Supreme Court hears mail carrier’s religious tolerance case

The Supreme Court is being asked to decide under what circumstances businesses must accommodate the needs of religious employees. A case before the justices Tuesday involves a Christian mail carrier in rural Pennsylvania. He was told that as part of his job he’d need to start delivering Amazon.com packages on Sundays. He declined, saying his Sundays are for church and family. U.S. Postal Service officials initially tried to get substitutes for the man’s shifts, but they couldn’t always. When he didn’t show, that meant more work for others. Ultimately, the man quit and sued for religious discrimination. The case is the latest religious confrontation the high court has been asked to referee. In recent years, the court’s 6-3 conservative majority has been particularly sensitive to the concerns of religious plaintiffs. That includes a ruling last year in which the court said a public high school football coach should be allowed to pray on the field after games. Another case the court is weighing this term involves a Christian graphic artist who wants to create wedding websites, but doesn’t want to serve gay couples. A federal law, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, requires employers to accommodate employees’ religious practices unless doing so would be an “undue hardship” for the business. But a Supreme Court case from 1977, Trans World Airlines v. Hardison, says employers can deny religious accommodations to employees when they impose “more than a de minimis cost” on the business. Three current justices — Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch — have said the court should reconsider the Hardison case. The case currently before the court involves Gerald Groff, a former employee of the U.S. Postal Service in Pennsylvania’s Amish Country. For years, Groff was a fill-in mail carrier who worked on days when other mail carriers were off. But when an Amazon.com contract with the Postal Service required carriers to start delivering packages on Sundays, Groff balked. Initially, to avoid the shifts, Groff transferred to a more rural post office not yet doing Sunday deliveries, but eventually that post office was required to do them too.

Supreme Court rejects Turkish bank’s arguments in Iran case

The Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected a Turkish bank’s main arguments for dismissing a lawsuit accusing it of helping Iran evade U.S. sanctions, but the court sent the case back for additional review. Halkbank, a bank owned by Turkey, had argued that a federal law, the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976, gave foreign states absolute immunity from criminal prosecution in U.S. courts. It also said federal courts don’t have jurisdiction to oversee the case. “We disagree with Halkbank on both points,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for himself and six of his eight colleagues. Still, Kavanaugh said the case should go back to a lower court for further review. He said the lower court “did not fully consider the various arguments regarding common-law immunity that the parties press in this Court.” The federal government says the bank “participated in the largest-known conspiracy to evade the United States’ economic sanctions on Iran,” laundering billions of dollars worth of Iranian oil and natural gas proceeds. The government says that working with an Iranian-Turkish businessman, the bank created ways for Iran to access the funds — including shipments of gold and fake food shipments. The government says that the schemes “freed up approximately $20 billion of restricted Iranian funds.” The businessman, Reza Zarrab, has pleaded guilty. The case was initiated under the Trump administration but was continued by the Biden administration. The case is Turkiye Halk Bankasi A.S. v. United States, 21-1450.

After Nashville, Congress confronts limits of new gun law

Nine months ago, President Joe Biden signed a sweeping bipartisan gun law, the most significant legislative response to gun violence in decades. “Lives will be saved,” he said at the White House. The law has already prevented some potentially dangerous people from owning guns. Yet since that signing last summer, the tally of mass shootings in the United States has only grown. Five dead at a nightclub in Colorado. Eleven killed at a dance hall in California. And just this past week, three 9-year-olds and three adults were shot and killed at an elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee. A day after that school shooting, Biden’s tone was markedly less optimistic than it was the signing ceremony. “What in God’s name are we doing?” he asked in a speech Tuesday, calling for a ban on so-called assault weapons like those that were used to kill at The Covenant School in Nashville. “There’s a moral price to pay for inaction.” Biden and others had hailed last year’s bipartisan gun bill — approved in the weeks after the shooting of 19 children and two adults at a school in Uvalde, Texas — as a new way forward. Several months in, the law has had some success: Stepped-up FBI background checks have blocked gun sales for 119 buyers under the age of 21, prosecutions have increased for unlicensed gun sellers and new gun trafficking penalties have been charged in at least 30 cases around the country. Millions of new dollars have flowed into mental health services for children and schools.

