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Supreme Court Says Employers Can Refuse To Pay For Contraception

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In a 5-4 decision, the justices ruled that the contraception mandate in the Affordable Care Act violates some employers’ religious freedom.

Demonstrators embrace as they react to hearing the Supreme Court's decision on the Hobby Lobby case on Monday.

Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Associated Press

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Monday that employers with religious objections can refuse to pay for insurance coverage for contraception.

The court's decision, written by Justice Samuel Alito, said the contraception mandate in the Affordable Care Act violates the Hobby Lobby company's rights under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA).

The 5-4 sharply divided court held that there was no reason why corporations should be not be able to claim the protections of the RFRA and that the contraception mandate regulation that Health and Human Services issued following the passage of the Affordable Care Act violated their rights under RFRA.

Specifically, Alito found for the court that the mandate substantially burdened Hobby Lobby's exercise of religion. While assuming that the government's reason for enacting the mandate is a compelling governmental interest, the court nonetheless decided that the mandate was not the "least restrictive means" to further that interest. Specifically, Alito noted the government's exception for nonprofit corporations as proof that the government could find a less restrictive method of advancing its aims.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote the opinion for the four dissenting justices, arguing — in an opinion that she read from the bench — that the exemption given to Hobby Lobby here could raise questions about whether corporations could seek other health care-related exemptions — such as coverage for blood transfusions or vaccinations — or other laws — such as Title VII of the Civil Rights Act or state nondiscrimination laws.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, who joined with the court's four more conservative members, joined in Alito's opinion for the court but wrote separately to argue that "the Court's opinion does not have the breadth and sweep ascribed to it by" Ginsburg's dissenting opinion.

The case, heard by the justices in March, presented the question of how the Affordable Care Act and federal health care regulation interact with a 1993 religious freedom law.

When the HHS issued regulations, as part of the Affordable Care Act, mandating that employer-provided health insurance must include contraceptive coverage, for-profit companies had three options:

1. Providing health care coverage that includes contraceptive coverage.
2. Providing health care coverage without contraceptive coverage and paying a steep fine.
3. Not providing health care coverage, sending employees to the health care exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act, and paying a tax.

After issuing those regulations, two companies — Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood — sued, seeking protections under RFRA. Although the third option picked up some attention at the oral arguments in March, Alito dismissed that possibility as "unpersuasive" because the companies "have religious reasons for providing health-insurance coverage for their employees."

This "for-profit" company question is separate from ongoing cases about the ways in which religious nonprofit companies can comply with the law's exemption.

Read the full opinion and dissent:

Via supremecourt.gov

LINK: White House Response To Hobby Lobby Ruling Could Be Simply To Take Supreme Court’s Advice


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Here's A Lot Of People Saying "Hobby Lobby" On TV

The 2014 Running Of The Interns

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Run #thistown

You may be unfamiliar with the annual D.C. tradition known as the 'Running of the Interns'...

You may be unfamiliar with the annual D.C. tradition known as the 'Running of the Interns'...

Win McNamee / Getty Images

... if you live under a rock.

... if you live under a rock.

As a refresher, here is why this glorious annual tradition happens:

There is no televised or electronic recording allowed inside the Supreme Court.

There is no televised or electronic recording allowed inside the Supreme Court.

So when a big decision is going to be handed down, broadcast television interns line up inside the court where the print-outs of the ruling are handed out...


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White House Response To Hobby Lobby Ruling Could Be Simply To Take Supreme Court's Advice

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Could a quick fix, at least as to the contraception mandate, be coming?

President Barack Obama and Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell in the Rose Garden of the White House on April 11.

© Larry Downing / Reuters / Reuters

WASHINGTON — On Monday, the Supreme Court exempted for-profit corporations with religious objections from the Affordable Care Act's contraception mandate — but Justice Samuel Alito also laid out a path forward for the Obama administration to ensure coverage for employees of those companies, a path the White House press secretary suggested Monday afternoon that it could take.

White House press secretary Joshua Earnest said at Monday's briefing that the decision "jeopardizes the health of women" and focused, initially, on "pressing Congress to actually take the step that's required to address this problem." When pressed, though, he acknowledged, "We'll consider whether or not there's an opportunity for the president to take some other action that could mitigate this problem as well."

In the ruling that Hobby Lobby could be exempted under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) from the coverage requirement, a key question was whether the administration could have done something less restrictive to guarantee cost-free contraception in health plans. Once the court determined that Hobby Lobby could seek exemptions from laws under RFRA, the court ruled the administration could have done something less restrictive, pointing to the administration's accommodation for nonprofits.

Because of the existence of that accommodation, the court held that Health and Human Services "itself has demonstrated that it has at its disposal an approach that is less restrictive than requiring employers to fund contraceptive methods that violate their religious beliefs." Alito then wrote for the court that such an accommodation, if extended to for-profit corporations, could be possible as it "does not impinge on the plaintiffs' religious belief that providing insurance coverage for the contraceptives at issue here violates their religion."

Congressional action — most likely involving reversing the first part of the court's opinion, in which the court held that closely held corporations could seek the protections for religious exemptions provided by RFRA — is unlikely to go anywhere in the current House.

