On Sunday, Gov. Jerry Brown (D-CA) signed a bill into law that will allow young undocumented immigrants to apply for driver’s licenses if they qualify for deferred action under an Obama Administration directive to protect DREAMers. About 400,000 undocumented immigrants are expected to be eligible for licenses in California as a result. Assembly member Gilbert Cedillo (D), who had spent a decade pushing for the bill, said the law will enhance public safety:

“It is a victory for those who were brought here through no choice of their own, played by the rules, and are only asking to be included in and contribute to American society,” Cedillo said in a statement.

He said California is the first state to grant drivers’ licenses to the group singled out under the Obama administration’s policy. Cedillo praised Brown for choosing “public safety over politics” by signing the bill.

“President Obama has recognized the unique status of these students, and making them eligible to apply for driver’s licenses is an obvious next step,” Brown spokesman Gil Duran said.

But on the same day Brown signed the licenses bill, he vetoed the California TRUST Act, an “anti-Arizona” bill that would have protected undocumented immigrants from deportation simply for minor infractions. The bill pushed back against Secure Communities by preventing local law enforcement officials from referring a detainee to ICE unless the person detained has been convicted of a violent or serious felony, but Brown said the bill was “fatally flawed” because the list of crimes was too narrow. The Democratic governor promised to work with the law’s supporters to fix the bill’s wording.

Our guest blogger is Erik Stegman, Manager of the Half in Ten Campaign at the Center for American Progress Action Fund

One year ago, the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) expired.  Since 1994, this landmark legislation has been funding clinics, shelters, and hotlines for victims in crisis across the country, and provided tremendously important tools for law enforcement to crack down on abusers and rapists.  Over the past year, VAWA has trained 500,000 law enforcement officers and judicial officials, and provided a national crisis hotline that served 264,000 victims.  So why do victims and service providers find themselves one year later without the certainty of a renewed law?  Some in the House are still trying to figure out which victims deserve its protection.

“Rape is rape and there’s no splitting hairs over rape.”  That’s what Rep. Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney’s Vice Presidential running mate, said in an interview about an abortion funding bill he cosponsored that tried to split hairs by defining “forcible” rape. But Reps. Ryan, Todd Akin, and their colleagues in the House are splitting hairs over something much more dangerous for rape victims: which women deserve protection and services under VAWA.  Originally passed in 1994 as the first and only comprehensive bill to combat rape and domestic violence, VAWA has been reauthorized unanimously by Congress in 2000 and 2005.  For years, protecting women from rape and domestic violence has been the issue too important to argue about for Congress: until now.

After passing the Senate in April by a now-rare supermajority of 68, including every female senator, the House stopped the bill in its tracks.  And, there’s not much time left for the House to act in the 112^th Congress.  But, why block a bill that protects women from rape?  According to the House, some victims aren’t legitimate enough.  After a grueling full day committee meeting, the House Judiciary Committee stripped improved provisions out of the Senate bill protecting Native American, LGBT and immigrant victims. During the meeting, Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), ranking minority member, offered an amendment to restore the inclusive Senate provisions, but Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) wouldn’t even allow a vote on it.

The full House hastily passed their version of the bill in May on a narrow vote of 222-205, parsing out Native American, LGBT and immigrant victims.  What now?  Instead of passing the bipartisan Senate bill and sending it to the president, House leadership have dug in their heels and continue to let the bill languish over a fight about who deserves protection.  Leadership in the House can pass this bill as soon as they get back from recess and send it to the president.  It’s solely in their court.  No one in Congress should be splitting hairs about rape, or which women are “legitimate” victims to receive support and services.

On Friday, Judge Carol Jackson, a George H.W. Bush appointee to a federal court in Missouri, rejected a Catholic business owner’s challenge to the Obama Administration’s rules requiring employer health plans to cover birth control. Like the many copycat lawsuits asserting similar legal claims, the plaintiffs in this suit argued that the birth control rules substantially burden their faith by requiring them to pay for employee health benefits which might then in turn be used to pay for birth control. As Judge Jackson’s opinions explains, however, this argument proves too much:

The burden of which plaintiffs complain is that funds, which plaintiffs will contribute to a group health plan, might, after a series of independent decisions by health care providers and patients covered by [an employer's health] plan, subsidize someone else’s participation in an activity that is condemned by plaintiffs’ religion. . . . [Federal religious freedom law] is a shield, not a sword. It protects individuals from substantial burdens on religious exercise that occur when the government coerces action one’s religion forbids, or forbids action one’s religion requires; it is not a means to force one’s religious practices upon others. [It] does not protect against the slight burden on religious exercise that arises when one’s money circuitously flows to support the conduct of other free-exercise-wielding individuals who hold religious beliefs that differ from one’s own. . . .

