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In a 6-3 decision this morning, the Supreme Court rejected an attempt by conservative activists to unravel the Affordable Care Act by attacking what was essentially a typo in the law. The court's decision in King v. Burwell will prevent at least 8 million people from losing their health insurance, so naturally the Right is devastated.
Here are the most panicked reactions from the Right just the first hour following the King decision being handed down:
1. Nothing means anything anymore!
Words don't mean anything. Laws don't mean anything. The law is, apparently, whatever Obama says it is.
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) June 25, 2015
The world has gone mad today And good's bad today, And black's white today, And day's night today... Anything goes! https://t.co/JilYBGKFPg
— Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) June 25, 2015
2. We're becoming a banana republic!
I braced for this decision by SCOTUS still shocked....folks country has fundamentally changed...another giant step toward Banana Republic
— Charles V Payne (@cvpayne) June 25, 2015
3. Hide your grandparents!
Good luck trying to find a doctor or hospital to treat your grandparents.
— toddstarnes (@toddstarnes) June 25, 2015
4. Justice Roberts is a tyrant!
Judicial tyrant Roberts says ObamaCare is "ambiguous." WHAT IS REMOTELY AMBIGUOUS ABOUT "ESTABLISHED BY THE STATE????"
— Bryan Fischer (@BryanJFischer) June 25, 2015
5. …who was obviously blackmailed!
Time to question Justice Roberts' decisions. Just like John Boehner, I now believe Justice Roberts has been blackmailed or intimidated.
— Wayne Allyn Root (@WayneRoot) June 25, 2015
Honorable mention: The most popular line on conservative Twitter this morning was written not by a professional pundit, but by Justice Antonin Scalia in his dissent. We'll let Glenn Beck share this one:
"We should start calling this law SCOTUS Care," Justice Scalia
— Glenn Beck (@glennbeck) June 25, 2015
Update: The Ben Shapiro quote that we originally included in this post was from 2012. But luckily he still has plenty to say! We've also added Michelle Malkin's insight.
This piece, by PFAW Senior Fellow Jamie Raskin, was originally published by Salon.
If you take away Prohibition (the 18th Amendment) and its repeal (the 21st), most of our constitutional amendments since the original Bill of Rights have expanded the voting rights and political equality of the people.
Our post-Reconstruction amendments have abolished slavery (the 13th), provided for equal protection of the laws and required reduction of states' congressional delegations if they disenfranchise eligible voters (the 14th), denied states the power to discriminate in voting based on race (the 15th) and shifted the mode of election of U.S. Senators from the legislatures to the people (the 17th). They have passed woman suffrage (the 19th), given residents of the federal district the right to vote and participate in presidential elections by casting electors (the 23rd), abolished poll taxes in federal elections (the 24th) and lowered the voting age to 18 (the 26th).
Moreover, many of these amendments have directly responded to Supreme Court decisionsdenying the political rights of the people. For example, the 19th Amendment overturned the Court's decision in Minor v. Happersett (1875), which held that Equal Protection did not protect the right of women to vote, affirming precedents finding that women's proper place is in the domestic sphere. Similarly, the 24th Amendment banning poll taxes in federal elections overturned the Court's 1937 decision in Breedlove v. Suttles upholding such taxes.
But if you listened only to some of my colleagues in the legal establishment, you might never know that our unfolding Bill of Rights is a dynamic chronicle of the democratic struggles of the people for participatory political equality nor would you know that the people have often had to override reactionary decisions of the Supreme Court in the process.
A lot of lawyers today react with horror to U.S. Reps. Marc Pocan and Keith Ellison's excellent push for a constitutional amendment to establish an affirmative and universal right to vote against recurring state efforts to disenfranchise people. And a lot of academics were aghast last summer when every Democratic United States senator supported a constitutional amendment to reverse Citizens United, McCutcheon v. FEC (2014) and Arizona Free Enterprise Club's Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett (2011).
The amendment, backed by the vast majority of Americans and a surging national campaign that 16 states and more than 650 cities and towns have joined, would restore the people's power to stop CEOs from spending corporate treasury wealth on political races, to impose reasonable campaign finance limits such as caps on aggregate contributions, and to develop public financing laws with matching grants that help empower poorer candidates to be heard over the roar of big money.
Yet we are constantly invited to believe that, however much big money comes to dominate our politics and control public policy, we must never touch our Constitution. It must be hidden away in the attic where it will be tended by wise Supreme Court justices and law professors who know that the people's constitutional values will always be inferior to those of the judiciary and the experts. This attitude betrays our progressive democratic heritage and Thomas Jefferson's important warning:
Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the arc [sic] of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment . . . . But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times.
The country's most prolific voting rights scholar and blogger, Richard Hasen—a colleague and friend of mine—is the most recent legal academic to pour cold water all over the movement for a constitutional amendment to rebuild the statutory wall protecting democratic elections from the flood of plutocratic and corporate wealth. This is the wall that has been mostly demolished by the Roberts Court in both Citizens United and the McCutcheon decision.
While Citizens United turned every corporate treasury in the country into a potential political slush fund, McCutcheon wiped out all aggregate limits on federal campaign contributions so that tycoons can now max out to every incumbent Member of Congress–plus all their opponents! The top half of the top 1 percent can now pretty much bankroll all federal campaigns, which is one reason why run-of-the-mill Republican millionaires and bundlers are complaining to the Washington Post that they have been bypassed in the nation's wealth primary by "multi-multimillionaires and billionaires." The bottom half of the top 1 percent is getting a sense of what it is like to be a political spectator in the country's exclusionary wealth primary.
The Post also reports that public anxiety about plutocracy is becoming a key issue in the presidential election—not just among Democratic activists for whom it is "red meat," according to Professor Hasen, but for Republicans and Independents too—pretty much everyone who lacks the strategic advantages of Sheldon Adelson and the Koch brothers. Earlier this month, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham also pointed to the need for a constitutional amendment to fix the damage done by Citizens United. Indeed, if you don't think the accelerating takeover of our politics by big money affects public policy in the real world, you may or may not be an academic, but you are definitely too innocent to be let out of the house by yourself.
In launching her 2016 campaign, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton declared a "big fight" to fix "our dysfunctional political system" by getting "unaccountable money out of it once and for all, even if it takes a constitutional amendment," and I say good for her. Given Clinton's legislative and political experience and her own prodigious navigation of our money politics, she obviously knows how the Roberts Court's magical transformation of for-profit business corporations into political membership groups has completely distorted politics in the Citizens United era. Of course, some of the Republican presidential candidates are charging her with hypocrisy for seeking to change the plutocratic political system that shapes her campaign, along with everyone else's, and sullies everyone who touches it. But this is predictable and pedestrian. The nihilistic enemies of reform prefer nothing systemic to change just so long as they can keep denouncing Hillary Clinton.
Thankfully there is no talk of hypocrisy in Hasen's critique, but still all Clinton gets from him is a lot of negative energy. First, he faults her for not trying to fix "the nation's disclosure laws," which is strange because she supported the Disclose Act, which U.S. Rep. Chris Van Hollen introduced and which Republicans killed, and she has always championed disclosure. It is also strange because Clinton is clearly treating a constitutional amendment as a last resort in a struggle against a runaway faction of five plutocrats on the Supreme Court. If I am reading her correctly, Clinton wants unaccountable corporate money—which is now spent by CEOs in our political campaigns on a secret basis and without any consumer, shareholder or citizen control over it—to be subject to public regulation "even if it takes" a constitutional amendment. That doesn't sound so reckless to me.
For Hasen, it seems sufficient to work for years or decades to mandate disclosure of the billions of dollars in corporate money coursing through the veins of the body politic, and then leave things at that. He is afraid that actually restoring the power of Congress to impose "reasonable" and viewpoint-neutral limits on corporate political expenditures would be subject to an effective judicial veto through reinterpretation by "a conservative majority on the Roberts Court" and therefore useless. Well, it is also the case that the addition of the words "equal protection" to the Constitution were effectively nullified through reinterpretation by a Jim Crow Supreme Court between Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) and Brown v. Board of Education(1954). But does that make passage of the Fourteenth Amendment a bad idea? The Supreme Court has been a conservative and reactionary institution for most of our history, but that is precisely the reason for the people to write our Constitution in a way that advances and protects strong democracy. Having the right constitutional language in place may not be sufficient to constrain the reactionary elitism of the Supreme Court, but it is certainly necessary.
If we just wait around for new justices to change things and fail to directly engage this constitutional question in the public arena, we can expect to see the few remaining bricks of campaign finance law flattened by the Right and the Court, including base limits on individual contributions, the Tillman Act's century-old ban on corporate contributions to federal candidates, the rules against "coordinated expenditures" between candidates and independent spenders, and the limits in 29 states on making campaign contributions during legislative sessions–all of them clearly at odds with the absolutist dogmas of the Right: that political money is political speech, that business corporations are First Amendment-protected political (and religious!) associations, and that the only kind of political corruption we can acknowledge and regulate are quid pro quo transfers tantamount to bribery.
But Hasen, finally, calls a constitutional amendment a "political nonstarter" because of the difficulties of passage. But here he ignores not only the success that popular movements have had in inscribing democratic values in the Constitution throughout our history, but also the way that serious constitutional movements can reshape the terrain of American politics with or without final passage and ratification. For example, the heroic movement for the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s not only led to widespread adoption of state constitutional amendments and significant federal statutory changes advancing the equal rights of women but also helped shock the Supreme Court into action to apply "heightened scrutiny" to official gender-based discrimination under Equal Protection doctrine. Constitutional movements can change the mind of the Court.
