Many of the laws passed by the Indiana legislature and signed by Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) during the first half of the year take effect today, and while the law that defunds the state chapters of Planned Parenthood was blocked by a federal judge last week, another controversial law that likely could not withstand judicial muster did go on the books today. SEA 86, signed into law in April, requires unemployed workers to submit to a drug test in order to collect unemployment benefits. A person who fails the test or refuses to take it “is considered to have refused an offer of suitable work”:

Requires that a drug test used for unemployment purposes be performed at a United States Department of Health and Human Services certified laboratory, with specimen collection performed by a collector certified by the United States Department of Transportation, and that the cost of the drug test be paid by the employer. Provides that an individual is considered to have refused an offer of suitable work if the individual: (1) tests positive for drugs after; or (2) refuses without good cause to submit to; a drug test required by a prospective employer as a condition of an offer of employment. Specifies the conditions under which a drug test is positive for purposes of the unemployment insurance system.

The law is similar to one passed earlier this year in Florida that requires recipients of welfare benefits to pass a drug test. When that law passed, the American Civil Liberties Union promptly filed a lawsuit challenging its constitutionality. As UCLA law professor Adam Winkler explained at the time, the ACLU suit likely will succeed in court:

Random drug testing is what is known as a “suspicion-less” search. Even without probable cause to believe the person required to pee in a cup has done anything wrong, he or she is forced to turn over bodily fluids for government inspection.

Winkler notes that while the Supreme Court has “in a few limited circumstances” approved the use of random drug tests, they have primarily involved either public safety concerns or the drug testing of high school athletes, even though the Court “generally frowns” on the testing of students.

Though the Florida and Indiana laws involve different programs, they are consistent in that they require drug testing without probable cause for access to a government program, and courts have repeatedly struck down these types of policies.

At a time when hundreds of thousands of Hoosiers remain unemployed, the state should be doing everything it can to assist jobless workers. Instead, legislators are attempting prevent workers from accessing benefits with a law that is likely unconstitutional. Unfortunately, in Indiana, that’s hardly shocking.

Earlier this week, Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) revealed that several senators are studying whether the debt ceiling may be unconstitutional, thus giving President Obama the ability to declare it so and save the nation from a crippling economic disaster if Republicans fail to raise our debt limit. An interview with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner suggests that the Administration may already be considering this option. Last month, Geitner suggested to Politico’s Mike Allen that the Debt Ceiling violates the Fourteenth Amendment:

ALLEN: You’ve been clear about the risk in not acting on the debt ceiling. Do you think Members of Congress get that?

GEITHNER: I think the leadership absolutely understands it. I think the vast bulk of Congress understands it completely. I think there are some people that are pretending not to understand it, who think there is leverage for them in threatening a default.

I don’t understand it as a negotiating position. I mean, really, think about it, you’re going to say that, uh, can I read you the Fourteenth Amendment. . . . “the validity of the public debt of the United States authorized by law including debts incurred for the payments of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection and rebellion”—this is the important thing—“shall not be questioned.” So, as a negotiating strategy, you’re going to go say, “if you don’t do things my way, I’m going to force the United States to default—not pay the legacy of bills accumulated by my predecessors in Congress?” It’s not a credible negotiating strategy, and it’s not going to happen.

Watch it:

Geithner may want to rethink his claim that congressional leaders understand the danger of a debt default, now that GOP leaders walked away from negotiations over the debt ceiling to protect tax breaks for the very richest Americans. But his citation to the Fourteenth Amendment is a very encouraging sign that the White House is seriously exploring whether the Constitution will save America’s economy from the GOP’s extortionary tactics.

As Yale Law Professor Jack Balkin explains, the “validity of the public debt” language was inserted into the Fourteenth Amendment entirely to prevent the kind of hostage taking Republicans are now engaged in:

The original purpose of Section Four, which is reflected in its text, was to prevent political disruption and party wrangling over the public debt following the Civil War. However, the language of the Amendment went beyond this particular historical concern. It was stated in broad terms in order to prevent future majorities in Congress from repudiating the federal debt to gain political advantage, to seek political revenge, or to try to disavow previous financial obligations because of changed policy priorities. . . .

The threat of defaulting on government obligations is a powerful weapon, especially in a complex, interconnected world economy. Devoted partisans can use it to disrupt government, to roil ordinary politics, to undermine policies they do not like, even to seek political revenge. Section Four was placed in the Constitution to remove this weapon from ordinary politics.

Hopefully, the GOP’s threat to destroy the entire national economy will prove to be a bluff, and the debt ceiling will be raised the old fashioned way. If it is not, however, Geithner’s statement is a hopeful sign that the White House is exploring all available options to save America from catastrophe.

