[JURIST] The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit [official website] on Tuesday upheld [decision, PDF] a San Francisco city ordinance passed in July 2006 that assists in the health care of nearly 73,000 uninsured workers and residents. The San Francisco Health Care Security Ordinance [text] requires all "covered employers" to pay up to a certain amount of medical care for certain employees. In November 2006, the Golden Gate Restaurant Association (GGRA) [advocacy website] filed a complaint against the city, complaining that the ordinance was preempted by section 514(a) of the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) [text], which says that ERISA provisions supersede any state law relating to any employee benefit plan governed by ERISA. A district court judge in December agreed, entering judgment [text, PDF] for GGRA. The Ninth Circuit reversed, holding:

[T]he Ordinance does not regulate benefits or charges for benefits provided by ERISA plans. Its only influence is on the employer who, because of the Ordinance, may choose to make its required health care expenditures to an ERISA plan rather than to the City...The [Ordinance's] spending requirements do not establish an ERISA plan; nor do they have an impermissible connection with employers' ERISA plans, or make an impermissible reference to such plans.

[JURIST] A group of news organizations filed a lawsuit in federal district court Monday to challenge the constitutionality of a Minnesota statute [text] restricting access to polling places. The Associated Press and several television networks brought suit in US District Court for the District of Minnesota [official website], alleging that the law violates their rights under the First Amendment [LII backgrounder] and asking the court to enjoin its enforcement as applied to exit polling. The statute, titled "Lingering near polling place," prohibits anyone other than an election official or prospective voter from standing within 100 feet of a building that houses a polling place. An earlier version of the law [text], which was amended in April, applied within 100 feet of the entrance to a polling place, defined as "the room or area where voting is occurring." An attorney for the news organizations said the law would prevent exit polling "with any kind of accuracy and reliability," describing the restriction as the broadest of its kind in the country. AP has more. From Minneapolis, the Star Tribune has local coverage.

The Congressional Research Service performed a legal analysis [text, PDF] after the 2000 presidential election, when media had projected that Vice President Al Gore had won Florida before the polls had actually closed. The study group concluded that Congress could not constitutionally prohibit exit polling, and the analysis suggested that "Congress, could, however, ban voter solicitation within a certain distance from a polling place, and might be able to include exit polling within such a ban." A number of federal courts have struck down restrictions on exit polling [RCFP backgrounder], including a Minnesota statute that prohibited reporters from questioning voters about ballot issues.

[JURIST] London's High Court of Justice on Tuesday struck down [judgment text, PDF] an immigration policy that has prevented thousands of retired Nepalese members of the British Army from remaining in the UK. Earlier this month, five former members of the Brigade of Gurkhas [official website; BBC backgrounder] and one Gurkha widow argued [JURIST report] that they were precluded from settling within the UK by a discretionary policy laid out for immigration officers in Diplomatic Service Procedures: Entry Clearance Volume 1 General Instructions [Chapter 29.4 text]. Declaring that the discretionary instructions are "unlawful and need urgent revisiting," Justice Blake ruled:

Transparency and clarity are significant requirements of instructions to immigration and entry clearance officers that are published to the world at large, generate expectations of fair treatment and bind appellate bodies in the performance of their statutory functions. The policy under challenge in this case either irrationally excluded material and potentially decisive considerations that the context and the stated purpose of the policy indicate should have been included; alternatively, it was so ambiguous as to the expression of its scope as to mislead applicants, entry clearance officers and immigration judges alike as to what was a sufficient reason to substantiate a discretionary claim to settlement here.

[R]ewarding long and distinguished service by the grant of residence in the country for which the service was performed would, in my judgment, be a vindication and an enhancement of [the Military Covenant].

[JURIST] The Lebanese Parliament [official website, in Arabic] on Monday approved a new election law as part of a peace deal between pro- and anti-Syrian groups within the country. Many of the provisions included in the law, which guarantees candidates equal airtime and imposes a 24 hour ban on media coverage and a 10 day ban on political polling before an election, were designed to permit limited media coverage of elections. There will also be a fixed limit placed on candidates' campaign expenditures, election districts will be expanded, and the vote-casting period will shortened to one day under the new law. Provisions to lower the country's voting age to 18, guarantee women parliamentary seats, and provide for absentee ballots for citizens abroad were dropped before approval. Despite the law's purported aim of modernizing the country's election protocols, critics have said it does not go far enough [Daily Star op-ed] to balance control and influence of Lebanese politics. BBC News has more. From Lebanon, the Daily Star has local coverage.

