Idaho
State’s ‘abortion trafficking’ law mostly can be enforced as lawsuit proceeds, court rules
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — A federal appeals court on Monday ruled that most of Idaho’s first-in-the-nation law that makes it illegal to help minors get an abortion without the consent of their parents can take effect while a lawsuit challenging its constitutionality continues.
The decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the statute’s prohibition on helping a minor get an abortion by harboring and transporting them with the intent to conceal the procedure from the minor’s parents is likely to be found constitutional and can be enforced.
Part of the law remains blocked, however. The court found that the law’s prohibition on “recruiting” pregnant youth violates the First Amendment. That means prosecutors, for now, will not be able to charge a person with “recruiting” or influencing a minor to have an abortion.
“Encouragement, counseling, and emotional support are plainly protected speech,” the court wrote, even when that speech happens in the “context of deciding whether to have an abortion.”
The ruling largely reverses U.S. Magistrate Judge Debora K. Grasham’s decision, which prevented the law from being enforced after opponents sued the state in the summer of 2023.
Abortion is banned in Idaho at all stages of pregnancy, and the law enacted in 2023 was designed to prevent minors from getting abortions in states where the procedure is legal if they don’t have their parents’ permission.
Supporters of the law call it an “abortion trafficking” ban. Opponents say it is an unconstitutional prohibition on interstate travel and free speech rights. Both sides framed Monday’s ruling as a victory.
“This decision is a significant victory for the plaintiffs, as it frees Idahoans to talk with pregnant minors about abortion health care,” Wendy Heipt, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said in an emailed statement Monday.
She said the plaintiffs, which include multiple advocacy groups, are also considering their appeal options.
Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador in an emailed statement called the ruling a victory for the state.
“Idaho’s laws were passed specifically to protect the life of the unborn and the life of the mother, Labrador said. “Trafficking a minor child for an abortion without parental consent puts both in grave danger, and we will not stop protecting life in Idaho.”
The law makes it illegal to either obtain abortion pills for a minor or to help them leave the state for an abortion without their parents’ knowledge and consent. Anyone convicted will face two to five years in prison and could also be sued by the minor’s parent or guardian. A parent who raped their child will not be able to sue, though the criminal penalties for anyone who helped the minor obtain an abortion will remain in effect.
Delaware
judge reaffirms ruling that invalidated massive Tesla pay package for Musk
DOVER, Del. (AP) — A Delaware judge has reaffirmed her ruling that Tesla must revoke Elon Musk’s multibillion-dollar pay package
Chancellor Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick on Monday denied a request by attorneys for Musk and Tesla’s corporate directors to vacate her ruling earlier this year requiring the company to rescind the unprecedented pay package.
McCormick also rejected an equally unprecedented and massive fee request by plaintiff attorneys, who argued that they were entitled to legal fees in the form of Tesla stock valued at more than $5 billion. The judge said the attorneys were entitled to a fee award of $345 million.
The rulings came in a lawsuit filed by a Tesla stockholder who challenged Musk’s 2018 compensation package.
McCormick concluded in January that Musk engineered the landmark pay package in sham negotiations with directors who were not independent. The compensation package initially carried a potential maximum value of about $56 billion, but that sum has fluctuated over the years based on Tesla’s stock price.
Following the original court ruling, Tesla shareholders met in June and ratified Musk’s 2018 pay package for a second time, again by an overwhelming margin.
Defense attorneys then argued that the second vote makes clear that Tesla shareholders, with full knowledge of the flaws in the 2018 process that McCormick pointed out, were adamant that Musk is entitled to the pay package. They asked the judge to vacate her order directing Tesla to rescind the pay package.
McCormick, who seemed skeptical of the defense arguments during an August hearing, said in Monday’s ruling that those arguments were fatally flawed.
“The large and talented group of defense firms got creative with the ratification argument, but their unprecedented theories go against multiple strains of settled law,” McCormick wrote in a 103-page opinion.
The judge noted, among other things, that a stockholder vote standing alone cannot ratify a conflicted-controller transaction.
“Even if a stockholder vote could have a ratifying effect, it could not do so here due to multiple, material misstatements in the proxy statement,” she added.
Musk expressed his disagreement with the ruling in a post on X, the social media platform he owns. “Shareholders should control company votes, not judges,” he wrote.
Meanwhile, McCormick found that the $5.6 billion fee request by the shareholder’s attorneys, which at one time approached $7 billion based on Tesla’s trading price, went too far.
“In a case about excessive compensation, that was a bold ask,” McCormick wrote.
Attorneys for the Tesla shareholder argue that their work resulted in the “massive” benefit of returning shares to Tesla that otherwise would have gone to Musk and diluted the stock held by other Tesla investors. They value that benefit at $51.4 billion, using the difference between the stock price at the time of McCormick’s January ruling and the strike price of some 304 million stock options granted to Musk.