The more likely option would be administrative action to "mitigate" the effect of the court's decision. The action would likely be a further regulation from HHS to extend the administration's accommodation for nonprofits under the contraception mandate to be also made available to for-profit corporations.

Although the court did not specifically rule Monday on whether that option could itself be subject to RFRA exemptions, a point raised by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in her dissent, it was clearly put forth by Alito as a potential option.

Such an action, thus, would not be an attempt to reverse the Supreme Court's ruling. The move would be taking the precise action that Alito suggested is available to the administration as a less restrictive means for accomplishing its goals in implementing the contraception mandate.

While the political debate over corporate rights likely will be inflamed by Monday's ruling, the specific outcome of the case itself likely could be addressed by a quick fix in short order.

From the Supreme Court's Hobby Lobby opinion:

From the Supreme Court's Hobby Lobby opinion:

Hillary Clinton: Hobby Lobby Ruling "Deeply Disturbing"

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Clinton’s comments drew applause from the audience.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday called the Supreme Court's ruling that employers with religious objections can refuse to pay for insurance coverage for contraception "deeply disturbing."

Clinton was speaking at a Facebook Live session at the Aspen Ideas Festival in Aspen, Colorado.

"I obviously disagree," Clinton said, "I obviously disagree ... I disagree with the reasoning as well as the conclusion."

During her remarks on the topic, Clinton said "this element" is seen in foreign countries where women are deprived of rights. "Among those rights is control over their bodies, control over their own health care, control over the size of their families," she said. "It is a disturbing trend that you see in a lot of societies that are very unstable, anti-democratic, and frankly prone to extremism."

Here's the video of Clinton's remarks:

View Video ›

"Part of the reason I was so adamant about including women and girls in our foreign policy, not as a luxury but as a central issue, is because they're often the canaries in the mine," Clinton said. "You watch women and girls being deprived of their rights, some of them never have them, some of them lose them. Among those rights is control over their bodies, control over their own health care, control over the size of their families. It is a disturbing trend that you see in a lot of societies that are very unstable, anti-democratic, and frankly prone to extremism. Where women and women's bodies are used as the defining and unifying issue to bring together people — men — to get them to behave in ways that are disadvantageous to women but which prop up them because of their religion, their sect, their tribe, whatever. So to introduce this element into our society… it's very troubling that a sales clerk at Hobby Lobby who needs contraception, which is pretty expensive, is not going to get that service through her employer's health care plan because her employer doesn't think she should be using contraception."

Obama To Move Toward Reducing Deportations Without Congress

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The president plans administrative action by the end of the summer. Speaker John Boehner told Obama the House will not take a vote on immigration reform this year.

Olivier Douliery/Abaca Press / MCT

A clearly angry President Obama announced Monday that he plans to move forward with administrative action by the end of the summer on steps he can take without Congress, but within his existing authorities, to "fix as much of our broken immigration system as we can" because of Republican inaction on an immigration overhaul.

The announcement comes a week after Speaker John Boehner and Obama spoke before the PGA golf event where Boehner told him the House will not take a vote on immigration reform this year.

"Today I'm beginning a new effort to fix as much of the immigration system as I can on my own without Congress," he said, later adding that "it's very rare that you get labor, business, evangelicals, law enforcement all agreeing on what needs to be done."

The most important expected policy shift is "administrative relief," which activists have been calling for for all of 2014, a plan that would reset enforcement priorities and lessen record deportations. The president previously directed Department of Homeland Security (DHS) chief Jeh Johnson to look at its policies to make sure they are "humane."

The announcement comes the same day the administration released a letter about its plans to deal with the flood of unaccompanied minors from Central America.

The plan seeks to "surge resources to our Southwest border to deter both adults and children from this dangerous journey, increase capacity for enforcement and removal proceedings, and quickly return unlawful migrants to their home countries," the letter read in part.

Obama said he is directing officials to "move available and appropriate enforcement resources from our interior to the border," adding that the administration will continue to focus on removing those who have committed serious crimes from the country.

Boehner spokesman Michael Steel told BuzzFeed the speaker told Obama what he has been telling him all along.

"The American people and their elected officials don't trust him to enforce the law as written," he said. "Until that changes, it is going to be difficult to make progress on this issue."

Congressman Luis Gutierrez, who has often criticized the administration over deportations, praised the president's announcement.

"The antidote for do-nothingism is doing something and the President is doing for the American people what the Republican-controlled Congress refused to do," he said in a statement. "This is the President I voted for."

AP Photo

Obama met with immigration advocates before his announcement. Marielena Hincapié, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, said it was the angriest she has ever seen him, his dual frustration over inaction on immigration along with the unaccompanied minors situation on display. She said he made it clear administrative relief is temporary and that activists need to continue to put pressure on Congress for a legislative solution.

"Interestingly, he said Boehner also talked about being able to do something [legislatively] after his election as speaker. That he would be ready in 2015 to move a bill on immigration reform," Hincapié said. Boehner spokesman Michael Steel says that was not true.

