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Handing down a victory for Knox County prosecutors, the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals today ruled Judge Jon Kerry Blackwood must recuse himself from presiding over retrials for three defendants convicted in the 2007 torture-slayings of a young Knox County couple. A stay previously entered in the retrial of these cases will remain in effect until the chief justice of the Tennessee Supreme Court appoints a replacement judge or pending further orders of this court of the Supreme Court, Judge Robert W. Wedemeyer wrote in the ruling for the three-member panel. "Upon that appointment, the new trial judge shall review...

Chief Justice John Roberts initially sided with the Supreme Court's four conservative justices to strike down the heart of President Obama's health care reform law, the Affordable Care Act, but later changed his position and formed an alliance with liberals to uphold the bulk of the law, according to two sources with specific knowledge of the deliberations. Roberts then withstood a month-long, desperate campaign to bring him back to his original position, the sources said. Ironically, Justice Anthony Kennedy - believed by many conservatives to be the justice most likely to defect and vote for the law - led the...

FARMINGTON, Pa. (AP) -- U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts joked that he'll spend some time on an "impregnable island fortress" now that the court has ended a session that featured him casting the decisive vote to uphold President Barack Obama's health care law.

U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts is joking that he’ll be spending some time in “an impregnable fortress” after casting the decisive vote upholding President Barack Obama’s health care law. Responding to a question about his summer plans, Roberts quipped that he thought his planned trip to Malta to teach a class was a “good idea.” He delivered the joke Friday at a federal court conference at a posh Pennsylvania resort. Roberts declined to answer a question about the landmark opinion issued Thursday. But he says he hopes the court will be remembered for “protecting equal justice under the...

President Obama, in his drive for a national healthcare overhaul, strove to provide a new guarantee that all Americans, no matter where they lived, would have basic protection against sickness and disease, ending decades of variations among states. ..... < snip > Under the court's ruling, states will be free to decide not to cover all their poor residents through their Medicaid programs.That may mean liberal states that have embraced the healthcare law such as California, Massachusetts and Maryland will in 2014 effectively offer all their residents health coverage, a key goal of the law Obama signed two years ago....

KNOXVILLE — An order has been filed ordering new trials for the defendants in a January 2007 torture slaying, according to John Gill, special counsel to Knox County District Attorney General Randy Nichols. This comes despite a request from prosecutors that Special Judge Jon Kerry Blackwood recuse himself from the case of the killings of Channon Christian, 21, and Christopher Newsom, 23. . . . Late last month, the Tennessee Supreme Court ruled Blackwood's legal reasoning for granting new trials was faulty but left the door open for him to do so if he found different legal grounds.

In a major case involving gay rights at CalPERS, the nation's largest public pension fund has been ordered to offer its long-term care insurance program to same-sex partners of California workers. A federal judge in Oakland struck down portions of the federal Defense of Marriage Act that have prevented the California Public Employees' Retirement System from extending the insurance to gay spouses and domestic partners. In a ruling released Thursday, U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken said the ban served no "legitimate governmental interest" and was apparently "motivated by anti-gay animus."

Finding the city's attitude "deeply troubling," a judge granted class action status Wednesday to a 2008 lawsuit accusing the New York Police Department of discriminating against blacks and Hispanics with its stop-and-frisk policies aimed at reducing crime. U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin in Manhattan said in a written ruling that there was "overwhelming evidence" that a centralized stop-and-frisk program has led to thousands of unlawful stops. She noted that the vast majority of New Yorkers who are unlawfully stopped will never file a lawsuit in response, and she said class-action status was created for just these kinds of court cases.

In 2011, death row inmate Abdul Awkal sued an Ohio prison because he was receiving non-halal food while in prison. As a consequence, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction banned all pork products in prison. This year, prisoner James Rivers filed a lawsuit arguing that pork should not be outright banned. He reasoned that, should Muslims not want to eat pork, they had the right to, but that it was discriminatory to ban pork for everyone. Additionally, the prison did offer meals without pork products in them before the ban. To reinforce Rivers's lawsuit, prison authorities argued that the...

A federal judge’s ruling has temporarily halted the Tennessee Department of Health’s decision to rescind funding for Planned Parenthood’s HIV and syphilis testing program. Today, U.S. Dist. Judge William Haynes granted a preliminary injunction filed by Planned Parenthood, which is suing the state over $150,000 in dropped grants. A portion of the grant money supported HIV testing at Planned Parenthood affiliates including the Memphis Gay and Lesbian Community Center.