While finding that the methodology used to calculate the fee request was sound, the judge noted that the Delaware’s Supreme Court has noted that fee award guidelines “must yield to the greater policy concern of preventing windfalls to counsel.”
“The fee award here must yield in this way, because $5.6 billion is a windfall no matter the methodology used to justify it,” McCormick wrote. A fee award of $345 million, she said, was “an appropriate sum to reward a total victory.”
The fee award amounts to almost exactly half the current record $688 million in legal fees awarded in 2008 in litigation stemming from the collapse of Enron.
Arizona
Grand jury indicts pair for alleged $110,000 school voucher fraud
PHOENIX (AP) — An Arizona grand jury has indicted two out-of-state residents for allegedly applying to the state’s private school voucher program as parents to 50 children – 43 of whom did not exist – and receiving more than $110,000.
The duo collected the money by submitting false, forged or fraudulent documents and spent it on personal living expenses in Colorado, according to an indictment released Monday by Attorney General Kris Mayes.
The voucher program — Arizona Empowerment Scholarship Account — has been a source of political tension for years. It expanded vastly in 2022 when then-Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, signed legislation to allow all parents in the state to take money that would go to local public schools and instead use it on private school tuition or other education costs.
The program is championed by many Republicans and advocates of the school choice movement. But many Democrats, including Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, have called for the program’s overhaul as its costs have skyrocketed. Hobbs has also criticized the program for funding what she called luxury items, including ski resort passes and pianos.
The grand jury in Maricopa County handed down the indictment Nov. 12, charging Johnny Lee Bowers and Ashley Meredith Hewitt each with 60 felony counts, including conspiracy, fraud and forgery. The Associated Press left voice messages at numbers listed for Bowers and Hewitt, also known as Ashley Hopkins, seeking comment late Monday.
According to the indictment, the two received the money by submitting applications for school vouchers between December 2022 and May 2024, using the names of both real and fictitious children, purportedly as parents and by using “ghost” names of parents.
Some of the made-up children’s names in their applications included Louis Dobbs, Tucker Gil and Poppy Fox. The “false, forged, or fraudulent” documents included birth certificates, utility bills and lease agreements, according to the indictment.
Mayes’ office said that Bowers and Hewitt now appear to reside in Utah.
Virginia
Man charged with murder 4 months after his wife’s disappearance
MANASSAS PARK, Va. (AP) — A Virginia man has been charged with murder more than four months after his wife disappeared and a substantial amount of blood was found in their suburban Washington home, authorities announced Monday.
Naresh Bhatt, 37, was indicted by a Prince William County grand jury and faces a charge of murder as well as a count of defiling a dead body, according to online court documents.
The body of Mamta Bhatt, 28, has not been found. But investigators linked her DNA to the blood found in the couple’s home, Manassas Park Police Chief Mario Lugo said Monday evening at a news conference.
“From the beginning, we believed that she was murdered,” Lugo told reporters.
Investigators conducted their first search warrant when Naresh Bhatt was home with the couple’s baby and discovered blood in the bedroom as well as the bathroom, Lugo said.
He added that evidence shows that Bhatt cut up his wife’s body, which prompted the defiling charge.
“I feel we have a strong case for not having the body,” Lugo said.
Chief Public Defender Tracey Lenox did not immediately respond to an email from The Associated Press seeking comment on the new charges against Bhatt, who is already in jail awaiting trial on separate charges in the case.
The investigation has drawn international attention to the small northern Virginia community, where homicide cases are rare. The disappearance of Mamta Bhatt, a pediatric nurse, spurred community members and her family in Nepal to band together to try to figure out what happened.
They posted on social media, hosted community events and held a rally. Within days, community members began to apply public pressure on her husband.
Three weeks after her disappearance in late July, Naresh Bhatt was charged with a felony count of concealing a dead body and placed in jail, where he remains. A prosecutor had said in court over the summer that the amount of blood found in the home indicated injuries that were not survivable.
The investigation continued in Mamta Bhatt’s death. But in September, Lenox, the public defender, argued that Naresh Bhatt was still entitled to a speedy trial on the count of concealing a dead body. The trial on that charge was scheduled for next week.
Bodiless murder cases are not unheard of, according to law enforcement experts. And while they can still be difficult to prosecute, they’ve become easier in recent years because of new types of evidence, such as DNA, cellphone location information and surveillance cameras.
Tad DiBiase is a former federal prosecutor and author of the 2014 book, “No-Body Homicide Cases: A Practical Guide to Investigating, Prosecuting and Winning Cases When the Victim is Missing.”
He keeps a tally of bodiless murder trials on his website. As of September 2, DiBiase noted that there was an 87% conviction rate after 604 trials across the U.S.
