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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 9 months

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In a development that should give hope to all Americans, a group of Montana youth secured a court victory that invalidated a state law prohibiting the consideration of climate effects in the approval process for new energy projects. The victory is a watershed moment, even though the ruling is narrow. The Montana constitution guarantees its citizens the right to a “clean and healthful environment.” Prohibiting the consideration of climate effects of new energy projects is plainly antagonistic to that guarantee. A state court judge correctly granted judgment in favor of the young people of Montana. See Washington Post, Judge rules in favor of Montana youths in landmark climate decision.

The decision faces ongoing opposition from Montana’s attorney general, who called the decision “absurd” and promised an appeal that will end up in the Montana Supreme Court. No matter. The dam has broken and the victory by sixteen young citizens of Montana will inspire hundreds (or thousands) of additional suits. Some of those suits will succeed, encouraging more such suits. Fossil fuel lobbyists have ruled supreme in state legislatures for more than a century. The victory today is a very small step forward, but it is significant, nonetheless. It is particularly impactful because the plaintiffs were youths ranging in age from 5 to 22 years old.

The Montana litigation is part of a global litigation strategy to challenge climate change. The Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School has published a report on climate change litigation across the world. See Global Climate Litigation Report | 2023 Review. Amidst the noise of the Trump indictment watch, good things are happening in the background.

[Robert B. Hubbell newsletter]

In 1972, after a century of mining, ranching, and farming had taken a toll on Montana, voters in that state added to their constitution an amendment saying that “[t]he state and each person shall maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations,” and that the state legislature must make rules to prevent the degradation of the environment.

In March 2020 the nonprofit public interest law firm Our Children’s Trust filed a lawsuit on behalf of sixteen young Montana residents, arguing that the state’s support for coal, oil, and gas violated their constitutional rights because it created the pollution fueling climate change, thus depriving them of their right to a healthy environment. They pointed to a Montana law forbidding the state and its agents from taking the impact of greenhouse gas emissions or climate change into consideration in their environmental reviews, as well as the state’s fossil fuel–based state energy policy.

That lawsuit is named Held v. Montana after the oldest plaintiff, Rikki Held, whose family’s 7,000-acre ranch was threatened by a dwindling water supply, and both the state and a number of officers of Montana. The state of Montana contested the lawsuit by denying that the burning of fossil fuels causes climate change—despite the scientific consensus that it does—and denied that Montana has experienced changing weather patterns. Through a spokesperson, the governor said: “We must focus on American innovation and ingenuity, not costly, expansive government mandates, to address our changing climate.”

Today, U.S. District Court Judge Kathy Seeley found for the young Montana residents, agreeing that they have “experienced past and ongoing injuries resulting from the State’s failure to consider [greenhouse gas emissions] and climate change, including injuries to their physical and mental health, homes and property, recreational, spiritual, and aesthetic interests, tribal and cultural traditions, economic security, and happiness.” She found that their “injuries will grow increasingly severe and irreversible without science-based actions to address climate change.”

The plaintiffs sought an acknowledgement of the relationship of fossil fuels to climate change and a declaration that the state’s support for fossil fuel industries is unconstitutional. Such a declaration would create a foundation for other lawsuits in other states.

[Heather Cox Richardson :: Letters From An American]

#climate change #climate science #Robert b. Hubbell Newsletter #Montana litigation #clean and healthful environment #Global Climate Litigation Report #Heather Cox Richardson #Letters from An American

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reasonsforhope · 10 months

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Article Date: 7 June 2023

Climate litigation in the US could be entering a “game changing” new phase, experts believe, with a spate of lawsuits around the country set to advance after a recent supreme court decision, and with legal teams preparing for a trailblazing trial in a youth-led court case beginning next week.

The first constitutional climate lawsuit in the US goes to trial on Monday next week (12 June) in Helena, Montana, based on a legal challenge by 16 young plaintiffs, ranging in age from five to 22, against the state’s pro-fossil fuel policies.

A federal judge ruled last week that a federal constitutional climate lawsuit, also brought by youth, can go to trial.

More than two dozen US cities and states are suing big oil alleging the fossil fuel industry knew for decades about the dangers of burning coal, oil and gas, and actively hid that information from consumers and investors.

The supreme court cleared the way for these cases to advance with rulings in April and May that denied oil companies’ bids to move the venue of such lawsuits from state courts to federal courts.

Hoboken, New Jersey, last month added racketeering charges against oil majors to its 2020 climate lawsuit, becoming the first case to employ the approach in a state court and following a federal lawsuit filed by Puerto Rico last November.

the new forms of climate litigation are different, as they grapple not with particular projects’ emissions, but on responsibility for the climate crisis itself. Sokol, who dubbed these new suits “climate accountability litigation”, says though they will not alone lower emissions, they could help reshape climate plans.

In the US, this litigation has taken a variety of forms; perhaps the best known cases are based on constitutional rights and brought by youth.

One of those cases, Held v Montana, is based on the state’s constitutional guarantees to a clean and healthy environment, which were enshrined in the 1970s and which the plaintiffs say the state has violated by supporting fossil fuels. It will next week become the first-ever constitutional climate lawsuit to go to trial in the US.

