Texas case before high court to test voting rights
Lawyer Blogs
The community of Canyon Creek was ranchland rich with limestone and cedar trees when Jim Crow held sway in the South. The first house wasn't built until the late 1980s and not even a hint of discrimination attaches to this little slice in suburbia.
President Barack Obama won more than 48 percent of the vote in November in this overwhelmingly white community northwest of the state capital.
Yet Canyon Creek, the heart of Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One, is the site of a major Supreme Court battle over the federal government's often used and most effective tool in preventing voting discrimination against minorities.
The utility district's elected five-person board manages a local park and pays down bond debt. Because it is in Texas, the board is covered by a section of the Voting Rights Act that requires approval from the Justice Department before any changes can be made in how elections are conducted.
That requirement applies to all or parts of 16 states, mostly in the South, with a history of preventing blacks, Hispanics and other minorities from voting.
The utility district is challenging that section of the law, which Congress extended in 2006 for 25 years. The Obama administration is defending it.
The Voting Rights Act, enacted in 1965, opened the polls to millions of black Americans. The law "has been the most important and transformative civil rights act in our country's history," said John Payton, director of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
Related listings
-
Judge waives waiting period for gay Iowa couple
Lawyer Blogs 04/27/2009A same-sex Iowa couple will be allowed to wed as soon as Monday after a judge allowed them to bypass the state's three-day waiting period. Melisa Keeton and Shelley Wolfe of Des Moines received their waiver by 9 a.m.Same-sex couples in Iowa began app...
-
Discrimination claim appears to divide high court
Lawyer Blogs 04/24/2009A divided Supreme Court took up its first examination of race in the Obama era Wednesday, wrestling with claims of job discrimination by white firefighters in a case that could force changes in employment practices nationwide. The case from New Haven...
-
Discrimination claim appears to divide high court
Lawyer Blogs 04/23/2009A divided Supreme Court took up its first examination of race in the Obama era Wednesday, wrestling with claims of job discrimination by white firefighters in a case that could force changes in employment practices nationwide. The case from New Haven...
Grounds for Divorce in Ohio - Sylkatis Law, LLC
A divorce in Ohio is filed when there is typically “fault” by one of the parties and party not at “fault” seeks to end the marriage. A court in Ohio may grant a divorce for the following reasons:
• Willful absence of the adverse party for one year
• Adultery
• Extreme cruelty
• Fraudulent contract
• Any gross neglect of duty
• Habitual drunkenness
• Imprisonment in a correctional institution at the time of filing the complaint
• Procurement of a divorce outside this state by the other party
Additionally, there are two “no-fault” basis for which a court may grant a divorce:
• When the parties have, without interruption for one year, lived separate and apart without cohabitation
• Incompatibility, unless denied by either party
However, whether or not the the court grants the divorce for “fault” or not, in Ohio the party not at “fault” will not get a bigger slice of the marital property.