State’s ‘abortion trafficking’ law mostly can be enforced as lawsuit proceeds, court rules
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — A federal appeals court on Monday ruled that most of Idaho’s first-in-the-nation law that makes it illegal to help minors get an abortion without the consent of their parents can take effect while a lawsuit challenging its constitutionality continues.
The decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the statute’s prohibition on helping a minor get an abortion by harboring and transporting them with the intent to conceal the procedure from the minor’s parents is likely to be found constitutional and can be enforced.
Part of the law remains blocked, however. The court found that the law’s prohibition on “recruiting” pregnant youth violates the First Amendment. That means prosecutors, for now, will not be able to charge a person with “recruiting” or influencing a minor to have an abortion.
“Encouragement, counseling, and emotional support are plainly protected speech,” the court wrote, even when that speech happens in the “context of deciding whether to have an abortion.”
The ruling largely reverses U.S. Magistrate Judge Debora K. Grasham’s decision, which prevented the law from being enforced after opponents sued the state in the summer of 2023.
Abortion is banned in Idaho at all stages of pregnancy, and the law enacted in 2023 was designed to prevent minors from getting abortions in states where the procedure is legal if they don’t have their parents’ permission.
Supporters of the law call it an “abortion trafficking” ban. Opponents say it is an unconstitutional prohibition on interstate travel and free speech rights. Both sides framed Monday’s ruling as a victory.
“This decision is a significant victory for the plaintiffs, as it frees Idahoans to talk with pregnant minors about abortion health care,” Wendy Heipt, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said in an emailed statement Monday.
She said the plaintiffs, which include multiple advocacy groups, are also considering their appeal options.
Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador in an emailed statement called the ruling a victory for the state.
“Idaho’s laws were passed specifically to protect the life of the unborn and the life of the mother, Labrador said. “Trafficking a minor child for an abortion without parental consent puts both in grave danger, and we will not stop protecting life in Idaho.”
The law makes it illegal to either obtain abortion pills for a minor or to help them leave the state for an abortion without their parents’ knowledge and consent. Anyone convicted will face two to five years in prison and could also be sued by the minor’s parent or guardian. A parent who raped their child will not be able to sue, though the criminal penalties for anyone who helped the minor obtain an abortion will remain in effect.
Delaware
judge reaffirms ruling that invalidated massive Tesla pay package for Musk
DOVER, Del. (AP) — A Delaware judge has reaffirmed her ruling that Tesla must revoke Elon Musk’s multibillion-dollar pay package
Chancellor Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick on Monday denied a request by attorneys for Musk and Tesla’s corporate directors to vacate her ruling earlier this year requiring the company to rescind the unprecedented pay package.
McCormick also rejected an equally unprecedented and massive fee request by plaintiff attorneys, who argued that they were entitled to legal fees in the form of Tesla stock valued at more than $5 billion. The judge said the attorneys were entitled to a fee award of $345 million.
The rulings came in a lawsuit filed by a Tesla stockholder who challenged Musk’s 2018 compensation package.
McCormick concluded in January that Musk engineered the landmark pay package in sham negotiations with directors who were not independent. The compensation package initially carried a potential maximum value of about $56 billion, but that sum has fluctuated over the years based on Tesla’s stock price.
Following the original court ruling, Tesla shareholders met in June and ratified Musk’s 2018 pay package for a second time, again by an overwhelming margin.
Defense attorneys then argued that the second vote makes clear that Tesla shareholders, with full knowledge of the flaws in the 2018 process that McCormick pointed out, were adamant that Musk is entitled to the pay package. They asked the judge to vacate her order directing Tesla to rescind the pay package.
McCormick, who seemed skeptical of the defense arguments during an August hearing, said in Monday’s ruling that those arguments were fatally flawed.
“The large and talented group of defense firms got creative with the ratification argument, but their unprecedented theories go against multiple strains of settled law,” McCormick wrote in a 103-page opinion.
The judge noted, among other things, that a stockholder vote standing alone cannot ratify a conflicted-controller transaction.
“Even if a stockholder vote could have a ratifying effect, it could not do so here due to multiple, material misstatements in the proxy statement,” she added.
Musk expressed his disagreement with the ruling in a post on X, the social media platform he owns. “Shareholders should control company votes, not judges,” he wrote.
Meanwhile, McCormick found that the $5.6 billion fee request by the shareholder’s attorneys, which at one time approached $7 billion based on Tesla’s trading price, went too far.
“In a case about excessive compensation, that was a bold ask,” McCormick wrote.
Attorneys for the Tesla shareholder argue that their work resulted in the “massive” benefit of returning shares to Tesla that otherwise would have gone to Musk and diluted the stock held by other Tesla investors. They value that benefit at $51.4 billion, using the difference between the stock price at the time of McCormick’s January ruling and the strike price of some 304 million stock options granted to Musk.