Held v Montana followed the highly publicized 2015 Juliana v United States in which 21 young people from Oregon sued the US government for violating their constitutional rights to life, liberty and property by enacting policies that drove and exacerbated the climate crisis. The case, which like the Montana suit was filed by the non-profit law firm Our Children’s Trust, calls on federal officials to phase out fossil fuels.

Last week, a US district court ruled in favor of the youth plaintiffs, allowing that their claims can be decided at trial in open court.

Litigation based on state constitutional rights, also filed by Our Children’s Trust, is currently pending in four other states. One of those cases brought by Hawaii youth is set to go to trial, possibly as soon as this fall.

Another set of lawsuits in the US allege that the fossil fuel industry has for decades known about the dangers of burning coal, oil and gas, and actively hid that information from consumers and investors. Since 2017, seven states, 35 municipalities, the District of Columbia, and one industry trade association have sued major fossil fuel corporations and lobbying groups on these grounds.

In late April, lawyers for the city of Hoboken amended a 2020 complaint to allege that the defendants violated New Jersey’s racketeering laws by conspiring to sow doubt about climate change.

It marked the first-ever state-level lawsuit of its kind, following one last year in which 16 Puerto Rico cities brought federal racketeering charges, originally used to bring down criminal enterprises like the mafia, against big oil.

Unlike some previous cases, Hoboken’s amended lawsuit focuses not only on past misinformation, but also on contemporary greenwashing – something that could feature prominently in future cases.

A study last month examined litigation against fossil fuel majors and found that the filing of a new case or a court decision against a corporation took a slight toll on their finances. Novel developments – including a groundbreaking 2021 Netherlands court ruling ordering Shell to substantially slash its carbon emissions, and an unprecedented transnational claim filed in 2012 by a Peruvian farmer against a German energy company – yielded bigger blows.

Sankar, of Earthjustice, said he expects to see new forms of climate litigation in future years. “As the impact on states and localities increases, they are increasingly going to be looking for ways in which their state and local laws protect them,” he said.

(shinigami red links in this post go to The Guardian)

Article Date: 7 June 2023

Article Source: Dharna Noor for The Guardian

Thanks so much to @queerce for submitting!

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wachinyeya · 9 months

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#good news #nature #environmentalism #environment #climate change #montana #usa #climate litigation

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poetry-protest-pornography · 9 months

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A judge in Montana has ruled in favor of a group of young people in Held v Montana!

The suit was basically "The State of Montana is violating our rights to a clean and safe environment by allowing for the development of fossil fuels.

The judge found MEPA limitation & changes made in SB557 (a bunch of changes that made coal and fossil fuel development easier and harder to challenge) to be unconstitutional.

The judge found that the plaintiffs have “a fundamental constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment, which includes climate…”

#climate change #Montana #good news!#climate litigation

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weadvocate · 2 months

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BAD APPLE LAWYERS OF OHIO AND NEW JERSEY ALMOST GOT AWAY SCOTT FREE WITH ROBBERY OF BLACK EEOC CHARGING PARTY EQUITABLE PROPERTY

THEY DONT WANT YOU TO KNOW TAXPAYER, VOTER, COMMUNITY, SHAREHOLDER, FUNDER THEY KEEP HARMING THE BLACK WOMAN TAKING HER LIFE, LIBERTY, PROPERTY, AND PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS HELP! LIFE IS AT RISK FOR EXPOSING THE ORGANIZED CRIME IN COLUMBUS OHIO JUDICIAL SYSTEM FRANKLIN COUNTY COURT OF COMMON PLEAS 22CV007866/22CV008947/22CV008936 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF OHIO EASTERN…

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#climate-change #LAW #litigation #montana #NEWS

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progressivegraffiti · 9 months

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"The win... could energize the environmental movement and reshape climate litigation across the country, ushering in a wave of cases aimed at advancing..."

#climate litigation #youth plaintiffs #montana #climate action #global warming

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macleod · 9 months

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In the first ruling of its kind nationwide, a Montana state court decided Monday in favor of young people who alleged the state violated their right to a “clean and healthful environment” by promoting the use of fossil fuels.

The court determined that a provision in the Montana Environmental Policy Act has harmed the state’s environment and the young plaintiffs, by preventing Montana from considering the climate impacts of energy projects. The provision is accordingly unconstitutional, the court said.

The win, experts say, could energize the environmental movement and reshape climate litigation across the country, ushering in a wave of cases aimed at advancing action on climate change.

(Source: Washington Post, August 2023)

#montana #environmentalism #climate change #fossil fuels #mine #news #nature

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soberscientistlife · 9 months

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A Montana judge handed a significant victory on Monday to more than a dozen young plaintiffs in the nation’s first constitutional climate trial, as extreme weather becomes more deadly and scientists warn the climate crisis is eroding our environment and natural resources.

In a case that could have legal reverberations for other climate litigation, District Court Judge Kathy Seeley ruled that Montana’s continued development of fossil fuels violates a clause in its state constitution that guarantees its citizens the right to a “clean and healthful environment.” Montana is one of several states that have explicit guarantees written into their state constitutions.