Whether or not we summon up the two-thirds of Congress and three-fourths of the states needed to pass a strong new anti-plutocracy amendment, the movement for such an amendment is essential to change the degraded assumptions of the Citizens United era. It will open up space for revival of the Disclose Act, for consideration of the "Shareholders United" legislation that I and other legislators have been advancing at the state level, for progress for small-donor plans like Congressman John Sarbanes' Government By the People Act, and for an honest debate about Citizens United, which turned on its head two centuries of conservative understanding of what a corporation is.
Even if the best we can hope for is some modest new disclosure rules and a few new Supreme Court justices who tilt towards democracy over plutocracy, as Hasen advises Hillary Clinton, these outcomes are far more plausible and likely with a lively popular constitutional movement on the ground than the defeatist attitude that the Supreme Court always knows best.
To: Interested Parties
From: Paul Gordon, Senior Legislative Counsel, People For the American Way
Date: September 25, 2014
Subject: PFAW Foundation's Supreme Court 2014-2015 Term Preview
The beginning of a new Supreme Court term has become a time to worry, "What's next?" In the past two terms alone, often in 5-4 decisions, the Roberts Court has severely undermined the Voting Rights Act, continued its assault on the American people's efforts to limit money in politics, strengthened the hand of employers who discriminate, significantly eroded church-state separation, discovered religious rights for for-profit corporations seeking to deny female employees needed contraception coverage, undercut unions, and found ways to help large corporations bypass laws designed to limit their power over small businesses and ordinary people.
As bad as the Roberts Court has been, there have also been some good decisions in the most recent terms. For instance, the Court struck down the odious Defense of Marriage Act, upheld the EPA's general authority to issue regulations on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, and unanimously recognized our Fourth Amendment right to privacy concerning our smart phones.
The 2014-2015 Term is set to begin on October 6, the traditional First Monday in October, and the Court will be hearing a number of important cases. At the same time, perhaps half the cases it will hear this term have not been determined or announced, and there is substantial speculation on whether it will hear cases on several high-profile issues, marriage equality most prominent among them. Below is a summary of some of the major cases the Court may hear this term, along with cases already scheduled that we will be following.
If the Court accepts a marriage equality case, it will obviously become the blockbuster case of the term (and perhaps the decade). The Court has already been asked to hear appeals of pro-equality rulings by three circuit courts: From the Tenth Circuit are Herbert v. Kitchen (Utah) and Smith v. Bishop (Oklahoma). From the Fourth Circuit are Rainey v. Bostic, Schaefer v. Bostic, and McQuigg v. Bostic (all Virginia). From the Seventh Circuit are Bogan v. Baskin (Indiana) and Walker v. Wolf (Wisconsin). While states and government officials who lost in the lower courts are filing the appeals, the couples who won the cases are also urging the Court to hear the appeals, so there can finally be a national resolution to the issue.
Should one of the remaining circuit courts uphold a state marriage ban, the resulting split among circuits on such a major constitutional issue would almost guarantee review by the Supreme Court. But if every circuit continues to rule the same way, the Justices might decide to let the issue be resolved there.
Conservatives like Scalia and Thomas, who have in case after case shown their hostility to LGBT equality but may be unsure of how Kennedy would vote, might not be willing to risk a Supreme Court precedent that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry. From their perspective, if they can't change the outcome around the country, why make it worse by adding a jurisprudential nightmare from the nation's highest court that would taint American law for decades to come?
For Justices likely to recognize the constitutional right to marriage equality, the calculation might be different. They, too, not knowing Kennedy's position, might not want to risk a 5-4 ruling in the "wrong" direction on a major constitutional and societal issue. But even if they could be certain of being in the majority, they might find advantages to having the Court stay out. Justice Ginsburg, for instance, has suggested publicly that Roe v. Wade went "too far, too fast," provoking a backlash that could otherwise have been avoided. If the legal question of marriage equality is being decided rightly in all the circuit courts, some Justices might rather leave well enough alone. In fact, Justice Ginsburg told a group of law students in mid-September that without a circuit split, she saw "no urgency" for the Court to take up the issue now, although she added that she expects the Court to take it up "sooner or later."
Should the Court grant cert on one or more of the appeals, it could answer a number of critically important questions in addition to whether states can prohibit same-sex couples from marrying.
Exactly which constitutional right do the bans violate? While numerous courts have ruled in favor of same-sex couples, they have been anything but unanimous in their reasoning: Some have suggested that the bans violate the Due Process Clause, because the longstanding, fundamental right to marry includes the right to marry someone of the same sex. Other judges indicate that the bans violate the Equal Protection Clause because they deny the right to marry based on the sex of the people seeking to get married. Still others suggest that the bans violate the Equal Protection Clause because they discriminate against gays and lesbians. While the different legal rationales would all have the same immediate result (marriage equality), they could create very different legal precedents and have very different impacts down the line as lower courts consider other types of discrimination, whether aimed at gays and lesbians, at transgender people, or at others.
A Supreme Court ruling might decide what level of scrutiny the Equal Protection Clause requires for laws that discriminate against gay people, an issue not squarely faced in previous cases. Most government classifications are subject to – and easily pass – "rational basis" scrutiny by the courts: The law is constitutional as long as it's rationally related to some legitimate government interest. (The Court has said that animus against gays and lesbians is not a legitimate purpose, which in the past has let it bypass the question as to whether anti-gay laws warrant more scrutiny from the courts.)
But a few types of laws trigger heightened Equal Protection scrutiny. Sex-based classifications are subject to intermediate scrutiny: They must be substantially related to an important government interest. Race-based classifications are generally subject to strict scrutiny, the highest level: They must be narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling government interest. If the Court rules that laws discriminating against lesbians and gays warrant some level of heightened scrutiny, that would have an enormous impact nationwide on all kinds of laws that discriminate against lesbians and gays, not just marriage bans.
The Court's discussion of this issue could also shed light on whether eliminating private discrimination against LGBT people is (in the Court's eyes) a compelling government interest. This could have an enormous impact as courts consider right wing challenges to anti-discrimination laws on the basis of the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act or state-law analogs.
Opponents of the Affordable Care Act strategically launched lawsuits in four different circuits challenging federal subsidies for millions of Americans buying health insurance on federally-run exchanges. The circuits were apparently selected to maximize the possibility of a circuit split, which in turn would maximize the likelihood of getting the case heard by the Roberts Court, which (they hope) would deliver a crippling blow to Obamacare. Decisions have been reached in two of the circuits, although one has since been vacated.
Section 1311 of the ACA says states should set up insurance exchanges, while Section 1321 of the Act says the federal government can set one up if a state doesn't. Subsidies are available for less well-off people getting health insurance through an exchange, based on the amount the person pays for the insurance s/he is enrolled in through an exchange "established by the state under [section] 1311" of the ACA. The law's opponents hope to have the Supreme Court rule that Congress intended for subsidies to be unavailable to Americans purchasing insurance through the federally-established exchanges that the law calls for in cases where the state does not step in. In other words, the argument is that Congress intended to undercut the financial viability of the law and thwart its central purpose.
A unanimous panel of the Fourth Circuit rejected this wild claim in King v. Burwell. However, two far right judges on the D.C. Circuit formed a majority in a three-judge panel ruling actually agreeing with the Obama care opponents in Halbig v. Burwell. Dissenting Judge Harry Edwards recognized the lawsuit as a "not-so-veiled attempt to gut the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act," noting that "[i]t is inconceivable that Congress intended to give States the power to cause the ACA to crumble." The full D.C. Circuit subsequently vacated the ruling and will consider the issue en banc, and most observers expect a ruling more like the Fourth Circuit's.
But even if that happens, there are still lawsuits percolating in Indiana (Seventh Circuit) and Oklahoma (Tenth Circuit), so the hoped-for circuit split may yet occur. If it does, the Roberts Court is almost certain to consider the issue. While the case is transparently political and legally weak, that did not stop the conservative Justices when it came to the Commerce Clause challenge to the individual mandate.
The Roberts Court may hear one or more cases involving religious nonprofits that oppose the ACA's contraception coverage requirement, in a sequel to Hobby Lobby v. Burwell. In that case, the Roberts Court gave certain for-profit corporations religious liberty rights under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), then completely rewrote the law to give the chain store the right to "exercise" its religion by refusing to comply with the ACA's contraception coverage requirement.
Under RFRA, a federal law cannot impose a substantial burden on a person's religious exercise unless it is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest, and it is the least restrictive means of doing so. In Hobby Lobby, the Roberts Court concluded that the corporation and its owners suffered a "substantial" burden" on their religious exercise because the owners were offended by the contraception coverage requirement, even though it did not restrict or burden what they may believe or do. The majority also concluded that the law was not the least restrictive means of furthering the government's interest in women's health, because the Administration offers religious nonprofits an accommodation: They are exempt if they simply sign a form certifying that they are a religious nonprofit that objects to the provision of contraceptive services, and provide a copy of that form to their insurance issuer or third-party administrator, which then has the responsibility to pay for and provide the coverage. (Churches, in contrast, are wholly exempt.) The Roberts Court concluded that the federal government can make this accommodation available to for-profit corporations, meaning the coverage requirement is not the least restrictive means of achieving the ACA's goal.
But three days later, the Court issued a temporary injunction against enforcing even this accommodation against Wheaton College, a non-profit religious institution that argued that the accommodation substantially burdens its religious freedom. This prompted a furious dissent from the three women Justices. Although the merits of the case are still being argued before a lower federal court, this was an ominous sign of how the Roberts Court will address the legal question when it inevitably reaches the high court.
