The biggest obstacle to enforcing the Constitution’s prohibition on racial discrimination in voting is the Supreme Court. Since 1965, Congress’s primary vehicle for implementing this constitutional command has been the Voting Rights Act; the Court, urged on by Republican elected officials, has been chipping away at the law’s promises ever since. The justices dealt particularly debilitating blows to the law in Shelby County v. Holder (2013) and Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee (2021). And now, yet another lawsuit is coursing its way through federal courts that threatens to kill what’s left of it.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit is currently considering Pendergrass v. Raffensperger, a challenge to the VRA ostensibly arising out of redistricting in Georgia. A closer look at the arguments made by challengers to the Act, though, suggests that much of the case arises from the Supreme Court itself: Republican litigants are attacking the Voting Rights Act in the way the Republican justices advertised that they should the last time they attacked the Voting Rights Act.

Back in 2021, groups representing Georgia voters sued Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, alleging that the state’s new electoral maps diluted the voting strength of Georgians of color in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The 2020 Census showed that Georgia’s growth over the preceding decade was entirely attributable to its minority population, yet there was no corresponding increase in the number of majority-Black congressional and legislative districts. Alongside its considerations of other contextual factors, like persistent racial polarization in voting and discrimination against Black voters in the state, the trial court specifically concluded that the GOP-led redistricting process had left Black voters in west-metro Atlanta with less of an opportunity to participate in the political process.

In his appeal to the Eleventh Circuit, Raffensperger not only argued that the map did not violate the VRA, but also challenged the Voting Rights Act as unconstitutionally out-of-date. “Just because” Section 2 “was justified when it was enacted in 1965—or when it was last amended in 1982—does not mean it remains so today,” he wrote. The relevant question, Raffensperger insists, is whether its “extraordinary measures…continue to satisfy constitutional requirements.”

If that sounds familiar to you, it’s because he’s quoting Chief Justice John Roberts’s majority opinion in Shelby County v. Holder. In Shelby, Roberts wrote that “the Voting Rights Act of 1965 employed extraordinary measures to address an extraordinary problem,” but opined that because “our country has changed,” the legislation no longer spoke “to current conditions.” Roberts pioneered the idea that parts of the Voting Rights Act can age out of constitutionality because, in news to people of color, America is so post-racist now.

Dallas-based global tax services and software provider Ryan has filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging the Federal Trade Commission’s new non-compete rule. It’s the first challenge filed against the rule, which “would upend companies’ IP protections and talent development and retention by invalidating millions of employment contracts and nullifying the laws of dozens of states, according to the FTC’s own public estimation,” Ryan said.

Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, the lawsuit says the new rule “imposes an extraordinary burden on businesses seeking to protect their intellectual property and retain top talent within the professional services industries.” Ryan is seeking to prevent “the immense, undue burdens the FTC’s rule would impose on service-driven companies of every size nationwide.”

FTC rule aims ‘to promote competition by banning noncompetes nationwide’

On Tuesday, the FTC announced it had issued a final rule “to promote competition by banning noncompetes nationwide, protecting the fundamental freedom of workers to change jobs, increasing innovation, and fostering new business formation.”

Noncompetes are “a widespread and often exploitative practice imposing contractual conditions that prevent workers from taking a new job or starting a new business,” the FTC said, often forcing workers “to either stay in a job they want to leave or bear other significant harms and costs, such as being forced to switch to a lower-paying field, being forced to relocate, being forced to leave the workforce altogether, or being forced to defend against expensive litigation.”

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — As transgender people in Louisiana watched surrounding states in the deeply conservative South implement a slew of laws targeting nearly every facet of their lives in recent years, they counted on their ally in the governor’s office to keep their home a relative oasis.

Former Gov. John Bel Edwards, the only statewide elected Democrat at the time, was indeed able to block most of the bills.

But this year, nothing stands in the way. Edwards has been replaced by Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican backed by former President Donald Trump who has shown support for such legislation. And the GOP holds a two-thirds supermajority in the Legislature. That means previously introduced legislation hostile to transgender people now has a clear path forward, as do new proposals.

