High court to hear Guantanamo prisoner’s state secrets case
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court will decide whether a Palestinian man captured in the wake of 9/11 and detained at the prison on the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay can get access to information the government classifies as state secrets.
Abu Zubaydah was initially captured in Pakistan and detained in CIA detention facilities abroad. The U.S. government says he was an associate and longtime ally of Osama bin Laden. Zubaydah and his lawyer want to question two former CIA contractors about the operation of a secret CIA facility in Poland where they say Zubaydah was held and tortured.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled 2-1 in 2019 that the two contractors could face limited questioning.
In asking the Supreme Court to take the case, the government said it has declassified a “significant amount of information regarding the former CIA Program, including the details of Abu Zubaydah’s treatment while in CIA custody, which included the use of enhanced interrogation techniques.” But it said it had “determined that certain categories of information—including the identities of its foreign intelligence partners and the location of former CIA detention facilities in their countries—could not be declassified without risking undue harm to the national security.”
The high court will not hear the case until sometime after its new term begins in October.
President Joe Biden’s administration has said he will seek to close the prison on the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay following a review process that began under the Obama administration.
Supreme Court rejects Texas suit over California travel ban
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday refused to consider Texas’ challenge to California’s ban on state-funded business trips to Texas and other states deemed to discriminate against LGBTQ people.
California adopted the ban following a 2017 Texas law that allows foster care and adoption agencies to deny services for religious beliefs.
Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas said they would have allowed the lawsuit to go forward at the high court.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sought to file the suit at the Supreme Court, which hears disputes between states. He has called the California law an effort “to punish Texans for respecting the right of conscience for foster care and adoption providers.”
In 2017, then-California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said, “Discriminatory laws in any part of our country send all of us several steps back. That’s why when California said we would not tolerate discrimination against LGBTQ members of our community, we meant it.”
Becerra now heads the U.S. Health and Human Services Department.
Supreme Court declines to hear wrestlers’ brain damage cases
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear the appeals of several former pro wrestlers who claimed in lawsuits that World Wrestling Entertainment failed to protect them from repeated head injuries that led to long-term brain damage.
The former wrestlers asked the high court to review lower court rulings that dismissed the lawsuits because they were filed too late. The plaintiffs include William “Billy Jack” Haynes, Russ “Big Russ” McCullough, Ryan Sakoda, Matthew “Luther Reigns” Wiese and the wife of the late Nelson “Viscera” Frazier, also known as Big Daddy V, who died in 2014.
Monday’s decision, which the Supreme Court did not explain under its usual practice, put an end to the last remaining lawsuits in an array of litigation originally filed six years ago in Connecticut against the WWE over concussions and other injuries. The WWE is based in Stamford.
More than 50 former wrestlers, most of them stars in the 1980s and 1990s, sued the WWE, saying they suffered repeated head injuries including concussions that led to long-term brain damage. They accused the WWE of knowing of the risks of head injuries but not warning its wrestlers.
Other wrestlers who filed suit were Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka, Joseph “Road Warrior Animal” Laurinaitis, Paul “Mr. Wonderful” Orndorff, Chris “King Kong Bundy” Pallies and Harry Masayoshi Fujiwara, known as Mr. Fuji.
Snuka and Fujiwara died in 2017 and 2016, respectively, and were diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, after their deaths, according to their lawyer. Pallies and Laurinaitis died in 2019 and 2020, respectively, of undisclosed causes. Other plaintiffs have dementia and other illnesses, the lawsuits said.
Several lawsuits were dismissed in 2018 by U.S. District Judge Vanessa Bryant in Hartford, Connecticut. Bryant ruled there was no evidence the WWE knew while the plaintiffs were wrestling that concussions or head blows during matches caused CTE or other long-term injuries.
She also ruled the lawsuits that were the subject of Monday’s Supreme Court decision were filed after the statute of limitations expired.
The rulings were upheld last year by a federal appeals court in New York City.
The WWE denied wrongdoing and said the lawsuits had no merit.
The wrestlers’ lawyer, Konstantine Kyros, said in statement Monday that the WWE exploited them and denied them access to health care and workers’ compensation.
Kyros had criticized Bryant’s rulings and said the former wrestlers had been “deprived of their fundamental rights as U.S. Citizens, including their right to appeal.”
In her 2018 ruling, Bryant also criticized Kyros for repeatedly failing to comply with court rules and orders and ordered him to pay WWE’s legal fees — more than $500,000.