Another high-profile case (or one similar to it) that may reach the Court involves Little Sisters of the Poor. This religious nonprofit organization, too, has a religious objection to the accommodation that was designed to meet its religious objections, arguing that the form is like a permission slip that would trigger contraception coverage, making the nuns complicit in sin. However, the Little Sisters' insurer is classified as a "church plan," which is actually exempt from the ACA requirement. So regardless of whether the Little Sisters signed the form, their employees would still not have the contraception coverage. Nevertheless, last January, while its RFRA suit against the contraception coverage provision was before the Tenth Circuit (where it is still pending), the Supreme Court enjoined the federal government from enforcing the law until a final resolution on the merits.
It seems likely that there will be a request that this issue be considered by the Supreme Court at some point this term, either through one of these cases or one similar to them.
Young v. UPS: Discrimination on the basis of pregnancy
The Supreme Court is to decide to what extent employers can treat pregnant workers temporarily unable to work differently from other workers temporarily unable to work.
This case involves Peggy Young, a pregnant employee of UPS with temporary medical restrictions on how much she could safely lift. UPS did not make any accommodations for her, such as temporary alternative work. As a result, she spent several months on unpaid leave, during which she lost her medical coverage.
In 1976, the Supreme Court ruled that discriminating against employees who are pregnant was not sex discrimination under Title VII. Congress corrected that interpretation of the law in 1978 with the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA), which has two relevant provisions. First, it specifies that sex discrimination includes discrimination on the basis of pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions.
The second provision explains how to apply that general principle: It says that women affected by pregnancy "shall be treated the same for all employment-related purposes … as other persons not so affected but similar in their ability or inability to work." This establishes a basis of comparison. So while a typical sex discrimination case looks at how a female plaintiff is treated in comparison to similarly situated men, a PDA case looks at how she is treated in comparison to non-pregnant workers with similar ability (or inability) to work.
UPS's collective bargaining contract calls for UPS to accommodate temporarily disabled employees if the disability is due to an on-the-job injury, or if they have lost their DOT certification to drive. UPS also accommodates employees who have a permanent impairment under the Americans With Disabilities Act. UPS says its policy is "pregnancy-blind:" They claim they are treating Young the same way they'd treat a non-pregnant employee whose injury doesn't fit any of the above conditions.
But Young argues that isn't the proper analysis under the PDA. She points out that UPS would have made an accommodation for someone "similar in their ability or inability to work" to her if they were in one of those three categories. So, she concludes, the plain text of the PDA requires UPS to accommodate her, as well.
Integrity Staffing Solutions v. Busk: Overtime pay for workers at warehouse distribution centers
The Supreme Court is to decide if employers can deny overtime pay to employees at "customer fulfillment" distribution centers for the time they spend waiting for mandatory security screenings.
This is a class-action lawsuit brought by Jesse Busk and Laurie Castro, two former employees of Integrity Staffing Solutions, which provides workers to work in the warehouses of companies like Amazon.com. At the end of the shift, the company requires every employee to go through a security check before they leave the facility to make sure they aren't stealing the merchandise. The employees wait as long as 25 minutes to be searched. Busk and Castro claim that they should have been paid overtime for this time under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), as should all current employees, as well.
FLSA requires overtime pay when a covered employee works more than 40 hours in a workweek. In 1947, Congress helped define what counts as "work" by passing the Portal-to-Portal Act (PPA), which says that FLSA's overtime requirement doesn't apply to activities that are "preliminary" or "postliminary" to an employee's primary job responsibilities. In a 1956 case called Steiner v. Mitchell, the Supreme Court interpreted the PPA as requiring overtime only for tasks that are an "integral and indispensable part of the principal activities for which covered workman are employed."
Busk and Castro say that any activity required by and benefitting the employer (such as the security searches) are part of the actual job, not "postliminary" to it, so they count as time at work under FLSA and should generate overtime pay. They get support from an amicus brief submitted by the National Employment Lawyers Association, which details how loss-prevention activities have become integrated into the modern retail work routine, making searches like those at issue here part of an employee's principal activities.
The workers won at the Ninth Circuit, but the court used different reasoning: that the searches are "postliminary" (so the Portal-to-Portal Act applies), but that they are an "integral and indispensable part" of the workers' principal activities and therefore subject to overtime pay. Integrity (supported by an amicus brief from the Obama Administration) asserts that the searches are "postliminary" to work, are not an "integral and indispensable part" of the employees' principal activities and, therefore, don't trigger the overtime requirement.
Part of the company's argument seems to be a results-based pitch to a corporate-friendly Court: In its certiorari petition urging the Justices to hear its appeal, Integrity Staffing wrote that since the Ninth Circuit ruling, "plaintiffs' lawyers have brought nationwide class actions against a number of major employers—including Apple, Amazon.com, and CVS—seeking back pay (plus overtime and penalties) for time spent in security screenings." Notice that it isn't employees who are suing, but "plaintiffs' lawyers," a framing that is red meat for right-wing ideologues. This argument also seems to have less to do with discerning congressional intent and more to do with protecting large corporations.
Mach Mining v. EEOC: Pre-lawsuit settlement efforts by the EEOC
The Supreme Court is to decide if employers can escape liability for illegal discrimination by arguing that the EEOC failed to make a sufficiently good-faith attempt to reach a settlement with the employer.
Mach Mining has never hired a woman for a mining position. A woman who had been turned down several times for a coal mining job filed a sex discrimination complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a step that Title VII requires before filing a lawsuit. EEOC looked into the allegation, found it had merit, and – again, as required by Title VII – sought to negotiate an end to the alleged sex discrimination "by informal methods of conference, conciliation, and persuasion" before suing. After several months without success, the EEOC notified the company that it felt further efforts would be futile and initiated a lawsuit. Mach Mining says the case should be dismissed on the grounds that the EEOC didn't make a good-faith conciliation effort. In response, the EEOC says Title VII doesn't allow such a defense.
While several other circuits have ruled otherwise, the Seventh Circuit in this case concluded that Title VII cannot be interpreted to allow courts to inquire into the adequacy of the EEOC's conciliation efforts. For one thing, Title VII has no express provision for an affirmative defense based on a defect in the EEOC's conciliation's efforts. It also calls for the EEOC to "endeavor" to end the discrimination through "informal methods of conference, conciliation, and persuasion." If it can't reach a result "acceptable to the Commission," it can sue. The Seventh Circuit interpreted this as giving the EEOC great deference.
The court also noted that Title VII makes the process confidential, with penalties for making the information public without the consent of everyone concerned. That could prevent the EEOC from showing the court the evidence that it had sought to conciliate in good faith. It seems unlikely that Congress wrote Title VII to require the EEOC to defend its conciliation efforts in court but made its ability to do so dependent on the permission of the employer being sued. The court also concluded that there would be no meaningful standard of review. For instance, just how hard should the agency pursue an agreement?
A Supreme Court ruling for the employer could give employers a significant tool to stymie legitimate lawsuits against unlawful employment discrimination. As the Seventh Circuit wrote:
Simply put, the conciliation defense tempts employers to turn what was meant to be an informal negotiation into the subject of endless disputes over whether the EEOC did enough before going to court. Such disputes impose significant costs on both sides, as well as on the court, and to what end?
All the employer should legitimately hope to gain is some unspecified quantum of additional efforts at conciliation by the EEOC. The result of such a defense, as we have said in a closely related context, is to "protract and complicate Title VII litigation, and with little or no offsetting benefit."
Holt v. Hobbs: Right of a Muslim prisoner to grow a short beard
The Supreme Court is to address whether a state prison's prohibiting a Muslim prisoner from growing a half-inch beard violates the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act.
This case originated with a handwritten request to the Supreme Court from Gregory Holt (aka Abdul Maalik Muhammad), a Muslim prisoner in Arkansas, to hear his case. He states that his religious beliefs require him to have a beard, and he seeks to grow a half-inch beard. The state Department of Corrections prohibits beards generally, but allows quarter-inch beards grown for medical reasons. Muhammad sees his request as a compromise (since his religious beliefs really would have him grow it much longer) that has been accepted in prisons elsewhere.
Since he is in a state prison, Muhammad's case is governed by a federal law called the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, or RLUIPA. Passed unanimously by Congress in 2000, RLUIPA requires prisons accepting federal funds to give greater religious liberty protections to inmates than is required by the First Amendment's Free Exercise Clause. Similar to the better-known Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which was at issue in Hobby Lobby, RLUIPA is triggered when the government imposes a "substantial burden on the religious exercise" of a person confined to an institution. When that happens, the action can be upheld only if the government can demonstrate that the burden: "(1) is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest; and (2) is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest."
The state argues that the no-beard policy furthers the compelling government interests in prison safety and security, and that the proposed half-inch accommodation would not be as effective as the no-beard rule in achieving those purposes. For instance, they provide the opinions of penal experts that prisoners could use the beards to hide contraband, and that escaped prisoners could too easily and quickly change their appearance simply by shaving. Muhammad (now represented by counsel) argues that the lower courts, which ruled against him, did not provide the strict scrutiny of the state's arguments that is required by RLUIPA.
In Hobby Lobby, the Supreme Court significantly rewrote RFRA, watering down the "substantial burden" requirement and applying the religious liberty law to for-profit corporations. Neither factor is relevant to this case, meaning the Court could rule in favor of Muhammad without rewriting the law. But the Roberts Court is known for playing the "long game." Even if the Court rules unanimously for Muhammad, they may not all agree on the reasoning: The conservatives could write an opinion designed to be cited in future RFRA litigation strengthening the hands of those on the right who would reshape RFRA from a shield against government oppression into a sword.
Alabama Democratic Conference v. Alabama / Alabama Legislative Black Caucus v. Alabama: Racial gerrymandering
The Supreme Court is to address whether Alabama engaged in unconstitutional racial gerrymandering when it drew new state House and Senate district lines that channeled large numbers of African Americans into districts that were already majority-minority.