Supreme Court skeptical of man who offered adult adoptions

The Supreme Court seemed inclined Monday to rule against a man convicted of violating immigration law for offering adult adoptions he falsely claimed would lead to citizenship. Attorneys for Helaman Hansen told the justices during approximately 90 minutes of arguments that the law he was convicted of violating was too broad. But the court’s conservative majority in particular seemed willing to side with the government and conclude that it is not. Justice Neil Gorsuch noted that the law “has been on the books for 70 years” without some of the issues Hansen’s lawyers worried about. He also expressed no sympathy for Hansen himself, who he said was “taking advantage of very vulnerable people.” “He had every intent in the world to keep these people here to take their money with no prospect they’d ever” actually get citizenship, Gorsuch said. The case involves a section of federal immigration law that says a person such as Hansen who “encourages or induces” a non-citizen to come to or remain in the United States illegally can be punished by up to five years in prison. That’s increased to up to 10 years if the person doing the encouraging is doing so for their own financial gain. The federal government says that from 2012 to 2016 Hansen — who lived in Elk Grove, California, near Sacramento — deceived hundreds of non-citizens into believing that he could guarantee them a path to citizenship through adult adoption. Based on Hansen’s promises, officials say, people either came to or stayed in the United States in violation of the law, even though Hansen knew that the adult adoptions he was arranging would not lead to citizenship. The government says at least 471 people paid him between $550 and $10,000 and that in total he collected more than $1.8 million. Hansen was ultimately convicted of encouragement charges as well as fraud charges. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison for the encouragement charges and another 20 years on the fraud charges. But a federal appeals court ruled that the law on encouragement is overbroad and violates the free speech clause of the First Amendment and overturned just those convictions. The court’s three liberal justices seemed more concerned about the reach of the law. Justice Elena Kagan asked “what happens to all the cases” where a lawyer, doctor, neighbor, friend or teacher “says to a non-citizen: ‘I really think you should stay.’” Kagan wanted to know whether those people could or would be prosecuted under the law.

Executive gets 15 months in prison in doomed nuclear project

A former executive utility who gave rosy projections on the progress of two nuclear power plants in South Carolina while they were hopelessly behind will spend 15 months in prison for the doomed project that cost ratepayers billions of dollars. Ex-SCANA Corp. Executive Vice President Stephen Byrne apologized in court Wednesday, saying he thinks about how he let down customers, shareholders, employees, taxpayers and his family almost every day. The two nuclear plants, which never generated a watt of power despite $9 billion of investment, were supposed to be “the crowning achievement of my life,” Byrne said. “But I failed.” Byrne is the second SCANA executive to head to prison for the nuclear debacle. Former CEO Kevin Marsh was sentenced to two years in prison in October 2021 and released earlier in March after serving about 17 months. Two executives at Westinghouse, which was contracted to build the reactors, are also charged. Carl Churchman, who was the company’s top official at the Fairfield County construction site at V.C. Summer, pleaded guilty to perjury and is awaiting sentencing. Former Westinghouse senior vice president Jeff Benjamin faces 16 charges. His trial is scheduled for October. Both defense lawyers and prosecutors agreed to delay Byrne’s prison sentence until he testifies at Benjamin’s trial to make sure he is honest and helpful. But that isn’t in doubt. Prosecutors said Byrne was the first executive to come to investigators after the project was abandoned in July 2017. His careful notes taken in every meeting of who spoke and what was said saved the government years of work unraveling the lies, prosecutor Winston Holliday said.

Alabama man charged in quadruple killing denied bond

A judge has denied bond for a man accused of killing his grandparents, his brother and a family friend in south Alabama. Jared Smith-Bracy, 21, is charged with four counts of capital murder in the deaths Wednesday night in Daphne. He met briefly with his two court-appointed attorneys before the Friday bond hearing, and they entered a plea of not guilty by reason of mental disease or mental defect on his behalf, WKRG-TV reported. Baldwin County Chief Assistant District Attorney Teresa Heinz asked for no bond, and the judge granted that request. But the judge said that could change as the investigation continues, the television station reported. Police have said Smith-Bracy fatally shot his 72-year-old grandmother, Barbara Smith; his 27-year-old brother, Jeremy Smith; and 71-year-old family friend, Sheila Glover, whose bodies were found in the backyard of his grandparents’ home. He then used a pickaxe to beat his 80-year-old grandfather, Lenard Smith, to death inside a bedroom in the house, police said, according to WPMI-TV. Baldwin County Chief Assistant District Attorney Teresa Heinz asked for no bond, and the judge granted that request. But the judge said that could change as the investigation continues, the television station reported.

Interior: $580M headed to 15 tribes to fulfill water rights

Fifteen Native American tribes will get a total of $580 million in federal money this year for water rights settlements, the Biden administration announced Thursday. The money will help carry out the agreements that define the tribes’ rights to water from rivers and other sources and pay for pipelines, pumping stations, and canals that deliver it to reservations. “Water rights are crucial to ensuring the health, safety and empowerment of Tribal communities,” U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement Thursday that acknowledged the decades many tribes have waited for the funding. Access to reliable, clean water and basic sanitation facilities on tribal lands remains a challenge across many Native American reservations. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1908 that tribes have rights to as much water as they need to establish a permanent homeland, and those rights stretch back at least as long as any given reservation has existed. As a result, tribal water rights often are senior to others’ in the West, where competition over the dwindling resource is often fierce. But in many cases, details about those water rights were not specified and have had to be determined in the modern era. Many tribes opted for settlements because litigation over water can be expensive and drawn out, with negotiations involving states, cities, private water users, local water districts and others that can take years, if not decades. Of the funding announced Thursday, $460 million comes from the $2.5 billion set aside for Native American water rights settlements in the Biden administration’s infrastructure bill. A federal fund created by Congress in 2009 to pay for water rights settlements will contribute the other $120 million. About $157 million will go to the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes in Montana. The federal government signed the tribes’ water rights compact in 2021 and promised over the following decade to fund the rebuilding of an irrigation project on the Flathead Indian Reservation constructed in the 1900s.