Mexico’s midterms raise question of Lopez Obrador’s legacy

Mexico’s president depicts Sunday’s congressional, state and local elections as the last opportunity to keep conservatives from returning to power, while opponents say it is a twilight battle to defend the country’s democratic institutions against a powerful populist. Security analysts worry that gangs and drug cartels are playing a role in local politics in some towns, after the killings of about three dozen candidates. There’s a bit of truth in all those perspectives. But drug cartels have long tried to control local government in Mexico and the conservative opposition is so rudderless it probably won’t come back anytime soon. And despite President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s hostility to critical voices in the media, the courts or regulatory agencies, he so far hasn’t taken strong action against them. What truly could emerge from Sunday’s vote is a clearer picture of whether Lopez Obrador’s movement, built on his personal popularity and little else, will outlast him. Lopez Obrador is barred from seeking reelection, and for a man who has been campaigning unceasingly for 32 years, this may be the last election he plays a leading role in. For such a powerful movement ? despite one of the world’s highest per-capita death tolls in the pandemic, Lopez Obrador still polls over 50% in approval ratings ? the president’s “Fourth Transformation” doesn’t seem to have a clear direction beyond completing the projects already announced, and his Morena party may well fail Sunday in its bid to become a truly nationwide force. Morena may hold on to the majority it now holds with allies in Congress, but the party seems unlikely to win governorships in northern states where it is weak. Even so, despite a slower than expected economic recovery and his party’s constant internal disarray, Lopez Obrador himself is doing fine, thank you. Like Britain’s Boris Johnson or America’s Donald Trump, Lopez Obrador’s mishandling of the start of the pandemic doesn’t appear to have hurt him all that much; people are more likely to remember the end of the story ? Mexico’s ability to finally get vaccines ? than the terrible beginning, said Federico Estevez, a political science professor at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico. “It doesn’t matter, people aren’t voting based on performance anymore,” Estevez said. “They’re voting on what they like or dislike.” There is no shortage of dire predictions by academics, activists and members of the conservative opposition that Lopez Obrador is trying to tear down the safeguards and independent watchdog agencies built up ? at huge cost to taxpayers since the old ruling party began to lose power in 1997.

Court rules against state in emergency room boarding case

Psychiatric patients being held involuntarily in emergency rooms must be given a chance to contest their detention within three days of their arrival, the state Supreme Court ruled Tuesday. State law requires probable cause hearings for such patients within three days of an “involuntary emergency admission,” but the state has argued the clock doesn’t start until someone is transferred to an inpatient facility. However, those facilities often have no available beds, leaving patients “boarding” in emergency departments for weeks at a time. Tuesday’s decision reaffirms a lower court ruling in favor of a woman who spent more than two weeks at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center’s emergency room before being transferred to the state psychiatric hospital. Justices agreed with the lower court, which said the state has a duty to provide hearings within three days of when a doctor signs off on an involuntary emergency certificate. “Nothing in the statutory scheme allows a person to be held indefinitely pending delivery to a receiving facility,” the court said in Tuesday’s ruling. In recent days, more than 80 mental health patients, including record numbers of children, have been waiting in emergency departments for inpatient beds, said Ken Norton, executive director of the New Hampshire chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Such boarding often aggravates rather than helps mental health conditions, he said, and stands in contrast to the quick treatment provided to those suffering from other illnesses. Norton said he hopes the state sees the ruling as a call to rapidly improve a mental health system that is overburdened at every stage, from entry to treatment to re-entry into the community. “During the past eight years thousands of Granite Staters have experienced ED Boarding. When justice is denied to one person it is denied to all,” he said. “Today’s decision on behalf of Jane Doe is a decision in favor of all Granite Staters. We are all Jane Doe.” A spokesperson for Health and Human Services Commissioner Lori Shibinette did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The department had argued in part that requiring hearings within three days of the signing of certificates would result in either court hearings being held in private hospitals or courts ordering patients to be released when such hearings do not occur. That would increase the risk that mentally ill people would hurt themselves or others, they said. The court, however, said such public policy arguments should be made to the Legislature, not the judicial branch. “We do not opine as to how the defendant should comply with its statutorily-mandated duty as our system of government entrusts such decisions to our coordinate branches,” the court said. The ACLU-NH, which has filed a separate class action lawsuit in federal court over the issue, praised the ruling. “Today’s historic decision is a major victory for mental health advocacy: it recognizes that those being boarded in hospital emergency rooms are human beings entitled to prompt due process,” said legal director Gilles Bissonnette.

