The Huffington Post reports:

A “billboard criticizing Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) for his opposition to Medicaid expansion may remain, a federal judge ruled on Monday in a trademark infringement case.

The state of Louisiana sued MoveOn.org in March for the billboard’s design, accusing the liberal policy group of ripping off its multi-million dollar tourism brand and seeking an injunction ordering the billboard removed. The billboard parodies the state’s “Louisiana: Pick Your Passion” motto and logo.

U.S. District Judge Shelly D. Dick ruled Monday that the billboard is permissible, saying that Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne, whose office developed the tourism slogan and sued MoveOn.org, “underestimates the intelligence and reasonableness of people viewing the billboard.”

“The State has not demonstrated a substantial likelihood of prevailing on its burden of proving confusion by viewers of the billboard. Furthermore, the State has failed to demonstrate a compelling reason to curtail MoveOn.org.’s political speech in favor of protecting of the State’s service mark,” Dick wrote in her opinion. “There has been no showing of irreparable injury to the State.”

MoveOn.org had argued that the billboard was protected under the First Amendment. Anna Galland, the group’s civic action executive director, released a statement expressing disappointment in the state’s “baseless lawsuit.”

Here is the rest of the story.

The Fair courts E Alert reports:

Two rule changes made by the Iowa Supreme Court last month directed significant resources to state legal aid organizations, according to The Gazette. The first new rule allows retired Iowa attorneys and attorneys licensed in other states “to provide pro bono services to legal aid organizations. The state’s legal aid offices turns thousands of low income people away every year because of the high caseload and lack of attorneys. The rule allows retired attorneys to apply for an emeritus license and volunteer their time for a legal aid office.” With this ruling, a total of 36 states across the country now offer an emeritus license. The state Supreme Court also amended the state’s student practice rule last month, which allows law students to take on cases under supervision. “Scott Hartsook, managing attorney for Iowa Legal Aid’s Older Iowans Legal Hotline, said it’s great for the students who get practical experience. One advantage of the new rule is that now law students who finish an internship can continue to appear in court with clients after the internship ends. The old rule stated they had to be involved in an educational program to practice before a court or administrative agencies.” Guy Cook, president of the Iowa State Bar Association, praised the changes to the student practice rule, saying, “It’s very forward thinking of the court to approve this rule. This will really help out in the rural areas that have a tremendous need.”

The Boston Globe reports:

WHEN GOVERNOR Deval Patrick introduced his budget proposal for the upcoming fiscal year, tucked amid big-ticket items like education and health care were a few small changes to the Massachusetts criminal justice system. If approved, the budget would create eight new courts: three designed specifically to deal with defendants suffering from mental illness and five for those struggling with drug addiction.

In the scheme of the $36.4 billion budget, these courts represent a modest investment, and would seem like an uncontroversial nod to the idea that certain people benefit from more individualized attention in court. But in legal terms, Governor Patrick’s proposal is tapping into something much bigger. It’s a new idea about criminal justice, rooted as much in sociology and psychology as in law: the notion that certain kinds of offenders are better handled by dealing with the problems underlying their crimes rather than with simple punishment.

Continue reading here.

The Associated Press reports:

The independence of New Jersey judges is under attack by Gov. Chris Christie and lawmakers, retired judges and lawyers told a state bar association task force Tuesday.

Speakers said the process of judicial appointments and lifetime tenure should be changed and judges should get regular pay raises and no longer be forced to retire when they turn 70.

“I was so proud to be the chief justice in this court system that was looked at as one of the finest if not the finest in this country,” said Deborah Poritz, who was chief justice of the state Supreme Court from 1996 to 2006. “I had no sense of how easy it could be to lose that, how quickly we could lose that.”

Poritz was one of many speakers who cited “The Federalist Papers,” used to pass the U.S. Constitution, in arguing for an independent judiciary.

New Jersey judges, particularly state Supreme Court justices, have long been criticized by conservatives for a string of landmark rulings dating to the 1970s that forced the state’s municipalities to make zoning laws that made it illegal to keep out poor people, forced state taxpayers to put more money into schools in impoverished cities and allowed civil unions and then marriage for gay couples. Critics say those were decisions that should not be made by a small number of judges.

Here is the complete story.

The Illinois Supreme Court has affirmed the right of citizens to make audio recordings without first getting permission from all parties.

The court ruled in favor of defendants in two separate cases. In one instance, a man was charged with recording his own court proceedings without the absence of a court reporter. In another, a woman was charged after recording three separate phone conversations with a court employee.

The justices said that the eavesdropping law was meant to criminalize the recording of private conversations, but had been interpreted too widely.

“None of these examples implicate privacy interests, yet the statute makes it a felony to audio record each one,” the court wrote.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has ruled this that the US Supreme Court’s Miller v. Alabama ruling is to apply retroactively. Here are the basics:

The state’s highest criminal court Wednesday ordered a new sentence for Terrell Maxwell, who is serving life in prison without the possibility of parole for shooting an Austin man in the head during a 2007 robbery. Maxwell was 17 at the time of the shooting, and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that his automatic sentence of life without parole violated the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment when applied to defendants who were under the age of 18 at the time of the crime.

The 5-4 ruling left intact Maxwell’s conviction for capital murder in the death of Fernando Santander, who was shot while sitting in a van in the parking lot of his apartment complex near Rundberg Lane. Two accomplices testified that Maxwell shot Santander when the 31-year-old, startled to find a gun pointing at his cheek, quickly raised his hands in surrender, court records show.

The Texas court split on whether a 2012 U.S. Supreme Court ruling — Miller v. Alabama, which established that automatic no-parole sentences for juveniles were unconstitutional — applied retroactively to defendants like Maxwell.

Writing for the Texas court’s majority, Judge Cathy Cochran said the Miller ruling required that Maxwell be given the opportunity to argue in court that life without parole was not an appropriate sentence. The Miller ruling did not prevent life without parole for juvenile murderers, Cochran wrote. But before such a sentence can be imposed, jurors must consider “how children are different, and how those differences counsel against irrevocably sentencing them to a lifetime in prison,” she noted.

Two dissents — written by Judges Michael Keasler and Paul Womack, joined by Presiding Judge Sharon Keller and Judge Barbara Hervey [available here and here] — said the Miller ruling should not be applied retroactively.

The National Law Journal has a commentary that begins:

Ask the average American whether failing to pay a debt can land a person in jail, and the answer will likely be “no.” But that would be wrong. Although the federal government abolished imprisonment for debt in 1833, more than one-third of the states permit incarceration of those in default of their civil obligations. Furthermore, despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s holding in Bearden v. Georgia (1983) that revoking probation for failure to honor a criminal fine or make restitution abridges due process when obligors through no fault of their own are unable to pay, the constitutional mandate is widely in the breach. Affronted by these shameful practices, several organizations have recently called for abolition of debtors’ prison in its modern incarnations. Their appeals must be heeded promptly.

In February, American Civil Liberties Union and the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law wrote to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau regarding the misuse of civil contempt to obtain repayment of private debts.

Read more here.

Kansas Chief Justice Lawton R. Nuss penned an op-ed in The Hutchinson News last week, criticizing a deal in which legislators will give the courts more money in exchange for “reforms” made to the judicial branch:

Legislative money is being offered to keep all Kansas courts open after July 1—in direct exchange for some important restructuring of the judicial branch. More specifically, the money would be given if the KDJA [Kansas District Judges Association] endorsed the ‘package deal.’

The legislation would give the chief judges in each of Kansas’ 31 judicial districts the power to submit and control their own budgets. The judges in each of these districts would also able to choose their own chief. The Kansas Supreme Court currently has control over both of these actions.