Now the debate turns to how big the president will go in passing administrative relief. Previously, new enforcement priorities were said to be on the table in a coming DHS memo. A bigger package centered around deferred action has long been floated by activists, in the same vein as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that gave legal status to undocumented youth who were brought to the country as children.

Gustavo Torres, executive director of CASA de Maryland, was at the meeting and said the president will look at the final recommendations and make his decision to see what he can do to stop deportations and provide other administrative relief for the community within his legal authority.

"The message we communicated was go big and bold and do it quickly," Torres said. "The time of waiting is over. He agreed with us and said he's going to do something before the elections."

Pablo Alvarado, executive director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, said the president's "enforcement-first strategy and his misguided deportation policy" were premised on the possibility of legislative reform, which is no longer available.

"What comes next will be a defining moment for the president and for the country," he said. "In de-linking his immigration policy from his legislative reform strategy, the president is now free to do the right thing, and he can fulfill the promise of being a transformative president."

On an earlier press call about the unaccompanied minors situation, Hincapié said she didn't want to see the children played off of the undocumented immigrants in the United States.

She said she hoped the administration wasn't coming out strong against the unaccompanied minors to allow itself the ability to move on executive actions to slow deportations afterward.

"If the administration is trying to create political space for administrative reforms, many of us will stand united so the administration does not pit children against the 11 million," she said at the time.

Now it looks like the White House has answered that question.

Kate Nocera contributed reporting.


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Democrats Cautious On Palestinian Unity Government After Murder Of Israeli Teens

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“[W]e don’t know all the facts about this yet, so I don’t want to speculate about next steps.”

Israeli soldiers stage in the village of Halhul, near the West Bank town of Hebron, where the bodies of the three missing Israeli teenagers were found.

AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed

WASHINGTON — Influential Democrats in Congress are staying cautious on the question of the U.S. stance toward the Palestinian unity government in the wake of the news that three Israeli teens were found dead in the West Bank.

Israel has placed the blame for the deaths of Gilad Shaar, Naftali Fraenkel (a U.S.-Israeli citizen), and Eyal Yifrach, who disappeared weeks ago while hitchhiking in the West Bank, squarely on Hamas; "Hamas is responsible, and Hamas will pay," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday. Some members of Congress have been calling for the United States to stop aid to the Palestinian Authority ever since Hamas joined a unity government with Fatah in early June, but it doesn't look like the deaths of the boys will lead to that yet — especially since the unity government is thought to be unlikely to stay together in the wake of the incident.

"The United States should stand shoulder to shoulder with our Israeli allies and provide support in the effort to bring the murderers to justice," said House Foreign Affairs Committee ranking member Eliot Engel in a statement to BuzzFeed. "However, we don't know all the facts about this yet, so I don't want to speculate about next steps."

"These boys had their whole lives ahead of them, and deserved so much better," said Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee. "As a mother, a Jew, and a public servant, my heart goes out to their families, friends, and the Israeli people. The terrorist cowards who perpetrated such heinous crimes must be brought to justice swiftly."

Wasserman Schultz declined to comment on the possible dissolution of the Palestinian unity government.

"No, no comment on that topic at this time," said her spokesman Sean Bartlett. "The congresswoman's main concern is for the families right now, and that justice be delivered."

"There is substantial evidence that this murder is the responsibility of Hamas," said Rep. Brad Sherman, one of the top Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. "We must bring to justice, not only the murderers, but their commanders."

Sherman's spokesperson forwarded a previous statement about the unity government when asked about Sherman's position on it: "It appears [Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud] Abbas was careful to form a government of technocrats, one that does not include any Hamas operatives, something that would almost certainly require us to cut off all aid to the PA," Sherman said when the government was formed.

The statements mirror the State Department's careful wording on the issue of its decision to work with the unity government in light of the murders.

"I'm not going to make any predictions, of course we do look at all kinds of information as it relates to the Palestinians as it relates to any entity that we work with," said State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki at Monday's press briefing. "As we have stated from the beginning, and the point I was trying to make, is that we would be constantly reviewing as it relates to action on the ground, whether they are abiding by the components that they have — the pledges that they made at the beginning."

Psaki said that Abbas had been a "cooperative partner" in the search for the boys and that the technocratic government that doesn't include members of Hamas had been abiding by its obligations.

The crisis, said Jonathan Schanzer, vice president of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, is likely to result in the unity government falling apart anyway. Only if the government stays together will there be a major push in Congress to pressure the administration to cut ties, if it doesn't do that on its own, he said.

"It's not likely that the Palestinian unity government will hold amidst this crisis," Schanzer said. "Abbas has granted the Israelis access to the West Bank to conduct its operations. Hamas has been furious about this, which explains the rockets fired from Gaza in recent days."

"If the unity government holds, and Israel is able to provide definitive proof of Hamas culpability in the kidnappings, the administration may still try to hold to the line that this is a government of technocrats under Abbas, but Congress will not have any of it," Schanzer said.

And already, some Republicans are renewing calls for the United States to cut off aid to the Palestinians.

