Cultivated Compendium

The Ninth Circuit has ruled that the First Amendment rights of a video-game maker don't trump the rights former NFL players have to be compensated for the use of their avatars in the Madden NFL series, the Associated Press' Sudhin Thanawala reports. Courthouse News' Maria Dinzeo reports that the panel ruled that Electronic Arts can't "use incidental use as a defense for its depictions of football players in video games, ... rejecting the company's claims that the athletes' images add little commercial value." The panel also upheld a lower court ruling rejecting Electronic Arts' motion to strike the lawsuit under California's anti-SLAPP law.

This week is bringing a tremendous confluence of events regarding same-sex marriage, the Washington Post's Robert Barnes reports: the U.S. Supreme Court is slated to consider on Friday whether to take up the constitutionality of bans on same-sex marriage, same-sex marriages started in Florida today, and the U.S Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit will consider cases regarding the bans on same-sex marriage in Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana on Friday.

Maine Governor Paul LePage spent close to $53,000 on private lawyers to try to remove low-income young adults from the state's Medicaid program, even though Attorney General Janet Mills rejected pursing the case and told the governor he couldn't win, the Associated Press reports.  The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit ruled that the Affordable Care Act requires the state of Maine to keep providing Medicaid coverage to 19- and 20-year-olds from low-income families. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act requires states accepting federal Medicaid funds to freeze their Medicaid eligibility standards for children until 2019.

The New York Times' James Risen reluctantly took the stand in a preview of what testimony he would give if compelled by the Justice Department to give testimony about his confidential sources for classified information in a book chapter about the Iranian nuclear program, his colleague Matt Apuzzo reports. Risen refused to say anything to help prosecutors in their case against Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA officer who allegedly provided the information to Risen. Edward B. MacMahon, Sterling's lawyer, said during the hearing, "that without more information from Mr. Risen, the government had no case. He said prosecutors could not even prove that the leak had occurred in Virginia," where the case is being prosecuted.

A member of the grand jury that decided against indicting Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson in the death of Michael Brown is seeking to have the gag order on talking about the grand jury process lifted, alleging that the prosecutor Robert McCulloch handled the case differently than hundreds of other cases presented to the grand jury, The Huffington Post's Ryan J. Reilly reports. ACLU of Missouri Legal Director said in a statement that grand jury secrecy can be outweighed by a juror's First Amendment rights "'in cases where the prosecuting attorney has purported to be transparent,"' Reilly further reports.

The New York Times' Jack Healy reports about how Longmont, Colorado, and several other local governments that passed bans on fracking for natural gas are being sued: "state officials, energy companies and industry groups are taking Longmont and other municipalities to court, forcing local governments into what critics say are expensive, long-shot efforts to defend the measures." The bans in Longmont, Lafayette and in Fort Collins, Colorado, were overturned in court. Lafayette City Council even voted against appealing a legal judgment against its restriction on oil and gas development out of concern with the legal costs.

The Ebola virus has killed over 20,000 people, Reuters reports, and the disease is still spreading in West Africa: "The Ebola crisis in West Africa is likely to last until the end of 2015, according to Peter Piot, a London-based scientist who helped to discover the virus in 1976 in the former Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo."

Legislators in Montana have proposed a limited expansion of Medicaid that would cover 15,000 to 18,000 people earning less than 100 percent of the federal poverty level, the Independent Record reports, but the plan would not allow Montana to take a federal subsidy that would expand coverage to 70,000 more people. Democratic Governor Steve Bullock wants to accept the money. The federal government would pay the entire cost in 2016 and 95 percent of the cost in 2017,  but the state would have to pick up 10 percent of the expansion cost by 2020, the newspaper further reports.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has ruled against lifetime registration for juvenile sex offenders, ruling a state law is unconstitutional because the juveniles have no ability to challenge an irrebuttable presumption they are likely to reoffend, the Associated Press reports: "'We agree with the juveniles that (the law)'s registration requirements improperly brand all juvenile offenders' reputations with an indelible mark of a dangerous recidivist, even though the irrebuttable presumption linking adjudication of specified offenses with a high likelihood of recidivating is not ‘universally true,'” Justice Max Baer wrote for the court.

Cornell law professor Michael C. Dorf, writing in a column in Justia, notes how Nebraska and Oklahoma, two of Colorado's neighboring states, are challenging Colorado's law legalizing marijuana in the U.S. Supreme Court. The basis for the Supreme Court's jurisdiction is the part of the federal constitution covering cases in "which a state shall be a party," Dorf notes.

Nebraska and Oklahoma's attorneys general argue that Colorado's pot legalization undermines their ability to "maintain their own prohibitions of marijuana because Colorado takes inadequate measures to prevent legal intrastate marijuana from crossing state borders, where it enters the illegal market." They also argue that Colorado's law violates the federal Controlled Substances Act. But Dorf finds a hole in the two states' argument about the CSA, reasoning that there is no federal preemption of states choosing not to criminalize marijuana.

Instead, he suggests that Nebraska and Oklahoma should sue the federal government for failing to enforce the CSA against third parties.