[T]he health care plan will offend plaintiffs’ religious beliefs only if an [] employee (or covered family member) makes an independent decision to use the plan to cover counseling related to or the purchase of contraceptives. Already, [plaintiffs] pay salaries to their employees—money the employees may use to purchase contraceptives or to contribute to a religious organization. By comparison, the contribution to a health care plan has no more than a de minimus impact on the plaintiff’s religious beliefs than paying salaries and other benefits to employees.

A key insight in this opinion is that salaries and health insurance can be used to buy birth control, so if religious employers really object to enabling their employees to buy birth control, they would have to not pay them money in addition to denying them comprehensive health insurance. An employer cannot assert a religious objection to how their employees choose to use their own benefits or their own money, because religious freedom is not a license to “force one’s religious practices upon others.”

Significantly, Jackson did not simply reject the plaintiffs’ claim that the birth control rules violate the Constitution’s Free Exercise Clause, a weak legal argument that conflicts with a 1990 Supreme Court decision written by conservative Justice Scalia, she also rejects the plaintiffs’ much stronger claim that the rules violate a federal law known as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). RFRA gives religious objectors significant, although not entirely insurmountable, rights against laws they do not wish to follow for religious reasons. So Jackson’s opinion rejects the strongest possible legal argument against the Obama Administration’s contraception rules.

Notably, Jackson’s view was, at least until recently, not particularly controversial. Eight years ago, the California Supreme Court rejected a very similar challenge to a state law protecting access to birth control. Five of the court’s six Republican justices voted to uphold the law. The sole justice who voted to strike down the law, future federal judge Janice Rogers Brown, once compared liberalism to “slavery” and Social Security to a “socialist revolution.”

Earlier this morning, the Supreme Court asked for the Solicitor General to respond to a conservative university’s petition seeking to reactivate a challenge to the Affordable Care Act. Normally when the Court calls for such a response it means they are taking the petition very seriously. As SCOTUSBlog explains, the petition tries to breathe new life into a claim that the law’s insurance coverage requirements violate religious liberty, a claim that has not been taken seriously by lower courts:

The Supreme Court opened its new Term on Monday by asking the federal government to offer its views on whether the way should be cleared for new constitutional challenges to the federal health care law — including a new protest against the individual mandate that the Court had upheld last June. The request for the government’s views came in response to a rehearing request by a religious-oriented institution, Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va. The university’s earlier petition was simply denied in June, so it asked the Court to reconsider and wipe out a lower court ruling in order to revive the university’s religious challenges to both the individual mandate and the separate insurance coverage mandate for employers. There is also another challenge to the employer mandate, which did not figure in the Court’s decision last Term.

It is, of course, always dangerous to make predictions about the Supreme Court, especially where Obamacare is involved. Had the justices followed their own past opinions last term, there would have been at least seven votes to uphold the Affordable Care Act as a valid exercise of Congress’ power to regulate the national economy. Nevertheless, it is likely that today’s order is merely procedural housecleaning — not a sign that the justices want to pick up this contentious statute again any time soon.

The petition facing the justices concerns Liberty University v. Geithner, which is the only case where a court of appeals dismissed a challenge to the Affordable Care Act because they believed the case was premature under something called the Tax Anti-Injunction Act. Last June, of course, the Supreme Court disagreed with the Fourth Circuit on this point.

Because the Fourth Circuit kicked Liberty University on procedural grounds, it never actually reached the merits of the plaintiffs’ claims in that case. Broadly speaking, there were two. First, the plaintiffs claimed that the Affordable Care Act exceeds Congress’ enumerated powers — that was the argument that the Supreme Court rejected last June. Additionally, they also claimed that the law violates religious liberty. Neither the Supreme Court nor the court of appeals has weighed in on this second assertion.

There is absolutely no reason to believe that Liberty University should ultimately win its religious freedom claim. Nevertheless, the proper procedure when a case pending before the Supreme Court presents a live issue that was not considered by the court of appeals is to let the court of appeals weigh in on that issue before the Supreme Court does anything else with it. The most likely explanation for today’s order is that the justices intend to set this housekeeping process in motion, not that they are considering striking down Obamacare on religious freedom grounds.

Earlier this year, Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) began a massive voter purge that initially targeted as many as 180,000 individuals to be removed from the state’s voter rolls. It quickly emerged, however, that Scott’s lists were deeply flawed — in one case, a 91 year-old decorated World War II veteran received a purge letter falsely informing him that “you are not a U.S. Citizen” — and the purge was eventually halted after Florida’s county elections officials, including 30 Republicans, rebelled against the purge.