It is also a landmark win for young climate advocates who are turning more to the courts for judgments on the causes and impacts of the climate crisis.

📸: William Campbell/Getty Images

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anarchywoofwoof · 13 days

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A federal appeals court on Wednesday evening granted the Biden administration’s request to strike down a landmark federal youth climate case, outraging climate advocates.

“This is a tragic and unjust ruling,” said Julia Olson, attorney and founder of Our Children’s Trust, the non-profit law firm that brought the suit.

The lawsuit, Juliana v United States, was filed by 21 young people from Oregon who alleged the federal government’s role in fueling the climate crisis violates their constitutional rights.

The Wednesday order from a panel of three Trump-appointed judges on the ninth circuit court of appeals will require a US district court judge to dismiss the case for lack of standing, with no opening to amend the complaint.

The decision affirmed an emergency petition filed by the justice department in February arguing that “the government will be irreparably harmed” if it is forced to spend time and resources litigating the Juliana case. It’s a measure the justice department should never have taken, said Olson.

“The Biden administration was wrong to use an emergency measure to stop youth plaintiffs from having their day in court,” she said in a statement. “The real emergency is the climate emergency.”

The lawsuit has faced numerous obstacles since it was first filed in 2015. A different panel of judges on the ninth circuit court of appeals previously ordered the case to be dismissed in 2020, on the grounds that the climate crisis must be addressed with policy, not litigation. But a US district court judge allowed the plaintiffs to amend their lawsuit, and last year ruled the case could go to trial.

Olson said the fight for the Juliana plaintiffs is “not over”.

“President Biden can still make this right by coming to the settlement table,” she said. “And the full ninth circuit can correct this mistake.” The Biden administration has not indicated it will come to the settlement table.

Litigation filed by Our Children’s Trust has seen success elsewhere. Earlier this year, Montana’s supreme court upheld upheld a groundbreaking decision requiring state regulations to consider the climate crisis before approving permits for fossil fuel development. Youth plaintiffs have similar pending lawsuits in Hawaii – which will go to trial in June – as well Florida, Utah and Virginia.

In December, Our Children’s Trust filed another federal lawsuit on behalf of a group of California youths, targeting the Environmental Protection Agency.

#climate change #climate crisis #climate news #environmentalism #united states #us news

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climatecalling · 9 months

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In a groundbreaking legal decision, a Montana judge last week ruled in favor of young people who had accused state officials of violating their constitutional rights by promoting fossil fuels. ... Even before the judge’s verdict, the Held v Montana case made history when it became the first-ever constitutional climate case in US history to go to trial. Soon, similar cases will probably have the same opportunity. ... ”The trial in Montana was everything,” said Nathan Baring, a 23-year-old plaintiff in the 2015 federal lawsuit Juliana v United States. “The science was actually put on the stand, and youth constitutional climate rights were actually considered in court.” Trials, he said, provide the opportunity to contest contentious claims made by government actors. “Without [a trial], justice can’t be done because you can’t establish a factual record and you can’t call out sometimes blatant falsehoods that the government is sharing,” he said. “It’s necessary.” ... But the Montana ruling did not merely affirm that climate change is real or human-caused: it specifically confirmed it is caused by fossil fuel usage and that every additional ton of greenhouse gas pollution warms the planet. The strength of the order could make it the “final nail in the coffin of any efforts to advance climate denial in the courtroom”.

#climate crisis #climate activism #climate solutions #climate lawsuits

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 1 year

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Rick McKee, Augusta Chronicle

* * * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

April 5, 2023

Heather Cox Richardson

In yesterday’s election in Wisconsin, the two candidates represented very different futures for the country. One candidate for the state supreme court, Daniel Kelly, had helped politicians to gerrymander the state to give Republicans an iron lock on the state assembly and was backed by antiabortion Republicans. The other, Janet Protasiewicz, promised to stand behind fair voting maps and the protection of reproductive rights. Wisconsin voters elected Protasiewicz by an overwhelming eleven points in a state where elections are usually decided by a point or so. Kelly reacted with an angry, bitter speech. “I wish that in a circumstance like this I would be able to concede to a worthy opponent,” he said. “But I do not have a worthy opponent to which I can concede.” Yesterday’s vote in Wisconsin reinforces the polling numbers that show how overwhelmingly popular abortion rights and fair voting are, and it seems likely to throw the Republican push to suppress voting into hyperdrive before the 2024 election. Since the 1980s, Republicans have pushed the idea of “ballot integrity” or, later, “voter fraud” to justify voter suppression. That cry began in 1986, when Republican operatives, realizing that voters opposed Reagan’s tax cuts, launched a “ballot integrity” initiative that they privately noted “could keep the black vote down considerably.” That effort to restrict the vote is now a central part of Republican policy. Together with Documented, an investigative watchdog and journalism project, The Guardian today published the story of the attempt by three leading right-wing election denial groups to restrict voting rights in Republican-dominated states by continuing the lie that voting fraud is rampant. The Guardian’s story, by Ed Pilkington and Jamie Corey, explores a two-day February meeting in Washington organized by the right-wing Heritage Foundation and attended by officials from 13 states, including the chief election officials of Indiana, Florida, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. At the meeting, participants learned about auditing election results, litigation, and funding to challenge election results. Many of the attendees and speakers are associated with election denial. Since the 2020 election, Republican-dominated states have passed “election reform” measures that restrict the vote; those efforts are ongoing. On Thursday alone, the Texas Senate advanced a number of new restrictions. In the wake of high turnout among Generation Z Americans, who were born after 1996 and are more racially and ethnically diverse than their elders, care deeply about reproductive and LGBTQ rights, and want the government to do more to address society’s ills, Republican legislatures are singling out the youth vote to hamstring. That determination to silence younger Americans is playing out today in Tennessee, where a school shooting on March 28 in Nashville killed six people, including three 9-year-olds. The shooting has prompted protesters to demand that the legislature honor the will of the people by addressing gun safety, but instead, Republicans in the legislature have moved to expel three Democratic lawmakers who approached the podium without being recognized to speak—a breach of House rules—and led protesters in chants calling for gun reform. As Republicans decried the breach by Representatives Gloria Johnson, Justin Jones, and Justin Pearson, protestors in the galleries called out, “Fascists!” Republican efforts to gain control did not end there. On Twitter today, Johnson noted that she had “just had a visit from the head of HR and the House ethics lawyer,” who told her “that if I am expelled, I will lose my health benefits,” but the ethics lawyer went on to explain “that in one case, a member who was potentially up for expulsion decided to resign because if you resign, you maintain your health benefits.” The echoes of Reconstruction in that conversation are deafening. In that era, when the positions of the parties were reversed, southern Democrats used similar “persuasion” to chase Republican legislators out of office. When that didn’t work, of course, they also threatened the physical safety of those who stood in the way of their absolute control of politics. On Saturday night, someone fired shots into the home of the man who founded and runs the Tennessee Holler, a progressive news site. Justin Kanew was covering the gun safety struggle in Tennessee. He wrote: “This violence has no place in a civilized society and we are thankful no one was physically hurt. The authorities have not completed their investigation and right now we do not know for sure the reason for this attack. We urge the Williamson County Sheriff’s office to continue to investigate this crime and help shed light on Saturday’s unfortunate events and bring the perpetrators of this crime to justice. In the meantime, our family remains focused on keeping our children healthy and safe.” The anger coming from losing candidate Kelly last night, and his warning that “this does not end well….[a]nd I wish Wisconsin the best of luck because I think it's going to need it,” sure sounded like those lawmakers in the Reconstruction years who were convinced that only people like them should govern. The goal of voter suppression, control of statehouses, and violence—then and now—is minority rule. Today’s Republican Party has fallen under the sway of MAGA Republicans who advocate Christian nationalism despite its general unpopularity; on April 3, Hungarian president Viktor Orbán, who has destroyed true democracy in favor of “Christian democracy” in his own country, cheered Trump on and told him to “keep on fighting.” Like Orbán, today's Republicans reject the principles that underpin democracy, including the ideas of equality before the law and separation of church and state, and instead want to impose Christian rule on the American majority. Their conviction that American “tradition” focuses on patriarchy rather than equality is a dramatic rewriting of our history, and it has led to recent attacks on LGBTQ Americans. In Kansas today, the legislature overrode Democratic governor Laura Kelly’s veto of a bill banning transgender athletes who were assigned male at birth from participating in women’s sports. Kansas is the twentieth state to enact such a policy, and when it goes into effect, it will affect just one youth in the state. Yesterday, Idaho governor Brad Little signed a law banning gender-affirming care for people under 18, and today Indiana governor Eric Holcomb did the same. Meanwhile, Republican-dominated states are so determined to ignore the majority they are also trying to make it harder for voters to challenge state laws through ballot initiatives. Alice MIranda Ollstein and Megan Messerly of Politico recently wrote about how, after voters in a number of states overrode abortion bans through ballot initiatives, legislatures in Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio, and Oklahoma are now debating ways to make it harder for voters to get measures on the ballot, sometimes even specifying that abortion-related measures are not eligible for ballot challenges. And yet, in the face of the open attempt of a minority to seize control, replacing our democracy with Christian nationalism, the majority is reasserting its power. In Michigan, after an independent redistricting commission redrew maps to end the same sort of gerrymandering that is currently in place in Wisconsin and Tennessee, Democrats in 2022 won a slim majority to control the state government. And today, Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer signed into law a bill revoking a 1931 law that criminalized abortion without exception for rape or incest.

—

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Voting Rights #voter suppression laws #Wisconsin #Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #minority rule #Rule of Law #gerrymandering #abortion rights #human rights #history #LBGTQ

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theculturedmarxist · 6 months

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Last Monday, one of the large number of Washington, D.C. insider trade publications - Politico - called out Biden antitrust policy as the single most problematic area for financiers. “In taking on tech giants and forcing the collapse of lucrative deals,” said Politico Morning Money, “Lina Khan has earned the status of Wall Street nemesis.” It’s true. The torpedoes launched last year - from rule-makings to challenges of Google and Spirit-JetBlue - are now exploding.

