Latest news with #DanielWiessner
Yahoo
20 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
US court won't lift judge's block on Trump's government overhaul
By Daniel Wiessner (Reuters) -A U.S. appeals court on Friday refused to pause a judge's ruling blocking President Donald Trump's administration from carrying out mass layoffs of federal workers and a restructuring of government agencies as part of a sweeping government overhaul. The decision by the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals means that, for now, the Trump administration cannot proceed with plans to shed tens of thousands of federal jobs and shutter many government offices and programs. U.S. District Judge Susan Illston in San Francisco on May 22 blocked large-scale layoffs at about 20 federal agencies, agreeing with a group of unions, nonprofits and municipalities that the president may only restructure agencies when authorized by Congress. A three-judge 9th Circuit panel on Friday denied the Trump administration's bid to stay Illston's decision pending an appeal, which could take months to resolve. The administration will likely now ask the U.S. Supreme Court to pause the ruling.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
States sue over Trump cuts to research funding, STEM diversity efforts
By Daniel Wiessner (Reuters) -A group of U.S. states filed a lawsuit on Wednesday seeking to block the administration of President Donald Trump from making massive cuts to federal funding for scientific research and projects focused on increasing diversity in science, technology, engineering, and math fields. The attorneys general of 16 states, including New York, California, Illinois, and New Jersey, say the Trump administration lacks the power to cap research funding and eliminate diversity programs provided by the National Science Foundation that were mandated by Congress. The lawsuit was filed in Manhattan federal court. Earlier this month, 13 major U.S. universities sued over NSF's decision to cap reimbursement for indirect research costs such as lab space and equipment at 15%, which mirrored funding cuts at the National Institutes of Health and U.S. Department of Energy that judges have temporarily blocked. Wednesday's lawsuit also challenges the cap at NSF along with the elimination of programs designed to boost the participation of women, minorities and people with disabilities in STEM fields. The states say both efforts could cause the U.S. to lose its position as a global leader in STEM research. "Institutions will not be able to maintain essential research infrastructure and will be forced to significantly scale back or halt research, abandon numerous projects, and lay off staff," they said. The NSF declined to comment. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The White House has proposed slashing NSF's $8.8 billion budget by more than 55%, and said it plans to restructure and drastically downsize the agency. New York Attorney General Letitia James said people use technology made possible by NSF funding every time they go online, scan a barcode at a store, or get an MRI scan. 'This administration's attacks on basic science and essential efforts to ensure diversity in STEM will weaken our economy and our national security," James, a Democrat, said in a statement. The states claim that the reimbursement cap would devastate scientific research at universities throughout the country. James' office said New York state universities received $104 million in NSF funding last year, which supported research into microelectronics, climate research and battery technology. They claim the cap and the elimination of diversity programs violate a federal law barring "arbitrary and capricious" actions by agencies, and violate the constitutional separation of powers by encroaching on funding decisions made by Congress.