"The administration should have immediately suspended its aid to the Palestinians once the unity deal was announced, and this latest tragic incident, in which Hamas members are reportedly responsible for the murders of three Israeli teens, only serves to reinforce that," said Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East and Central Asia. "The administration needs to get serious about enforcing the U.S. law regarding this and suspend all aid to the Palestinian unity government and press Abu Mazen to cut his ties with the terrorist organization immediately."

She and Ted Deutch, a Democratic congressman from Florida, released a joint statement on Monday calling for Abbas to dissolve the unity government.

House and Senate panels both recently voted in favor of an appropriations bill for next year that would cut spending to the PA and tighten restrictions in the current law on aid to the PA if it includes Hamas.

Progressives Want To Turn Big SCOTUS Losses Into Political Wins

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“There is a silver lining here.”

Olivier Douliery/Abaca Press / MCT

WASHINGTON — As union and pro-choice activists lamented Monday's Supreme Court decisions, progressive leaders and strategists mulled how to turn a very bad day for them into a good November.

The country's highest court announced two decisions Monday. The first was on Harris v. Quinn, in which Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the majority that Illinois home health care workers who don't wish to pay union dues could not be compelled to do so by the state.

For months unions feared that the Harris v. Quinn decision might determine that all public-sector non-union employees have the right not to pay administrative fees for unions bargaining on their behalf, also known as "right to work." Likewise, the court's second decision on Monday in the Hobby Lobby case, exempted certain for-profit businesses from the Affordable Care Act's contraception mandate, was a blow for progressives.

But with midterms around the corner and 2016 looming ever closer, progressives are figuring out how to turn the negatives into a positive.

"There is a silver lining here," said American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten. "To the fact that the court was so obvious about whose side it is on. And it is not on the side of regular working folk."

Weingarten pointed to the Harris and Hobby Lobby cases as well as recent decisions on campaign finance and the Voting Rights Act as ways to galvanize left-leaning voters and make them show up at the polls in this election and the next.

"In the guise of individual liberty, the court has really taken a whack at regular working folks and a whack at the ladder of opportunity for everyday Americans, and particularly women," she said.

One progressive source with strong ties to labor described the Harris v. Quinn decision as "a big deal," even though the ruling ended up being relatively narrow in scope.

"These decisions have the potential to be a huge motivator for union, choice activists — the people who have to be committed to make voter mobilization programs work — in '14 and more likely '16," the source emailed.

Whether progressives can excite voters with the relatively wonky argument about potentially conceding another seat on the Supreme Court to a conservative if a Republican president wins in 2016 remains a challenge.

Progressive strategist Mike Lux said union PACs will likely try to fundraise off these decisions, but more generally noted that if the Supreme Court idea is weaved into a broader context, say, by focusing on corporations' attempt to control the electoral process, voters might actually respond, especially in a presidential year.

"I think Citizens United sort of started something, and now all of these decisions are building on each other," Lux said.


What Happened In Arizona On Nov. 16, 2010?

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There have been 21 known cases of a Border Patrol agent shooting someone crossing the border illegally — only two have survived.

Jesus Castro Romo

Brad Racino / Investigative Newsource

For Jesus Castro Romo, crossing illegally into the United States from Nogales, Mexico, wasn't supposed to be a big deal: He'd done it more than a dozen times.

Half the time, he'd made it to a job some place just in the interior of Arizona, once as far as Tucson for a few months, where he worked as a gardener. The rest of the time, Customs and Border Protection agents had caught him and promptly released him. "Twenty-four hours," Castro said of his incarceration times in a later deposition.

But in the early morning of Nov. 16, 2010, a routine illegal border crossing went wrong when a Border Patrol agent — a man once paid $4,000 by the drug cartels to wave at least one U-Haul truck full of unknown contraband past a border checkpoint — shot Castro in the back.

Now 42, Castro can't sit, or stand, for long periods of time. Shrapnel from the standard-issue, hollow-point CBP bullet hit his spine, and caused significant internal injuries that have also made it impossible for him to operate his waste hauling business in Nogales.

The border agent who shot him is unlikely to ever face any penalties, let alone jail time. CBP does not keep public databases of cases in which agents used deadly force, and the agency has ignored multiple requests over the last eight months by BuzzFeed for data on such cases. But publicly available data collected by the Southern Borders Community Coalition shows that few people survive armed conflicts with the CBP. In 21 known cases, only two people survived the confrontations: Castro and Jose Gutierrez Guzman, who was beaten into a coma by Border Patrol agents in 2011.

Jesus Castro Romo shows his scar from the the shooting and multiple surgeries thereafter.

Brad Racino / Investigative Newsource

What we know about the Castro shooting, based on law enforcement reports and depositions, is that on the morning of Nov. 16, 2010, Castro and a group of eight or nine other migrants were crossing into the United States in the Walker Canyon area, a few miles west of Nogales, Ariz. The group had set off CBP censors, and Abel Canales and his partner — both of whom were on horse patrol — were dispatched to intercept the group, along with a second group of agents on ATVs.

For Canales, joining the Border Patrol was a way forward. Coming from a Mexican-American family that spent much of its time working horses in the country's western desert, entering the CBP meant a new life with upward mobility, especially with a pregnant girlfriend.