Justices consider hearing a case on ‘most offensive word’

Robert Collier says that during the seven years he worked as an operating room aide at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, white nurses called him and other Black employees “boy.” Management ignored two large swastikas painted on a storage room wall. And for six months, he regularly rode an elevator with the N-word carved into a wall. Collier ultimately sued the hospital, but lower courts dismissed his case. Now, however, beginning with a private conference that was scheduled for Thursday, the Supreme Court is considering for the first time whether to hear the case. (Although the court did not comment, the case remained on its calendar, which likely means it was discussed Thursday.) Focusing on the elevator graffiti, Collier is asking the justices to decide whether a single use of the N-word in the workplace can create a hostile work environment, giving an employee the ability to pursue a case under Title VII of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. Already, the court’s two newest members, both appointed by President Donald Trump, are on record with seemingly different views. The case is also a test of whether the justices are willing to wade into the ongoing, complex conversations about race happening nationwide. The public could learn as soon as Monday whether the court will take Collier’s case. Jennifer A. Holmes, a lawyer with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which has urged the court to take the case, says she hopes the conversations taking place nationally will push the justices in that direction. Doing so gives the court an “opportunity to show that they’re not insensitive to issues of race,” Holmes said. And courts are “all the time” confronting workplace discrimination claims involving use of the N-word, she said. The question for the justices, she said, is just whether someone who experiences an isolated instance of the N-word can “advance their case beyond the beginning stage.” Two of the court’s nine justices have experience with similar cases.

Alaska denied oil check benefits to gay couples, dependents

Alaska discriminated against some same-sex spouses for years in wrongfully denying them benefits by claiming their unions were not recognized even after courts struck down same-sex marriage bans, court documents obtained by The Associated Press show. The agency that determines eligibility for the yearly oil wealth check paid to nearly all Alaska residents denied a dividend for same-sex spouses or dependents of military members stationed in other states for five years after a federal court invalidated Alaska’s ban on same-sex marriage in 2014, and the Supreme Court legalized the unions nationwide in June 2015, the documents show. In one email from July 2019, a same-sex spouse living out-of-state with his military husband was denied a check because “unfortunately the state of Alaska doesn’t recognize same sex marriage yet,” employee Marissa Requa wrote to a colleague, ending the sentence with a frown face emoji. This Permanent Fund Dividend Division practice continued until Denali Smith, who was denied benefits appealed and asked the state to start including her lawyer in its correspondence. Smith later sued the state, seeking an order declaring that state officials violated the federal court decision and Smith’s constitutional rights to equal protection and due process Smith and the state on Wednesday settled the lawsuit. Alaska admitted denying benefits to same-sex military spouses and dependents for five years in violation of the permanent injunction put in place by the 2014 U.S. District Court decision. The state also vowed to no longer use the outdated state law, to deny military spouses and dependents oil checks going forward, and updated enforcement regulations. There were no financial terms to the settlement. In fact, Smith had to pay $400 out of pocket to file the federal lawsuit to get her oil check, and her attorney worked pro bono. In Alaska, the oil wealth check is seen as an entitlement that people use to buy things like new TVs or snowmobiles, fund college savings accounts or, in rural Alaska, weather high heating and food costs. The nest-egg fund, seeded with oil money, has grown into billions of dollars. A portion traditionally goes toward the checks, but the amount varies. Last year, nearly every single resident received $992. The year before, the amount was $1,606. About 800 pages of emails provided by the state for the lawsuit show a clear misunderstanding or outright disregard of the 2014 precedent and reluctance to reach out to the attorney general’s office for guidance.

