Supreme Court Notebook

Reinstated hormone replacement suits won’t be stopped
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court won’t reconsider a decision to reinstate more than 100 lawsuits filed by women who claimed that hormone replacement therapy caused breast cancer.

The high court refused on Tuesday to hear an appeal from Wyeth LLC and other pharmaceutical companies.

The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a federal judge’s decision to throw out many of the lawsuits.

The drug companies wanted the case in federal court, and said plaintiffs added unrelated local defendants to ensure it would stay in state court. A federal judge agreed, and dismissed many of the lawsuits. But the appeal court overturned that ruling, saying that it had not been proven that the women had done anything wrong.

The case is Wyeth LLC v. Kirkland, 10-222.

Appeal of two ejected from Bush event denied
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has turned down the appeal of two people who say they were kept from attending an appearance by then-President George W. Bush in Denver in 2005 because of their opposition to the war in Iraq.

The justices refused Tuesday to get involved in a case concerning whether people may be excluded from taxpayer-funded events featuring public officials because of their political views.

Lower courts dismissed a lawsuit filed by Leslie Weise and Alex Young, who say a White House aide and two volunteers violated their free speech rights by ejecting them from a hall just before Bush was to speak. Weise and Young arrived in a car with a bumper sticker reading “No more blood for oil” but say they had no plans to disrupt the event.

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor voted to hear the appeal. “I cannot see how reasonable public officials, or any staff or volunteers under their direction, could have viewed the bumper sticker as a permissible reason for depriving Weise and Young of access to the event,” Ginsburg said in a short written opinion.

The case is Weise v. Casper, 10-67.

Court stays out of Wash. campaign money case
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has turned down a request to lift Washington state limits on campaign contributions in the final weeks of ballot measure campaigns.

The court said Tuesday that it will leave in place a decision from a federal appeals court that keeps a $5,000 limit in effect in the final three weeks of an initiative or referendum campaign. The action comes despite a federal judge’s ruling that capping contributions is unconstitutional.

The state is appealing the ruling in a lawsuit brought by Family PAC, a political group involved in Washington’s 2009 referendum on expanded domestic partnerships for gay couples.

Do in-school interviews require warrants?
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court will decide whether child social workers should have to get warrants to interview potential victims of sex abuse at school when the alleged abuser lives at home.

The court decided to hear an appeal from Oregon officials and police officers who interviewed a potential victim at school.

They were worried that children were being abused by Nimrod Greene, who had already been previously arrested on a charge of sexually abusing a 7-year-old boy.

A social worker and a police officer interviewed a 9-year-old girl at the child’s public school so Greene would not be around. The girl said during the interview that she had been sexually abused by Greene. The girl later recanted the statements.

Greene said he was innocent but agreed that a judge or jury could find him guilty.

But the girl’s mother sued the police and the social worker, saying that they had unconstitutionally seized the 9-year-old girl at school when they removed her from her classroom, took her into another room and questioned her about possible sexual abuse.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, saying the social worker and police officer should have gotten a warrant, a court order or parental consent before talking to the child, or should have demonstrated that they acted with probable cause and under exigent circumstances.

Police and social workers say the courts should treat investigations of potential child abuse differently than they do criminal investigations.

The cases are Camreta v. Greene, 09-1451 and Alford v. Greene, 09-1478.

Court sends back Buddhist temple killing case
WASHINGTON (AP) — A man accused of killing nine people at a Buddhist temple near Phoenix as a juvenile will have the federal courts reconsider his overturned conviction.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered the lower courts to re-examine the thrown-out murder conviction of Johnathan Doody.

Doody was convicted for the slayings of six priests, a nun and two helpers during a robbery at the Wat Promkunaram temple west of Phoenix.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threw out the conviction, saying his Miranda warnings were inadequate. But the Supreme Court justices noted their February decision saying police only have to ensure that the Miranda warnings they read reasonably communicate to a suspect his rights.

The case is Ryan v. Doody, 09-1443.

Court to decide if anti-terrorism law applies to wife’s attack of mistress
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court will decide whether an anti-terrorism law should have been used to prosecute a jealous woman who tried to harm her husband’s mistress with deadly chemicals.

The high court on Tuesday agreed to hear an appeal from Carol Anne Bond of Lansdale, Pa. She was sentenced to six years in prison after admitting to trying to harm her husband’s mistress, Myrlinda Haynes, with toxic chemicals that she stole from her workplace.

Bond has been in prison since her arrest in June 2007.

Prosecutors charged her with a federal chemical weapons violation, a law that Bond’s lawyers said was intended to deal with rogue states and terrorists, not a woman in a love triangle. They want the court to throw out her conviction, saying Bond should have been prosecuted under state law instead of in federal court.

Bond, a laboratory technician, had stolen the chemical potassium dichromate — which is potentially deadly if ingested — from the company where she worked. Bond said she put the chemicals on Haynes’ door handle and in the tailpipe of Haynes’ car.

Haynes was not injured.

Bond’s husband, Clifford, had a child with Haynes while married to Bond. Haynes had contacted police and postal authorities after finding the chemicals at her home.

The case is Bond v United States, 09-1227.