The GOP-controlled Alabama state legislature enacted a redistricting plan that transferred a significant portion of the black population that had previously been in majority-white districts into districts that were already majority-black. In so doing, the legislature was seeking to achieve certain percentages of black voters in the majority-black districts. At issue is whether legislators engaged in an unconstitutional effort to separate voters by race, or whether they followed traditional redistricting criteria in a way that was necessary to comply with the Voting Rights Act.
Due to population shifts, majority-black districts established after the 2000 Census lost population and had to be redrawn after the 2010 Census to bring in new people. In some cases, the population loss was disproportionately white, meaning that a significantly higher percentage of the remaining population was African American than before. In redrawing the lines while keeping the same number of majority-black districts, the legislature made two decisions that led to what some call "bleaching" – drawing lines so that large numbers of African Americans in majority-white districts would be redistricted into supermajority-black districts, and diminishing African Americans' political influence in much of the state.
First, they chose to reduce the permissible population difference between districts from 10% (the 2000 standard) to 2%. To achieve district populations that close to each other, many more people would have to be drawn into the modified black-majority districts than would otherwise have been necessary. That huge numbers of those people would be blacks removed from majority-white districts was determined by the second decision: Ostensibly to comply with the requirement under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (this was before Shelby County) that new lines not lead to a retrogression in the position of racial minorities with respect to their effective exercise of the electoral franchise, the African American percentages in the redrawn majority-minority districts should be at least whatever they had become in 2010.
This reapportionment was upheld by a divided three-judge federal district court. The majority concluded that race was not the predominant factor in drawing the redistricting boundaries, so that they need not be analyzed under strict scrutiny as in the 1993 Shaw v. Reno case. The majority also concluded that even if strict scrutiny applied, the legislative boundaries were narrowly tailored to achieve the compelling purpose of compliance with the preclearance provisions of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which applied at the time. The plaintiffs in this case – the Alabama Legislative Black Caucus and state Democrats – challenge those conclusions, arguing that legislators had misinterpreted Section 5, that race was impermissibly the overriding criterion used by legislators in drawing lines, and that the redistricting plan violated the Fourteenth Amendment.
Reed v. Town of Gilbert, Arizona: Municipal sign regulations
The Supreme Court will hear a church's Free Speech challenge to city rules regulating the size and placement of various types of signs, which affect the signs it puts up to direct people to its church services.
This case was brought by a small church (25-30 adult members) in Arizona that places signs up to invite people to its weekly services and inform them where they are being held. Good News Church and its pastor Clyde Reed are urging the Court to strike down the town of Gilbert's sign ordinance, which treats some signs (such as directional signs for events, like a fair or, in this case, a church service) differently from others (like political, real estate, or ideological signs). The different types of signs have different rules on how large they can be, and where and when they can be posted. Good News Church argues the law is an unconstitutional content-based infringement of its First Amendment rights. The lower court had upheld it as content-neutral.
Gilbert regulations generally require a permit before posting a sign, with a number of exceptions that can be posted without a permit. These exceptions (each with specific size, number, and placement rules) include construction signs, open house signs, parking signs, building identification signs, garage sale signs, street address signs, and restaurant menu signs. The church devotes much of its focus to three of the exceptions:
The church has signs in the first category to tell people about their weekly church services in the space they rent. The maximum size is smaller than political and ideological signs, fewer can be posted, and they cannot stay up nearly as long. Represented by the far-right Alliance Defending Freedom, Good News Church argues that the city is violating its First Amendment rights by applying different rules to different types of noncommercial signs based on their content. According to the church, any classification based on what a sign says is content-based and therefore subject to the highest level of scrutiny. And if the law's purpose is, say, to promote traffic safety or aesthetics, then what difference should it make if the sign is for a church service, political candidate, or particular ideology?
A divided panel of the Ninth Amendment disagreed, ruling against the church. It said the distinctions among different types of signs are content-neutral (and thus subject to a somewhat lower level of scrutiny) because Gilbert's interests in regulating temporary signs are unrelated to the specific content or message of the sign. Each exemption is based on objective criteria related not to the sign's message, but to the reason for the exemption (such as need for communication about elections, or the need to let event sponsors inform people how to get to the event).
Public Employees' Retirement System of Mississippi v. IndyMac MBS: Timing of lawsuits
The Court is to decide whether the clock stops on a deadline to sue for securities fraud when someone files a class action suit.
This case relates to a key 1974 precedent called American Pipe & Construction Co. v. Utah, where the Supreme Court ruled that the filing of a class action lawsuit stops the clock ("tolls" in legal parlance) on the statute of limitations on filing federal antitrust claims for all potential members of the class, including those who are not actively involved with or even aware of the class action lawsuit. So if a court then doesn't certify the class for some reason or dismisses its claims, but makes that decision after the statute of limitations has passed, those who would have been included in the class have not lost their opportunity to have their day in court just because they hadn't made an individual filing in the case.
The current case relates to the financial meltdown of the 2000s and involves federal laws in the Securities Act of 1933 prohibiting sellers of securities from misleading investors. The law has two key time limits: (1) You generally have one year to file a lawsuit, and that can be a year after the untrue or misleading statement is made or discovered. (2) But there is an additional limit, one that restricts just how long after the fact you have to discover the wrongdoing: "In no event shall any such action be brought … more than three years after the security was bona fide offered to the public [or, depending on which section of the law is involved] more than three years after the sale." The Second Circuit concluded that the American Pipe rule did not apply to this statute.
One of the great benefits of class action litigation is that it protects the rights of people who cannot afford to themselves engage in litigation and may not even realize they have been wronged. It also vastly enhances our society's ability to hold large corporations responsible when they violate people's rights. The rule from American Pipe has served that purpose well. But in other contexts, the Roberts Court has significantly undercut the ability of Americans to utilize class actions to protect their rights. If the Court rules that American Pipe doesn't apply in the securities fraud context, it will be important to see if its reasoning also undercuts American Pipe as a precedent in other contexts.
Omnicare v. Laborers District Council: Holding companies accountable for false statements to investors
The Court is to address what investors need to prove to hold companies accountable for material misstatements in investment material.
When responding to a public offering of company shares, investors may rely on a company's registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Under Section 11 of the Securities Act of 1933, investors can sue if that statement "contained an untrue statement of a material fact or omitted to state a material fact [that was] necessary to make the statements therein not misleading." This case asks what investors need to prove if the purportedly "untrue statement" was the company's opinion that it wasn't breaking the law.
Omnicare is the nation's largest provider of pharmaceutical care for the elderly and other residents of long-term care facilities. In Omnicare's registration statement, it said that "we believe" that its financial relationships with pharmaceutical manufacturers were legal. The investors here claim that some of those deals constituted unlawful kickbacks. The question is whether that allegation is enough to trigger Section 11.
According to Omnicare, for the investors to have a claim under Section 11, they have to allege that Omnicare didn't believe the statement when it was made. Otherwise, companies could be held liable for statements of opinion that turn out later not to be true. Two circuit courts have taken that view.
But in this case, the Sixth Circuit took a different approach, one that makes it easier for investors to file a Section 11 claim. That court reasoned that Section 11 is a "strict liability" statute where the state of mind of company officials isn't relevant, so it's sufficient to allege that the opinion was false, regardless of whether the company knew at the time it was false. That's the ruling the investors in this case are asking the Supreme Court to uphold.
In an amicus brief, the Obama Administration takes a middle ground, in which the company isn't held liable only because it expressed an opinion that turned out not to be true. The Administration argues that a statement of opinion is actionable under Section 11 if: (1) the company didn't believe it at the time (which both parties in this case agree on), or (2) there was no reasonable basis for the opinion at the time, even if it was sincerely held (which Omnicare disagrees with).
Any ruling by the Roberts Court should keep in mind that Congress enacted Section 11 to encourage maximum disclosure by companies making a public offering. After all, people associated with the company know far more about the business than potential investors could ever know, and Section 11 was intended to dissuade corporations from tricking investors.
Just as the Lochner case defined the Supreme Court a century ago as it turned conservative economic policies into constitutional dogma, America finds itself living through the Citizens United era, where the Court again routinely rules in favor of corporate and other powerful interests. By the end of June, we will know if the current term will have been as damaging to Americans' fundamental rights as recent terms have been.
To: Interested Parties
From: Paul Gordon, Senior Legislative Counsel
Re: Striking Progress on Judicial Nominations
Date: September 22, 2014
So far, 2014 has been a banner year for effectively pushing back against the Republican obstruction of judicial nominees that we have seen since the moment Barack Obama took office. The past few months have shown just how much progress America can make in ending the deliberate sabotage of the third branch of government so that our nation's federal court system can do what the Founders intended it to do: Protect every person's rights and ensure that everyone can have their day in court.
Since the day that George W. Bush left office, Republicans have sought to leave as many judgeships as possible vacant for as long as possible, apparently in the hopes of maximizing the next (Republican) president's opportunities to nominate his or her own judges and impose a right-wing ideology on America's federal courts. With that goal they have simply blocked confirmation votes, regardless of the nominee. The result has been long backlogs in courts across the country and serious delay in providing justice for many Americans.
Under Senate rules, unanimous consent is needed to schedule a confirmation vote for a judicial nominee – something that used to be regularly granted to nominees with strong bipartisan support, as most lower court judges have had. But for the first time, Republicans under President Obama have routinely refused to allow timely votes on nearly every nominee – even the vast majority who have little or no Republican opposition – effectively but invisibly filibustering just about every one of them. Only after months of delay would Republicans finally consent to a vote. In all other cases, the only way to break the logjam has been for Democrats to file a cloture motion to end the filibuster, a burdensome and time-consuming practice, and (until recently) one requiring a supermajority of 60 votes. So for the first five years of the Obama presidency, confirmations were regularly delayed for no reason, usually out of public view, for months longer than necessary. For instance, Richard Taranto was confirmed to the Federal Circuit unanimously, but the Senate was not allowed to hold a vote until 347 days after his committee approval; Republicans never publicly explained why they would not allow him a vote earlier.