In August, Lebanon [JURIST news archive] charged [JURIST report] Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi [official website; JURIST news archive] and six other officials with the 1978 disappearance of a prominent Lebanese cleric and issued warrants for their arrests. In January 2007, the Lebanese government sought to amend [JURIST report] the county's constitution [text, in French]  to allow Gen. Michel Suleiman [Xinhua report] to replace former Lebanon leader Emile Lahoud, who left office [JURIST report] at the end of his term on November 23 without a successor in place.

[JURIST] Leaders from Thailand's ruling People Power Party (PPP) said on Tuesday that the PPP plans to introduce amendments to the country's 2007 constitution [PDF text], despite likely opposition. A spokesperson for the government said that in forming a new committee [Bangkok Post report] to draft the changes, the ruling coalition would seek input from both professional experts and members of the opposition party, the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD). Proponents of the plan argue that the changes, including giving more authority to elected officials and less to Thailand's courts, are necessary to provide for stronger democratic rule of the country. Opponents of the plan support strong judicial oversight provisions in the current charter, and argue that the PPP is too closely connected with former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra [BBC profile; JURIST news archive] who was ousted by military coup [JURIST report] in 2006, largely due to allegations of corruption. AFP has more.

On Monday, the country's Election Commission (EC) [official website, in Thai] said it would begin an investigation [Bangkok post report] into allegations that current prime minister Somchai Wongsawat [Nation backgrounder] illegally holds stocks in certain companies. Under the Thai constitution, public officials are prohibited from having stock in either telecommunications or media companies, or companies that receive government contracts. The investigation of Somchai comes less than a month after the Constitutional Court of Thailand [official website, in Thai] ousted then-prime-minister Samak Sundaravej [BBC profile; JURIST news archive] for violating the country's constitution by receiving payment for an appearance on a television cooking show [SkyNews report, with video]. Last week, Samak also lost an appeal [JURIST report] he had made against a 2006 defamation conviction.

Earlier this month, the EC voted to recommend [Bangkok Post report; JURIST report] that the PPP be disbanded for election fraud [Bangkok Post report] allegedly committed by one of its top officers. On the same day, Samak imposed a State of Emergency in Bangkok, prohibiting public gatherings and the incitement of protests in reaction to demonstrations [Bangkok Post reports] by both pro and anti-government protesters. PAD members have also protested [JURIST report] delays in Thaksin's various corruption trials, and the National Counter Corruption Commission (NCCC) [official website] said that it may bring more charges against Thaksin without waiting for the Office of the Attorney General [official website, in Thai] to file additional indictments.

[JURIST] Members of the UN Security Council [official website] approved a resolution Monday to extend the terms of some judges serving on the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) [official website] to allow them to complete their assigned cases. The resolution, which was unanimously approved, will extend the terms of four Appeals Chamber judges to the end of 2010 and the terms of 10 Trial Chamber judges, 14 temporary judges now serving on the tribunal and another 13 temporary judges not currently serving on the tribunal to the end of 2009. This resolution complements a February resolution [Res. 1800 text; JURIST report] authorizing Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to appoint four additional judges to the ICTY in an effort to try all defendants by the end of 2008. The UN News Centre has more.

Under the ICTY's completion strategy [ICTY materials], all trials are to finish this year, and all appeals are scheduled to conclude by the end of 2010. In 2005, ICTY officials expressed concern [JURIST report] that the ICTY would miss the 2008 deadline to wrap up all of the criminal trials, blaming Serbian, Bosnian and Croatian leaders for failing to turn over key fugitives.

[JURIST] Former CIA executive director Kyle Foggo [JURIST news archive] pleaded guilty Monday in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia to one count of wire fraud [18 USC s. 1343 text] relating to charges that he accepted bribes in return for granting federal defense contracts. Foggo was originally indicted [text, PDF; JURIST report] in February 2007 on charges of conspiracy, wire fraud, and money laundering in connection with allegations that his friend and defense contractor Brent Wilkes [Newsweek profile] gave him gifts and promised him a job in return for the granting of CIA defense contracts. In May 2008 the indictment was amended [indictment, PDF] to include counts of conflict of interest and additional counts of fraud, but following Foggo's guilty plea Monday, prosecutors agreed to drop the other charges against him. Foggo could face up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, but the prosecutors said they will recommend a jail sentence of no longer than 37 months. Sentencing is scheduled for January 8. The Washington Post has more. The New York Times has additional coverage.

