Month: June 2023

NY Times: “The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected affirmative action at colleges and universities around the nation, declaring that the race-conscious admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina were unlawful and sharply curtailing a policy that had long been a pillar of higher education. The vote was 6 to 3, with the court’s liberal members…

MS Free Press: “Bass arrived for the meeting with Alford and another teacher later that afternoon. The principal said she would not move Jack back to Bass’ class, but that he had returned the pride flag, which Alford handed back to Bass.  Soon, though, the art teacher learned that the topic of their meeting was…

Democracy Now!: “In news from Atlanta, opponents of a proposed massive police training center known as Cop City are hoping to begin collecting signatures soon to force a citywide referendum on the project in November. On Wednesday, the Atlanta city clerk approved the language of the referendum petition to stop the $90 million project. Meanwhile,…

NY Times: “A former Florida sheriff’s deputy who failed to confront the gunman at a Parkland high school five years ago, and instead backed away from the building while the students and teachers inside endured a deadly barrage, was found not guilty of child neglect and other crimes on Thursday. Scot Peterson, a former Broward County sheriff’s deputy,…

NY Times: “The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a legal theory that would have radically reshaped how federal elections are conducted by giving state legislatures largely unchecked power to set rules for federal elections and to draw congressional maps warped by partisan gerrymandering. The vote was 6 to 3, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. writing…

AR Times: “Philip Edwin Kaplan, a Little Rock lawyer who was nationally recognized for his work in civil and human rights, died Friday of a stroke. Kaplan moved to Little Rock in 1968 and started his career in class-action lawsuits representing inmates in the Arkansas prison system, according to the Encyclopedia of Arkansas. The landmark Holt v….

WaPo: “Several advocacy groups filed a federal lawsuit Monday alleging a Virginia law that automatically stripped the right to vote from more than 300,000 convicted felons is an illegal vestige of historical efforts to keep Black residents from casting ballots. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Virginia, the voting rights group Protect Democracy and…

AR Times: “Blue Arkansans are not the only ones marveling at how much harm the state’s citizens will suffer from new laws passed during the 2023 legislative session. Two professors from Kansas State University and Bard College took aim at Arkansas’s mystifying rollback of child labor protections in an article published yesterday in The Conversation. John A….

KWTX10: “Three San Antonio Police Department officers – identified as Sergeant Alfred Flores, Officer Eleazar Alejandro, and Officer Nathaniel Villalobos – on June 23 were charged with murder in the fatal shooting of a 46-year-old woman who was experiencing a “mental health crisis,” the police chief said. The shooting happened shortly after 2 a.m. Friday…

WaPo: ““The pain of not being myself,” says Rachel Fleit in her film, “Bama Rush,” “became greater than the pain of not fitting in.” Fleit’s documentary, about sorority culture at the University of Alabama, is streaming on Max (the service formerly known as HBO). She’s referring to her experience as a bald woman — a person with…