Earlier this month, the American Civil Liberties Union — joined by a local ACLU chapter and the Center for Reproductive Rights — sued Arizona over the state’s abortion ban, calling it the nation’s most extreme because it criminalizes almost all abortions after 20 weeks. Today, a federal judge upheld HB 2036, dismissing the ACLU’s request to block the law from going into effect on Thursday.

U.S. District Judge James A. Teilborg ruled that HB 2036, which Gov. Jan Brewer (R-AZ) signed into law in April, will be allowed to take effect this week. The law criminalizes almost all abortions after just 20 weeks, even though a fetus generally isn’t considered to reach viability until week 23 or 24. There are no exceptions for pregnant women’s health except for immediate medical emergencies.

Nancy Northup, the president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, pointed out in a press release that Teilborg’s ruling contradicts the legal precedent for women’s right to privacy before their fetus reaches viability:

Today’s decision casts aside decades of legal precedent, ignoring constitutional protections for reproductive rights that have been upheld by the United States Supreme Court for nearly 40 years and threatening women’s health and lives. [...] Anyone concerned with the erosion of constitutional rights in the U.S. and the intrusion of government into the lives and private decisions of individual citizens should be profoundly disturbed by today’s decision.

The Guttmacher Institute has designated Arizona as one of the 26 states that are “hostile” to women’s reproductive freedom. Women’s health advocates are currently embroiled in a second lawsuit in Arizona to combat another anti-choice law, HB 2800, that seeks to defund the state’s Planned Parenthood clinics.

In 2004, 9 votes per precinct pushed George W. Bush ahead of John Kerry in Ohio. But thousands are thrown out each election, according to a new report by the Cincinnati Enquirer.

The battleground state, which has predicted the winner of every presidential election since 1944 except Nixon vs. Kennedy in 1960, often comes down to a tiny margin of votes. In 1976, Ohio tipped the election to Jimmy Carter by only 11,116 votes out of nearly 4.1 million.

The Enquirer found the state tosses thousands of ballots every election due to bureaucratic confusion, clerical error and other factors. Urban counties are particularly vulnerable, such as Hamilton County, which contains Cincinnati:

In Hamilton County alone, hundreds of votes are routinely disqualified in major statewide elections because they are cast in the wrong precinct, often only feet from the correct location. Hundreds more votes have been tossed out for another relatively minor miscue: voters’ failure to seal an inner envelope containing their absentee ballot.

Provisional ballots, which a voter can cast if there is uncertainty over their registration, are much more common in Ohio than in any other state besides California. This can happen if a voter moved without changing registration or if the rolls show a typo in their name or address. In the 2008 presidential election, nearly 40,000 out of 207,000 provisional ballots cast were rejected. Urban counties hold the bulk of these provisional ballots:

Most of Ohio’s provisional votes are cast in five large urban counties: Hamilton, Cuyahoga (Cleveland), Franklin (Columbus), Montgomery (Dayton) and Summit (Akron). In November 2010, they produced 54,470, or 52 percent, of Ohio’s 105,195 provisional votes, and an even higher percentage of those that were discarded – 57 percent (6,748) of 11,772.

Smaller races are equally dysfunctional; the outcome of a Hamilton County judicial race in 2010 was delayed for 18 months due to lawsuits over votes that were rejected partly because poll workers could not find addresses or distinguish between even and odd numbers.

Over the years, Ohio has been hit with many lawsuits over voting procedures, most recently by the Department of Justice over the Legislature’s attempt to restrict early voting, a measure enacted after 2004, when Ohio’s polls were clogged with seven-hour lines on Election Day. The state is attempting to limit the early voting deadline for most Ohioans, the remnant of House Bill 194, which was repealed after outcry over provisions that killed early voting on the last weekend before an election and cut the requirement that poll workers direct voters to their proper precinct.

Since 2008, all 88 counties in the state have been working to improve the chaotic election system, preparing administration plans for November addressing the poll worker training and correct ballot filing procedures. However, the report concludes, “Unless voters take a more proactive approach about how and precisely where to vote, poll workers improve their performance over past elections or courts order new changes before Election Day, tens of thousands of ballots are likely to be disqualified.”