He ended up in the checkpoint on Interstate 19 between Nogales, Ariz., and Tucson, a lonely, gas fume-fused stretch of highway in the middle of nowhere. It's mind-numbing work — checking identification papers, surveying passengers, and deciding which ones will get extra scrutiny and which will get waved through to Tucson and its international airport and easy access to the country's interior.

When the cartels came calling in 2008, Canales took their cash.

According to a later deposition, Canales received $4,000 for allowing a U-Haul through the CBP checkpoint on Oct. 30, 2008. Canales said he took the money because he was in debt for "many thing."

"I had … I don't remember specifically, but I know I was" in debt, Canales said under questioning from Castro's attorney Bill Risner, including owing $15,000 on a pickup truck, cell phone bills, and credit cards. Canales was indicted and later pled guilty on charges stemming from the exchange in 2011.

But in the fall of 2010, he was on horseback.

The migrants, who had been hiking through the desert overnight, saw the federal agents approaching, and turned back, hoping to cross back into Mexico before they were apprehended.

Canales and his partner split up, and eventually Canales caught up with the group. Although he ordered the migrants to halt and lie face down on the ground, Castro and a woman from the group, Liliana Gonzalez Rodriguez, ran south.

Canales brought the rest of the group under control while Castro and Gonzalez made their way down into a ravine that ran toward the border, approximately a mile away. Canales then went after Castro and Gonzalez. Castro continued down the ravine while Gonzalez scrambled up the side into the brush — so Canales went after Castro further into the ravine.

And that's where what we know for sure ends. The details of what happened between that moment and the moment Canales fired a single shot are less clear.


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A Growing Fight Over Same-Sex Marriages Granted In Boulder County, Colo.

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“As things currently stand, nobody can be happy.” The state’s attorney general is locked in a fight against a county clerk.

Suthers

coloradoattorneygeneral.gov

Hall

bouldercounty.org

WASHINGTON — Colorado's attorney general is in a legal standoff with Boulder County officials, where the county clerk has been issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples since June 25.

The state attorney general's office has set a deadline of noon MT Tuesday for a response to a recent proposal that would stop the marriages for now and send the dispute to the Colorado Supreme Court, but the Boulder County officials asked late Monday for that deadline to be delayed until July 10.

The dispute is an unexpected result of the June 25 decision of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals that Utah's ban on same-sex couples' marriages is unconstitutional — and a sign of the growing difficulty that state and local officials could face as court cases remain in limbo during the slow appeals court process.

Boulder County Clerk Hillary Hall consulted with her county attorney on the afternoon of June 25 and decided that the county could legally issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples in Colorado because the 10th Circuit, which includes Colorado, had ruled that marriage is a fundamental right available to same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples alike.

That evening, Colorado Attorney General John Suthers shot back, saying that any such marriages were "invalid" because Colorado's amendment "remains in effect." Hall made clear in press statements, including to BuzzFeed, that she was going to continue issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples despite the attorney general's statement.

Suthers then took another shot at it, with his office sending a letter to Hall's office late on the afternoon of June 27, stating, "As things currently stand, nobody can be happy." In the letter, Solicitor General Dan Domenico put forth "a proposal" that Hall stop issuing marriage licenses and, in exchange, the state would agree "to file a joint petition with you to the Colorado Supreme Court ... seeking expeditious resolution of the question of your authority to issue licenses to same-sex couples."

Domenico also formally stated that the state's position is that the same-sex couples' licenses issued by Hall "are invalid and of no legal effect." He also issued a threat to Hall, stating that agreeing to the proposal by noon July 1 would "obviate the need for us to take any further action regarding your issuance of licenses."

Late Monday, Boulder County Attorney Ben Pearlman responded that Hall "has found one-and-a-half days insufficient for both her office and mine to consider and formulate a response" — noting that the June 27 letter was sent to the county clerk's "generic e-mail box on Friday at 5:07 p.m." The Boulder County officials have asked for the attorney general's office to give them until July 10 to respond.

Pearlman made no reference to the county stopping the issuance of licenses to same-sex couples during that time.


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Labor Department Will Protect Trans Workers From Discrimination Under Current Law

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A long-awaited announcement.

Labor Secretary Tom Perez

Molly Riley, File / AP

WASHINGTON — More than two years after the issue was first raised, the Labor Department on Tuesday announced it "will issue guidance to make clear that discrimination on the basis of transgender status is discrimination based on sex."

The decision follows the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's 2012 decision that sex discrimination prohibited under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act includes discrimination based on transgender status.

Since then, however, the Labor Department had refused to say whether it was applying the ruling in Mia Macy's EEOC case to its own enforcement of the current executive order banning federal contractors from discriminating on the basis of, among other factors, sex. After the department avoided answering or even being questioned about the issue, Labor Secretary Tom Perez said earlier this year that the issue was under review.

Perez announced in a blog post Tuesday, however, that the Labor Department's Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs is responsible for enforcing Executive Order 11246, and it will now be issuing the guidance.

"[W]e are updating enforcement protocols and anti-discrimination guidance to clarify that we provide the full protection of the federal non-discrimination laws that we enforce to transgender individuals," Perez wrote.