In this issue, we’re going to describe how the establishment is hitting back, in ways you don’t see, but which might become a political issue if the consultants and candidates who run campaigns actually notice what’s happening in Congress.

The short story is that big business is using partisanship to try and persuade Congressional Republicans, and some Democrats, to repeal antitrust laws, as well as drag antitrust enforcers before committees and harangue them in public. But among voters, within academia, and even in the conservative legal movement, antitrust is becoming far more relevant.

First, let’s set the context. This week, polling came out again showing Americans oppose monopolies and support antitrust laws, which isn’t a surprise. People dislike junk fees and unfair prices. We’ve all noticed high-profile monopoly-driven problems with episodes like the baby formula shortages, the failure of Ticketmaster’s ability to sell tickets, and ludicrously high prices for EpiPens and asthma inhalers.

This parade of incidents is one reason two-thirds of all Americans support anti-monopoly laws. That holds among both Biden and Trump voters, with more than 70% of both camps agreeing that monopolies are bad for the economy. And only 5% of Americans - across party affiliations - think that antitrust laws should be weakened.

One thing that surprised us is though people generally like technology firms, 46% still think the government should break up big tech, versus just 28% who don’t. What’s also interesting is that 52% of voters have heard little or nothing about the Biden administration’s economic policies, which means few people know what antitrust enforcers are doing. That could change relatively soon. Here’s Montana Senator Jon Tester, running for reelection in a very Trump-friendly state as a Democrat, attacking consolidation in the meat-packing and seed industries as a point of distinction between the parties.

It’s not just certain Democrats making the case. After all, in 2020, it was Donald Trump’s administration which brought the major Google antitrust suit currently being litigated. In academia, today legal scholars and historians are trying to reorient the history of America as one grounded in anti-monopoly thought, as this interesting collection of essays put out by the Tobin Project shows. And in key ways, conservative legal thinkers are ahead of the curve on consolidation. Take the highly influential George Mason law professor Todd Zywicki, who interviewed Biden antitrust chief Jonathan Kanter on the new proposed merger guidelines, calling them a “moderate” way to split the difference between traditional Chicago School conservatives and a newer populist sentiment.

That interview happened at, of all places, the Federalist Society, which is the beating heart of the conservative legal movement, where law professors, high-powered lawyers, circuit court judges and Supreme Court justices spend time networking and learning from each other. Justices Alito, Barrett, Gorsuch, and Kavanagh all attended last Friday’s black tie Federalist Society event.

Indeed, that dinner was part of the organization’s National Lawyer’s Convention, which had multiple discussions of the threats to conservatives by monopolization, as well as originalism and antitrust law. Stephanos Bibas, Third Circuit Judge, was the moderator of the panel on antitrust, and he often expressed surprise and interest in some of the comments by panelists, which included, among others, Deputy Assistant Attorney General of Antitrust Doha Mekki, Michigan professor Daniel Crane, and conservative plaintiff lawyer Ashley Keller. It wasn’t just one panel, the interest was pervasive. Lina Khan, for instance, did a well-attended fireside chat. And the main event on Saturday was a debate between two conservatives over whether social media platforms had sufficient monopoly power that the state could regulate them as common carriers.

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And yet, in certain corners of the establishment, the pro-monopoly tradition that started in the 1980s remains dominant. Last week, an appropriations bill in the House - one of the spending bills that keeps government working - was amended multiple times to repeal antitrust laws.

Let’s look at a few of those proposals. There was a pro-junk fee amendment from Rep. Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI), which would “prohibit funding for the FTC to make Unfair Competition rule-makings.” Such wording sounds anodyne. But if you strip away the legalese, Fitzgerald is seeking to do away with the rule-making authority the FTC is using to ban annoying junk fees, which deceive customers into paying higher prices for food, hotels, event tickets, car rentals and more. It’s also the authority the FTC is using to prohibit non-compete agreements, which trap people in their jobs and deprive workers of some $300 billion in wages per year.

There was another amendment which would prevent the FTC from enforcing its unfair methods of competition authority outside the bounds of the Clayton and Sherman Act. This one would effectively end or weaken key parts of the FTC’s case against Amazon, particularly its use of algorithms to raise prices in tacit collusion with other sellers, as well as its actions against pharmacy benefit managers on lower insulin prices and its work against price discrimination towards small and medium size grocers.

Rep. Kat Cammack (R-FL) proposed an amendment to block the finalization of all rules that would affect more than $100 million of activity. This would get rid of things like the FTC’s ‘Click to Cancel’ provision that stops entities from cheating you with subscriptions, or the pre-merger notification requirement rule, which would help stop predatory acquisitions by private equity firms in health care. These are gifts to the Chamber of Commerce, at the expense of hundreds of millions of real people.

In this section of the underlying bill, Republican appropriators even included a provision to let auto dealers cheat customers with undisclosed added fees.

But this isn’t about Republicans, who in many ways are just being partisan and/or exercising muscle memory from the 1990s. In a separate appropriations bill, Rep.’s Massie (R-KY) and Democrat Lou Correa (D-CA) led a bi-partisan amendment to strip the Department of Transportation of its authority to investigate airline mergers. JetBlue, in other words, is doing a lot of lobbying, and is trying to win - through spreading around cash in Congress - what it can’t win in the JetBlue-Spirit merger proceeding. As a reminder, internal documents say this merger raises airfares by up to 40% overnight, so Correa and Massie are working hard to raise airline ticket prices.