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
US judge nixes Treasury's bid to cancel IRS workers' union contract
By Daniel Wiessner (Reuters) -A federal judge has rejected a bid by the U.S. Treasury Department to cancel a union contract covering tens of thousands of IRS staff, an early blow to President Donald Trump's efforts to eliminate collective bargaining rights for many federal workers. U.S. District Judge Danny Reeves in Lexington, Kentucky, said in a written opinion late Tuesday that the department lacked legal standing to bring a lawsuit against the National Treasury Employees Union. After Trump issued an executive order exempting Treasury and other agencies from union bargaining obligations, the agency sued an affiliate of the NTEU that represents Internal Revenue Service employees, to invalidate a bargaining agreement reached in 2022. Reeves, an appointee of Republican former President George W. Bush, dismissed the case, saying the lawsuit was premature because Treasury had not yet taken any steps to implement Trump's order. "This decision says nothing of the merits of the case," the judge wrote. "Had Treasury filed suit in response to an invasion or threatened invasion of its sovereign right to enforce [Trump's order], a different result likely would have been reached." A U.S. appeals court last week paused a ruling by a judge in Washington, D.C., that had blocked seven agencies including Treasury from implementing Trump's order in a lawsuit by the NTEU. The White House, the Treasury Department and the NTEU did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Trump in the executive order excluded from collective bargaining obligations agencies that he said "have as a primary function intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative, or national security work". The order applies to the Justice, State, Defense, Treasury, Veterans Affairs, and Health and Human Services departments, among other agencies. The NTEU has said the order applies to about 100,000 of its 160,000 members. The Treasury Department sued the NTEU affiliate a day after Trump issued the order, seeking a declaration that gave Treasury the authority to end its bargaining relationship with the union. The department said that federal civil service law empowers the president to exempt agencies from bargaining when he deems it necessary to protect national security, and that courts lack the authority to review and second guess those determinations. NTEU and other federal worker unions have accused Trump of issuing the order to punish them for bringing legal challenges to a number of his policies. U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman in Washington, D.C., ruled in the NTEU's lawsuit in April that Trump had not adequately justified reversing decades of practice and exempting large swaths of the federal workforce from bargaining. But an appeals court panel in blocking that ruling said it was likely to be overturned on appeal. Eight federal agencies have filed a separate lawsuit against the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal worker union, seeking to invalidate existing union contracts covering thousands of workers. The union has moved to dismiss that case, with a hearing scheduled for June.
Yahoo
05-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Trump to continue Biden's court defense of abortion drug mifepristone
By Daniel Wiessner (Reuters) -President Donald Trump's administration on Monday pushed forward in defending U.S. rules easing access to the abortion drug mifepristone from a legal challenge that began during Democratic former President Joe Biden's administration. The U.S. Department of Justice in a brief filed in Texas federal court urged a judge to dismiss the lawsuit by three Republican-led states on procedural grounds. While the filing does not discuss the merits of the states' case, it suggests the Trump administration is in no rush to drop the government's defense of mifepristone, used in more than 60% of U.S. abortions. Missouri, Kansas and Idaho claim the U.S. Food and Drug Administration acted improperly when it eased restrictions on mifepristone, including by allowing it to be prescribed by telemedicine and dispensed by mail. The Justice Department and the office of Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Trump said while campaigning last year that he did not plan to ban or restrict access to mifepristone. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told Fox News in February that Trump has asked for a study on the safety of abortion pills and has not made a decision on whether to tighten restrictions on them. Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a bid by anti-abortion groups and doctors to restrict access to the drug, finding that they lacked legal standing to challenge the FDA regulations. Those plaintiffs dropped their case after the high court ruling, but U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee, allowed the states to intervene and continue to pursue the lawsuit. The U.S. Justice Department moved to dismiss their claims days before Trump took office in January. In Monday's filing, government lawyers repeated their arguments that Texas is not the proper venue for the lawsuit and that the states lack standing to sue because they are not being harmed by the challenged regulations. "Regardless of the merits of the States' claims, the States cannot proceed in this Court," they wrote. The three states are challenging FDA actions that loosened restrictions on the drug in 2016 and 2021, including allowing for medication abortions at up to 10 weeks of pregnancy instead of seven, and for mail delivery of the drug without a woman first seeing a clinician in-person. The original plaintiffs initially had sought to reverse FDA approval of mifepristone, but that aspect was rebuffed by a lower court. The Republican-led states have argued they have standing to sue because their Medicaid health insurance programs will likely have to pay to treat patients who have suffered complications from using mifepristone. They have also said they should be allowed to remain in Texas even without the original plaintiffs because it would be inefficient to send the case to another court after nearly more than two years of litigation.
