Cultivated Compendium

Entrepreneur Jay Bregman wants to add regulatory engineers at a new startup to help companies use drones without running afoul of products liability and privacy law, C|NET's Steve Shankland reports: "His as-yet-unnamed startup plans to bake those rules into drone control software so drone makers and operators can fly the robotic devices without fear." Bregman said that the Federal Aviation Administration just doesn't have the bandwidth to regulate thousands and thousands of drones, so technology could enforce regulations via software code.

After years of delay, the Federal Aviation Administration is close to releasing a ruling to allow smaller drones operated by commercial enterprises like media companies to fly in American airspace, National Defense Magazine's Yasmin Tadjeh reports. Jim Williams, manager of the FAA’s UAS integration office, said "we hope that it will be published before the end of this year." Under the 2012 FAA Modernization and Reform Act, drones weighing less than 55 pounds were to be integrated into the domestic airspace by September 2015.

U.S. District Judge Robert Chambers struck down West Virginia's ban on same-sex marriage as unconstitutional, the West Virginia MetroNews reports: "'The right to marry is a fundamental right, giving every individual the opportunity to exercise choice in this important relationship. As such, the government must not interfere in that choice unless it demonstrates compelling state interests and carefully tailors its restrictions to protect those interests,"' the judge said.

In contrast, the Sixth Circuit last week upheld same-sex marriage bans under the lowest level of constitutional scrutiny: rational basis. Other courts have often been applying greater constitutional scrutiny in striking down bans on same-sex marraige.

The Indiana Supreme Court upheld a law that bans conditioning employment on paying union fees, Bloomberg's Sophia Pearson reports. The law made it a misdemeanor to require a worker to pay fees to get or keep a job.

Detroit will emerge from insolvency proceedings after U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes approved its Chapter 9 bankruptcy today as fair and feasible, the Detroit Free Press reports. The plan will give the city the authority to cut 74 percent, or $7 billion, in unsecured debt and reinvest $1.4 billion over 10 years in public services and blight removal. Pensioners will have 4.5 percent cuts to their checks and the elimination of cost-of-living increases.

Detroit's bankruptcy is the largest municipal insolvency in Ameircan history.

The U.S. Supreme Court has taken up another existential challenge to Obamacare. The plaintiffs in King v. Burwell allege that the Affordable Care Act doesn't allow the federal government to provide tax credits and subsidies to low-income and moderate-income consumers shopping for insurance on the federally-run insurance exchange, The Huffington Post's Jeffrey Young reports. The Obama administration argues that Congress intended to provide tax credits to people shopping for health insurance whether an exchange is state-run or federally run, but the plaintiffs allege the Affordable Care Act only allows subsidies for insurance bought on an "'exchange established by the state,'" Young also reports.

If the Supreme Court rules in favor of the plaintiffs, "absent financial assistance, many fewer people would be able to afford coverage and likely would drop their insurance or never purchase it. Higher prices also would discourage healthy people who are cheaper to insure from buying policies, leaving a sicker pool of customers on insurers' books," Young further reports.

Earlier today I posted about how Missouri's ban on same-sex marriage was struck down by a state-court judge, and I was feeling a complacent sense of happiness that social change was proceeding apace. Well, no more. The Sixth Circuit ruled today in favor of same-sex marriage bans in Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee. The decision reverses the district court judges who struck down the various states' bans as unconstitutional. As a result, there is now a circuit split on same-sex marriage. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to take up same-sex marriage cases earlier this year, but that was when there wasn't a split among the circuit courts of appeals on the issue. The justices are much more likely to take up cases when there is a split about the circuits, so we may get a same-sex marriage case on the court's docket before June after all. Here's the opinion from the Sixth Circuit:
http://www.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/14a0275p-06.pdf

St. Louis Circuit Judge Rex Burlison ruled yesterday that denying same-sex couples the right to marry in Missouri denies them equal protection and due process under the law and is unconstitutional, the Post-Dispatch's Doug Moore reports. Moore struck down the ban in the state constitution because of the equal protection and due process clauses of the 14th Amendment of the federal Constitution.

The Missouri Attorney General will appeal the ruling to the Missouri Supreme Court.

Voters in Oregon and Colorado rejected measures that would have required labeling of genetically modified food, Reuters' Carey Gillam reports. The vote was much closer in Oregon than in Colorado. Instead, the fight will shift to the federal level, Gillam reports: "Labeling proponents are pursuing a federal mandate for labeling of GMO foods, while labeling opponents are backing a proposed law that would nullify any mandatory labeling laws, including one approved by Vermont lawmakers earlier this year."

Jason Millman, writing in the Washington Post's Wonkblog, says that the Republican victory in several gubernatorial races means that Medicaid expansion under Obamacare may not happen in several states: "Fifteen of the 23 states that hadn't yet expanded Medicaid held gubernatorial elections last night, and it looks like only Alaska will elect a candidate who campaigned for the Medicaid expansion." There might even be a real chance of undoing Medicaid expansion in Arkansas.

But Millman also notes that several Republican governors have said they might explore expanding their Medicaid coverage and "Medicaid expansion has support from hospitals, which hold considerable political clout and have a lot to lose without the infusion of federal funds from the expansion."