While finding that the methodology used to calculate the fee request was sound, the judge noted that the Delaware’s Supreme Court has noted that fee award guidelines “must yield to the greater policy concern of preventing windfalls to counsel.”
“The fee award here must yield in this way, because $5.6 billion is a windfall no matter the methodology used to justify it,” McCormick wrote. A fee award of $345 million, she said, was “an appropriate sum to reward a total victory.”
The fee award amounts to almost exactly half the current record $688 million in legal fees awarded in 2008 in litigation stemming from the collapse of Enron.
Arizona
Grand jury indicts pair for alleged $110,000 school voucher fraud
PHOENIX (AP) — An Arizona grand jury has indicted two out-of-state residents for allegedly applying to the state’s private school voucher program as parents to 50 children – 43 of whom did not exist – and receiving more than $110,000.
The duo collected the money by submitting false, forged or fraudulent documents and spent it on personal living expenses in Colorado, according to an indictment released Monday by Attorney General Kris Mayes.
The voucher program — Arizona Empowerment Scholarship Account — has been a source of political tension for years. It expanded vastly in 2022 when then-Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, signed legislation to allow all parents in the state to take money that would go to local public schools and instead use it on private school tuition or other education costs.
The program is championed by many Republicans and advocates of the school choice movement. But many Democrats, including Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, have called for the program’s overhaul as its costs have skyrocketed. Hobbs has also criticized the program for funding what she called luxury items, including ski resort passes and pianos.
The grand jury in Maricopa County handed down the indictment Nov. 12, charging Johnny Lee Bowers and Ashley Meredith Hewitt each with 60 felony counts, including conspiracy, fraud and forgery. The Associated Press left voice messages at numbers listed for Bowers and Hewitt, also known as Ashley Hopkins, seeking comment late Monday.
According to the indictment, the two received the money by submitting applications for school vouchers between December 2022 and May 2024, using the names of both real and fictitious children, purportedly as parents and by using “ghost” names of parents.
Some of the made-up children’s names in their applications included Louis Dobbs, Tucker Gil and Poppy Fox. The “false, forged, or fraudulent” documents included birth certificates, utility bills and lease agreements, according to the indictment.
Mayes’ office said that Bowers and Hewitt now appear to reside in Utah.
Virginia
Man charged with murder 4 months after his wife’s disappearance
MANASSAS PARK, Va. (AP) — A Virginia man has been charged with murder more than four months after his wife disappeared and a substantial amount of blood was found in their suburban Washington home, authorities announced Monday.
Naresh Bhatt, 37, was indicted by a Prince William County grand jury and faces a charge of murder as well as a count of defiling a dead body, according to online court documents.
The body of Mamta Bhatt, 28, has not been found. But investigators linked her DNA to the blood found in the couple’s home, Manassas Park Police Chief Mario Lugo said Monday evening at a news conference.
“From the beginning, we believed that she was murdered,” Lugo told reporters.
Investigators conducted their first search warrant when Naresh Bhatt was home with the couple’s baby and discovered blood in the bedroom as well as the bathroom, Lugo said.
He added that evidence shows that Bhatt cut up his wife’s body, which prompted the defiling charge.
“I feel we have a strong case for not having the body,” Lugo said.
Chief Public Defender Tracey Lenox did not immediately respond to an email from The Associated Press seeking comment on the new charges against Bhatt, who is already in jail awaiting trial on separate charges in the case.
The investigation has drawn international attention to the small northern Virginia community, where homicide cases are rare. The disappearance of Mamta Bhatt, a pediatric nurse, spurred community members and her family in Nepal to band together to try to figure out what happened.
They posted on social media, hosted community events and held a rally. Within days, community members began to apply public pressure on her husband.
Three weeks after her disappearance in late July, Naresh Bhatt was charged with a felony count of concealing a dead body and placed in jail, where he remains. A prosecutor had said in court over the summer that the amount of blood found in the home indicated injuries that were not survivable.
The investigation continued in Mamta Bhatt’s death. But in September, Lenox, the public defender, argued that Naresh Bhatt was still entitled to a speedy trial on the count of concealing a dead body. The trial on that charge was scheduled for next week.
Bodiless murder cases are not unheard of, according to law enforcement experts. And while they can still be difficult to prosecute, they’ve become easier in recent years because of new types of evidence, such as DNA, cellphone location information and surveillance cameras.
Tad DiBiase is a former federal prosecutor and author of the 2014 book, “No-Body Homicide Cases: A Practical Guide to Investigating, Prosecuting and Winning Cases When the Victim is Missing.”
He keeps a tally of bodiless murder trials on his website. As of September 2, DiBiase noted that there was an 87% conviction rate after 604 trials across the U.S.