In substance, he then explained:

These changes reflect current law. In Macy v. Holder, for example, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission concluded that discrimination because a person is transgender is sex discrimination in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs and Civil Rights Center, along with the Employment and Training Administration, will issue guidance to make clear that discrimination on the basis of transgender status is discrimination based on sex. While the department has long protected employees from sex-based discrimination, its guidance to workers and employers will explicitly clarify that this includes workers who identify as transgender. The department will continue to examine its programs to identify additional opportunities to extend the law's full protection against discrimination to transgender workers.

The announcement came a day after President Obama announced that he had directed his staff to prepare an executive order to ban gender identity-based discrimination in federal employment. It also follows the June 16 announcement from the White House that Obama had asked for an executive order to be drafted that would provide explicit protections to federal contractors from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

CNN Host's Patriotic Man-Breast Trick

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I guess you could say Chris Cuomo did it for the Vine

Here it is, infinity.

Here it is, infinity.

Via vine.co

What's Going With This Photo In Valerie Jarrett's Office?

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An NBC package over the weekend shows an odd display.

"Our Cynthia McFadden was granted unique access and spent a day behind the scenes with Valerie Jarrett at the White House," host David Gregory said introducing the segment.

Here's the video of the segment:

View Video ›

nbcnews.com

Strangely, inside her office is this photo with figures bowing before a picture of Jarrett.

Strangely, inside her office is this photo with figures bowing before a picture of Jarrett.

NBC


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Fox News Host's Insane Definition Of "Beyoncé Voters"

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“They depend on government because they’re not depending on their husbands.”

Fox New host Jessie Waters: "Hillary Clinton needs the single ladies vote. I call them 'The Beyoncé Voters' — the single ladies. Obama won single ladies by 76% last time, and made up about a quarter of the electorate. They depend on government because they're not depending on their husbands. They need contraception, health care, and they love to talk about equal pay."

Fox News / Via foxnews.com

Federal Judge Strikes Down Kentucky Same-Sex Marriage Ban

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Judge Heyburn stayed his ruling, meaning no marriages for now.

Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear (center) and his wife, Jane, are interviewed by "Todd the Intern" before the 140th running of the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky., Saturday, May, 3.

Charles Bertram/Lexington Herald-Leader / MCT

WASHINGTON — Building off his February opinion forcing Kentucky officials to recognize same-sex couples' marriages performed out of state, a federal judge Tuesday ruled that Kentucky must allow same-sex couples to marry in the state.

"The ability to marry in one's state is arguably much more meaningful, to those on both sides of the debate, than the recognition of a marriage performed in another jurisdiction," U.S. District Court Judge John G. Heyburn II wrote. "But it is for that very reason that the Court is all the more confident in its ruling today."

He ruled that "to the extent Ky. Rev. Stat. §§ 402.005 and .020(1)(d) and Section 233A of the Kentucky Constitution deny same-sex couples the right to marry in Kentucky, they violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, and they are void and unenforceable."

He also stayed the order in the trial court "until further order of the Sixth Circuit" — meaning there are no immediate marriages for same-sex couples in Kentucky.

Heyburn ruled in February that Kentucky officials had to recognize the marriages of same-sex couples who had gotten married in states that permit such marriages. The lawyers in the case then brought other claims from same-sex couples who wished to get married in Kentucky, succeeding in intervening in the recognition case to try those claims. Tuesday's ruling is on those claims.

Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear is defending the ban, having appealed the recognition ruling to the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals. The appeals court has scheduled arguments for early August in that case and other similar cases out of Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee.

In reaching his ruling, Heyburn — appointed to then bench in 1992 by President George H.W. Bush — did not take the same path as last week's ruling from the 10th Circuit Court of Appeal. The appeals court decided that the marriage ban in Utah was unconstitutional because it violated due process by infringing on the fundamental right of the couples to marry, but Heyburn found that outcome is "unlikely" to be the one reached by the Supreme Court should it decide the issue. He wrote:

Since the Supreme Court's landmark decision in United States v. Windsor, 133 S.Ct. 2675 (2013), every federal court to consider state bans on same-sex marriage and recognition has declared them unconstitutional. Most of these courts have done so under both the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. This Court's opinion differs in that it does not determine whether Kentucky's laws interfere with a fundamental right. The Court's chief reason for declining to do so is its careful reading of Windsor, which suggests that the Supreme Court is unwilling and unlikely to view the right Plaintiffs seek to exercise as fundamental under the Constitution.

Heyburn did conclude, however, "that the Commonwealth's exclusion of same- sex couples from civil marriage violates the Equal Protection Clause."

Read the opinion:


7 U.S. Presidents Awkwardly Interacting With Soccer Balls

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The awkward interaction with piece of sporting equipment is a presidential past time.

Richard Nixon

Richard Nixon

Nixon Presidential Library / Via facebook.com

Gerald Ford

Gerald Ford

U.S. National Archives

Ronald Reagan

Ronald Reagan

Ronald Reagan Presidential Library

George H.W. Bush

George H.W. Bush

George H.W. Bush Presidential Library / Via facebook.com


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The Weirdest Conceivable Twist In The Fight Over Washington's NFL Team Name

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Eight years ago, one of Virginia’s most prominent liberal bloggers convinced America “macaca” was racist. Now he’s in charge of convincing America “Redskins” isn’t.

