Supreme Court to rule in voter equality case News
Supreme Court to rule in voter equality case

The US Supreme Court [official website] agreed Tuesday to rule in a major voter equality case, noting jurisdiction [order list, PDF] in Evenwel v. Abbott [docket; jurisdictional statement, PDF]. The question presented is: “whether the ‘one-person, one-vote’ principle of the Fourteenth Amendment creates a judicially enforceable right ensuring that the districting process does not deny voters an equal vote.” The case concerns Texas’ redistricting scheme. A three-judge panel for the US District Court for the Western District of Texas dismissed [opinion, PDF] the voters’ claims that their votes would count less than if they were in other districts.

The court also granted certiorari in two cases Tuesday. In Foster v. Humphrey [docket; cert. petition, PDF] the court will decide whether the “Georgia courts err[ed] in failing to recognize race discrimination … in the extraordinary circumstances of this death penalty case.” The case involves a black defendant and a white victim. The state of Georgia struck all four black prospective jurors, and the prosecution’s notes later revealed that the prospective jurors had been identified and labeled as black. The Georgia courts found no race discrimination.

In Lockhart v. United States [docket; cert. petition, PDF] the court will consider 18 USC § 2252(b)(2) [text], which requires a district court to impose a prison term of at least 10 years on a defendant convicted of possessing child pornography if he “has a prior conviction … under the laws of any State relating to aggravated sexual abuse, sexual abuse, or abusive sexual conduct involving a minor or ward.” The question presented is: “whether § 2252(b)(2)’s mandatory minimum sentence is triggered by a prior conviction under a state law relating to ‘aggravated sexual abuse’ or ‘sexual abuse,’ even though the conviction did not “involv[e] a minor or ward.'” The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit found “that § 2252(b)(2) does not require that a prior state‐law aggravated sexual abuse or sexual abuse conviction involve a minor.” There is a circuit split on the issue.

THIS DAY @ LAW

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail

On April 16, 1963, an incarcerated Martin Luther King, Jr. (arrested for demonstrating in defiance of a court order) wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail in response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama.

Part of the letter read: We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. Read the full text of the Letter.

Former communist countries admitted for EU accession

On April 16, 2003, the 2003 Treaty of Accession was signed by 10 countries, admitting them for European Union (EU) ascension. After Malta and Cyprus, eight of the ten new EU nations (Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) were former communist countries. The signing of the treaty in Athens marked the first time that former members of the Soviet Bloc joined the EU.

Learn more about EU expansion from the organization's website.

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