Florida Governor Rick Scott has spoken a lot about cutting government spending, lowering taxes for corporations, and removing social safety nets that millions of people rely on. But while he is busy eliminating more than $3 billion from public classrooms, his administration is simultaneously racking up hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars in legal expenses to defend several of its own unconstitutional laws and fight frivolous battles in federal court over Obamacare.

To date, Rick Scott has authorized more than $888,000 for legal costs. Nearly $70,000 of that money was spent over the last two years fighting Obamacare in court, and that expense only ended thanks to the Supreme Court’s ruling last month. Other suits have been filed in response to the state’s new welfare drug testing law, plans to privatize prisons through the budgeting process, and changes in the way the state manages its retirement plan. In all three cases the courts have sided against the Scott administration.

State governments finding themselves in court is nothing new, not even in Florida. But as the Orlando Sentinel explains, Scott’s administration is so far proving to be particularly litigious:

Legal challenges to new laws aren’t unusual in Florida. Gov. Jeb Bush tangled with the Florida Education Association over his school-voucher program; Gov. Charlie Crist was sued by the Legislature — successfully — over a gambling compact he negotiated with the Seminole Tribe. And in 2010, several suits overturned proposed constitutional amendments that Republican lawmakers had wanted on the ballot.

But observers in Tallahassee said the suits filed against Scott-approved measures far exceed other administrations’ legal woes. Friday, a new case was added to the list, with U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown, D-Jacksonville, along with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference announcing they would file a federal suit opposing some of the changes under the state’s new election law.

The Sentinel also points out that the $888,000 figure was calculated before several new suits were filed, including a case involving the state’s controversial voter purge program. And even though the Attorney General’s office has been able to handle most of the legal challenges, in several instances the state has had to contract out to expensive law firms in DC and Atlanta, costing taxpayers even more.

Last January, President Obama nominated federal Magistrate Judge Robert Bacharach to a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. Since then, Bacharach’s done little more than generate bipartisan support for his nomination. Even Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), an ultra-conservative who believes that Medicare is unconstitutional, called Bacharach “a stellar candidate” who “ought to get through,” and the Senate Judiciary Committee voted nearly unanimously to approve Bacharach. Only Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), the Tea Party senator who votes against every single one of Obama’s nominees, voted against Bacharach in committee.

So Bacharach enjoys widespread bipartisan support, including support from the Senate’s most ideological wing. He should be a shoo-in for confirmation — except, of course, for the fact that the Senate is run by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY):

Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is forcing a vote Monday afternoon on Robert Bacharach, of Oklahoma, for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, a nominee considered to be highly qualified and noncontroversial. The move is a direct challenge to Republicans who have leaked plans that they will block all circuit court judges for the rest of the presidential election year.

But it is also Reid’s only option for moving forward on the circuit court nominees this congressional session, as Republicans cite a loosely defined Senate tradition of backing off from filling circuit court seats in the waning months of a president’s term, dubbed “The Thurmond Rule.”

The “Thurmond Rule” — which doesn’t actually do what McConnell says it does — is named for the late Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-SC). Thurmond is best known for delivering the longest filibuster speech in American history in order to block a civil rights bill.

Maggie Brooks (R) has been County Executive for Monroe County, NY, since 2004. After nearly a decade as chief executive of the Rochester, NY-area county — population of 744,000 — Brooks is currently the Republican nominee for U.S. House of Representatives, challenging 13-term incumbent Rep. Louise Slaughter (D). And, according to her most recent disclosure forms, she is receiving significant help from a long-time lobbyist supporter who has done very well under the tenure — a potentially serious conflict of interest.

Bruce Fennie, a Rochester-based federal lobbyist has raised at least $19,200 in “bundled” contributions for Brooks’ Congressional campaign and contributed the legal maximum of $2,500. Fennie is the only lobbyist bundler identified to date as having raised a significant amount for Brooks. And this support is nothing new — New York State campaign finance disclosure records show Fennie gave tens of thousands to her county races over the years.