“These bills are absolutely going to become law,” said SarahJane Guidry, executive director of the LGBTQ+ rights group Forum for Equality. “And that is such a tragedy, but it doesn’t end there. We are going to continue to fight.”

As the only Democratic governor in the Deep South at the time, Edwards used vetoes to block anti-transgender legislation, including one broadly barring teachers from discussing gender identity and sexual orientation in schools, a type of policy critics have dubbed “Don’t Say Gay”; and a measure requiring public school teachers to use the pronouns and names students were assigned at birth.

Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Lee said Monday that he thinks workers at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga made a mistake by voting to unionize under the United Auto Workers in a landslide election but acknowledged the choice was ultimately up to them.

Ahead of the vote, Lee and five other Southern Republican governors spoke out publicly against the UAW's drive to organize workers at factories largely in the South, arguing that if autoworkers were to vote for union representation, it would jeopardize jobs.

Instead, the union wound up pulling 73% of the vote at a facility whose workers had narrowly rejected the union in 2019 and 2014. The Volkswagen plant vote was the first to follow a series of strikes last fall against Detroit’s automakers that resulted in lucrative new contracts. Workers at Mercedes factories near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, will vote on UAW representation in May.

Lee told reporters Monday that the Volkswagen vote was “a loss for workers." He noted that he has a “long history with skilled workers" — workers are not unionized at his family's business, Lee Company, which employs about 1,600 people in home, facilities and construction projects.

“I think it's unwise to put your future in somebody else's hands,” Lee said at an event in Gallatin. “But those workers made that decision based on the individual circumstances of that plant. I think it was a mistake, but that's their choice.”

President Joe Biden will deliver an abortion-focused speech in Florida next week, capitalizing on a looming abortion ban there to make a broader case for reproductive rights.

At a campaign event in Tampa on Tuesday, Biden is expected to tie the 2024 election to access to reproductive rights across the country, a campaign aide confirmed to POLITICO. NBC News first reported Biden’s planned speech.

The Biden campaign has hammered former President Donald Trump over abortion in recent weeks, after Trump announced this month that he would defer to state-level abortion laws. In quick succession, a number of state-level cases put Trump and the GOP on the defensive on the issue. In Arizona, the state Supreme Court reinstated an 1864-era abortion ban, while in Florida, a six-week ban, approved by the state Legislature, will soon go into effect.

Biden’s addressing of abortion head-on is also significant, as the devout Catholic has often displayed discomfort with the issue. Instead, he’s regularly leaned on other messengers, including Vice President Kamala Harris and women who have been directly affected, to argue for abortion rights. His campaign has released several testimonial-style ads that feature women sharing personal stories about abortion.

“Since the overturning of Roe, whenever reproductive rights have been on the ballot, they have won, and this November will be no different,” Morgan Mohr, the Biden campaign’s senior adviser for reproductive rights, said in a statement. “While Donald Trump continues to brag about unleashing these extreme and dangerous bans, President Joe Biden is running to restore reproductive freedom.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — One woman miscarried in the restroom lobby of a Texas emergency room as front desk staff refused to admit her. Another woman learned that her fetus had no heartbeat at a Florida hospital, the day after a security guard turned her away from the facility. And in North Carolina, a woman gave birth in a car after an emergency room couldn't offer an ultrasound. The baby later died.

Complaints that pregnant women were turned away from U.S. emergency rooms spiked in 2022 after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, federal documents obtained by The Associated Press reveal.

The cases raise alarms about the state of emergency pregnancy care in the U.S., especially in states that enacted strict abortion laws and sparked confusion around the treatment doctors can provide.

“It is shocking, it’s absolutely shocking,” said Amelia Huntsberger, an OB/GYN in Oregon. “It is appalling that someone would show up to an emergency room and not receive care -- this is inconceivable.”

It's happened despite federal mandates that the women be treated.

Federal law requires emergency rooms to treat or stabilize patients who are in active labor and provide a medical transfer to another hospital if they don’t have the staff or resources to treat them. Medical facilities must comply with the law if they accept Medicare funding.

Changing course, a Democratic Florida prosecutor suspended from office by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said Tuesday he will seek reelection while a court battle continues over his 2022 removal from the post.

