High court rules narrowly in voting rights case
Legal News Feed
The Supreme Court ruled narrowly Monday in a challenge to the landmark Voting Rights Act, exempting a small Texas governing authority from a key provision of the civil rights law but side-stepping the larger constitutional issue.
The court, with only one justice in dissent, avoided the major constitutional questions raised in the case over the federal government's most powerful tool to prevent discriminatory voting changes since the mid-1960s.
The law requires all or parts of 16 states, mainly in the South, with a history of discrimination in voting to get approval in advance of making changes in the way elections are conducted.
The court said that the Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 in Austin, Texas, can opt out of the advance approval requirement, reversing a lower federal court that found it could not.
Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the court, said the larger issue of whether dramatic civil rights gains means the advance approval requirement is no longer necessary "is a difficult constitutional question we do not answer today."
The court's avoidance of the larger issue explains the consensus among justices in the case rendered Monday, where they otherwise likely would have split along conservative-liberal lines.
Justice Clarence Thomas, alone among this colleagues, said he would have resolved the case and held that the provision, known as Section 5, is unconstitutional.
"The violence, intimidation and subterfuge that led Congress to pass Section 5 and this court to uphold it no longer remains," Thomas said.
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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.