Yahoo
05-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Explainer-Why Trump is ending enforcement of civil rights laws that ban 'disparate impact'
By Daniel Wiessner (Reuters) - President Donald Trump recently ordered federal agencies not to enforce laws that prohibit policies and practices with discriminatory impacts that are often unintended. Curbing so-called "disparate impact" liability, which is common in employment-related cases, removes a critical tool the government has used for decades to also police discrimination in housing, education, lending and other areas. WHAT IS DISPARATE IMPACT LIABILITY? Numerous federal laws, some dating to the years after the Civil War, prohibit discrimination based on race, sex, religion and other protected traits. Courts long understood discrimination to be an intentional act, but that began to change after the adoption of the landmark Civil Rights Act in 1964. The U.S. Supreme Court created a new path to hold employers liable for discrimination in the 1971 case Griggs v. Duke Power. The court said that otherwise neutral employment practices can violate the Civil Rights Act when they disproportionately affect a protected group and are not demonstrably related to job performance. Congress in 1991 amended the Civil Rights Act to explicitly prohibit the practices covered by the Supreme Court decision. Many experts have credited those changes for helping to spur companies to track the impact of their employment policies on protected groups, a now commonplace practice. WHY DOES TRUMP OPPOSE DISPARATE IMPACT LIABILITY? Trump in an April 23 executive order said disparate impact litigation is one of the tools used by a "pernicious movement" to replace merit-based decisionmaking with a focus on diversity. The Republican president has been a vocal critic of workplace diversity, equity and inclusion policies and has launched an aggressive effort to eradicate them from the government and the private sector. During Trump's first term, some federal agencies considered rolling back disparate impact regulations. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in 2020 eliminated Obama-era rules barring housing practices with disparate impacts on protected groups, but that was paused by a court and later reversed by the Biden administration. Trump in April's executive order said the threat of disparate impact litigation prevents businesses from making decisions based on merit and skill, and that the legal theory wrongly presumes that unlawful discrimination exists "where there are any differences in outcomes" among different groups. WHAT DO LEGAL ADVOCATES SAY? Legal advocates point out that plaintiffs using disparate impact analysis are generally required to show statistically significant differences that cannot be explained by legitimate, non-discriminatory factors in order to win disparate impact lawsuits. Many legal experts and civil rights advocates say disparate impact liability is a crucial tool for uncovering systemic discrimination that may be unintentional but affects workers and communities. They say it holds employers and others accountable when they fail to change their practices and that the latest order risks exacerbating disparities. WHAT ARE EXAMPLES OF DISPARATE IMPACT? Even the most routine policies can have disparate impacts on specific groups. Many companies stopped administering physical fitness tests or changed eligibility requirements for jobs after a surge in lawsuits during the Obama administration claiming such policies discriminated against women and older or disabled workers. Other employers have been sued for refusing to hire people with criminal records, which can have a disparate impact on Black and Hispanic job applicants. Advocates argue that Black and Hispanic people are disproportionately convicted of crimes due to inequities in the criminal justice system. A policy with a disparate impact can be legal when it is necessary to operate a business. For example, law firms can require applicants for jobs as lawyers to have law degrees and banks can deny loans to people with low credit scores even if those policies disproportionately exclude members of certain groups. WHAT DOES TRUMP'S ORDER DO? Trump declared a government-wide policy "to eliminate the use of disparate-impact liability in all contexts to the maximum degree possible" and directed federal agencies to deprioritize enforcement of disparate impact laws. Trump told the heads of federal agencies, including the Attorney General, the chairs of the Equal Employment Opportunity and Federal Trade commissions, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and the Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, not to pursue cases attempting to hold businesses and others liable for disparate impact discrimination. Trump also told federal agencies to evaluate whether existing cases and settlements that rely on disparate impact claims comport with his order. That means some employers, schools, banks and others could be released from settlements they entered into years ago, including requirements to adopt anti-discrimination policies and submit to outside monitoring. WHAT HAPPENS NEXT? Trump's order will likely lead the agencies to drop some existing cases and settlements, and deter them from bringing any lawsuits or brokering settlements involving disparate impact claims. Trump's order may face legal challenges by groups and individuals who have filed discrimination complaints with federal agencies, likely claiming that Trump exceeded his authority by issuing it. Many of the more than 140 executive orders issued by Trump since January have been challenged in court by nonprofits, unions, workers and Democratic state officials, among others.