Overcoming Obstruction in 2014
This year, things have changed. By late 2013, five years of unprecedented obstruction had climaxed in a declaration by GOP senators that they would filibuster any nominee for the critically important and understaffed District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals, no matter who the nominee might be, Senate Democrats concluded that the Senate and the nation would be significantly damaged if this were allowed to continue. The chamber responded to the exceptional obstruction by reforming its procedural rules. Going forward, cloture votes to end filibusters of executive and judicial nominees (with the exception of those to the Supreme Court) would require a majority of senators voting, rather than 60 votes.
Now, when Republicans refuse to consent to a vote, Majority Leader Reid files a cloture petition and sets a vote. Taking advantage of the change in Senate rules, Democrats have been able to defeat the GOP filibusters with a simple majority vote. While Republicans have not consented to even one judicial confirmation vote in 2014, they also have not been able to stop the Senate from voting on any of them. And despite the significant time that Republicans force the Senate to spend on each confirmation – drawn-out roll-call cloture votes, post-cloture time for debate of 30 hours for circuit court nominees and two hours for district court nominees (a debate that usually does not occur despite the time set aside for it), then time-consuming roll-call confirmation votes – Reid and the Democrats have persevered. Rather than wait for months longer than needed after committee approval before having a floor vote, the Senate has been able to act in a more timely – and appropriate – manner.
One of the basic and most important responsibilities of the U.S. Senate under the Constitution is to vote whether to confirm judges and keep the federal judiciary functioning. As of 2014, the Senate has no longer been blocked from doing that.
The figure below shows the dramatic drop in how long the average nominee has had to wait for a confirmation vote after approval by the Judiciary Committee as a result of the rules change:
With the Senate freed to do its job, the number of confirmation votes has grown significantly.
This has ameliorated the intentionally generated vacancy crisis that has hobbled our courts since President Obama took office. There were 54 vacancies when Obama was inaugurated in 2009. With the Senate blocked from holding timely confirmation votes, that number went to historic highs, skyrocketing to 100 by the end of the year. When the 111th Congress ended in December of 2010, Republicans blocked confirmation votes for 19 qualified nominees who had been approved by the Judiciary Committee, the overwhelming majority of whom had been approved unanimously or with almost unanimous support. As a result, 2011 opened with 95 vacancies – and with a needless bottleneck of nominations that delayed confirmation votes for all nominees down the line. With Republicans preventing the Senate from confirming even consensus nominees, it counted as a major accomplishment if the number of vacancies dipped into the low 80s, or even the 70s, as it sometimes did.
As a result, at the beginning of this year, our federal court system was suffering from 92 vacancies. And now? As of September 21, we're down to 57 circuit and district court vacancies, just a few more than when Obama took office. This is a dramatic and long overdue drop.
Supreme Court and Circuit Courts:
Undoing the Damage of the Bush Years
Our Constitution and our laws protect our right to vote, to have a workplace free of discrimination, to get married, to make our own reproductive decisions, to hold corporations accountable when they unlawfully injure or cheat us, and to have a voice in our democracy. But those rights don't mean anything if we don't have effective courts – and judges – to vindicate them when they are impinged.
Knowing the important role federal courts play in shaping our laws and guaranteeing – or frustrating – our basic rights, President Bush and his supporters set out to put as many far right ideologues on the federal appellate courts as possible. The most controversial of his court nominees are busy re-making law across the land.
Most notoriously, John Roberts and Samuel Alito have joined with Reagan and Bush-41 nominees Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Anthony Kennedy to give hard-right ideologues a frequent 5-4 majority on the Supreme Court. They have regularly bent the law and confounded logic in order to rule in favor of the powerful in case after the case, rewriting our Constitution and federal laws. Citizens United, Shelby County, and Hobby Lobby are just a few of the growing number of cases where they have used the federal bench as a platform to transform the country to fit their personal political ideologies, notwithstanding what the Constitution and our laws actually say.
While the Supreme Court is extremely important and well known, it only hears around 75 cases a year. Most Americans in federal courts have their cases decided at the district or circuit level. Circuit court rulings have an enormous impact on the law, and only a tiny portion of them are reconsidered at the Supreme Court. That is why George W. Bush and his partisans spent so much effort to confirm ideologues like Janice Rogers Brown, who now holds a lifetime position on the D.C. Circuit. She wrote a 2012 opinion holding that graphic warnings on cigarette packages violate the tobacco companies' free speech rights. She joined a 2013 opinion striking down a National Labor Relations Board rule requiring employers to post workers' legal rights, framing it as "compelled speech" indistinguishable from forcing schoolchildren to say the Pledge of Allegiance or requiring drivers to display a political message (Live Free or Die) on their license plates. She even defended the ideology of the discredited Lochner era in a 2012 concurrence, writing that courts' deference to everyday economic and business regulations "means property is at the mercy of the pillagers."
In contrast to ideologues like Brown, President Obama has named judges characterized by their fidelity to the Constitution and our laws, and the impact on ordinary Americans has been enormous. For instance, the full D.C. Circuit, which now has four Obama nominees among its eleven active judges, this month vacated a widely criticized panel ruling by two conservative judges striking down a key subsidies provision of the Affordable Care Act. The legal argument against the subsidies has been widely recognized as weak, with a transparently political motive. On the same day of the DC Circuit's panel ruling, a unanimous panel of the Fourth Circuit had upheld the law. Obama nominee Andre Davis accurately described what the far right plaintiffs are seeking judicial allies to do:
[They want] our help to deny to millions of Americans desperately-needed health insurance through a tortured, nonsensical construction of a federal statute whose manifest purpose, as revealed by the wholeness and coherence of its text and structure, could not be more clear.
As that one example illustrates, the D.C. Circuit is hardly the only one of our nation's 13 federal circuit courts that looks very different today from when Bush left office. Where there was then only one circuit with a majority of its active judges nominated by Democratic presidents, today there are nine.
Especially this year, supported by the Senate rules change, progress has been remarkable. The 113th Congress has confirmed 23 circuit court judges. One would have to go back to the 99th Congress in 1985-1986 to see that many circuit court judges confirmed during a single Congress.
The past year has seen the confirmation of nominees like Michelle Friedland (9th Circuit), Pam Harris (4th Circuit), and Nina Pillard (D.C. Circuit), jurists who understand the impact of the law on everyday Americans, who cherish our constitutional principles of equality and liberty, and who don't see the federal courts as just another part of government that can be used to enhance corporate power.
If the past few months have shown us anything, it is this: Standing up to bullies works. The White House has made judicial nominations that it can be proud of, and Senate Democrats have overcome years of Republican obstruction to get these nominees confirmed. Despite the GOP's herculean efforts to prevent President Obama from exercising the powers he was elected – and re-elected – to use, he is successfully restoring balance to the nation's courts. For the first time, the number of courtroom vacancies is close to where it was when Obama took office, and highly qualified jurists are taking their places on our federal circuit and district courts.
And the progress isn't over. An additional 16 judicial nominees have been fully vetted and approved by the Judiciary Committee and are currently eligible for a floor vote – a floor vote that could have been held before the Senate left town for the elections. Several more have had hearings and should be ready for consideration by the Committee and the full Senate during the lame duck session that is scheduled to begin on November 12. And the White House just sent additional nominees to the Senate that could easily have hearings and a Committee vote during the lame duck session as well. There is absolutely no excuse for not holding confirmation votes on any of these committee-approved nominees by the end of this Congress.
During the last two years of the Obama Administration and the years that follow, we can be sure of certain things: The courts will remain critically important, and progressives will have to fight hard to protect those courts and keep them functioning effectively, with judges who won't seek to use their positions to short-circuit our most important rights.
In an op-ed printed in the Portland Press Herald this weekend, retired congressman Barney Frank offers a sharp critique of the far right Supreme Court under John Roberts. Explicitly noting the importance of the Court in defining law that affects all citizens, Frank makes clear not only that courts matter, but everyday citizens have a hand in how these courts are shaped.
Reviewing the impact of recent Supreme Court decisions — from overturning "more than 100 years of federal and state efforts to regulate the role of money in campaigns" to declaring that corporations have the right to religious freedom under RFRA—Frank states that "the court has ended this term with a barrage against laws it does not like" (emphasis added).
He continues,
…The Supreme Court is now strongly inclined to impose conservative ideology via Constitutional interpretation on a broad range of public policy. It is true that Kennedy and to some extent Roberts occasionally deviate from this, but Justice Samuel Alito has surpassed even Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas in his ideological purity.
The relevance of this to the next two elections is very clear. Four of the sitting justices are in their late 70s or older. This means that there is a strong possibility that President Obama will have a chance to appoint another justice before his term expires, but his ability to do so will be determined not simply by the health of the justices in question, but by the composition of the U.S. Senate. The increasing partisanship in the Senate, the continued virulent influence of the tea party and recent history strongly suggest that even if a vacancy occurs, Obama will be prevented from filling it (emphasis added).
Frank refers to the unceasing Republican obstructionism and argues courts are critical for defining laws that affect Americans on a daily basis, highlighting the importance of this year's midterm elections. As he concludes in this piece,
This makes it highly likely that among the issues that will be determined in the next senatorial and presidential election will be the ideological makeup of the Supreme Court. Voters should act accordingly.