The Massie-Correa amendment failed, with mostly Democrats against it. But a handful of Democrats who did vote for it - in addition to Correa, Rep.’s Lofgren (D-CA), Meeks (D-NY), Morelle (D-NY), and Panetta (D-CA) also voted to promote airline concentration - should have to answer for why. Correa is a particularly odd case and has attracted a lot of scrutiny for parroting big tech talking points, despite his district being near Los Angeles. Lofgren, from Silicon Valley, is also important, since she could take over the leading slot on the Democratic side of the Judiciary Committee if the current chair, Jerry Nadler, retires.

In other words, most, though not all, House Republicans seem out of touch with their own base on antitrust and monopoly issues. A whopping 206 House Republicans, many of whom represent “flyover states” most harmed by airline concentration, voted to block the Department of Transportation from investigating higher airfares and worsening airline service. So, even though 70% of the Republican base wants monopolies to be held accountable, only 13 House R’s - including Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and outgoing Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) - want the federal government to keep doing so.

But it’s not just these amendments that matter. Tomorrow at 10am, there’s an antitrust oversight hearing in the Judiciary Committee, which is the main part of the House of Representatives that controls antitrust law. The Chair of that committee, Jim Jordan, is hostile to the anti-monopoly project, and the main witness is Antitrust Division chief Jonathan Kanter, who Jordan wants to rake over the coals for his aggressive attempts to go after big tech. I got a copy of the memo that Jordan’s staff prepared, and it reads a lot like it was written by lawyers for big business.

Under Kanter, it reads, antitrust enforcers have “pursued costly policy changes that harm American businesses and empower foreign governments.” This memo attacks the proposed merger guidelines that conservative Zywicki praised, and generally argues that antitrust enforcers are both losers who can’t do anything right, and also all powerful policymakers who block too much economic activity. Basically, it’s the old Yiddish joke about a restaurant. The food is terrible, and the portions are too small!

How much does this Congressional noise matter? Well the hope is this stuff is just a lagging indicator, and that House Republicans will catch up to their voters. It’s worth highlighting that none of the amendments will make it into law. The underlying funding bills were never brought to the House floor because of disarray among Republicans. And even if they did pass the House, the Senate would likely reject most of these amendments, with the possible exception of the auto dealer one. After all, there’s substantial support in many parts of Congress for stronger antitrust action.

However, there’s a catch. These proposals are a possible indication of what monopolists hope they can get done next Congress, if the elections go the way they want. I think that’s unlikely, since there are important Republicans in the Senate who are supportive of antitrust, but it’s possible.

Perhaps more importantly, these amendments and hearings are also an indication that members of Congress do not think voters will notice their choices that affect their constituents. All that said, the juxtaposition of very popular antitrust with ham-fisted efforts to weaken antitrust provides fertile terrain for doing some brute politics.

Another way to think about this is that establishment politicians like Rep. Fitzgerald are out of touch with actual voters. Fitzgerald is from a pretty red district in Wisconsin, a state that narrowly voted for Biden in 2020. Given where most Republican and Trump voters are on issues of corporate power, the attack ads write themselves: Establishment Republicans want you to pay more for groceries, healthcare, and travel, and are perfectly fine letting monopoly corporations make decisions about your daily life.

That kind of ad could be done in a Republican primary, or a general election. They could also be used in Democratic primaries, or general elections. It really does not matter. The point is, right now, lower prices are the top priority for over two-thirds of voters. Yet, most voters haven’t heard about what antitrust enforcers are doing. So while it sounds politically insane to propose knee-capping rules that would bring prices down, it will only be problematic if voters hear about it. As we saw above, Senator Jon Tester thinks it’s politically salient enough to bring up. It won’t take much more for big business to be on the ballot in 2024.

The pro-monopoly world is hoping that doesn’t happen, and they can keep these conflicts as quiet as possible. Unfortunately for them, people really do like complaining about Ticketmaster.

#monopoly #capitalism #anti-trust #biden administration #republicans #democrats #us politics #Youtube

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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 1 year

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Idaho already has some of the most extreme abortion restrictions on the books, with nearly all abortions banned in the state and an affirmative defense law that essentially asserts any doctor who provides an abortion is guilty until proven innocent. And now Idaho Republicans have set their sights on hindering certain residents from traveling out of state to get an abortion.

House Bill 242, which passed through the state House and is likely to move quickly through the Senate, seeks to limit minors’ ability to travel for abortion care without parental consent. The legislation would create a whole new crime — dubbed “abortion trafficking” — which is defined in the bill as an “adult who, with the intent to conceal an abortion from the parents or guardian of a pregnant, unemancipated minor, either procures an abortion … or obtains an abortion-inducing drug” for the minor. “Recruiting, harboring, or transporting the pregnant minor within this state commits the crime of abortion trafficking,” the legislation adds.

