Resources Defense Council. The EPA has carried out initial assessments of the site and has already taken a position to veto the project before Pebble Partnership even applied for permits.

The goal is to kill the proposal before it starts. The NRDC and other activist groups worry that once in progress the project will continue unless stopped early on, saying that, “EPA’s study (and intervention) is critically important. If left to its own devices, the state of Alaska has never said no to a large mine.”

However, some groups are speaking out against this preemptive EPA vetoing power. The Center for American Progress, for example, has come out in favor of letting the permitting review take place, even though the group has criticized the Pebble Mine project.

[See Full Article: Alaska Dispatch]

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Featured image courtesy of [emydidae via Flickr]

Davis Truslow

Davis Truslow is a founding member of Law Street Media and a graduate of The George Washington University. Contact Davis at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Guiyang has created an eco-court, an eco-procuratorial bureau and an eco-public security branch that is included in all three arms of the judicial structure in order to promote ecological progress.

Guiyang, the capital of an underdeveloped inland province, is leading the way in ecologically protective judicial systems. The court was initially established in 2007 and was the first of its kind. Now there are over 130 environmental courts nationwide as pollution and other environmental issues are becoming more prominent.

“Setting up specialized ecological courts could break the limitations of administrative areas and reduce interference from various parties,” said Luo Guangqian, the environmental court’s presiding judge.

In the past five years, the court had decided 619 environmental cases involving water, land and air pollution, punishing 477 polluters. Among them were 13 major public interest environmental litigation cases, which account for half of such cases nationwide.

“For a long time, China has mainly relied on administrative measures to manage and supervise environmental affairs and curb pollution,” said national legislator Wang Qingxi, noting that judicial forces have been playing a relatively minor role in environmental protection.

[inhuanet.com]

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Featured image courtesy of [radiowood via Flickr]

Davis Truslow

Davis Truslow is a founding member of Law Street Media and a graduate of The George Washington University. Contact Davis at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post China creates judicial protection in a green push appeared first on Law Street.

On Jun. 26, 2013 the Capital Collateral Regional Counsel, a state agency that represents post-convicted death row inmates, filled a lawsuit in Florida against the 2013 Timely Justice Act, set to take effect July 3rd, which could accelerate executions by requiring Gov. Rick Scott to sign a death warrant within 30 days of a Supreme Court review.

Once the governor determines that the clemency process is complete and signs the death warrant, execution must follow within 180 days. The group claims that his new law is unconstitutional because it takes away from the courts powers and violates death penalty defendant’s rights to equal protection and due process. The suit stated, “The Act creates a rushed process for issuance of a likely flood of death warrants that will inundate the courts and abruptly cut off this Court’s exercise of judicial review in capital cases.

If not addressed prior to its operation in practice, the process will have the unconstitutional and irreversible result of individuals being executed under a legislatively-determined judicial procedure in which violations of their constitutional rights go unresolved. Further, Florida history shows that diminished process can have tragic and irreversible consequences.” Florida has the highest exoneration rate of any state with 24 inmates being released from death row since 1973.

[Full Article]

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Featured image courtesy of [Victor via Flickr]

Davis Truslow

Davis Truslow is a founding member of Law Street Media and a graduate of The George Washington University. Contact Davis at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Florida Lawyers Challenge 2013 Timely Justice Act appeared first on Law Street.

The Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision Wednesday to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act is a monumental victory for advocates of same-sex marriage.

But what happens now that the 1996 federal law that confines marriage to a man and a woman has been declared unconstitutional?

Will federal benefits flow only to same-sex married couples living in states that recognize their unions?

What about same-sex spouses who are legally married but living in states that ban such unions?

And how will federal agencies, already with myriad rules and regulations regarding spousal eligibility for benefits, deal with the court’s edict?

“Striking down DOMA is a great step forward, obviously,” says Ari Ezra Waldman, legal editor at Towleroad, a widely read LGBT-oriented website, “but there will be difficult complications to work out.”

