Let’s look at the weeds! New York City officials recently cracked down on stores selling marijuana without a license. More than 1,100 businesses have closed.. Now a state judge is speaking to authorities. Not so fast.
Operation Padlock to Protect, the New York City policy used to justify the closures, is unconstitutional, according to New York Supreme Court Justice Kevin Kerrigan. (In New York, the state’s highest court is called the Court of Appeals. The Supreme Court is the trial court that hears criminal and civil cases.)
that policyThe bill, adopted last spring, allows city sheriffs to inspect any business that sells cannabis or cannabis products without proper registration, license or permit, and states that “if such conduct is found to be in violation as a result of the investigation or if such conduct is public.” “If there is an immediate threat to health, safety and welfare.”
Owners of closed businesses can request a hearing with the city’s Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings (OATH), which will make a recommendation on whether the business should be allowed to reopen. “But the final decision rests with the sheriff, and attorneys representing closed businesses say it is not uncommon for sheriffs to ignore OATH’s recommendations.” memo that Gotham Mist.
A store called Cloud Corner found itself in this situation. The store, located in Queens, closed in September after being accused of illegally selling marijuana. After the hearing, OATH officials recommended that the store should be allowed to reopen. But City Sheriff Anthony Miranda refused to follow this recommendation and ordered the store closed for a year.
Cloud Corner filed suit, alleging a violation of due process.
Judge Kerrigan agreed There was a “clear” due process issue here. “If the final arbitrator does not have the authority to attach any importance to the hearing, then there is no opportunity to be heard in any meaningful way, which raises due process concerns,” he wrote in his decision.
The city said it would be attractive and basically went full steam ahead. frozen madness We advocate for the forced closure of businesses due to licensing violations. Illegal tobacco shops and dangerous products threaten young New Yorkers and our quality of life. “We continue to lock down illegal shops and protect our communities from the health and safety risks posed by illegal operators.” said said Liz Garcia, a spokeswoman for Mayor Eric Adams, on Tuesday.
Republican lawmakers are recommending criminal charges against former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (Democrat). The Republican-led House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic is expected to send a letter to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland this morning recommending criminal charges be filed against Cuomo for lying to Congress about COVID-19 deaths.
“At issue is Cuomo’s veracity about his role in the preparation and review of the June 2020 state Department of Health report. Nursing home death toll underestimated “It decreased by almost half.” report CNN.
Early in the pandemic, Cuomo’s office ordered New York nursing homes to readmit patients hospitalized with COVID-19 and said nursing homes would not count people who died of COVID-19 in hospitals after being transferred there. Home coronavirus deaths.
New York Attorney General Letitia James later concluded that COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes were severely undercounted and underreported.
In June 2020, an internal report from New York health officials said 9,000 people had died from COVID-19 in the state’s nursing homes, but that fact was omitted from the final report released. “The extraordinary intervention, which came as Mr. Cuomo began writing a book about his pandemic performance, was the latest in what critics said was a months-long effort by the governor and his aides to obscure the full scope of nursing. “Death at home” new york times Cuomo’s office said the omission was due to “an inability to ensure that it was properly verified.”
The Cuomo administration’s policy “effectively placed thousands of COVID-19 positive patients in nursing homes, with predictable but devastating consequences for New York’s most vulnerable people.” charge U.S. Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) earlier this year. Wenstrup heads the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, which is currently recommending criminal charges against Cuomo. In a letter obtained by CNN, the subcommittee accused Cuomo of making “criminal misrepresentations” regarding his “involvement in drafting and knowledge of” reports of coronavirus deaths.
On Wednesday, “Cuomo’s legal team submitted a referral to the Justice Department asking the special committee to investigate allegations of abuse of power, with a particular focus on Wenstrup, who they allege colluded with the Fox News personality and her husband against the former governor. It is part of a separate coronavirus-related lawsuit,” CNN reported.
In Texas, miscarriage leads to death. A Texas woman who died from an infection after a miscarriage might have been saved if doctors weren’t so worried about violating the state’s abortion ban. propose ProPublica. Josseli Barnica, a mother of one, went into labor naturally at 17 weeks pregnant with her second child, the news outlet reported. Doctors at HCA Houston Healthcare Northwest determined that a miscarriage was in progress. Typically, treatment at that point involves giving the pregnant woman medication to speed up labor or performing dilatation and evacuation procedures, many medical experts said. ProPublica. But hospital staff told Barnica they couldn’t do that while the fetus’ heartbeat could be detected.
Texas’ abortion ban includes exceptions for situations where the pregnant woman’s life is at risk, but a miscarriage is not necessarily a life-threatening procedure. This puts doctors in an impossible situation where doing what’s best for their patients can put them at enormous legal risk, and if they decide it’s legally safe to do so, they can put their patients at even greater risk. In this case, “Vanica was still technically stable. But lying in the hospital with the cervix open wider than a baseball exposed the uterus to bacteria, increasing the risk of developing sepsis, experts told ProPublica.”
Barnica remained in the hospital for about 40 hours before doctors declared the fetus no longer had cardiac activity and administered medication to help speed up the miscarriage. About eight hours later she was sent home. ProPublica report. Three days later, Varnica died. The autopsy report listed the cause of death as “sepsis due to acute bacterial endometritis and cervicitis secondary to spontaneous abortion…with residual products of pregnancy.”
No one can say for sure whether Barnica would have survived if hospital doctors had acted differently. But stories like hers, and others like them, raise more questions about whether strict abortion bans, at least those in Texas, are putting pregnant women at risk.
quick hit
• Washington Post Talking to pro-choice women People who do not accept the Democratic Party’s arguments Here’s what a second Trump presidency means for legalizing abortion.
• A new analysis from the Brennan Center for Justice says it “makes clear that it is a ‘progressive’ prosecution policy that does not disarm police or embolden criminals.” report technology dustThis is Team Cushing.
• Japan’s ban on same-sex marriage violates the country’s guarantee of equal rights. Tokyo High Court ruling yesterday.