In November 2007, Wilkes was convicted [JURIST report] of 13 felonies, including money laundering, fraud, and conspiracy, in connection with bribes he paid to former congressman Randy Cunningham [official profile]. Both Wilkes and Foggo came under investigation when Cunningham pleaded guilty in 2005 [JURIST report] to taking $2.4 million in bribes in return for federal contracts.

[JURIST] The All Party Parliamentary Group on Extraordinary Rendition (APPG) [official website] released a legal opinion [text, PDF] on Monday which examines UK governmental liability under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) [text, PDF] and the UK Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA) [text] for its participation in the CIA extraordinary rendition [JURIST news archive] program. The opinion states that a human rights violation under both the ECHR and the HRA would occur where "an individual in British detention in Iraq is handed over to US military personnel despite substantial grounds for considering that there is a real risk of that person being subjected to torture or inhuman and degrading treatment." The opinion also determined that US assurances that suspects handed over by the UK would not be tortured would not be sufficient to absolve the UK of its obligations under the ECHR and the HRA:

The United States Government has registered reservations to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention Against Torture stipulating that it considers itself bound by the prohibition of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment only to the extent that it is prohibited by the Fifth, Eighth and/or Fourteenth Amendments to the US Constitution and, moreover, the reservation also sets out a definition of torture that is narrower than that accepted by courts in the United Kingdom (in particular, in referring to an act intended to inflict severe physical pain and suffering). An undertaking not to engage in inhuman and degrading treatment or torture would not therefore necessarily be sufficient to discharge the United Kingdom’s obligations under the ECHR. ... The US military, which would be responsible for the detention of detainees handed-over by the British military authorities, are known to have applied “enhanced interrogation techniques” to those within their custody believed to have intelligence value. These techniques are capable of amounting to inhuman and degrading treatment and torture in domestic law. In A (No. 2), Lord Hope, in considering what conduct is capable of amounting to torture, stated that some of the interrogation techniques authorized for use in Guantanamo Bay, “would shock the conscience if they were ever to be authorized for use in our own country” (A (No.2) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [...]. Lord Bingham stated that the interrogation techniques used by British authorities in Northern Ireland during the troubles, which were categorized as “inhuman and degrading” by the ECtHR in Ireland v United Kingdom (1978) 2 EHRR 25, would today be regarded as torture [...]

[JURIST] The US Senate voted Saturday to approve spending legislation [H.R. 2638 text, PDF] approving the expiration of a Congressional moratorium on offshore oil drilling [JURIST news archive]. The spending bill, known as the Consolidated Security, Disaster Assistance, and Continuing Appropriations Act, was approved in the Senate by a vote of 78-12 [roll call vote]. The moratorium, first enacted in 1982 as the Outer Continental Shelf Moratorium, denied the US Department of the Interior [official website] the funds to pursue oil and natural gas exploration off of the US Pacific and Atlantic coasts. The expiration of the moratorium via the Senate vote follows a House of Representatives vote two weeks ago passing a comprehensive energy bill [H.R. 6899, PDF] that would partially lift the offshore oil drilling ban [JURIST report]. The House bill would authorize drilling activities 50 miles beyond the Pacific or Atlantic coastlines, part of the 85 percent of US coastal waters which have been off-limits for drilling since 1981. The Washington Post has more.

In July, President George W. Bush lifted an executive ban on offshore oil drilling [JURIST report] put in place during his father's presidential administration. In June, Bush called on Congress to relax restrictions on oil exploration [statement text; JURIST report], saying that it should also allow drilling to begin in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge [official website] in Alaska. Bush argued that resources currently off-limits to energy companies could offset rising fuel prices. Environmental organizations have criticized efforts to expand oil drilling [WWF report] in the Arctic, calling for increased research into energy conservation and renewable resources instead. Critics have also said that offshore development will require several years and a massive infrastructure that could impact local wildlife.