Florida could soon be the only state where a judge could override a jury’s recommendation for a life sentence and give the death penalty instead, under proposed legislation to recraft Florida’s capital punishment system.

In identical bills filed by Rep. Berny Jacques, R-Seminole, and Sen. Blaise Ingoglia, R-Spring Hill, the legislation proposes that “notwithstanding the recommendation of the jury,” the court can “enter a sentence of life imprisonment or death.”

The language is nearly identical to Florida’s previous statute, which allowed judicial override until 2016, when the Legislature reworked the statute following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that said judges had too much power, instead of juries, when it came to the death penalty.

Along with opening the door for judicial override again, the bill proposes doing away with requiring unanimous jury verdicts for a death penalty sentence, lowering the threshold to an 8-4 majority.

Alabama, the only state that currently has a nonunanimous jury sentencing requirement, has a 10-2 threshold; it abolished its judicial override provision in 2017.

Steve Vladeck
@steve_vladeck
The Fifth Circuit strikes again:

Unanimous panel (Jones, Ho, Wilson) strikes down the federal statute prohibiting possession of firearms while subject to a domestic violence-related restraining order; holds it violates the Second Amendment under Bruen:

https://assets.nationbuilder.com/firearmspolicyfoundation/pages/3970/attachments/original/1675361904/United_States_v_Rahimi_Opinion.pdf

(Reuters) - West Virginia's only abortion clinic and the clinic's primary doctor on Wednesday filed a lawsuit challenging the near-total abortion ban passed by the state last year, saying it violates patients' constitutional rights.

In their complaint in the Charleston, West Virginia federal court, Women's Health Center of West Virginia and the doctor, identified as John Doe, are asking the court for an immediate order blocking enforcement of the law while the case goes forward.

It names officials of the West Virginia Board of Medicine, which oversees the practice of medicine in the state and is tasked with enforcing the law, as defendants.

"We are ready to defend West Virginia's abortion law to the fullest," West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, a Republican, said in a statement.

Wednesday's lawsuit argues that these restrictions violate the clinic's and patients' right to due process under the U.S. Constitution by imposing "irrational" barriers to medical treatment. It said there is no medical basis for imposing restrictions on abortion when there are no such restrictions on other, riskier procedures.

The lawsuit states that, under the law's own language, if any provision is unconstitutional, the entire law must be struck down.

Incoming University of Florida President Ben Sasse will be greeted by protestors Monday afternoon outside the school's administration building as he officially takes the helm of the top-5 public university.

In a press release announcing the protest, which is planned for 2 p.m. outside Tigert Hall at 300 SW 13th St., the coalition of UF students, faculty, staff, alumni and community members are demanding that Sasse commits to a series of initiatives.

MADISON - A conservative law firm based in Wisconsin is suing the Biden administration over a rule that puts new regulations on stabilizing braces, arguing the measure violates the Second Amendment and usurps legislative authority.

Attorney General Merrick Garland announced in 2021 the U.S. Justice Department would tighten regulations on stabilizing braces for firearms like the one used in a shooting in a Boulder, Colorado, grocery store that left 10 people dead. The rule, implemented this month, aimed to make clear a device marketed as a stabilizing brace, which DOJ argues effectively allows a pistol to operate as a short-barreled rifle, is subject to the requirements of the National Firearms Act, according to Garland.

Attorneys with the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, representing three Marine veterans in the lawsuit, argue the Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives bureau of the DOJ created an illegal rule.

"The new rule unlawfully usurps Congressional authority by significantly expanding the definition of 'rifle' under federal law and, with it, imposes potential criminal liability on millions of Americans exercising their Second Amendment rights," the complaint says. Attorneys argue "such a dramatic seizure of legislative authority" violates the Second Amendment and illegally encroaches on legislative powers.

With GOP hostility toward Biden's agenda and signs of hyperpartisanship in the Senate, he's so far largely avoided potential blue-slip fights by nominating circuit court judges — who sit on one of 13 courts that hear challenges of district court decisions and whose nominations do not require blue slips to advance — and district court judges in states represented by his party. A senator can derail an aspiring federal judge simply by refusing to return the slip.

Democrats confirmed 28 circuit court judges and 68 district court judges in Biden's first two years. Of the district court judges, the majority were in states with Democratic senators and only one nominee was confirmed in a state with two Republican senators: Iowa.

"President Biden's gonna have a tougher time filling district court slots over the next two years because he's already picked the low-hanging fruit of filling district court slots with two Democrat home state senators," said Mike Davis, who previously served as chief counsel for nominations to former Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican.