Why is Fennie so enthusiastic about Brooks? One reason may be that, during her tenure as County Executive, almost all of his lobbying contracts over Brooks’ tenure have been with her county’s government. The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle reported in 2010:

Fennie, a former executive in Rochester for the communications division of Florida-based Harris Corp., and his three employees earned $660,000 last year representing five public-sector clients in Monroe County.

They were paid $260,000 by the Monroe County Water Authority, $160,000 by Monroe Community College and $80,000 each by Monroe County, the Monroe County Airport Authority and the Monroe County Department of Transportation, according to public disclosure reports he filed with the House of Representatives.

The Monroe Community College was the only such institution in the state of New York to be paying a federal lobbyist. And, the Democrat and Chronicle notes, Brooks even accompanied Fennie on a Washington lobbying trip in March.

While a Brooks spokesman told the paper that all of Fennie’s contracts were with “independent authorities that do not report to the county or the county executive,” and claimed none were with the county itself, the paper noted that that statement was apparently false. A ThinkProgress review of lobbying disclosure forms confirms that Fennie has directly represented the county since 2008 and receives $80,000 a year for his services.

While her campaign website boasts that Brooks is “well-known for her fiscally responsible leadership and commitment to best serving the interests of local taxpayers,” not everyone believes the county’s spending on Fennie’s lobbying firm was a good use of funds. In a 2010 column, Republican Rochester talk show host Bob Lonsberry observed that the apparently symbiotic relationship between Brooks and Fennie “smells” and “makes you wonder what the behind-the-scenes connection is.”

Neither Fennie nor the Brooks campaign responded immediately to a request for comment.

On Friday, Colorado federal Judge John Kane issued an order allowing a heating an air conditioning company to ignore federal rules protecting women’s access to birth control because the company’s owners are conservative Catholics. Judge Kane, however, relied on a very odd rule that does not exist in most of the country to hand down this decision. So while it would be disturbing if Kane’s injunction were finalized after several more rounds of litigation, the contraception-fearing employer in this case still has a number of hurdles to clear before that could happen.

Kane issued what is known as a “preliminary injunction” on Friday, which is an extraordinary order permitting a judge to temporarily suspend a law before they have time to fully consider the merits of a case. According to the Supreme Court, a judge cannot issue such an extraordinary order unless the plaintiff “establish[s] that he is likely to succeed on the merits” when the case receives a full trial. As Judge Kane explains, however, the Tenth Circuit (the federal appeals court that presides over Colorado and five other states) has refused to follow the Supreme Court’s rule in such cases. In the Tenth Circuit, a plaintiff can temporarily suspend a law merely by “showing that questions going to the merits are so serious, substantial, difficult, and doubtful as to make the issue ripe for litigation and deserving of more deliberate investigation.” In other words, while a judge is not supposed to issue this kind of order unless they are pretty convinced the plaintiff is going to win, Judge Kane issued his order after merely determining that this case is kinda hard.

Because of this relaxed standard, Kane gives a hat tip to the hardest question in this case, but spends no time discussing the correct answer to this question:

The government argues that as a for-profit, secular employer, Hercules cannot engage in an exercise of religion. Accordingly, the argument concludes, the preventive care coverage mandate cannot burden Hercules’ free exercise of religion. Plaintiffs counter, arguing that there exists no law forbidding a corporation from operating according to religious principles.

These arguments pose difficult questions of first impression. Can a corporation exercise religion? Should a closely-held subchapter-s corporation owned and operated by a small group of individuals professing adherence to uniform religious beliefs be treated differently than a publicly held corporation owned and operated by a group of stakeholders with diverse religious beliefs? Is it possible to “pierce the veil” and disregard the corporate form in this context? What is the significance of the pass-through taxation applicable to subchapter-s corporations as it pertains to this analysis? These questions merit more deliberate investigation.