Abortion trafficking would be a felony, and those found guilty would face two to five years in prison. The legislation also includes a statute allowing the Idaho attorney general to supersede any local prosecutor’s decision, preemptively thwarting any prosecutor who vows not to enforce such an extreme law.

Since the bill would criminalize anyone transporting a pregnant minor within the state to get an abortion or to obtain medication abortion, it could apply to an aunt who drives a pregnant minor to the post office to pick up a package that includes abortion pills. Or it could target an older sibling who drives a pregnant minor to a friend’s house to self-manage an abortion at home. Either violation would carry a minimum sentence of two years in prison.

The legislation doesn’t actually say anything about crossing state lines, but Republican lawmakers are creative. Most pregnant people in Idaho are not traveling to obtain an abortion elsewhere in the state, since nearly all abortions are illegal in Idaho; they’re traveling to the border with the intent of crossing state lines, likely into Washington, Oregon or Montana, to get an abortion there.

“Technically, they’re not criminalizing people driving in Washington state with a minor. The crime is the time that someone is driving the minor in Idaho,” said David Cohen, a law professor at Philadelphia’s Drexel University whose work focuses on constitutional law and abortion policy.

“They’re going to say what they’re doing is just criminalizing actions that take place completely within Idaho, but in practice what they’re criminalizing is the person helping the minor,” Cohen, who also litigates abortion-related cases with the Women’s Law Project nonprofit, told HuffPost.

State Rep. Barbara Ehardt (R), one of the sponsors of the abortion trafficking bill, said plainly that the intent of the legislation is to limit minors’ ability to travel out of state without parental consent.

“It’s already illegal to get an abortion here in the state of Idaho,” she told HuffPost. “So, it would be taking that child across the border, and if that happens without the permission of the parent, that’s where we’ll be able to hold accountable those that would subvert a parent’s right.”

In the past, a bill like this would have been brushed aside as political fodder, never to become law. But Idaho has seen a Christian white nationalist insurgency in recent years, helping to create a Legislature that’s quickly gone down the far-right rabbit hole — including by introducing legislation that would bring back firing squad executions, or make it a crime punishable by life in prison for a parent to get gender-affirming care for their transgender child.

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, the country has yet to find the floor on how extreme abortion restrictions can get — and Republicans in Idaho are actively testing the waters.

“The far right has an incremental plan. It’s death by a thousand cuts on many things, but they’re especially unrelenting on abortion,” Idaho Senate Minority Leader Melissa Wintrow (D) told HuffPost. “My colleagues are just rabid about denying all access to abortion care. It’s really harmful to women, and it’s harmful to our state.”

The abortion trafficking bill is rapidly advancing through the Legislature. It passed along party lines in the state House (57-12-1) earlier this month with less than 10 minutes of floor discussion. The final roadblock for the bill was the Senate State Affairs Committee, which on Monday agreed to hold a full Senate vote. A handful of amendments, which don’t substantively change the bill, were added on Monday, meaning the bill will head back to the House for a full vote after the Senate vote takes place. It’s extremely likely to pass in the Senate, where Republicans outnumber Democrats 4 to 1, and in the House which has already passed the bill once. Gov. Brad Little (R), a devout anti-abortion advocate and the first governor to enact a copycat of Texas’ infamous bounty hunter abortion restriction, is likely to sign the bill into law.

Wintrow is prepared to fight the legislation in the Senate, but she’s only one of 18 Democrats in a Legislature of 105 members. She’s not optimistic, despite being acutely aware of just how devastating a bill like this could be for minors, physicians and the greater health care system in Idaho.

“It feels terribly inevitable that this bill will pass,” said Wintrow, who has been teaching gender studies at Boise State University for over 20 years. “That’s what we’re facing. That’s my fear. That’s the pit in my stomach.”

Ehardt stressed to HuffPost that the bill is about parental rights.

“What we want to make sure of is that parents are the ones who are in charge of their children. Parents are the ones who need to be involved in helping to make these decisions,” she said.

“A parent absolutely still has the right to take their child across the border and get an abortion,” Ehardt added. “The parent still has the right to cede that power and authority to someone else, such as a grandparent or an aunt, to take that child, should they be pregnant, across the border and get an abortion.”

The language in the Idaho legislation is ripped nearly word for word from a model law published by the National Right to Life Committee, a leading anti-abortion group, just weeks before Roe fell. Idaho Right to Life, a state-level organization of National Right to Life, crafted the bill that Ehardt is leading through the Legislature.

What was once viewed as an extremist’s dream agenda is now very real.

“This is the first of what will probably be many states that pass provisions like this because it does seem to be something that the movement wants, at least for minors. Whether they expand it to adults, too, we will see,” Cohen said. “But at least for minors, this seems to be part of the blueprint. And Idaho is now the first state that’s putting it into reality.”

Most teenagers and adolescents voluntarily include at least one parent in abortion decisions. But for the minority of those who don’t, it’s often for good reason. Studies show that requiring parental involvement can increase the risk of harm or abuse, delay care and lead minors to seek out dangerous alternatives. The risk of abuse is especially acute for LGBTQ kids.