High court nixes Alex Jones’ appeal in Newtown shooting case

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear an appeal by Infowars host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who was fighting a Connecticut court sanction in a defamation lawsuit brought by relatives of some of the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. Jones was penalized in 2019 by a trial court judge for an angry outburst on his web show against an attorney for the relatives and for violating numerous orders to turn over documents to the families’ lawyers. Judge Barbara Bellis barred Jones from filing a motion to dismiss the case, which remains pending, and said she would order Jones to pay some of the families’ legal fees. Jones argued he should not have been sanctioned for exercising his free speech rights. The Connecticut Supreme Court upheld Bellis’ ruling last year. The families and an FBI agent who responded to the shooting, which left 20 first-graders and six educators dead, are suing Jones and his show over claims that the massacre was a hoax. The families said they have been subjected to harassment and death threats from Jones’ followers because of the hoax conspiracy.

Colorado court: Speed-reading bills violates constitution

The Colorado Supreme Court has ruled that state Senate Democrats violated the constitution in 2019 when they responded to Republicans’ request that bills be read at length by having computers speed-read the bills in an intelligible garble. The Colorado Sun reports that in a 4-3 ruling released Monday, the court ruled the speed-reading tactic violated the constitution’s mandate that legislation be read at length upon request. “There are unquestionably different ways by which the legislature may comply with the reading requirement,” Justice Carlos Samour Jr. wrote in the majority opinion. “But the cacophony generated by the computers here isn’t one of them.” Minority Senate Republicans were trying to delay Democrats’ attempts to overhaul oil and gas regulations by asking that bills be read aloud ? including a 2,000-page measure. When Democrats resorted to computers, Republicans sued. A lower court found for the minority party. In a dissenting opinion, Justice Monica M. Marquez wrote that the court should give direction on how legislation ought to be read in the future. In 2019, Democrats began negotiating with Republicans to avoid further stalling tactics ? and the GOP has since slowed down work on other occasions to force Democrats to make deals.

Mississippi told to pay $500K to wrongfully imprisoned man

A judge is ordering the state of Mississippi to pay $500,000 to a Black man who was wrongfully imprisoned more than 22 years and was tried six times in a quadruple murder case. Curtis Flowers was released from prison in December 2019, months after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a district attorney had excluded Black jurors from his trials. Flowers had spent years on death row. Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch said in September that she would not try Flowers a seventh time in the 1996 slayings and a robbery that took place at a furniture store in Winona. He had been in custody since 1997. In November, Flowers sued the state seeking compensation for wrongful imprisonment. Court papers show the attorney general’s office agreed to his request. Montgomery County Circuit Judge George Mitchell on Tuesday ordered the state to pay Flowers $500,000. That is the maximum allowed under a 2009 state law, which says the state can pay $50,000 for each year of wrongful imprisonment, for a up to 10 years. Mitchell also ordered the state to make a separate payment of $50,000 to Flowers’s attorneys. Flowers was convicted four times: twice for individual slayings and twice for all four killings. Two other trials involving all four deaths ended in mistrials. Each of Flowers’s convictions was overturned. In June 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court tossed out the conviction and death sentence from Flowers’s sixth trial, which took place in 2010. Justices said prosecutors’ pattern of excluding Black jurors from his trials was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court ruling came after American Public Media’s “In the Dark” investigated the case. The podcast recorded jailhouse informant Odell Hallmon in 2017 and 2018 recanting his testimony that Flowers had confessed to him. The first six trials were prosecuted by the local district attorney. Flowers was still facing the 1997 indictments in December 2019 when a judge agreed to release him on bond. The district attorney handed the case to the attorney general, and her staff spent months reviewing it before deciding not to go forward because of a lack of credible witnesses.