There is a fairly strong legal argument that a twenty year old federal law would allow a religious organization, such as the Catholic church, to ignore a federal birth control law — although one of the most Republican courts in the country rejected a very similar argument just eight years ago. Judge Kane’s case, however, does not involve a church. It doesn’t even involve a Catholic-affiliated charity. This case involves whether a for-profit heating and air conditioning company can claim its religious beliefs are being tread upon.

It’s bizarre enough that five Supreme Court justices cannot tell the difference between a corporation and a person. For the plaintiffs to win this case, a judge will have to hold that a corporation can be Catholic.

About two years ago, my boss asked me to co-author a brief defending the Affordable Care Act in the first federal court to consider the law’s constitutionality. My response was more or less what any competent observer of the Constitution and Supreme Court precedent would have said at the time — “I’ll get right on it, but do we really think that it’s necessary?” Like pretty much everyone who practiced constitutional law in 2010, I overestimated either the integrity or the competence of many federal judges, and wrongly assumed they would each follow the constitutional text and nearly two hundred years of precedent establishing that Obamacare is constitutional.

As it became increasingly clear that many judges were more interested in their own ideology than they were in faithfully and impartially applying the Constitution, I became more and more involved in health reform’s defense. Throughout this effort, I believed this fight was essential to the millions of Americans who, unlike me, either cannot afford health insurance or who risk becoming uninsured because of their preexisting health conditions.

As it turns out, I spent those two years fighting for people exactly like me.

Three weeks ago, I left work in an ambulance and a great deal of pain. In the night that followed, doctors determined that I had a bowel rupture leaking digestive fluid into my abdominal cavity, and a truly outstanding surgeon removed about 8 inches of my small intestine. A few days later, my doctors told me I have Crohn’s disease, a chronic condition in which my immune system sometimes decides to go rogue and attack my own digestive tract.

The upshot of this is that, in one night, I transformed from the kind of patient health insurers drool over — a young, healthy man whose biggest medical expense in the last ten years was a broken toe incurred during a kung fu class — to what those same insurers deem a “high risk” patient. If I lost my job tomorrow, or if I left CAP and ThinkProgress to start my own business, it is very unlikely I would be able to afford health insurance once my current plan runs out. Indeed, without Obamacare, it is reasonably likely that I would not be able to obtain insurance at any price. Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, however, the insurance industry’s practice of denying care to high risk patients like myself will soon be illegal.

So let’s be clear, there are people in this world who have the right to complain; I am not one of them. I have a wonderful girlfriend who took care of me when I was unable to sit up and when I had to get out of my hospital bed eight times in one night to go to the bathroom. I come to work every day and spend the next ten or eleven hours working to turn my moral values into a reality. I am blessed with hard working and dedicated colleagues who are some of my closest friends. And I’ve somehow managed to find an organization that is willing to pay me a salary and offer me generous health benefits to do this. I am one of the most fortunate people in the world.

But I am also deeply grateful that the Supreme Court did the right thing last month. Because of Obamacare, I will never have to know what it is like to fear that my next trip to the doctor could be a ticket to bankruptcy. And when the law takes full effect in 2014, millions of Americans just like me will wake up free of this fear for the rest of their lives.

Welcome to Justiceline, ThinkProgress Justice’s morning round-up of the latest legal news and developments. Remember to follow us on Twitter at @TPJustice

• Casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who along with his wife has given at least $10 million to the pro-Mitt Romney Super PAC Restore Our Future, told reporters at a Romney fundraiser in Jerusalem he was only there to “get a shwarma sandwich.”
• Colorado shooting suspect James Holmes will make his second appearance in court today.
• Justice Antonin Scalia on Fox News Sunday attacked the 5-4 majority ruling that upheld ObamaCare and suggested that he would time his eventual retirement to a Republican presidential administration, saying he did not want to be “replaced by someone who immediately sets about undoing everything that I’ve tried to do for 25 years, 26 years.”
• The Center for Public Integrity reports that Jet Set Sports Holdings, L.P., a major donor to the pro-Romney Restore Our Future Super PAC, was implicated in the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic bribery scandal.
• And finally, “dark money” — political advertising by tax-exempt groups not subject to public disclosure laws, now makes up half of the “independent” spending for the 2012 elections.