Throughout this ordeal, which also included a U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit challenging the purge and a pledge by a top Scott Administration official to restart the purge, Scott insisted this purge was necessary to prevent non-citizen voters from changing the result of the 2012 election.

Now, Scott has begun a second voter purge, albeit under greater scrutiny after the debacle that was his first attempt to prevent Floridians from voting. Despite Scott’s previous claims that non-citizen voting is a major problem worthy of a massive voter purge, his own data now undermines this claim. After comparing a state database of drivers licenses with a federal database of immigration records, Rick Scott’s Florida barely uncovered any potential non-citizen voters:

In total, Scott’s quest for non-citizen voters flagged only 198 names of registered voters who may not be U.S. citizens — and this is in a state where over 8 million people voted in the last presidential election. Of these 198 possible non-citizens, only 39 have actually ever voted. If any of the 198 names identified by Scott’s new purge turn out to be non-citizens — itself an uncertain proposition — the most likely explanation for why many of them became registered to vote is that they accidentally registered while filling out paperwork to receive a driver’s license, not that the alleged non-citizens intentionally tried to register illegally.

In the past year, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has lost over 40 member companies because of its role in crafting voter suppression laws, anti-immigration laws like Arizona’s SB 1070, and other conservative causes. Still, the group continues to be popular among lawmakers in Republican-controlled states. According to a report released Monday, ALEC has even made inroads in Democratic-leaning New Jersey, where Gov. Chris Christie (R) and other New Jersey lawmakers have apparently introduced 22 bills since 2010 based on ALEC model legislation. Christie denied the connection in April, when another report found many similarities between his legislation and ALEC bills. However, records found Christie’s advisers and conservative lawmakers in New Jersey consulted ALEC on key legislation, including:

The New Jersey Jobs Protection Act (S240) and a similar bill (S164), which would require all employers to verify whether their workers are legally qualified to work in the United States. The report said they were “taken nearly word for word from ALEC’s Fair and Legal Employment Act, which is also incorporated in ALEC’s longer and more thorough No Sanctuary Cities for Illegal Immigrants Act — the infamous model legislation that was introduced in Arizona … and led to protests across the country and a showdown at the Supreme Court.”

ACR103, which would allow a two-thirds majority in the state Legislature to nullify any federal law or regulation. It’s sponsored by Assemblywoman Amy Handlin (R-Monmouth) and Assemblyman Jay Webber (R-Morris), co-chairman of ALEC’s state chapter. Handlin, who has said she is not an ALEC member, and Webber declined to comment.

The New Jersey Parental Rights Program Act (S504), which would create a publicly funded scholarship program for students attending certain types of private or religious schools.

None of the bills passed in the Democrat-controlled Legislature, and Christie’s office continues to deny any coordination on the bills in spite of the nearly identical language. His attempts to distance himself from the group is no surprise; ALEC has become notorious since their involvement in pushing right-wing legislation was exposed earlier this year. The bad publicity led corporations including Amazon, General Electric, Coca-Cola, and Walmart to drop their financial support of the group.

ALEC is funded by Koch Industries and has proven to be a good investment for the powerful brothers. The group wrote models for many of the most radical state bills, including “Stand Your Ground” laws, SB 1070, union-busting bills, anti-minimum wage laws, voter ID requirements, and efforts to block clean energy while promoting “the benefits of atmospheric CO2 enrichment.” In spite of their heavy reliance on the group, lawmakers are not required to disclose the powerful group’s influence as it is technically a non-profit and refuses to comply with lobbying laws.

The following is the third in a multi-part series on the U.S. Supreme Court term that begins today. Parts I and II of the series are here and here.

The U.S. Supreme Court begins its term this morning with a case about egregious human rights violations that ThinkProgress called last spring the “mother of all corporate immunity cases.”

Now that the Supreme Court has ordered the case to be reargued on another, broader question than it started with, it is just as likely that the case could implicate corporate accountability as that it could implicate, even more fundamentally, the accountability of anyone – individual or corporation – for committing torture or other major human rights abuses abroad.

The case, Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Company, involves oil companies accused of aiding and abetting the Nigerian government in committing torture, arbitrary detention and indiscriminate killings against members of the Ogoni tribe for protesting oil exploration on the Niger delta. Twelve Nigerians brought suit under the Alien Tort Statute, a 200-year-old law that authorizes a civil lawsuit in U.S. federal courts by an “alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States.” The U.S. Supreme Court has already established that this statute can be used in civil lawsuits alleging violations of “universally condemned human rights violations,” but the justices have expressed significant skepticism about this case, and they could reject the plaintiffs’ claims in at least three ways:

1. The Court could shield corporations from any liability under the ATS, whether the violations are committed in the U.S. or abroad

When the Supreme Court held its first round of arguments in February, the question before the court was whether this statute could be applied to any corporation that violates “the law of nations.” The statute, of course, makes no distinction between individuals and corporations. In fact, it makes no mention at all of what types of actors may be defendants. For better or for worse, the Supreme Court has already deemed corporations “people” when it comes to entitlement to First Amendment rights. It is now for the justices to answer: Do corporations have rights but not responsibilities?