The macaca tape.

Via youtube.com

WASHINGTON — Last week, the Washington Redskins hired an unusual defender for the team's beleaguered name: the man who famously sunk George Allen's political career with a video of the Republican senator using the word "macaca."

Ben Tribbett, a blogger who first found and then promoted the video of Allen calling a Virginia man "macaca," joined the front office of the Washington Redskins and owner Dan Snyder's team of consultants and paid staff who are defending the NFL franchise's name.

The effort also brings Tribbett on the same team as Allen, whose brother, Bruce, is the Redskins' general manager. Tribbett won't talk about Allen or what exactly he plans to do to defend the Redskins' name, but he argues his new job is consistent with his long-held belief that the name "Redskins" is neither racist nor divisive.

The critics are only a small number of "well-intentioned" elites, Tribbett told BuzzFeed, "who are not Native American, by the way." On D.C. sports radio Monday, Tribbett dismissed the concerns over the team's nickname as "a PC campaign."

"It's something that's been around in our lexicon for, you know, 70 years, and it's primarily as a football thing," Tribbett told BuzzFeed. "The only people who get called Redskins are football players."

Tribbett is dismissive of those who say "Redskins" has any racially charged negative connotation.

"They don't have the support behind it," he said. "That's why they're resorting to these tactics of comparing it to the n-word or things like that that are horrible. Because they're not winning the debate. They're not winning over the public with this."

Football for many Northern Virginians like Tribbett runs very, very deep and the Redskins may be the only thing besides traffic that unites the three parts — Maryland, Virginia, and Washington — of the D.C. area. The team's regional fan base remains united behind the embattled nickname, Tribbett insists, and said the pressure to change it smacks of outside interference in matters that should be local.

But many progressives in Virginia who followed Tribbett for years are "appalled," one prominent liberal voice in the commonwealth told BuzzFeed.

"You've got overlapping priorities" in Virginia, said Catherine Read, Northern Virginia-based progressive political fixture and an Equality Virginia board member who thinks the nickname is racist. "It's a religion for some people here."

"I don't think Ben is coming at this from political correctness," she added. "He's coming at it as a fan."

"Maybe he's playing 3D chess, like in Star Trek," one prominent liberal said, wondering aloud how the man who surfaced "macaca" can square his new gig with his past. "Or maybe he's full of shit."

In August 2006, as detailed extensively in the book Netroots Rising, Tribbett got what would be the first ever major "tracker video." Then an anonymous blogger writing under the name Not Larry Sabato — a crack at the political prognosticator based at the University Of Virginia — Tribbett called up the campaign staff of Allen's Democratic challenger, Jim Webb, and told them he knew they had a recording of Allen mocking a Democratic staffer dispatched to follow Allen on the campaign trail. On the tape, Allen pointed to the Democrat, an American of Indian descent named S.R. Sidarth, called him "macaca" and added, "Welcome to America."

In the aftermath of Webb's defeat of Allen, "tracker" became a term of art, and a necessary hire for any candidate. In a sense, every opposition researcher everywhere hopes to be the one to shop the next "macaca." It's a moment that's often imitated but rarely recreated.

Another and, just as key, legacy of the "macaca" scandal was the requisite argument about a gaffe's intent that goes with any similar political scandal these days. No one had really heard the word before, and after Allen said it there was a lively debate about whether or not the word was racist or even an insult. Allen and his allies first said it was a nonsense word, made up by the Republicans, and the first AP stories said it was a term for monkey. Even Tribbett didn't know what it was, spelling it "makkhah" in his first post. Eventually, Allen's critics found the word "macaca" used as a slur against dark-skinned people in Francophone northern Africa, tied that to the years Allen's mother lived in Tunisia, and eventually proclaimed that he must have heard it from her (she denied the charge). Years after the election, Allen apologized for "macaca," saying he "singled out" Sidarth by "calling him a name."

One of the loudest voices insisting the controversial term "macaca" was a racist attack: Tribbett.

"I've been arguing for two weeks on here that Macaca is a racial slur," he wrote in an Aug. 27, 2006 post about a Democratic candidate who he heard "made an offensive joke to a group of Muslims."

"Racial slurs are not funny things to joke about," he added.

Tribbett shut down Not Larry Sabato not long after taking the job with the NFL team. Archived pages show he was dismissive of those who thought Allen's crack was anything other than racially charged.

But Tribbett has been a staunch advocate of the Redskins name for a long time, leading to vigorous debate with followers. Tribbett says strange bedfellows are par for the course.

"There's all sorts of political issues all the time where there are people of different political views who are on the same side of a political issue," he said. "Weird? No, I've been on the same side of probably everyone in Virginia politics at some point on some issue."

In an interview, he kept pointing to a belief that average Americans aren't offended by the name and want to keep it, while a cadre of elitists bent on scoring a victory for political correctness based in ignorance want to destroy it. He used the widely derided "#RedskinsPride" campaign to illustrate the point. While on Twitter, the hashtag was quickly hijacked by opponents of the name, on Facebook, the hashtag was a rousing success for the franchise. Tribbett chalked up the difference to regular fans on Facebook against the more elitist anti-team name crowd on Twitter.

