constitutional law

The Missouri Supreme Court struck down red-light camera laws in St. Louis, Kansas City and St. Peters, The Wall Street Journal's Jacob Gershman reports. The law in St. Louis was struck down because it shifted the burden onto a defendant to prove that he or she wasn't operating the motor vehicle at the time of the violation.

The ordinances authorizing red-light camera violations in the other cities were struck down for other reasons.

Civil rights lawyers from the Department of Justice have lambasted a law in Boise, Idaho, that bans people who are homeless from sleeping in public places, The Washington Post's Emily Badger says. The DOJ said in a court filing such laws are unconstitutional when there aren't enough beds for homeless people to sleep indoors: "' When adequate shelter space does not exist, there is no meaningful distinction between the status of being homeless and the conduct of sleeping in public. Sleeping is a life-sustaining activity — i.e., it must occur at some time in some place. If a person literally has nowhere else to go, then enforcement of the anti-camping ordinance against that person criminalizes her for being homeless.'"

Idaho's "ag gag" law banning undercover surveillance inside of agricultural operations has been ruled unconstitutional, The Guardian's Rory Carroll reports. U.S. District Judge B Lynn Winmill ruled the ban violates the constitutional right to free speech and to equal protection: "'An agricultural facility’s operations that affect food and worker safety are not exclusively a private matter. Food and worker safety are matters of public concern.”'

Winmill also ruled that the Idaho statute violated the constitutional protection for equal protection under the law because it was motivated by animus toward animal rights activists.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that an immigration law that treats mothers and fathers differently in determining whether their children may claim U.S. citizenship is unconstitutional, Reuters' Joseph Ax reports.

The law requires unwed fathers who are U.S. citizens to spend at least five years residing in the U.S. before they can confer citizenship to children born out of country, out of wedlock and to a mother who is not a U.S. citizen. In contrast, unwed U.S. mothers only must reside in the U.S. for a year for their children to be able to obtain American citizenship.

Triple-digit heat indices on Louisiana State Penitentiary's death row do not constitute cruel and unusual punishment, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has ruled. The Times-Picayune's Emily Lane reports that the court did agree that extreme temperatures constituted cruel and unusual punishment for the three plaintiffs who filed the lawsuit. However, the court ruled that air conditioning does not have to be provided to all of death row.

The U.S. Supreme Court, voting 5-4, has upheld the use of a drug in Oklahoma's lethal injection protocol that has been criticized as likely to cause inmates cruel and unusual punishment, The Huffington Post's Kim Bellware reports. Lawyers for the inmates on Oklahoma's death row aruged that midazolam "can't reliably render an inmate unconscious and free of pain while the second and third drugs paralyze him and stop his heart, thus making the execution cruel and unusual punishment."

A federal judge has ruled that Minnesota's civil-confinement program for sex offenders violates the constitution, The Star Tribune's Chris Serres reports. U.S. District Judge Donovan Frank opined the civil-commitment program "'is a punitive system that segregates and indefinitely detains a class of potentially dangerous individuals without [legal] safeguards.'"

One issue is that there are no periodic assessments to determine whether offenders are dangerous enough to be confined, Serres reports.

More than 700 men have been locked up after serving their prison terms. Minnesota civilly commits more sex offenders per capita than any other state, Serres reports.

Attempts by legislative leaders to use Alaska's budget to stop the governor from accepting federal funds to expand Medicaid are likely unconstitutional, the Alaska Dispatch's Pat Forgey reports.

The governor wants to expand healthcare coverage to 20,000 or more low-income Alaskans. Legislators included provisions in the operating budget aiming to stop Governor Bill Walker from unilaterally accepting $130 million in federal money for the program.

Counsel for both the governor and for the legislature have concluded the legislative language is likely unconstitutional because the state constitution confines budget bills to appropriations.

The Washington Supreme Court has ruled that state's law allowing defamation defendants to get cases thrown out early violates the constitutional right to a trial by jury, the Volokh Conspiracy's Eugene Volokh reports. The anti-SLAPP law says defamation plaintiffs can only move forward with their cases if they can show they would prevail by clear and convincing evidence, and the Washington Supreme Court said this stringent standard violates the right to a jury in civil cases. Volokh notes that many other states have anti-SLAPP statutes that only require judges to determine if the plaintiffs has "stated and substantiated a legally sufficient claim," not to weigh evidence.

During the current session of the U.S. Supreme Court, protesters have interrupted oral arguments multiple times, and they have been arrested for it. The Legal Times' Zoe Tillman reports that some of the protesters are arguing that a prohibiting "a 'harangue or oration' or other 'loud' language at the high court violates the First Amendment." In particular, their lawyer is arguing that the law is overbroad and does not advance any compeling governmental interest.