This is a monumental question, and a decision to immunize those corporations that profit from torture and abuse would, as one federal appeals court judge wrote, free businesses to “trade in or exploit slaves, employ mercenary armies to do dirty work for despots, perform genocides or operate torture prisons for a despot’s political opponents, or engage in piracy.”

But during oral argument in February, the justices did not seem inclined to side with the plaintiffs on that question, and the court will never reach it in this case if it answers “no” to the new, broader question it posed to the parties in this case, on what is known as “extraterritoriality.”

2. The Court could shield both corporations and individuals from any liability for human rights violations outside the U.S.

What if a corporation, or an individual, chooses to perpetrate torture in a country where they may be able to skirt liability for their actions? Does that company or individual, even if they also conduct business in, or enjoy the benefits of, a democracy like the United States, successfully escape accountability for those abuses because they occur outside U.S. borders? This is the new question the justices address today, and if the answer is yes, this major human rights statute will only apply to violations of international law that occur within U.S. borders.

Justice Samuel Alito pointedly asked during oral arguments in February, “What business does a case like that have in the courts of the United States? … [T]here’s no connection to the United States whatsoever.” He was referring to the fact that this case involves Nigerians  (several of whom now live in the United States) suing foreign oil companies for actions that occurred in Nigeria. If the justices think that this case contains no connections to the U.S., or object to this case based on the particular fact pattern, our legal system contains other doctrines, such as personal jurisdiction, that require certain such connections in order to bring the case in U.S. courts.

3. The Court could dispense with this case on other narrower grounds, such as jurisdiction, because it is skeptical of this particular case’s connection to the United States

Jurisdictional rules exist because we want the reach of the law to extend to those entities with which we in the United States interact. We want to hold accountable the stores where we shop, the places that manufacture our goods and the people who spend time in our country, even if they attempt to avoid liability by incorporating in another country, or committing their bad acts elsewhere. Jurisdiction might be established, for example, because Royal Dutch Petroleum does significant business in the United States.

Rejecting this case on jurisdictional, or other narrower grounds, is the most palatable option of the three ways of turning back this case, because it recognizes that the justices’ concerns are to the particular facts of this case, and not to the Alien Tort Statute generally.

Of course, this case arguably does have connections to the United States, or it would not have made it this far. But if the court finds otherwise, it should send back the case on those grounds, rather than setting precedent based on facts it doesn’t like that the Alien Tort Statute precludes all cases involving foreign human rights abuses. To do so would not only contravene the clear scope and intent in the statute; it would further incentivize any individual or corporation who wants to behave badly to simply do their dirty work elsewhere.

President Obama and Mitt Romney will face each other Wednesday in their first presidential debate at University of Denver, just 15 miles from the site of the movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado. However, the media’s interest in the largest shooting in the country since Virginia Tech has waned, while both Romney and Obama have backed away from offering any new solutions to deal with the nation’s gun homicide rate, which far outpaces any other developed country in the world.

In an effort to revive the conversation about gun violence, 22-year-old Stephen Barton, who was shot in the face and neck in the Aurora movie theater, appears in an ad that will air in the days leading up to the presidential debate on Wednesday. Barton makes a direct appeal to voters to “demand a plan” from Obama and Romney:

This past summer in a movie theater in Colorado, I was shot. Shot in the face and neck. But I was lucky. In the next four years, 48,000 Americans won’t be so lucky, because they’ll be murdered with guns in the next president’s term, enough to fill over 200 theaters. So when you watch the presidential debates, ask yourself, ‘Who has a plan to stop gun violence?’

Watch it:

The ad, which debuted Monday, is sponsored by Mayors Against Illegal Guns and echoes Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s call for a plan immediately after the theater shooting. Obama spoke out in support of stricter gun control, but later clarified that he would not be introducing any new measures.

Since the Aurora shooting on July 20, six people were shot to death in a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, three were killed in a shooting near Texas A&M University, and one was killed outside the Empire State Building. Meanwhile, Chicago has suffered prolonged gun violence that has claimed 152 lives in two months, many of them teenagers. And on Friday, a gunman in Minneapolis killed 5 people and injured 3 more in what the police chief called “a hellish scene” — yet attracted sparse attention from national media outlets zeroed in on the presidential race.