"I'm very confident than when people get all the facts behind this, they'll support the Redskins. The vast majority," he said. "The big fact is the history of the team, and we'll go out and talk about this more as the [campaign] goes on ... We're going to bring out a full history of the team, the meaning of the word 'Redskins,' what people perceive it is."

Tribbett is more than comfortable going from the man who made "macaca" a thing to the man trying to make sure "Redskins" isn't. But the Democrats who joined him in the political trenches in 2006 are scratching their heads.

"It's just sad that someone with a such long tradition of supporting Virginia Democrats and progressive causes can turn around and become a part of the Dan Snyder and Allen family regime to defend a racist team name," said a Democratic veteran of Virginia politics and commonwealth native now working on the national stage. "What does he really believe in?"

youtube.com

Federal Appeals Court Says Indiana Must Recognize Terminally Ill Woman's Same-Sex Marriage

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An emergency order protecting Amy Sandler and Niki Quasney.

In this 2011 photo is Amy Sandler, right, and her wife Niki Quasney in Munster, Ind.

AP Photo/Sun-Times Media, Jeffrey D. Nicholls

WASHINGTON — In a two-sentence order, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals has ordered Indiana officials to recognize the marriage of a same-sex couple in which one of the women faces a terminal illness.

The same three-judge panel that halted Indiana marriages this past Friday issued Tuesday's order ordering the recognition of Amy Sandler and Nikole Quasney's marriage.

"IT IS ORDERED that the motion is GRANTED. The appellants are ORDERED to recognize the validity of the 2013 marriage between appellees Amy Sandler and Nikole Quasney on an emergency basis pending further order of the court," the court ordered.

Quasney has battled stage four ovarian cancer since 2009, and is no longer receiving treatment, according to the couple's attorneys at Lambda Legal. The Munster, Ind. couple, who raise two children, married in Massachusetts last year and have been together for 13 years.

Earlier, in April and May, a federal trial court judge had issued a temporary restraining order and then a preliminary injunction ordering the recognition of the couple's marriage. Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller and state officials are appealing that ruling to the 7th Circuit.

Although the 7th Circuit is considering the various marriage and marriage recognition cases together on appeal, Sandler and Quasner asked the 7th Circuit to lift the stay just as to them because of Quasney's illness. Earlier Tuesday, Zoeller's office filed a response opposing the emergency request to recognize the couple's marriage, but issued a statement asking the court to issue relief to the couple if the court could do so.

"The State has extensively researched this matter and sincerely wishes it found a provision within our State's statutes that would allow for some extraordinary relief, or humanitarian exception to the rule of law that would grant what petitioners request," Zoeller said in the statement. "If this Court can find an exception that would apply, this circumstance surely warrants its use."


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Mexico Hails U.S. Court Decision Opening U.S. Border Patrol Up To Lawsuits In Cross-Border Shootings

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Since 2010, Border Patrol agents have shot six Mexican nationals across the border without legal repercussions.

Families members of Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez, who was killed by Border Patrol agents in 2012, attend a vigil in Nogales, Mexico.

john stanton, buzzfeed

WASHINGTON — The Mexican government Tuesday praised a 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that Mexican citizens shot by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents across the border can bring claims in U.S. courts.

The ruling, on a 2010 shooting of a 15-year-old boy in Cuidad Juarez, Mexico, by a Border Patrol agent standing in El Paso, Texas, could have significant repercussions across the country's southern border, which has seen cross-border shootings during the Obama administration's enforcement effort.

"Mexico welcomes the Court's finding that 'a noncitizen injured outside the United States as a result of arbitrary official conduct by a law enforcement officer located in the United States may invoke the protections provided by the 5th amendment,' for the purposes of monetary reparation," the Mexican Embassy in Washington said in a statement.

The embassy also praised the court's rationale in its decision that "Border Patrol agents are not free 'to move in and out of constitutional strictures, creating zones of lawlessness.'"

Since 2010, six Mexican nationals have been shot by CBP while still inside Mexico, including Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez, a 16-year-old resident of Nogales, Mexico, who was shot in the back by CBP agents while he walked down the street in October 2012.

Monday's decision by the 5th Circuit is a significant departure from previous court rulings. Federal attorneys have previously insisted that while the shots may have originated in the United States, because the harm — in most cases death — occurred in Mexico, they were not covered by the U.S. Constitution and therefore the families of victims did not have standing. Courts have typically accepted this rationale, over protests from activists, families, and the Mexican government.

Although Department of Justice attorneys, who are tasked with defending CBP in cross border shooting cases, have, according to sources familiar with the situation, been long uncomfortable with that defense, the department remained tight-lipped on Tuesday.

Because of the on going litigation, a DOJ spokesperson Tuesday would only say, "We are reviewing the judge's decision."

LINK: What Happened In Arizona On Nov. 16, 2010?

19 Dorky Things You Will Only See At The Congressional Baseball Game

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