B·Page 8
The University Daily Kansan
Wednesday, January 19, 2000
Nation
Supreme Court agrees to hear abortion, Boy Scout cases
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court is adding two explosive cases to an already high-profile term, agreeing to decide whether states can ban a procedure opponents call partial-birth abortion and whether the Boy Scouts can exclude homosexuals.
The justices announced Friday they would hear arguments in the two cases this spring; decisions are expected by July.
The abortion case could yield the court's most important ruling on the issue since it reaffirmed women's constitutional right to abortion in 1992.
The justices will review a
Nebraska law that made it a crime for doctors to perform the controversial procedure. A federal appeals court struck down the law as unconstitutional.
Although the controversy involves a specific procedure, abortion-rights activists contend far more may be at stake. They say the court's decision could broadly safeguard — or dramatically erode — abortion rights, depending on what state legislatures are allowed to consider when passing laws to regulate abortions.
The procedure involves partially extracting a fetus.
Thirty states have enacted bans on the procedure, but most have been blocked in court.
Congress passed a federal ban on partial-birth abortions, but President Clinton veted it.
The Boy Scout case involves an assistant scoutmaster in New Jersey whose leadership role was revoked when the organization learned he was gay.
James Dale sued, and the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled last summer that the Boy Scouts' denial of membership to homosexual boys and leaders violated a state law banning discrimination in public accommodations.
The Scouts' lawyers contend that law violated the organization's rights of free speech and free association under the Constitution's First Amendment.
But Dale's lawyer, Evan Wolfson of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, said opposition to homosexuality was not one of the Scouts' main purposes.
"As gay people we know how important the First Amendment is," Wolfson said. "Their First Amendment rights are not being interfered with."
Entering another high-profile area Friday, the Supreme Court agreed to review an appeal in which five Branch Davidians challenged their sentences for using firearms during a gun battle that began the 1993 standoff at the group's compound near Waco, Texas.
The justices said they would hear
the Davidians' argument that they could not be given longer sentences for using machine guns, rather than some other kind of firearms, because a jury never decided what type of weapons were used.
Even before Friday, the court had a number of major cases on its calendar. This week, the justices further trimmed the federal government's power over states, ruling that state employees cannot sue in federal court over age bias.
They also broadened police officers' authority to stop and question people who run at the sight of an officer, and ruled that Congress could protect motorists' privacy by barring states from selling personal information on drivers' licenses.
Rulings in several other cases are expected by summer:
State laws that give grandparents broad rights to seek courtordered visitation with their grandchildren against the parents' wishes.
Whether a federal law, in effect, overturned the 1966 Miranda ruling that requires police to warn criminal suspects of their right to remain silent and to get a lawyer's help.
- Limits on financial contributions to political candidates.
A federal law that lets rape victims sue their attackers in federal court.
Food and Drug Administration's decision to regulate tobacco as an addictive drug.
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