And parental consent laws are common. Currently, 36 states require some kind of parental involvement for a minor to receive abortion care. Almost all of those states have a judicial bypass process that allows a minor to obtain approval from a court without alerting their parents, although this procedure is time-consuming and confusing, and it puts up many logistical barriers for young people who have few resources.

Idaho state Rep. Lauren Necochea (D) brought up this issue during the brief discussion on the House floor this month before the bill passed.

“There are cases where a minor might not feel safe telling their parents they need abortion care,” she said. “It could be an abusive family situation. It could be any number of circumstances that make it feel unsafe for a 17-year-old to go to her parents, but maybe she has a big sister who can help her out,” Necochea added, noting that the bill would prohibit a minor from talking to a sibling or other trusted relative about plans to obtain an abortion.

Several national health groups agree that a minor should not be required to involve their parents in decisions to obtain an abortion, including the American Medical Association, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the American Academy of Pediatrics.

But targeting minors is why such legislation works. They have fewer rights than adults in some situations, allowing lawmakers to litigate away critical health care for adolescents. (Just look at what Florida, Tennessee and a dozen or so other states are doing to gender-affirming care for trans youth.)

“It’s a very creative way of getting around the legality of this,” Rebecca Wang, legal support counsel at the reproductive justice nonprofit If/When/How, told HuffPost about the Idaho bill. “The phrasing of this law is very strategically trying not to impede on the right to travel but focusing more on the state’s right to interfere with young people’s medical decisions. I certainly see this as part of the trend of chipping away at the right to travel.”

For her part, Ehardt said she took on this bill because of her passion for parental rights. She is not looking to limit any adult’s ability to travel across state borders to get abortion care for themselves.

“I can’t speak for what any organization or someone else may try to do, but as far as I’m concerned this is a way to handle parental rights,” she said. “I am not interested in carrying legislation to try to restrict someone’s ability, if they are pregnant and they are an adult, to go somewhere else [out of state].”

Similar to other abortion restrictions, the legality of the bill is suspect. And since people travel around Idaho and across state lines every day, it’s unclear how it would be enforced. Between the legal jargon and constant confusion around abortion limitations, the legislation is likely to simply have a chilling effect.

“This is another one of those laws that seeks to create an atmosphere of not being able to trust the people around you. They [Republican lawmakers] are relying on a network of people around a person seeking care to potentially report them to authorities,” Wang said.

“The very real effect we will see is adults who are supportive of a young person’s right to get an abortion are going to be quite hesitant to offer that assistance, and be concerned that they might be prosecuted and go to jail as a result of this,” she added. “That’s concerning because young people, more than anybody, need additional community support to access services.”

Restricting anyone’s ability to travel looks and sounds unconstitutional. But in the U.S. — a country where the Supreme Court repealed nearly 50 years of precedent, lawmakers are vowing to surveil and prosecute pregnant people, and a lawsuit with no scientific basis is threatening access to medication widely used for abortion and miscarriage care — what’s constitutional or unconstitutional is up for debate.

“There is nothing clear about current Supreme Court case law that mandates the result that I think is right, which is that this is unconstitutional,” Cohen said. “And because it’s not clear from the case law, I think motivated judges are going to have the ability to decide one way or the other based on how they feel about abortion.”

In his concurring opinion for Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh did state that the right to interstate travel is still constitutionally protected. But since the abortion trafficking bill is crafted in a way that only pertains to travel inside Idaho, lawmakers may have found a loophole.

Rebecca Gibron, the CEO of a Seattle-based Planned Parenthood affiliate, told HuffPost that her organization will meet the legal battle wherever it is.

“This wouldn’t be the first time that the Idaho Legislature and the governor put bills into law that are unconstitutional. We have challenged them and won,” said Gibron, who heads Planned Parenthood Great Northwest, Hawaii, Alaska, Indiana, Kentucky.

“There’s no way this bill is constitutional, and if it’s passed there will absolutely be a legal battle. Idaho can bet on that.”

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kp777 · 11 months

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By Micah Drew

Flathead Beacon

June 20, 2023

HELENA — On the final day of a groundbreaking constitutional climate trial that activists hope will establish solid legal precedent and incite systemic change to Montana’s standard of approving fossil fuel projects, an 18-year-old plaintiff from Kalispell characterized the end of the lengthy legal proceedings as “just the beginning.” “We’re hopefully starting a trickle down of other litigation and activism nationally,” Lander Busse, who was raised in Kalispell along with his brother, a co-plaintiff in the case, said at a press conference following Tuesday’s closing statements in Helena. “We hope we made a spark here.” Attorneys representing the 16 young plaintiffs in Held v. Montana, as well as counsel for the state, delivered their brief closing remarks before Lewis and Clark District Court Judge Kathy Seeley on the seventh and final day of a non-jury bench trial that was scheduled to run through the end of the week. The trial wrapped up early after the state called on fewer expert witnesses than its legal team anticipated, instead laying out the entirety of its defense in less than a day, despite having mounted an aggressive defense in pre-trial proceedings that spanned three years. Counsel for both sides now must prepare and submit their written findings of fact and conclusions of law, which are required in non-jury legal actions of this kind. According to the estimation of one plaintiffs’ attorney, it could be more than three weeks before those filings are complete, after which Seeley will respond with her final order.