Courage, a Roman Catholic group that encourages gays and lesbians to live lifetimes of abstinence, is planning to hold its annual summit this month at the University of St. Mary of the Lake in Mundelein, Ill., which will include a speech by Fr. Paul Scalia.
Paul Scalia is the son of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, and his involvement in Courage is well known.
The conference's website lists Scalia as "the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Courage apostolate" and says he will speak on "Fearing the Lord ... and Not Being Afraid."
Courage also points to an article Scalia wrote for the Fall 2012 edition of Humanum: Issues in Family, Culture & Science, in which he reviews three books authored by Courage founder Fr. John Harvey.
Scalia's piece claims that critics of homosexuality are being silenced and mistreated, while in "this radical transformation of society, one of the greatest casualties is the individual who experiences homosexual attractions but who desires to live chastity." He adds that it is unfortunate that Harvey used the term "homosexual person" since according to Scalia, those people do not exist: "We should not predicate "homosexual" of any person. That does a disservice to the dignity of the human person by collapsing personhood into sexual inclinations."
After hailing Harvey for having eventually "ceased using the term "homosexual" or "homosexual person," Scalia goes on to claim that many people have "have found freedom, to varying degrees, from homosexual attractions" and deny that people have sexual orientations: "Homosexual tendencies (to use a term from magisterial documents), do not constitute a fixed, unchangeable aspect of the person and therefore should not be considered an "orientation"…. Either our sexuality is oriented in a certain direction (i.e. toward the one-flesh union of marriage), or it is not."
Consider how swiftly American society has changed as regards homosexuality. The "Stonewall riots," the touchstone and unofficial beginning of the gay rights movement, occurred in June 1969. Since then, the demands from the gay community have progressed from simple tolerance, to acceptance, to the right to marry, to now the silencing of any opposition as bigoted and "homophobic." Those who once insisted on tolerance for their lifestyle will now tolerate no disagreement. Society now requires everyone's approval of what not long ago was regarded as morally abhorrent.
In this radical transformation of society, one of the greatest casualties is the individual who experiences homosexual attractions but who desires to live chastity. He finds, on one hand, the homosexual community encouraging him to live out his sexual desires, to claim his gay identity, to embrace the lifestyle, and so on. Worse, even some in the Church will encourage him to do so. Unfortunately, among those to whom he turns for help, he may find insensitivity, ignorance, misunderstanding, or simply an unwillingness to help. This individual is caught in the crossfire of the broader battle. He suffers great loneliness and often despair in the face of a struggle that some see as futile and others ignore.
In these books Father Harvey repeatedly articulates and explains the principle that guided his work and the work of Courage – namely, the distinction between the person and his homosexual attractions or tendencies. Those who advocate the goodness of homosexual acts and lifestyle do so because they identify the person – always a good – with the homosexual inclinations. They therefore conclude that such inclinations must be good and so also, of course, the actions. Likewise, those who feel shame and loneliness do so precisely because they have come to identify themselves (their very persons) with their same-sex attractions, which they know (both intellectually and affectively) to be wrong. The work of Courage (and of the Church as a whole) turns on the person/attraction distinction. We can fairly summarize that work as distinguishing the person to be loved from the attractions to be resisted and even overcome.
In this regard we must note the unfortunate title The Homosexual Person (and therefore also the unfortunate title of the CDF document). In short, we should not predicate "homosexual" of any person. That does a disservice to the dignity of the human person by collapsing personhood into sexual inclinations. The chronology of the books helps us to see the development in this area of language. Indeed, the Church is still trying to find the right vocabulary to speak about this modern phenomenon. Thus in his last book, Father Harvey ceased using the term "homosexual" or "homosexual person." His thought and ministry brought him to realize that it is better to speak of someone with "same-sex attractions." Although lacking brevity and ease of speech, this phrase has the virtue of precision. It acknowledges both the person/attraction distinction and the complexity of the condition – not fairly summarized as an "orientation." Which brings us to another matter of vocabulary.…
Father Harvey's use of the term "orientation" also underwent a deserved change. In his first two books we find the use of this word to describe homosexual inclinations or attractions. In the last book, however, he deliberately avoids it. This reflects the increased appreciation for the fact that homosexual tendencies (to use a term from magisterial documents), do not constitute a fixed, unchangeable aspect of the person and therefore should not be considered an "orientation." Further, the term does violence to a proper understanding of human sexuality. Either our sexuality is oriented in a certain direction (i.e. toward the one-flesh union of marriage), or it is not. We cannot speak of more than one sexual "orientation" any more than we can think of the sun rising in more than one place (i.e. the orient).
Indeed, one of Father Harvey's contributions is his discussion of the possibility for healing of homosexual attractions. He deftly navigates the extremes (on one hand, that change is impossible… on the other hand, that it is morally obligatory) to present the simple truth that many have found freedom, to varying degrees, from homosexual attractions. Thus we cannot speak of it as a fixed, unchangeable, unchanging "orientation." (For this reason also the Church made a similar correction in the second edition of the Catechism, removing unfortunate language that implied homosexuality is a fixed orientation.)
The topic of discussion on Sandy Rios' American Family Radio program Wednesday was diversity among federal judicial nominees. The Washington Post published a story over the weekend detailing President Obama's largely successful effort to appoint more women, people of color and openly LGBT people to federal judgeships. The voice of dissent in the article was that of the Committee for Justice's Curt Levey, who told the Post that the White House was "lowering their standards" in nominating nonwhite judges. So naturally, Rios invited Levey on as a guest and explained to him why she disapproves of President Obama's diverse judicial nominations.
In particular, Rios disapproves of Obama's Supreme Court nominees, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, respectively the third and fourth women ever to sit on the high court. Sotomayor and Kagan, Rios says, have been forgetting their place and behaving "rudely," "interrupting" and "speaking inappropriately" to, of all people, Justice Antonin Scalia.
While Levey correctly notes that "Scalia can give it out as well as take it," he agrees with Rios that Sotomayor, the Supreme Court's first Latina justice, "has occasionally, at least, stepped over the line." In particular, he says Sotomayor – who he once accused of supporting "violent Puerto Rican terrorists" -- "sort of lost it" during arguments on the Voting Rights Act, when she contradicted Scalia's stunning assertion that the law represents a "perpetuation of racial entitlement."
In fact, while Scalia's bombast provoked audible gasps in the hearing room, Sotomayor waited several minutes before calmly asking the attorney challenging the Voting Rights Act, "Do you think that the right to vote is a racial entitlement in Section 5?"
Later, Rios, with an impressive lack of self-awareness, marvels that progressive groups criticized Scalia for his remarks. "Groups on the left," Levey responds, "shall we say, like to personalize things."
Rios: I read an article that Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, at least this article was intimating that they are behaving in a – these are my words – sort of rudely on the bench, to Scalia and to others, interrupting, speaking inappropriately. Have you observed that? Do you know what I'm talking about and is that true?
Levey: Um, yeah. I mean, you know, Scalia can give it out as well as take it, but yeah, Sotomayor has gone over the line a number of times. Most recently in the Voting Rights Act case, which was just last week, where, you know, Scalia had the nerve to speak the truth and refer to the Voting Rights Act as "racial preferences," which of course is what it's become by guaranteeing that there be minority districts formed, minority congressional districts. And, you know, Sotomayor sort of lost it when Obama [sic] said that, interrupted and you know, basically made fun of Scalia's comment. So yeah, I think they have the right to be aggressive up there, but Sotomayor has occasionally, at least, stepped over the line.
Rios: And on the Voting Rights Act and Scalia's comments, you know, there were demonstrators at the Court last week, hundreds of them, demonstrating against Antonin Scalia. I don't remember that happening. I don't remember a Supreme Court justice – doesn't mean it hasn't happened – but I don't remember it being a subject of public demonstrations.
Levey: No. Typically they will, you know, they'll, protestors at the Supreme Court will focus on issues, not justices. But you know, that changed of late. There's been in the last two years a lot of, you know, progressive groups have gone personally after Scalia and especially Thomas and his wife. But you know, we see that in so much of politics, that groups on the left like to, shall we say, personalize things.
Rios: Yeah, as like in Alinsky, yes, personalize and target, yeah, so we are seeing some very new things and actually pretty dangerous I think.
Earlier in the program, Rios and Levey lamented the fact that President Obama has had more openly LGBT people confirmed to the federal bench than all of his predecessors combined. Echoing right-wing arguments made against Romney advisor Richard Grennell, who was forced to resign last year after less than a month on the job, Rios claimed she didn't mind that the president was appointing gay people to federal judgeships, but that they are "activists who are trying to change the law."
Levey: You know, I don't have any problem with him nominating gay and lesbian nominees. The problem is that they should be gay and lesbian nominees who respect the Constitution. You know, there are…
Rios: I don't disagree, Curt, just for the record, I don't disagree with that. It's the activists, activists who are trying to change the law that I will have trouble sitting on the bench.
Levey: Exactly. He's not appointing, you know, conservative or even moderate, you know, gay Americans, he's appointing very radical gay Americans. And, you know, again, it's not so much any individual nominee as it is the pattern here. Of the 35 or so nominees who are pending now, only six are straight white males, even though about half the legal profession is straight white males. So, do straight white males have some, you know, right to a certain number of seats? Of course not. But if you were doing it in a balanced way without any preference for minorities of various types, then you'd probably wind up with about 17 or 18 of those 35 being straight white males. The fact that there's only six tells us that there's a system of preferences going on.


text:
Mullard P Band 100 MHz.
Separate transmitter-receiver in mobile boot mounted bracket.
Circa 1954.
No transmitter fitted.
