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Minn. gay couple in '71 marriage case still united
Court Watch |
2012/12/10 20:46
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When Jack Baker proposed to Michael McConnell that they join their lives together as a couple, in March 1967, McConnell accepted with a condition that was utterly radical for its time: that someday they would legally marry.
Just a few years later, the U.S. Supreme Court slammed the door on the men's Minnesota lawsuit to be the first same-sex couple to legally marry in the U.S. It took another 40 years for the nation's highest court to revisit gay marriage rights, and Baker and McConnell — still together, still living in Minneapolis — are alive to see it.
On Friday, the justices decided to take a potentially historic look at gay marriage by agreeing to hear two cases that challenge official discrimination against gay Americans either by forbidding them from marrying or denying those who can marry legally the right to obtain federal benefits that are available to heterosexual married couples.
"The outcome was never in doubt because the conclusion was intuitively obvious to a first-year law student," Baker wrote in an email to The Associated Press. The couple, who have kept a low profile in the years since they made national headlines with their marriage pursuit, declined an interview request but responded to a few questions via email.
While Baker saw the court's action as an obvious step, marriage between two men was nearly unthinkable to most Americans decades earlier when the couple walked into the Hennepin County courthouse in Minneapolis on May 18, 1970, and tried to get a license. |
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Limits on class-action lawsuits at Supreme Court
Court Watch |
2012/11/06 18:25
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The Supreme Court appeared divided Monday in two cases in which businesses are trying to make it harder for customers or investors to band together to sue them.
The justices heard arguments in appeals from biotech company Amgen Inc. and cable provider Comcast Corp. that seek to shut down class-action lawsuits against the businesses.
Amgen is fighting securities fraud claims that misstatements about two of its drugs used to treat anemia artificially inflated its stock price. Comcast is facing a lawsuit from customers who say the company's monopoly in parts of the Philadelphia area allowed it to raise prices unfairly.
Last year, the Supreme Court raised the bar for some class-action suits when it sided with Wal-Mart against up to 1.6 million of its female employees who complained of sex discrimination. In the Wal-Mart case, the court said there were too many women in too many jobs at the nation's largest private employer to wrap into one lawsuit.
Class actions increase pressure on businesses to settle suits because of the cost of defending them and the potential for very large judgments. |
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UK court sides with Samsung in Apple suit
Court Watch |
2012/10/20 23:58
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Britain's Court of Appeal has backed a judgment that Samsung's Galaxy
tablet computer is "not as cool" as Apple's iPad — and therefore
doesn't infringe Apple's rights.
The panel's upholding of the findings of by a lower court endorses the
U.K. judgment which made headlines around the world when it was handed
down in July. Judge Colin Birss had then gushed over Apple's design,
while knocking back the company's case against its rival.
"The extreme simplicity of the Apple design is striking," Birss wrote
at the time, enthusing over its "undecorated flat surfaces," its "very
thin rim" and "crisp edge."
"It is an understated, smooth and simple product," Birss wrote, saying
that Samsung's products "are not as cool."
On Thursday, the Court of Appeal agreed unanimously with Birss, with
Judge Robin Jacob ordering Apple to publicize the court rulings to
make sure consumers knew that Samsung wasn't a copycat.
"The acknowledgement must come from the horse's mouth," Jacob said.
"Nothing short of that will be sure to do the job completely."
Kim Walker, a partner with English law firm Thomas Eggar LLP, said
that the ruling was an endorsement of Samsung's originality — if not
its design.
"It appears that you don't have to be cool to be original when it
comes to intellectual property rights," she wrote in an email. "You
just have to be different!"
The British case is just one of several in Apple and Samsung's
international copyright battle, which has raged across Europe and the
United States. |
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MacDonald goes to court in 'Fatal Vision' case
Court Watch |
2012/09/22 22:36
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Jeffrey MacDonald, a clean-cut Green Beret and doctor convicted of killing of his pregnant wife and their two daughters, is getting another chance to try proving his innocence — more than four decades after the nation was gripped by his tales of Charles Manson-like hippies doped up on acid slaughtering his family.
The case now hinges on something that wasn't available when he was first put on trial: DNA evidence. A federal judge planned to hold a hearing Monday to consider new DNA evidence and witness testimony that MacDonald and his supporters say will finally clear him of a crime that became the basis of Joe McGinniss' best-selling book "Fatal Vision" and a made-for-TV drama.
It's the latest twist in a case that has been the subject of military and civilian courts, intense legal wrangling and shifting alliances. |
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Federal court rejects GOP-drawn Texas voting maps
Court Watch |
2012/08/29 17:28
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Stadiums and hospitals removed from the districts of black congressional members and country clubs newly drawn into those of white incumbents. A lawyer emailing "No bueno" to a Republican staffer about plans that risked leaving a paper trail and jeopardizing the legality of a voting map.
Those were among the evidence a Washington federal court used to determine that Texas Republican lawmakers discriminated against minorities while drawing new political boundaries, throwing out the maps as violations of the Voting Rights Act but likely not in time to affect the November elections.
The decision Tuesday by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia is instead likely to reverberate in 2014, when some Texans could find their congressional and statehouse districts changed for the third time in five years.
The long-awaited ruling was hailed as a sweeping victory by minority rights groups that sued the state after the Republican-controlled Legislature pushed through new redistricting maps last year. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott called the decision "flawed" and vowed to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. |
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