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North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein is elected as the state’s governor
Attorney News |
2024/11/09 23:03
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North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein was elected governor on Tuesday, defeating Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson and maintaining Democratic leadership of the chief executive’s office in a state where Republicans have recently controlled the legislature and appeals courts.
Stein, a Harvard-trained lawyer, former state senator and the state’s chief law enforcement officer since 2017, will succeed fellow Democrat Roy Cooper, who was term-limited from seeking reelection. He will be the state’s first Jewish governor. Robinson’s campaign was greatly hampered by a damning report in September that he had posted messages on an online pornography website, including that he was a “black NAZI.”
Democrats have held the governor’s mansion for all but four years since 1993, even as the GOP has held legislative majorities since 2011.
As with Cooper’s time in office, a key task for Stein likely will be to use his veto stamp to block what he considers extreme right-leaning policies. Cooper had mixed success on that front during his eight years as governor.
Otherwise, Stein’s campaign platform largely followed Cooper’s policy goals, including those to increase public school funding, promote clean energy and stop further abortion restrictions by Republicans.
Stein’s campaign dramatically outraised and outspent Robinson, who was seeking to become the state’s first Black governor.
For months Stein and his allies used television ads and social media to remind voters of previous inflammatory comments that Robinson had made about abortion, women and LGBTQ+ people that they said made him too extreme to lead a swing state.
“The people of North Carolina resoundingly embraced a vision that’s optimistic, forward-looking and welcoming, a vision that’s about creating opportunity for every North Carolinian,” Stein told supporters in his victory speech after Cooper introduced him. “We chose hope over hate, competence over chaos, decency over division. That’s who we are as North Carolinians.”
Robinson’s campaign descended into disarray in September when CNN reported that he made explicit racial and sexual posts on a pornography website’s message board more than a decade ago. In addition to the “black NAZI” comment, Robinson said he enjoyed transgender pornography and slammed the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as “worse than a maggot,” according to the report. Robinson denied writing the messages and sued CNN and an individual for defamation in October.
In the days following the report, most of Robinson’s top campaign staff quit, many fellow GOP elected officials and candidates — including presidential nominee Donald Trump — distanced themselves from his campaign and outside money supporting him on the airwaves dried up. The result: Stein spent millions on ads in the final weeks, while Robinson spent nothing.
Stein had a clear advantage among women, young and older voters, moderates and urban and suburban voters, according to AP VoteCast, an expansive survey of more than 3,600 voters in the state. White voters were about evenly divided between Stein and Robinson, while clear majorities of Black voters and Latino voters supported Stein.
Fifteen percent of those who voted for Trump also backed Stein for governor, while just 2% of those who cast ballots for Democratic presidential nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris backed Robinson.
Patrick Stemple, 33, a shipping coordinator attending a Trump rally last week in Greensboro, said he voted early for Trump but also chose Stein for governor.
Stemple mentioned both Stein’s ads talking about how he has fought illegal drug trafficking and his dislike for Robinson’s rhetoric. Stemple said the graphic language that CNN reported was used in Robinson’s posts reinforced his decision not to back Robinson.
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US court to review civil rights lawsuit alleging environmental racism
Attorney News |
2024/10/07 17:50
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A federal appellate court is set to hear oral arguments Monday in a civil rights lawsuit alleging a south Louisiana parish engaged in racist land-use policies to place polluting industries in majority-Black communities.
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans is reviewing a lawsuit filed by community groups claiming St. James Parish “intentionally discriminated against Black residents” by encouraging industrial facilities to be built in areas with predominantly Black populations “while explicitly sparing White residents from the risk of environmental harm.”
The groups, Inclusive Louisiana, Rise St. James and Mt. Triumph Baptist Church, seek a halt to future industrial development in the parish.
The plaintiffs note that 20 of the 24 industrial facilities were in two sections of the parish with majority-Black populations when they filed the complaint in March 2023.
The parish is located along a heavily industrialized stretch of the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, known as the Chemical Corridor, often referred to by environmental groups as “Cancer Alley” because of the high levels of suspected cancer-causing pollution emitted there.
The lawsuit comes as the federal government has taken steps during the Biden administration to address the legacy of environmental racism. Federal officials have written stricter environmental protections and committed tens of billions of dollars in funding.
In the Louisiana case, U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier of the Eastern District of Louisiana in November 2023 dismissed the lawsuit largely on procedural grounds, ruling the plaintiffs had filed their complaint too late. But he added, “this Court cannot say that their claims lack a basis in fact or rely on a meritless legal theory.”
Barbier said the lawsuit hinged primarily on the parish’s 2014 land-use plan, which generally shielded white neighborhoods from industrial development and left majority-Black neighborhoods, schools and churches without the same protections. The plan also described largely Black sections of the parish as “future industrial” sites. The plaintiffs missed the legal window to sue the parish, the judge ruled.
Yet the parish’s land-use plan is just one piece of evidence among many revealing ongoing discrimination against Black residents in the parish, said Pamela Spees, a lawyer for the Center of Constitutional Rights representing the plaintiffs. They are challenging Barbier’s ruling under the “continuing violations” doctrine on the grounds that discriminatory parish governance persists, allowing for industrial expansion in primarily Black areas.
The lawsuit highlights the parish’s decision in August 2022 to impose a moratorium on large solar complexes after a proposed 3,900-acre (1,580-hectare) solar project upset residents of the mostly white neighborhood of Vacherie, who expressed concerns about lowering property values and debris from storms. The parish did not take up a request for a moratorium on heavy industrial expansion raised by the plaintiffs, the lawsuit states.