In a direct challenge to the Obama administration, a federal appeals court temporarily halted the deportation of seven immigrants until federal authorities explain whether they should be deported. "It has caused quite a stir," said San Jose immigration lawyer Bernadette Connolly, whose client David Aranda Rodriguez is one of the seven who won the unexpected reprieve Monday. A panel of the San-Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 to give the Obama administration until March 19 to explain if Aranda Rodriguez and the other immigrants deserve a break under a new enforcement policy known as prosecutorial discretion. The...

CalPERS refuses to sell its long-term care insurance to the same-sex partners of state workers, on the grounds that federal law doesn't allow it. Now a judge in Oakland seems ready to overturn that federal ban. Last week, U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken refused to dismiss a class-action lawsuit against CalPERS and the U.S. government over the California pension fund's long-term care program. In her ruling, she suggested the ban could be unconstitutional. While the California Public Employees' Retirement System extends most benefits to same-sex couples, it has denied long-term care coverage to the same-sex spouses or domestic partners of...

A Sacramento federal judge has struck down as unconstitutional the part of California's so-called Victims' Bill of Rights that governs parole revocation. The law, enacted by voter approval of a 2008 ballot initiative known as Proposition 9, was a sweeping amendment to the state constitution, conferring a long list of entitlements on crime victims. The sections dealing with parole revocation were made part of the state's Penal Code. U.S. District Judge Lawrence K. Karlton ruled Tuesday that those sections fall short of providing the minimum due process guaranteed by the Constitution and two U.S. Supreme Court decisions, Morrissey v. Brewer...

Mayor Jean Quan vowed Wednesday to quickly reform the scandal-plagued Oakland Police Department after a frustrated judge threatened a federal takeover if it fails to quickly make good on changes agreed to nine years ago. U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson said he "remains in disbelief" that the department has failed to adopt the reforms. Henderson's frustration with the pace of improvements was evident throughout a scathing five-page ruling issued Tuesday. "This department finds itself woefully behind its peers around the state and nation," he wrote. In his ruling, Henderson increased the oversight authority of a court-appointed monitor. Oakland Police Chief...

The state's fiscal crisis does not outweigh access to health care, a federal judge said in temporarily blocking state Medi-Cal cuts that rural hospitals say would have endangered skilled nursing care for their elderly and long-term patients.The ruling by U.S. District Judge Christina Snyder in Los Angeles federal court Dec. 28 puts the brakes on Medi-Cal cuts that were intended to save California up to $623 million by trimming reimbursement rates to care providers by as much as 10 percent. An earlier round of cuts, also temporarily blocked by the courts, would double the reductions. Medi-Cal, the state's federal Medicaid...

A federal judge has blocked a California state budget cut that would have affected rural patients, the latest indication that courts will have the last word on Medi-Cal reductions. Gov. Jerry Brown and lawmakers cut reimbursement rates to a variety of Medi-Cal providers by 10 percent to save $623 million in their June budget. Physicians, pharmacists and hospitals, among others, have argued that the cut to California's already low payment rates would discourage providers from accepting Medi-Cal patients and reduce access. U.S. District Court Judge Christina Snyder issued a preliminary injunction Wednesday blocking the specific rate cut to nursing units...

Even as the definition of family in America expands and shifts, California courts are trying to keep pace by redefining whom the law regards as parents.Judges have moved beyond traditional notions of biology and adoption and have assigned parental rights to adults with no genetic or legal ties to kids.In a recent Sacramento case, an appeals court said a woman who never adopted her ex-girlfriend's children was nevertheless their parent because she acted like one – providing for them financially, cleaning up after them when they got sick, and volunteering at their school. "We're redefining what constitutes a family," said...

A federal judge has apparently granted at least a temporary reprieve to 372,000 elderly and disabled Californians who faced a 20 percent cut in their in-home care on Jan. 1. U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken of Oakland issued a temporary restraining order Thursday that prohibits the state from taking any immediate steps to carry out the reductions — in particular, from mailing out notices to all recipients, starting next week. Wilken said a lawsuit by disability-rights groups and other advocates raised “serious questions” about whether the cuts would violate federal health and disability laws by forcing recipients into nursing homes....

A federal judge said Monday he would not order that Vermont's only nuclear plant be allowed to remain open while a lawsuit to determine its long-term future plays out. The state is moving to close the Vermont Yankee plant, with both the governor and the state Senate on record as wanting it to close when its initial 40-year license expires next March. The plant's owner, New Orleans-based Entergy Corp., got a 20-year license extension for Vermont Yankee from the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission and filed a lawsuit arguing that the federal action pre-empts the state's effort to close the plant....