Andrew Warren had said in January he would not run this year. But that was before a federal appeals court ruled that a lower court should consider Warren's argument that statements he made about hot-button issues such as abortion were political advocacy protected by the First Amendment. That case remains pending.

DeSantis cited those statements in suspending Warren, contending he was improperly refusing to uphold and enforce certain laws. The governor appointed Republican Suzy Lopez to replace Warren, and she is running for the position that prosecutes cases in Tampa and surrounding Hillsborough County.

In his announcement in a video posted on social media, Warren said the governor “illegally forced me from office” and that he decided to seek a third term even as a judge in Tallahassee considers whether to order his reinstatement later this year. Qualifying for the election ends next week.

Changing course, a Democratic Florida prosecutor suspended from office by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said Tuesday he will seek reelection while a court battle continues over his 2022 removal from the post.

Andrew Warren had said in January he would not run this year. But that was before a federal appeals court ruled that a lower court should consider Warren's argument that statements he made about hot-button issues such as abortion were political advocacy protected by the First Amendment. That case remains pending.

DeSantis cited those statements in suspending Warren, contending he was improperly refusing to uphold and enforce certain laws. The governor appointed Republican Suzy Lopez to replace Warren, and she is running for the position that prosecutes cases in Tampa and surrounding Hillsborough County.

In his announcement in a video posted on social media, Warren said the governor “illegally forced me from office” and that he decided to seek a third term even as a judge in Tallahassee considers whether to order his reinstatement later this year. Qualifying for the election ends next week.

Danielle Tallafuss spoke through tears Saturday afternoon as she recounted to hundreds of people the difficult decision to have an abortion.

The Oviedo resident had been counting down the days in 2020 until the birth of her son, Nathaniel. Then a scan around week 20 of her pregnancy revealed he had a genetic defect called hypoplastic left heart syndrome.

The condition would require three open heart surgeries within his first two years of life — with no guarantee her son would survive. Tallafuss had another child at home, as well. She didn’t want to split her time between him and a baby in the hospital, she said from the stage of Lake Eola Park’s Walt Disney Amphitheater.

“It was a decision we made out of love, compassion and doing what was best not just for the son we already had at home, but for Nathaniel, who would have had to suffer through treatments that most adults wouldn’t be able to handle before he could even take his first steps,” she said.

As she spoke, coordinated chants of “Abortion is murder” were heard from counter-protesters behind a nearby barricade. Some held signs bearing graphic pictures of aborted fetuses. Others dropped to their knees in prayer, holding rosaries toward the sky.

The event marked the official kickoff of the Yes On 4 campaign — an effort to enshrine the right to abortion in Florida’s Constitution and undo current restrictions if 60% of voters approve in November’s election. The changes would then go into effect in January.

Pro-choice demonstrators march on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 20, 1970. Among the visible signs is one that reads, “Defend Shirley Wheeler,” referencing the first woman prosecuted under Florida’s abortion laws (and possibly the first in the United States); she was convicted the following year. (Leif Skoogfors / Getty Images)


Florida’s Supreme Court recently upheld the state’s law banning abortion after 15 weeks of becoming pregnant. Not surprisingly, news coverage and commentary about the decision focused on abortion and the fact that the effect of that ruling was to allow a six-week ban to go into effect. Far from being a decision limited to abortion, however, it is one that should shock the conscience of anyone who believes that women, and all those with the capacity for pregnancy, have a right to privacy.

That right is specifically protected in Article 23 of Florida’s Constitution. Adopted by Florida voters in 1980, it states: “Every natural person has the right to be let alone and free from governmental intrusion into the person’s private life except as otherwise provided herein.”

Nowhere is it “otherwise provided” that womanhood, pregnancy or the capacity for pregnancy are exceptions to protection from governmental intrusion into a “person’s private life.” Nevertheless, Florida’s Supreme Court concluded that the people who become pregnant have no right to be let alone from Florida’s laws banning abortion care.

Purporting to carry out an objective evaluation of the words used in Article 23 the court erases the experiences and ultimately the privacy rights of the all Floridians who have the capacity for pregnancy.