These community members “have tried at every turn to simply have their humanity and dignity be seen and acknowledged,” Spees said. “That’s just been completely disregarded by the local government and has been for generations.”
Another part of the complaint argues the parish failed to identify and protect the likely hundreds of burial sites of enslaved people by allowing industrial facilities to build on and limit access to the areas, preventing the descendants of slaves from memorializing the sites. The federal judge tossed out that part of the lawsuit, noting the sites were on private property not owned by the parish.
At its core, the complaint alleges civil rights violations under the 13th and 14th amendments, stating the land-use system in the parish allowing for industrial buildout primarily in majority-Black communities remains shaped by the history of slavery, white supremacy and Jim Crow laws and governance.
Lawyers for St. James Parish said the lawsuit employed overreaching claims and “inflammatory rhetoric.” St. James Parish did not respond to a request for comment. |
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Supreme Court will weigh Mexico’s $10 billion lawsuit against U.S. gun makers
Attorney News |
2024/10/05 00:50
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The Supreme Court said Friday it will decide whether to block a $10 billion lawsuit Mexico filed against leading U.S. gun manufacturers over allegations their commercial practices have helped caused much bloodshed there.
The gun makers asked the justices to undo an appeals court ruling that allowed the lawsuit to go forward despite broad legal protections for the firearm industry.
A federal judge has since tossed out the bulk of the lawsuit on other legal grounds, but Mexico could appeal that dismissal. Mexico argues the companies knew weapons were being sold to traffickers who smuggled them into Mexico and decided to cash in on that market. The government estimates 70% of the weapons trafficked into Mexico come from the United States.
The defendants include big-name manufacturers such as Smith & Wesson, Beretta, Colt and Glock. They say Mexico has not shown the industry has purposely done anything to allow the weapons to be used by cartels and is trying to “bully” gunmakers into adopting gun-control measures.
Originally filed in 2021, the lawsuit was initially tossed out by a district court who cited legal protections for gun makers from damages resulting from criminal use of firearms. But the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals revived the case under an exception to that law. The gunmakers appealed that ruling to the Supreme Court, arguing they have followed lawful practices and the case has no business in American courts.
U.S. District Judge F. Dennis Saylor in Boston again dismissed the case against six of the eight companies in August, ruling Mexico had not provided concrete evidence that any those companies’ activities in Massachusetts were connected to any suffering caused in Mexico by guns.
Still, with some claims remaining and an appeal possible, the gun makers argue the 1st Circuit ruling could hang over the industry for years if allowed to stand.
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Algerian court certifies Tebboune’s landslide reelection win
Attorney News |
2024/09/14 18:07
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Algeria’s constitutional court on Saturday certified the landslide victory of President Abdelmadjid Tebboune in last weekend’s election after retabulating vote counts that he and his two opponents had called into question.
The court said that it had reviewed local voting data to settle questions about irregularities that Tebboune’s opponents had alleged in two appeals on Monday.
“After verification of the minutes of the regions and correction of the errors noted in the counting of the votes,” it had lowered Tebboune’s vote share and determined that his two opponents had won hundreds of thousands more votes than previously reported, said Omar Belhadj, the constitutional court’s president.
The court’s decision makes Tebboune the official winner of the Sept. 7 election. His government will next decide when to inaugurate him for a second term.
The court’s retabulated figures showed Tebboune leading Islamist challenger Abdellali Hassan Cherif by around 75 percentage points. With 7.7 million votes, the first-term president won 84.3% of the vote, surpassing 2019 win by millions of votes and a double-digit margin.
Cherif, running with the Movement of Society for Peace, won nearly 950,000 votes, or roughly 9.6%. The Socialist Forces Front’s Youcef Aouchiche won more than 580,000 votes, or roughly 6.1%.
Notably, both challengers surpassed the threshold required to receive reimbursement for campaign expenses. Under its election laws, Algeria pays for political campaigns that receive more than a 5% vote share. The results announced by the election authority last week showed Cherif and Aouchiche with 3.2% and 2.2% of the vote, respectively. Both were criticized for participating in an election that government critics denounced as a way for Algeria’s political elite to make a show of democracy amid broader political repression.
Throughout the campaign, each of the three campaigns emphasized participation, calling on voters and youth to participate and defy calls to boycott the ballot. The court announced nationwide turnout was 46.1%, surpassing the 2019 presidential election when 39.9% of the electorate participated.
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Alaska high court lets man serving a 20-year sentence remain in US House race
Attorney News |
2024/09/13 01:07
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The Alaska Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a man currently serving a 20-year prison sentence can remain on the November ballot in the state’s U.S. House race.
In a brief order, a split court affirmed a lower court ruling in a case brought by the Alaska Democratic Party; Justice Susan Carney dissented. A full opinion explaining the reasoning will be released later.
Democrats sued state election officials to seek the removal from the ballot of Eric Hafner, who pleaded guilty in 2022 to charges of making threats against police officers, judges and others in New Jersey.
Hafner, who has no apparent ties to Alaska, is running as a Democrat in a closely watched race featuring Democratic U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola and Republican Nick Begich. Hafner’s declaration of candidacy listed a federal prison in New York as his mailing address.
Under Alaska’s open primary system, voters are asked to pick one candidate per race, with the top four vote-getters advancing to the general election. Hafner finished sixth in the primary but was placed on the general election ballot after Republicans Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom and Matthew Salisbury, who placed third and a distant fourth, withdrew.
John Wayne Howe, with the Alaskan Independence Party, also qualified.
Attorneys for Alaska Democrats argued that there was no provision in the law for the sixth-place finisher to advance, while attorneys for the state said that interpretation was too narrow.
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