A brief look at some rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday.
Court rejects gay therapy ban challenge
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court has rejected a challenge to California’s law that bars mental counseling aimed at turning gay minors straight.
The justices on Monday let stand an appeals court ruling that said the state’s ban on so-called conversion therapy for minors doesn’t violate the free speech rights of licensed counselors and patients seeking treatment.
Liberty Counsel, a Christian legal aid group, had challenged the law along with other supporters of the therapy. They argue that lawmakers have no scientific proof the therapy does harm.
Union can’t make nonmembers pay fees
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court dealt a blow to public sector unions Monday, ruling that thousands of home health-care workers in Illinois cannot be required to pay fees that help cover a union’s costs of collective bargaining.
In a 5-4 split along ideological lines, the justices said the practice violates the First Amendment rights of nonmembers who disagree with the positions that unions take.
The ruling is a setback for labor unions that have bolstered their ranks and their bank accounts in Illinois and other states by signing up hundreds of thousands of in-home care workers.
But the narrow ruling was limited to “partial-public employees” and stopped short of overturning decades of practice that has generally allowed public sector unions of teachers, firefighters and other government workers to pass through their representation costs to nonmembers.
Justices turn down oyster farm appeal
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court has refused to hear an appeal from a popular oyster farm in Northern California that is facing closure.
The justices did not comment Monday in leaving in place lower court rulings against Drakes Bay Oyster Co.
The company operates in the Point Reyes National Seashore. Then-Interior Secretary Ken Salazar declined to renew its lease when it expired in 2012. Salazar said the waters of Drakes Estero should be returned to wilderness status.
Lower courts have allowed the oyster farm to keep operating while the case was pending.
Madoff trustee can’t sue major banks
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court will not let the trustee working to recover money for Bernard Madoff’s investors sue major financial institutions for their role in Madoff’s massive fraud.
The court refused Monday to hear an appeal from trustee Irving Picard, who wants to pursue tens of billions of dollars from UBS AG, HSBC Bank PLC and other institutions.
Picard, as trustee for the Securities Investor Protection Corporation, has brought claims in bankruptcy court alleging that the institutions were complicit in Madoff’s vast Ponzi scheme because they provided him with financial services while ignoring obvious signs he was a con artist. A federal appeals court ruled that Picard doesn’t have legal standing to make claims against the financial institutions that Madoff’s burned customers could make themselves.
Associated Press
