In an opinion by Reagan-appointed Judge James Fox, a federal court in North Carolina held that North Carolina can no longer issue license plates promoting an anti-abortion view unless it also provides supporters of reproductive choice with the opportunity to display a similar plate advertising their views — in Judge Fox’s words, “[t]he State’s offering of a Choose Life license plate in the absence of a pro-choice plate constitutes viewpoint discrimination in violation of the First Amendment.” During the debate over the 2011 law that authorized the anti-abortion plate, six amendments were offered authorizing plates that would have stated either “Trust Women. Respect Choice” or just “Respect Choice,” but each of these amendments were voted down. The final bill authorized the following plate:

Judge Fox’s decision will appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, which is one of the few federal appeals courts dominated by Democratic appointees. In 2004, the Fourth Circuit struck down a similar instance of viewpoint discrimination against supporters of reproductive freedom, although the three judges who decided that case could not agree on their reasoning.

A divided three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit struck down an Illinois law yesterday which prohibited most people from carrying loaded weapons outside of the home. The law prohibits most individuals from carrying a “loaded, immediately accessible—that is, easy to reach—and uncased” firearm, with exceptions for “police and other security personnel, hunters, and members of target shooting clubs.” The law also contained broad exemptions allowing someone to carry a firearm on their own property or in their own home, the later of which is required under the the Supreme Court’s decision in District of Columbia v. Heller.

Heller established a robust right to gun possession within the confines of the home, while also permitting a wide range of firearm regulation beyond the home’s four walls. Although the Seventh Circuit’s decision deemed the fairly broad Illinois law to exceed this wide range, it also makes clear that lawmakers retain a great deal of authority over firearms:

[W]hen a state bans guns merely in particular places, such as public schools, a person can preserve an undiminished right of self-defense by not entering those places; since that’s a lesser burden, the state doesn’t need to prove so strong a need. Similarly, the state can prevail with less evidence when, as in Skoien, guns are forbidden to a class of persons who present a higher than average risk of misusing a gun. And empirical evidence of a public safety concern can be dispensed with altogether when the ban is limited to obviously dangerous persons such as felons and the mentally ill. Illinois has lots of options for protecting its people from being shot without having to eliminate all possibility of armed self-defense in public. . . .

Apart from the usual prohibitions of gun ownership by children, felons, illegal aliens, lunatics, and in sensitive places such as public schools, the propriety of which was not questioned in Heller (“nothing in this opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings”), some states sensibly require that an applicant for a handgun permit establish his competence in handling firearms. A person who carries a gun in public but is not well trained in the use of firearms is a menace to himself and others. States also permit private businesses and other private institutions (such as churches) to ban guns from their premises. If enough private institutions decided to do that, the right to carry a gun in public would have much less value and might rarely be exercised—in which event the invalidation of the Illinois law might have little effect, which opponents of gun rights would welcome.

The court concluded its opinion by staying its own decision for 180 days, “to allow the Illinois legislature to craft a new gun law that will impose reasonable limitations, consistent with the public safety and the Second Amendment as interpreted in this opinion, on the carrying of guns in public.”

Historically, Virginia has executed more individuals than any other state besides Texas. But the state will end 2012 without a single execution for only the second time since 1984. The reasons, according to the Washington Times, include that cases are tied up in appeals and juries are less likely to opt for the punishment. Nationwide, there were 43 executions this year – the same number as in 2011, but a decline of 50 percent since 1999 – when capital punishment peaked after the U.S. Supreme Court effectively halted executions in 1972, and then re-established that they were legal in 1976. As has been the trend, the 43 executions were isolated in a few states. Texas, which relies far more than any state upon capital punishment, executed 14 people in 2012, while 41 states did not perform any executions.

The long-term trend away from capital punishment may reflect growing evidence that the sentence has been wrongly and arbitrarily applied to innocent individuals, and could ultimately lead to a Supreme Court conclusion that, given our “evolving standard of decency,” the punishment meets the definition of “cruel and unusual” punishment under the Constitution’s Eighth Amendment.

