Latest news with #Feres
Yahoo
12-05-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Brescia holds commencement at RiverPark Center
Duda Feres hadn't thought about being the student speaker during Brescia University's undergraduate commencement Saturday morning at the RiverPark Center until she got a little prodding from friends. But as she prepared to enter the facility's Cannon Hall with her classmates, she was thankful to have the opportunity. 'This year the student government association president was not a senior, so they decided to come up with an application process, and my friends were like Duda, you should apply,' she said. 'Honestly, I'm glad they told me to do that, because I had such a good time here at Brescia, and I've been involved in so many things.' Feres, who is from Brazil and played soccer for Brescia, said one of the aspects of her college career that stood out was how at home she always felt. 'As soon as I stepped here, everyone was really welcoming; people actually care about us,' she said. 'My friends, all of the professors, the staff, they're really warm with you. 'There is a sense of community. It's a small school, everyone knows everyone, but even though it's a small school, the diversity is so big. I've met so many people from different cultures, people I'm going to take with me forever.' Feres, who double majored in business and psychology, used her speech to talk about how students from so many different backgrounds create the Brescia community. 'It's a mix of my own culture and how that applies here, and how we all came from different places and had to go through so many things, but ended up here for a reason,' she said. 'You were meant to be here, and what we lived was almost unexplainable.' Feres has decided to stay at Brescia for another year to earn her Master of Business Administration. 'I love it too much,' she said of the school. 'I have to stay around.' Daniel Rusiecki, who earned degrees in English and psychology, arrived at Brescia from Florida to play basketball and quickly found a second family. 'The thing that stands out is the community; I've always said it feels like a family here,' he said. 'I came from Florida, and finding this community that accepts me and actually wants to make me engage with it, it's probably one of the best things I'll always remember about this campus. 'The way they surround you with their energy, no one wants to leave anyone behind. The people around here is what really made my experience.' Rusiecki said he's honored to be a part of Brescia's tradition. 'It means the world,' he said, 'knowing there are a lot of people who have come before me, and the fact I'm able to do this now at this level and make the people who came before me proud, it just means a lot.' Rusiecki will pursue a Master of Fine Arts degree in screenwriting from Western Kentucky University. He wants to be a film director and writer. 'When I was a kid my mom had heart problems, so I always wanted to be a heart surgeon,' he said. 'But my sophomore year of high school I got into a film class, and from there I've always wanted to go into movie making.' While Feres and Rusiecki praised the time they spent on campus, graduate Irene Wainaina was seeing the school — and Owensboro — for the first time this weekend, as she had taken classes through its online program from her home in Seattle. 'I had looked everywhere, but I really wanted an online-only program, and this was the only school that I could find that did strictly online,' she said. 'It worked out amazing, with amazing teachers.' Wainaina earned a degree in social work and wants to be a counselor. 'This means everything,' she said of graduating. 'It means my daughter gets to see me graduate, it means my family gets to see me graduate, and it means I kept a promise to my dad when he was dying. 'This was the last promise I made to him. So it means a lot.'
Yahoo
24-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Military Feres Doctrine Case Turned Down by Supreme Court, Sparking Criticism from Justice Thomas
The Supreme Court rejected a case Monday that challenged the Feres doctrine, a 1950s judicial ruling that prevents active-duty service members from suing the government for wrongful injury or death. With the court's announcement that it would not hear the case, however, Justice Clarence Thomas issued a strong 14-page dissent, calling the 75-year-old rule of law "indefensible ... and senseless as a matter of policy." "This court should overrule Feres," Thomas argued in an opinion in support of hearing the case, Ryan G. Carter v. United States. "The Feres doctrine has no basis in the text of the Federal Tort Claims Act, and its policy-based justifications make little sense. It has been almost universally condemned by judges and scholars." Read Next: Key Federal Agencies Refuse to Comply with Musk's Latest Demand in His Cost-Cutting Crusade Thomas has previously argued that the Supreme Court should reexamine Feres, established by the court in the 1950s following several wrongful death suits brought by the families of service members who died as the result of negligence or accident, including two troops who were killed by a civilian contractor driving an Army truck; two who died as a result of medical malpractice by military doctors; and Lt. Rudolph Feres, who was killed in a barracks fire caused by a defective heater. In the Feres case, the court ruled that the federal government had immunity from claims for injuries considered "incident to military service." The decision effectively barred active-duty personnel from suing the U.S. government for anything. In 2019, the last time the court considered a Feres-related case, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg voted in favor of hearing the case, and Thomas, in agreement with Ginsburg, argued that Feres would continue to dog the judiciary and deny relief to military personnel until it was reviewed. He made his case again Monday. "The Feres doctrine significantly impacts injured service members and their families by preventing suits over claims with a tenuous connection to military life -- like negligent care for a vacation-related stingray injury. The doctrine barred recovery in cases where negligent conduct led to a towel that read 'Medical Department U.S. Army' being left in a man's stomach, a service member losing a leg due to flesh-eating bacteria, the rape of a young cadet at West Point," Thomas wrote. In the most recent case, Air National Guard Staff Sgt. Ryan Carter was admitted to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, in April 2018 for back surgery to address chronic neck pain. But the procedure left him a quadriplegic, unable to take care of himself. At the time of the surgery, Carter was not on active-duty orders or medical orders -- an inactive status his attorneys said allowed him to file a malpractice claim against the government under the Federal Tort Claims Act. Nearly three months after the surgery, however, the military changed his status to active duty and backdated it to March 14, 2018 -- a move officials argued was necessary to ensure that Carter's care was covered by the military but also disallowed any claims under Feres. His attorney had hoped that, given previous statements by Thomas and former members of the court, including the late Justice Antonin Scalia, the court would accept the case. In filing Carter's petition to the court, attorney Christopher Casciano said the case represented "yet another chilling example of the breadth and injustice of Feres." "Under Feres, military service members and their families receive arbitrarily disparate treatment under the law, as compared to both civilians and their ex-military, veteran counterparts," Casciano wrote. Casciano did not respond to a request for comment on Monday regarding the court's denial of the petition. Congress has instituted at least two exceptions to the prohibition on service members filing claims or lawsuits for malpractice: The 2020 National Defense Authorization Act allowed troops to file compensation claims with the Defense Department for malpractice at U.S. military medical treatment facilities, and service members assigned to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, were allowed to file tort claims, followed by civil lawsuits against the government for injury or illness caused by exposure to contaminated drinking water from the 1950s through 1987. The Supreme Court last accepted a challenge to Feres in 1987, deciding in a 5-4 decision to uphold the ruling in U.S. v. Johnson, a case brought against the Coast Guard by the widow of a helicopter pilot who died in a crash during a rescue mission but was under the direction of a civilian air traffic controller. The majority ruled that the death was directly related to military service. But at the time, writing in dissent, Scalia said, "Feres was wrongly decided and heartily deserves the widespread, almost universal criticism it has received." Related: Supreme Court Weighs Arguments in Lawsuit over Veterans Getting 'Benefit of Doubt' in Claims Decisions