Biden, a former Judiciary Committee chair himself, could continue to prioritize and appoint judges in Democratic-led states, which he's widely anticipated to do. But if Democrats want to make good on their promise of restoring balance to the courts, experts say they must place judges in red states, where there are currently 28 open district court seats, including in Texas, Florida, Idaho and Wyoming. The sole pending nomination for those vacancies is in Mississippi.

"The real difference will come when you replace the Republican appointees with a Democrat who has very different experience and different views ideologically," Tobias said. "[Biden] needs to get more of those."

On the first day of Black History Month, Gov. Ron DeSantis was the focus when Miami-Dade County’s Black Affairs Advisory Board convened in downtown Miami Wednesday.

“Our governor is racist,” said Stephen Hunter Johnson, a Miami lawyer and one of two dozen volunteer board members. “He is using Black America, and Black Floridians, as a political football.”

The board has no formal power in Miami-Dade government but serves as the county’s unofficial sounding board for issues and challenges facing Black residents. Items discussed at Wednesday’s meeting included the use of specialized police units in Miami-Dade similar to the one responsible for the death of Tyre Nichols in Memphis, and what position the board should take on bail reform.

With more than a dozen members attending, the February meeting offered a cross section of the mood of Black leaders from Miami-Dade to a pair of controversies sparked by DeSantis as he prepares for a possible presidential run in 2024.

The meeting began with a discussion on the DeSantis administration’s blocking of an optional African American Studies high-school course over inclusion of readings on the Black Lives Matter political movement and on the topic of “Black Queer Theory.”

(Reuters) - A federal judge on Tuesday blocked a New Jersey law authorizing the state's attorney general to sue gun manufacturers and sellers for endangering public safety, finding it ran afoul of a federal law protecting the gun industry from such claims.

The preliminary order by U.S. District Judge Zahid Quraishi in Trenton, New Jersey, means the law cannot be enforced while the judge considers a legal challenge by the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), a gun industry group. It comes a day after a different judge struck down parts of a separate gun control measure in the state.

"NSSF wholeheartedly welcomes this decision," said Mark Oliva, a spokesperson for the group.

A spokesperson for New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy said the governor was disappointed and confident the order would be reversed on appeal.

The now-blocked law, passed last June in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling expanding gun rights, allows the state attorney general to bring lawsuits accusing gun manufactures and sellers of creating a "public nuisance" that endangers health and safety - for example, through dangerous marketing or failing to prevent illegal trafficking.

ST. LOUIS (AP) — Attorneys general in 20 conservative-led states warned CVS and Walgreens on Wednesday that they could face legal consequences if they sell abortion pills by mail in those states.

A letter from Republican Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey to the nation's largest pharmacy-dispensing companies was co-signed by 19 other attorneys general, warning that sale of abortion pills would violate federal law and abortion laws in many states. Missouri is among states that implemented strict abortion prohibitions last summer after the Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade.

Bailey didn't specify what legal action he would take if the pharmacies begin selling abortion pills to Missourians by mail.

“I will enforce the laws as written," Bailey said in a statement in response to questions from The Associated Press. "That includes laws protecting the health of women and their unborn children. The FDA rule is in direct violation of federal law, and the unelected bureaucrats at the FDA have no authority to change Missouri law, either. The people’s elected representatives have spoken on the issue of abortion in our state, and we will fight to uphold that in court.”

Nineteen states have imposed restrictions on abortion pills, but there’s a court battle over whether they have the power to do so in defiance of U.S. Food and Drug Administration policy. A physician and a company that makes the pill mifepristone filed separate lawsuits last month seeking to strike down bans in North Carolina and West Virginia.

When President Joe Biden nominated William Pocan to a vacant federal judgeship in Wisconsin in December 2021, the state’s senior senator, Republican Ron Johnson, shouldn’t have been surprised. A few months earlier, Johnson, along with the state’s Democratic senator, Tammy Baldwin, had submitted Pocan’s name to Biden, along with three others, for consideration to fill that vacancy.

“These candidates were among those selected by a bipartisan commission that we established to screen applicants,” he and Baldwin wrote in a letter to the White House. “We are pleased to recommend them to you,”

But then, Johnson changed his tune, effectively freezing Pocan’s nomination in February 2022 using a Senate tradition known as “blue slips”—literal blue slips of paper that senators must return to the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Illinois Democrat Dick Durbin, to signal their support for a committee vote on a home-state district court nominee. Despite recommending Pocan for the position, Johnson withheld his blue slip, and Pocan’s nomination expired at the end of the previous Senate.

Earlier this year, when Biden renominated those whose nominations had lapsed, Pocan’s name wasn’t on that list. If Pocan had been confirmed, he would have been the first openly gay federal judge in Wisconsin’s history. Now, he won’t be a judge at all.