After Republicans spent the past two years passing voter suppression bills, progressives in several states are gearing up to fight back next year with legislation that would increase voting rights.

In the last week, lawmakers in states ranging from Florida to Virginia to New Jersey pre-filed bills to help Americans access the ballot box and ensure that citizens aren’t disenfranchised.

• FLORIDA: HB 25 to ease restrictions on registration groups. Rep. Darryl Rouson (D) pre-filed legislation to undo the change last session that hamstrung voter registration groups like the League of Women Voters by requiring that they submit completed forms within 48 hours to the minute or face fines. The move had forced outside organizations to shut down their operations, which harmed minorities and other groups of voters who tend to benefit from registration drives. A federal judge invalidated the suppression law earlier this year. Rouson’s bill would remove it from the books entirely and restore previous law, which allowed 10 days for groups to submit registration forms.
• NEW JERSEY: AB 3553 to establish early voting. New Jersey is one of just 18 states that doesn’t have some form of early voting. That could change next year if AB 3553, sponsored by seven New Jersey assemblymen, is passed. The bill would establish a 28-day early voting period in the state, from the fourth Monday before the election through the final Sunday prior to Election Day.
• VIRGINIA: HB 1361 to allow anyone to vote absentee. Delegate Jim Scott (D) introduced a bill to permit “no-excuse” absentee voting in Virginia. If passed, any Virginian would be allowed to vote via absentee ballot, not just those residents who are out of town on Election Day.
• VIRGINIA: HJ 563 to restore voting rights for ex-felons. Delegate Joe Morrissey introduced legislation that would restore voting rights for individuals who were convicted of a felony but have finished repaying their debt to society. Currently, Virginia is one of just four states that strip voting rights from millions of citizens by permanently disenfranchising people who have ever been convicted of a felony.

In addition, after some Floridians were forced to wait in line more than six hours to vote, officials in Miami-Dade County sent a request to the Florida state legislature this week to extend the early voting period in populous counties.

A California appeals court last week rejected mandatory parental supervision of a father who uses medical marijuana, finding that his consumption of the drug does not make him unfit to care for his child, nor does it justify the random drug screens, drug counseling or parenting classes mandated by the lower court. In the unanimous three-judge ruling, the court distinguished between “use” of marijuana and “abuse,” and concluded that the lower court had produced no evidence that the father, “Paul M.,” was a poor parent, nor that he was abusing marijuana:

DCFS [Department of Children and Family Services] failed to show that father was unable to provide regular care for Drake due to father‘s substance abuse. Both DCFS and the trial court apparently confused the meanings of the terms ―substance use and ―substance abuse. The statute is clear, however, jurisdiction based on “the inability of the parent or guardian to provide regular care for the child due to the parent‘s . . . substance abuse,” must necessarily include a finding that the parent at issue is a substance abuser. […]

Although “even legal use of marijuana can be abuse if it presents a risk of harm to minors,” a jurisdictional finding … based merely on such usage alone without any evidence that such usage has caused serious physical harm or illness or places a child at substantial risk of incurring serious physical harm or illness is unwarranted and will be reversed.

Paul M. testified that he consumes marijuana several times a week to manage his chronic arthritis pain, but that he never smokes in front of the child and leaves adequate time between consuming marijuana and driving to avoid impaired driving. The court found that the “record shows that Drake was well cared for by his father.” Nonetheless, the trial court had placed him under county parental supervision last year because of his medical marijuana use.

Paul M.’s lawyer told The Huffington Post that the ruling is the first to distinguish between “use” and “abuse” in juvenile dependency law. The case is the latest test for users of marijuana in states where it is legal, who not only face potential consequences from federal marijuana prohibition, but also from government, employer and university drug policies that impose their own rules about use. The court’s distinction between “use” and “abuse” — embodied in the state’s child welfare statute – reflects the growing consensus that total drug prohibition policies are ineffective in achieving actual public health and safety goals.