The court’s decision does not embrace a national constitutional right to same-sex marriage, but would make married gay couples living in states where their unions are legal eligible for federal benefits already enjoyed by married heterosexual Americans.

[Full Article]

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Davis Truslow

Davis Truslow is a founding member of Law Street Media and a graduate of The George Washington University. Contact Davis at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post After DOMA: What’s Next For Gay Married Couples appeared first on Law Street.

Sporting her pink sneakers, Sen. Wendy Davis spoke for over ten hours straight in her successful filibuster against a Texas abortion bill that would be one of the most restricting of its kind.

The bill would severely cut access to abortion clinics across Texas and make an abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy illegal. Before the filibuster was carried out in its entirety, Davis’ speech was disqualified for going off topic three times. As the Dems. stalled, the crowd of opponents rose and chanted “Shame! Shame! Shame!” in a successful attempt at delaying the process. The efforts of the protesters and Davis’ 11 hour filibuster successfully stopped the bill for now.

Gov. Rick Perry has called for a second special session in order to pass the abortion bill. The session began July 1 at 2:00pm and could last a month. Though the bill is expected to pass the Republican-dominated legislature, Davis is confident that it is not over yet, now that the whole nation is paying attention.

[Full Article: New York Times]

Featured image courtesy of [The Texas Tribune via Flickr]

Davis Truslow

Davis Truslow is a founding member of Law Street Media and a graduate of The George Washington University. Contact Davis at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Texas Senator Wendy Davis Leads Successful Filibuster appeared first on Law Street.

The EPA has been given a second opportunity to defend the “Transportation Rule” and its attack on interstate air pollution. The Clean Air Act defines the EPA’s responsibility to regulate and maintain the nation’s air quality, and an important part of that is setting the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS). Each state is responsible for finding a way to meet these standards, however, natural wind patterns often transport air pollution across states, making compliance harder for some states than others.

The “good neighbor” provision of the Clean Air Act makes upwind states responsible for air pollution that travels downwind and prevents these states from meeting NAAQS. Furthermore, the EPA has outlined the steps (Federal Implementation Plans) in which these 28 upwind states must follow in order to reduce air pollution so that the downwind states are able to meet standards.

The Supreme Court will address three main issues in relation to the Transportation Rule: Whether the Court of Appeals had jurisdiction and properly struck down the Federal Implementation Plan’s rules, the reasonableness of EPA’s interpretation of the “good neighbor” provision of the Clean Air Act, and whether the Court of Appeals’ reasoning disrupts EPA’s approach to managing the Clean Air Act.

[See Full Article: JDSUPRA]

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Featured image courtesy of [NGerda via Wikipedia]

Davis Truslow

Davis Truslow is a founding member of Law Street Media and a graduate of The George Washington University. Contact Davis at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post U.S. Supreme Court Agrees to Review Interstate Air Pollution Rules appeared first on Law Street.

The parents of Robert J. Thomas have received a $7.5 million jury award. Police shot the 21 year old seven times outside of a Los Angeles County party with more than 60 other attendees. The parents claim that police assumed assumed their son and the other attendees to be members of the Crips gang.

The deputies arrived at the party and frisked Thomas as he stood outside. When Thomas fled he was shot seven times when the officers believed he was reaching for a gun. The police department says Thomas was a known gang member. After two days a deliberation, a 7 person jury, of which five were female, found that Thomas had been unarmed at the time of the shooting despite the fact that sheriffs department showed the jury the gun that they said was recovered from Thomas’ pocket.

After the verdict Thomas’ father, Robert Sr., said “it feels great for it to be proven that my son was never a gang member.” The family’s attorney said that the deputies believed they were arriving at a gang party, however, Thomas was simply working security and showed no signs of any involvement with the gang.

[Full Article: JDSupra]

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Featured image courtesy of [Steve Devol via Flickr]

Davis Truslow

Davis Truslow is a founding member of Law Street Media and a graduate of The George Washington University. Contact Davis at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Parents of Son Shot Dead by Police Win $7.5 Million appeared first on Law Street.