Acquired from John G3tfc Circa
Separate valve transmitter-receiver boot mount mobile Circa 1950.
1 OFF boot mount set only. In rack
with only the receiver installed.
Serial No. 30 on 88.5 MHz.
Transmitter was kept by previous owner who wanted the dynamotor out of it. Transmitter
now lost! As he abandoned it instead
of giving it to the Museum. Didn't
you John! Still slight chance of him
finding it.
G8EPR Pye Museum (this site)
G8EPR Pye Museum
Table of Contents
G8EPR Pye Museum (original site)
12 December 2014 10:40:55
All pictures are © Dave Hicks 2014
or © Martin Briscoe 2014
Please ask permission before using elsewhere
Any addition
notes, comments or photographs of any of these sets are very welcome and can be
sent to:
Technical queries and comments about The Pye Museum to Dave G8EPR
Website queries and comments to Martin GM8AOB
The site deals mainly with Pye (and other companies) Radio Telephone and
Telecommunication equipment. It is very unlikely that we will be able to
answer any questions about Pye domestic radios, radiograms, record players etc

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
So I was all psyched initally about last night's game. My guy Oh Pea was taking on my "substitute" guy Zito -- But I also had a weird vision. Zito was 2-3 and Pea was 3-2. I thought, well, if we lose the game, Pea and Zito will be 3-3 each.
Curse myself for thinking that way.
I am still off from work so I decided not to be a big poochie and watch the west coast game. I wish I hadn't. I saw ALL the ugliness that started in the 5th. Now, I don't want to let Pea totally off the hook. After all, he had 2 outs (much like I Wanna Be a Ho) and could have gotten out of the inning with just giving up 3 runs.
And let's be honest here -- two of those runs are a little bogus (after watching the Prince Fielder-like replay a dozen and a half times with Gary calling the non-home run, at best a GR double). Plus his defense screwed him. Easley needs to just...not be starting. Green? Though he is still smacking the ball around, can't we put in like a test dummy out there to field? I think that would be better than him out there.
But you know what, I didn't get the feeling that Pea was losing it after that. He was still throwing heat, almost daring the Giants hitters to swing. Well, they did.
And what is it with these fuckin Molina catchers killing the Mets???
Anyway, I am back from vay-kay in sunny Florida, and already I'm a stressed out Mets fan.
*~~* Pick a Topic - Attend a Game with The Coop! *~~*
So as many of you know, I moonlight as a columnist for Flushing University. I have two pieces under my belt so far - one on Rick Down, the other on Bill Shea.
I had a column forming in my head on the mind of the sports fan, with hockey playoff-mania (as long as the Rangers made it to the third round) and the Mets doing so well, and the Yankees, well, Yankee fans being blinded by all this propaganda.
Well, the Rangers didn't make the third round, so I don't have all the perspective anymore...but maybe YOU do.
If you pick a topic - that is Mets-related or even just NY sports-related, I'll listen...if *I* pick that topic to write about, YOU get to attend a game with MOI!
OK, that's not much of a gift...but if I give tickets away for free, I think Mr. Coop might get upset. Plus, he takes people all the time when I can't go, it's my turn!!!
So throw out your ideas, I'll take them under consideration!
So I'm sure many of you are wondering about my reaction to the Clemens signing with the Yanks. $28 million for ONE YEAR? A HGH-test shortened year, mind you.
Granted Clemens is good...a real competitor and has the heart of a champion. But let's be honest here. He's 44 years old now. It's no longer 1999. Yet Yanks fans are treating it like it is.
In my most humble opinion, that $28 mil could have been used in other areas. Like beefing up the BP that's obviously going to be tapped on more and more with their average pitching age going up about 8 years.
In my most humble opinion, the Yankees have FAR worse problems than a $28 mil contract Clemens could sign.
Many thanks to the Dawg. for pinch hitting and doing a great job while I was away. Dawg., you did good.
Later guys.
4 comments:
- Sassdawg. said...
Aight Coop, I've got a topic for you....Baseball Superstitions. If my memory serves, the last time David Wright rocked The Dawg.'s hair doo, he went into a huge upswing in his offense. Could superstition have anything to do with it?
- Coop said...
You know, I don't remember the last time they shaved heads on the Mets - wasn't it during Mike Piazza's last year? Superstitions would be a cool column.
Wanna go to a Minnesota game? I think its the Monday or Wed game I have avail.
- Sassdawg. said...
I think I'm up for that. I'll definitely let you know.
- Sassdawg. said...
So it would appear that the Sassdawg. effect of having the most aerodynamic hairstyle possible has aided one Carlos Delgado in today's game. Los Del'g sent a shot out into McCovey Cove today.
Woo Hoo, Let's go Dilbert's Revenge (My fantasy teamname)


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Where do our XBee packets go?
An important component of our hardware is a pair of 900MHz XBee radios, one on the robot and the other at our operator control station. We use them as a second communications channel with the robot in addition to the WiFi. Among other messages, the XBee carries the RTK correction data from our base station GPS to the GPS unit on the robot. The XBee configuration also allows simultaneous communication with multiple robots while each robot runs its own contained ROS system.
The case of the dropped packets
Our issue, discovered while debugging the most recent updates to our XBee interface code, was that some of the packets sent from our operator control station XBee were never received from the robot XBee.
We use the XBee in API Mode 1 (no escaped characters), so we can broadcast messages to all XBees within range and target specific XBees as needed. In this mode, the user is responsible for assembling packets with a maximum payload of 72 bytes including our own header that encodes the message type and size. The correction data from the base station GPS is RTCM3.0 messages, many of which exceed the single packet payload size. For our purposes, the correction messages are viewed as raw binary data to transmit. We break the message into multiple packets before sending, then reassemble the correction messages on the robot before passing them on to the GPS.
During testing, we noticed messages with only ASCII letter and number characters (0-9, A-Z, a-z), were always received correctly, while many of the RTCM messages were never received by the robot XBee. With this evidence, we scoured documentation for any special characters that could affect packet transmission. From this article and the handy-dandy ASCII table, we identified XBee special characters (which are not fully used in our Mode 1 operation) 0x7E, 0x7D and software flow control characters 0x11, 0x13. As a test, we replaced all instances of these characters within our payload with the 'A' (0x41) character, but received message performance did not change. We did notice that changing all instances of 0x00, the null character, to any letter or number character greatly improved performance. Without exhaustive testing of ASCII characters, we concluded that there is likely a subset of ASCII characters used as special characters by at least one link in the transmission pipeline.
Our (temporary) Solution
We decided the best solution given our time constraints for testing, was to convert each payload byte to its 2-byte string equivalent: 0xF3 becomes the string 'F3', which restricts the payload characters to the ranges 0-9 and A-F. This requires roughly double the XBee packets to transmit, but results in much fewer, but still a non-zero number, of dropped packets. The remaining dropped packets may result from special characters popping up in our custom header inside of the payload, which is not being encoded in the described manner. The settings for the USB port on the computer were also investigated, but results in no change in packet loss behavior.
The issue will not be completely solved until I dive into the interaction of escaped characters for the USB port, the USB to serial device on the XBee carrier board, and the XBee as well as investigate the XBee API modes more thoroughly. Currently, the robot usually receives enough of the correction messages to stay RTK corrected, but sometimes it doesn't. While the current solution is not very satisfying, it let's us continue on our current testing push.
The Real Solution
When we have time to revisit the issue, I believe the complete solution will involve:
- Use XBee API Mode 2 (we still need API Mode functionality), and properly escape characters in the messages
- Identify and properly handle special characters for all components including XBee
- Keep payload data in the more compact binary form instead of converting to ASCII letter/number characters
Half of the summer is gone with little research to show. What I do have is a test track for the robot, a second generation robot under development, and full autonomy tests on the horizon for the current platform. At the end of every week I look at my progress and ask one question: what should I work on next week? What follows is how I try to balance and make sense of the daily logistics requirements, ongoing infrastructure development, and the need for research progress on my current robotics project. How to answer this question is more important than ever to me because I start a new program in the fall.
As a PhD student, my job is to solve important unsolved problems in my field to increase human knowledge by some measurable amount. I think these illustrations put it into perspective.
Concerning my weekly work, I try to maximize the likelihood that my robot will do something no other robot has done before (drive itself very fast). From my experience, the single largest factor determining success for robotics projects is to start with solid hardware and software infrastructure. This includes properly set up test space, a reliable platform, and core software to abstract out hardware interaction, data routing, and visualization. I will admit that my perspective is skewed toward software. As mentioned in an earlier post, we are building our system using ROS, which a great example of how core technologies enable successful project development. Just take a look at all the awesome projects people are listing on the ROS website.
I estimate that upwards of 80% of the time on my current project is dedicated to infrastructure development and testing. We could have used a more balanced time allocation approach and pushed early on for a fully autonomous demo, but it would have been a shell. Further, that would slow the overall progress of the project beyond that demo. Corners cut in the drive to the specific goal leaves important components in shambles and inoperable under all but ideal conditions requiring constant tuning.
I don't believe this is how successful long-term robotics projects should progress, and I keep that in mind every week when I plan. I believe that taking the time to develop bulletproof infrastructure in the beginning leads to awesome, repeatable demos later. As the saying goes, there is no shortcut to success.
Using QT in a ROS Catkin Package
This post is a brief account of how to compile a QT GUI as part of a ROS catkin package.
I spent the past week migrating a ROS project to the latest release, ROS Groovy. A major change with this release is the deprecation of the build system rosbuild in favor of a new build system, catkin. Catkin is a light-weight wrapper for CMake. Overall, the migration went smoothly, but it took significantly longer than anticipated (which I probably should have anticipated). One sticking point was compiling our Operator Control Station (OCS) GUI, designed in QT4. The problems were related to the removal of QT-specific rosbuild macros for the CMakeLists.txt and the use of out of source builds by catkin.
