Iowa
State to pay $5 million in legal fees in school abuse case
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Iowa officials agreed Tuesday to pay a group of attorneys nearly $5 million in a case that showed staff wrongly kept boys at a state-run school in isolation chambers and restraints.
The Iowa Appeals Board approved the payment to attorneys for former students of the Iowa Boys State Training School in Eldora. The former students earlier won a lawsuit against the state over their mistreatment.
The board — comprised of the auditor, treasurer and director of the Department of Management — approved the payments after the state lost a court challenge. A federal judge ordered the payment be made and the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of appeals affirmed the order.
The former students and their families sued the state in 2017, claiming their constitutional rights had been violated. The federal judge found that the Iowa Department of Human Services violated the boys’ due process rights under the 14th Amendment by failing to provide them with adequate mental health care and by improperly putting them in solitary confinement and mechanical restraints.
The school houses boys who have committed crimes. During the trial in 2020, witnesses testified that students — some as young as 14 — were often kept in isolation for weeks or endured a restraint device called “the wrap” that left them immobilized for up to five hours.
The lawsuit sought to force the state to change how the school was run. The state put new people in charge, and officials say the school made changes the judge ordered, including adopting a remedial plan and appointing a monitor.
Iowa Auditor Rob Sand questioned why the state allowed the case to go on for so long, which allowed legal fees to climb to $5 million even though lawyers sought changes at the school, but not damages. He acknowledged, however, that the fees were court-ordered and that the state had to pay them.
Children’s Rights Inc., of New York, will get $2.4 million; Ropes and Gray, of Chicago, will get $1.9 million; and Disability Rights Iowa, of Des Moines, will get $572,297.
Idaho
Bill would bar state’s lands and animals from ‘personhood’
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — A bill that would prevent animals, natural resources and artificial intelligence from being granted “personhood status” in Idaho was introduced by the House State Affairs Committee on Tuesday.
The legislation sponsored by Republican Rep. Tammy Nichols of Middleton seeks to prevent any future efforts to increase environmental protections for animals or inanimate objects by granting them some of the same legal rights a person would have.
Nichols told the State Affairs Committee that some organizations are pushing for personhood status for non-human entities as a way to limit access to some natural resources.
“There’s a growing trend that’s taking place across the United States as well as globally where we are seeing this occur,” Nichols said, promising to provide examples of such efforts if the bill reaches a hearing.
“We don’t want our children to be inferior to artificial intelligences,” she said. “Children are not equal to bodies of water or trees, so their rights shouldn’t be equal to those as well.”
Nichols’ legislation was introduced on a voice vote.
While the decades-old concept of environmental personhood hasn’t been widely implemented in the U.S., it’s not unheard of. In 2019, voters in Toledo, Ohio, voted to grant Lake Erie some legal rights so that residents could sue polluters on the lake’s behalf — in the same way a parent could file a lawsuit against someone on behalf of a child who was harmed. That local ordinance was later struck down by a federal court.
Laws granting natural resources like rivers certain rights have also been enacted in New Zealand, Bangladesh, Ecuador and in indigenous communities around the world.
Other types of inanimate object “personhood” are widely used in the United States, particularly when it comes to big business. Corporations have been treated like people in many court cases: In 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court found that craft store giant Hobby Lobby didn’t have to follow some aspects of the Affordable Care Act because it was entitled to protections under religious freedom laws, and in 2010 the Supreme Court vastly increased the power of corporations to influence government decisions by allowing them to make unlimited political expenditures under the First Amendment in the landmark ruling Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.
Missouri
Court backs ban on using public funds for campaigns
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — The Missouri Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled in favor of a law banning the use of public funds for campaigning.
Several cities in 2019 sued to overturn the law against using public resources to support candidates or ballot measures. The cities argued the law unconstitutionally limited public officials’ free speech.
A lower court judge sided with cities, but Supreme Court judges ruled unanimously that while the law limits the use of public funding, it does not limit free speech.
The Supreme Court sent the case back to the lower court for further legal proceedings.
Judges in their ruling wrote that the law “does not limit or prohibit officials’ speech; it merely prohibits them from using public funds to facilitate or augment that speech.”
The Republican-led Legislature last year amended the law to ensure that it applies to schools. For example, it prohibits a school spokesperson in their official capacity from writing a press release in favor of a tax hike to raise money for schools.
Kansas
Man who drove at officer, harassed Trump rally sentenced
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — A Wichita man has been sentenced to 30 months in prison after authorities said he tried to run over a Sedgwick County courthouse police officer and harassed demonstrators at a rally in 2020 supporting former president Donald Trump.
Justin Young, 33, pleaded guilty to assault on Dec. 17.
Prosecutors and Young’s attorneys had recommended probation because Young was experiencing mental health issues after the death of his father in the days before the Nov. 22, 2020, rally. But Sedgwick County District Judge Eric Williams disagreed and imposed the 30-month prison sentence last week, The Wichita Eagle reported.
Authorities said a demonstrator at the rally reported to Officer Stephen Linarez that a man was driving erratically and attempting to hit several rally members, according to an arrest affidavit.
When Linarez intervened, Young initially drove away but then turned around and drove directly toward the officer, the affidavit says.,
Linarez ran and was able to avoid injury.
After driving erratically again outside of City Hall and shouting at the rally crowd, Young eventually was arrested by another deputy.