This year, the Georgia legislature considered a bill that would require women to prove their miscarriages “occurred naturally” and weren’t secret abortions. In a similar vein, the Guardian reports that states including Mississippi and Alabama are charging dozens of women with murder or other serious crimes who have miscarried or had stillbirths:

Across the US more and more prosecutions are being brought that seek to turn pregnant women into criminals.[...]

In Alabama at least 40 cases have been brought under the state’s “chemical endangerment” law. Introduced in 2006, the statute was designed to protect children whose parents were cooking methamphetamine in the home and thus putting their children at risk from inhaling the fumes. Amanda Kimbrough is one of the women who have been ensnared as a result of the law being applied in a wholly different way.[...]

The baby was delivered by caesarean section prematurely in April 2008 and died 19 minutes after birth. Six months later Kimbrough was arrested at home and charged with “chemical endangerment” of her unborn child on the grounds that she had taken drugs during the pregnancy – a claim she has denied.

“That shocked me, it really did,” Kimbrough said. “I had lost a child, that was enough.”

Kimbrough is now facing a 10-year sentence if her case is not reversed on appeal — a 10 year sentence that will deprive her three other children of their mother.

A common tactic by prosecutors is singling out a group of women who are unlikely to draw public sympathy — women who may have used drugs while pregnant — to blur the line between abortion and homicide. Rennie Gibbs, for example, was 15 when she became pregnant and lost her baby in a stillbirth. Prosecutors charged her with a “depraved heart murder” after they discovered she had used cocaine, although there was “no evidence that drug abuse had anything to do with the baby’s death.” She now faces life in prison in Mississippi.

Targeting women who use drugs while they are pregnant is exactly the wrong policy for protecting the health of their future children. When a woman who is addicted to drug becomes pregnant, she needs immediate treatment to ensure that her addiction does not lead to serious birth defects for her child. But the threat of criminal prosecution — especially for a crime as serious as murder — will only drive her into the shadows. For this reason, dozens of public health organizations including the American Public Health Association have all denounced these prosecutions as harmful to both woman and child.

Other prosecutors are twisting laws designed to protect pregnant women and their unborn children into attacks on childbearers themselves. At least 38 states have introduced fetal homicide laws that were intended to be used against violent attacks by third parties like abusive male partners. But in South Carolina, only one case has been brought against a man for assaulting a pregnant woman, while up to 300 women have been arrested under the law, according to the National Advocates for Pregnant Women.

These prosecutions are part of a much broader assault on women’s reproductive rights. Indeed, it’s been a banner year for the right’s war on women, with state legislatures passing a slew of restrictive legislation across the country that not only impede women’s constitutional right to abortions but also jeopardize their access to basic health care. Four states have defunded Planned Parenthood so far, a new Ohio law bans abortions as early as six weeks without exceptions for rape or incest, and Texas is one of several states that now forces women seeking abortions to undergo waiting periods and mandatory sonograms. Some groups and lawmakers are even pushing to outlaw contraceptives like birth control pills.

Today the U.S. Sentencing Commission unanimously voted to retroactively apply the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, enabling 12,000 prisoners who were convicted under a previous law that applied harsh sentences to minor crack offenders to be released:

“In passing the Fair Sentencing Act, Congress recognized the fundamental unfairness of federal cocaine sentencing policy and ameliorated it through bipartisan legislation,” noted Commission chair, Judge Patti B. Saris. “Today’s action by the Commission ensures that the longstanding injustice recognized by Congress is remedied, and that federal crack cocaine offenders who meet certain criteria established by the Commission and considered by the courts may have their sentences reduced to a level consistent with the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010.”

Under previous law, crack offenses led to sentences 100 times more severe than powder cocaine sentences. It took 500 grams of cocaine to trigger a five-year mandatory minimum sentence, but only 5 grams of crack. Because African-American drug users tend are more likely to use crack, while white drug users tend to use powder cocaine, the practical effect of the disparity has been to fill the federal prison system with non-violent African-American offenders. Eighty to 90 percent of defendants convicted of crack offenses are black, while 70 percent of powder cocaine offenders are white or Hispanic. As one federal judge once put it, the disparity “makes the war on drugs look like a ‘war on minorities.’ ”

Last year, Congress passed the Act, substantially lowering the recommended sentences for people convicted of crack cocaine crimes, but it was not applied to people already serving time in prison under the old system. Today the Sentencing Commission ruled that offenders locked up for crack offenses before the new law took effect should also benefit.

Ketanji Brown Jackson, a vice chair of the commission commented, “I say justice demands this result.” Unless Congress intervenes, the retroactivity will take effect on November 1. The new guidelines not only rectify a decades-long injustice that has disproportionately affected minority communities, but will save an estimated $200 million over the next five years.