The Setup
I used qt_ros to generate a QT form, an accompanying QMainWindow derived class, and a ROS interface class as the basis for the OCS. The original CMakeLists.txt was based on rosbuild and modifications for the transition to catkin. I relied on a variety of resources for the migration, since none of them seemed to have all the information I needed: catkin's CMakeLists.txt overview, using CMake to build QT, rosbuild to catkin migration guide, and this post about using CMake with QT.
The Skinny
The OCS took significantly more work to catkinize than the rest of the nodes. The migration guide specifies how to transition many rosbuild macros to catkin, but the qt-specific ones are absent, specifically:
rosbuild_prepare_qt4(QtCore QtGui)
Using information from the first three of the above sources, I found a replacement to include the QT components I need:
find_package(Qt4 REQUIRED COMPONENTS QtCore QtGui)
The next problem involved catkin's transition to out of source builds. A QT .ui file must be turned into an associated header file to be included in a project. All of the files built during a catkin build are placed in the build/ directory of the catkin workspace, not CMake's current working directory. For someone trying to include a ui header file from an in source location, the standard include will fail because the ui's header file ends up in buid/.
Once I figured this out, I found the last source, and the addition to the CMakeLists.txt was simple:
Now everything compiles and installs properly. The new CMakeLists are closer to pure CMake.
Below is the CMakeLists.txt I use to compile the OCS. Not included are some catkin and project dependencies passed in from parent directories. I want to offer this as a basic outline to compile and install a QT GUI using catkin and ROS Groovy because I was not able to find it anywhere else.
cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 2.8.3)
find_package(catkin REQUIRED COMPONENTS roscpp image_transport)
find_package(Qt4 REQUIRED COMPONENTS QtCore QtGui)
file(GLOB QT_FORMS RELATIVE ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR} *.ui)
file(GLOB QT_RESOURCES RELATIVE ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR} resources/*.qrc)
file(GLOB_RECURSE QT_MOC RELATIVE ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR} FOLLOW_SYMLINKS *.hpp)
file(GLOB_RECURSE QT_SOURCES RELATIVE ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR} FOLLOW_SYMLINKS *.cpp)
add_executable(ocs ${QT_SOURCES} ${QT_RESOURCES_CPP} ${QT_FORMS_HPP} ${QT_MOC_HPP})
target_link_libraries(ocs ${QT_LIBRARIES} ${ROS_LIBRARIES} ${catkin_LIBRARIES})
install(TARGETS ocs


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- Discover India
- History of India
- Electrical Power
- India Food
- India Government
- India Quick Facts
- India Tourism
- Indian Rupee
- Indian Culture
- Indian Embassies
- Indian Languages
- Indian Railways
- Indian Recipes
- Indian Wedding
- Kids in India
- Religions of India
- Shopping in India
- States of India
- Yoga in India
- Indian Dress
- Indian Landmarks
India Electricity - Electrical Plugs, Converters, Electric Sockets, Electric Adapters
India uses 230 Volts, 50 Hz alternating current as the power source. Plugs and sockets have either grounded / earthed 3 Pin connections (Type D) or ungrounded 2 pin connections (Type C).
The two pin plug is also called the Europlug. It has two round 4 mm (0.157 in) pins. It can be inserted in either way into the socket. Hence there is no fixed live (hot) and neutral (cold) terminals.
The three pin plug is rated at 6A / 250V. It has three round pins in a triangular pattern. The earth terminal is slightly larger than the live and neutral terminals.
For Higher current, there is a 15 Amp version of the same 3 Pin plug, usually called the Power Plug or the M Plug. Live and neutral are 1 inch (25.4 mm) apart. Earth terminal is 1
+1⁄8 in (28.58 mm) away from live and neutral terminals. Typically, refrigerators, heaters and other high power devices are connected to this 15 Amp socket.
Will a standard European electric plug (2 round pins) fit into a power point in India?
Yes. To insert the 2 pin plug into a Type D 3 Pin socket which in some cases may be closed by default, push a pen into the Ground/Earth terminal. This opens up the protected 2 Pin terminals and you can insert the 2 Pin plug.
Will a standard Americal electric plug fit into a power point in India?
No. But any electrical store will sell you an adapter (picture below) for around 50 cents (Rs. 25 aprox) or less.
3 Pin Converter / Adapter


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How Much dwarf hairgrass?
I am doing a large carpet for my 75 gallon tank. How many pots should i order from aquariumplants.com to give it a good start to fill in? Or are there any better places to order plants from? I am looking for a nice carpet effect and in one corner of my tank i am doing a assortment package of different plants to be the centerpiece.
here is the link of the dwarf hairgrass and its size.
Dwarf Hairgrass (Eleocharis acicularis) pot
Anyone have experience with foreground plants like this??
Posted via Mobile Device
Well, if you're using sand, the hairgrass should spread fairly fast...
I would probably order about 8 pots, and split them up when they arrive...
Personally, I like Sweetaquatics.com
If you have gravel, I'd go with dwarf sag or narrow leaf chain sword.
I'm just using this black nutrient rich substrate I ordered from that website, not gonna use gravel above it cause I like the black, but it will eventually be completely covered if the carpet effect works. I hope it will work with the dwarf hair grass
Posted via Mobile Device
It needs a lot of light and even then is still a PITA.
I have both the dwarf hairgrass and the narrow leaf chain sword growing in rock. The Chain sword is doing great and spreading, I really like it. The dwarf hairgrass looks like it did when I planted it. Not that he asked but I would use the chain sword if it were me.
It depends on what you want it to look like, dwarf chain sword grows in little bunches, dwarf hairgrass has a much more even spread, more like actual grass.
I want the dwarf hairgrass look, how intense is intense. I'm getting mixed reviews on the light intensity. But i have a 4 bulb HO t5 system with led moonlighting, since I want to make this a discus tank I was going to only use two bulbs at once which is about 108 watts of HO. I can add two more if that's enough but I don't want it too bright to scare the discus. What is a good WPG for dwarf hair
Posted via Mobile Device
It likes a lot of light, but even though you have a lot of light available for that tank you are limited to using 2 bulbs. It puts you close to 1.5 WPG of T5 light which is toward the upper end of moderate lighting. Any higher and you will need pressurized CO2. You will probably still have initial algae problems at that starting light level. You can't run all 4 bulbs unless the tank is fully high tech, even then that is a LOT of light. Higher your lighting goes the less stable your tank is as it becomes increasingly depended on daily fertilizers and other maintenance.
Angel079 had a tank with hairgrass... She had about 1 wpg and it grow in completely in a month or two.
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Research led by the Johns Hopkins Children's Center shows that black children with persistently elevated blood pressure are more likely than other hypertensive children to develop left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH), a dangerous enlargement or thickening of the left chamber of the heart. LVH, over time, can lead to heart failure, heart rhythm abnormalities and death.
In the study, black children with LVH also had higher cholesterol levels, a trend that was absent among children of other ethnicities, with or without LVH.
All children with untreated hypertension, regardless of race, are at risk for developing LVH over time, the Johns Hopkins researchers say, but the new findings should be heeded as an alarm by pediatricians that black children may be at even higher risk.
In the study of 139 children with hypertension, ages 3 to 21, researchers found that of 35 black children, 60 percent had developed LVH, compared to 37 percent of the 104 children of other races.
"Our study identifies black children with hypertension as a special group who may be at particularly high risk for heart disease as they age because of several risk factors, and pediatricians treating these kids should follow them very closely," said study lead author Cozumel Pruette, M.D., a kidney specialist at Johns Hopkins Children's
An estimated 4 million children in the United States have hypertension, a number that has increased five times over the last 20 to 30 years, and researchers say the obesity epidemic is one possible factor in the increase.
All children, regardless of race, who have had one episode of elevated blood pressure during a visit to their doctor, should be monitored to make sure the episode was isolated rather than chronic, Pruette says. And all children who are diagnosed with hypertension should be referred to a kidney specialist and have an ultrasound study of the heart to check heart muscle thickness and heart function. Researchers recommend cholesterol checks for children with blood pressure at or above the 95th percentile; overweight children with blood pressure ranges in the 90th to 94th percentile (or pre-hypertension); in children with chronic kidney disease, and in those who have family history of hypertension and cardiovascular disease.
Co-investigators on the study: Barbara Fivush, M.D., and Tammy Brady, M.D., M.H.S., of Johns Hopkins Children's; and Joseph Flynn, M.D., M.S., of Seattle Children's Hospital.
Founded in 1912 as the children's hospital at Johns Hopkins, the Johns Hopkins Children's Center offers one of the most comprehensive pediatric medical programs in the country, with more than 92,000 patient visits and nearly 9,000 admissions each year. The Johns Hopkins Children's Center is Maryland's largest children's hospital and the only state-designated Trauma Service and Burn Unit for pediatric patients. It has recognized Centers of Excellence in dozens of pediatric subspecialties, including allergy, cardiology, cystic fibrosis, gastroenterology, nephrology, neurology, neurosurgery, oncology, pulmonary, and transplant. For more information, visit www.hopkinschildrens.org.
March 22, 2016Ruth and Norman Rales Health Center Dedication
March 16, 2016When the IBD Patient Is a Child
March 14, 2016Celebrating Patient and Family-Centered Care Week 2016
April 29, 2016Lawn Mower Safety Reminder
February 24, 201627th Mix 106.5 Radiothon Raises over $1.1 Million
February 16, 2016Mix 106.5 Kicks off 27th Annual Radiothon To Benefit The Kids At Johns Hopkins
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