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State Supreme Court Elections 2024: Key Battles in Abortion, Gerrymandering, and Voting Rights

(CTN News) – Beyond the presidential race and the fight for congressional control in 2024, there will be a slew of other races that are shaping up to be just as important.

There will be 80 races for state supreme court seats in 33 states next year, and important fights will be fought over gerrymandering, voting rights, abortion, and other issues.

These elections have the potential to be the most expensive and contentious in the United States since the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which removed the constitutional right to abortion, off the ballot.

According to Douglas Keith, senior counsel in the judiciary program at the Brennan Center for Justice, who tracks spending in judicial contests, the decision brought the abortion debate to the states and ushered in a “new era” in state supreme court elections.

State supreme court elections have received unprecedented funding and media coverage, according to Keith.

As a taste of what to expect in 2024, Democrats prevailed in heated court contests in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in 2023 and spent tens of millions of dollars on television commercials. They are also encouraging organizations to think about investing in states where they weren’t before.

According to the Brennan Center, there have been a total of 38 lawsuits filed challenging abortion bans in 23 states. The highest courts in each state are likely to hear a number of these cases.

Legal challenges to abortion restrictions are being closely monitored by the American Civil Liberties Union in the following states: Montana, Wyoming, Ohio, Utah, Florida, Nevada, Arizona, Nebraska, and Georgia.

“State courts and state constitutions were the critical backstop to protecting access to abortion after Roe v. Wade was overturned,” stated Brigitte Amiri, deputy director of the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project. Every one of these lawsuits in every one of these states has ridiculously high stakes.

Among the several groups that spent heavily in support of Democratic candidates for state supreme court in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania this year was the American Civil Liberties Union.

The Republican State Leadership Committee has also been active in recent court races, despite its stated primary interest in redistricting. State supreme courts were hailed as the “last line of defense against far-left national groups,” according to the group. However, details regarding their funding plans and target states for next year’s elections remain unknown.

State supreme court contests in Ohio are likely to be framed by Democrats as a continuation of the November election, when voters codified the right to abortion in the state constitution. Now that the amendment is in place, the state’s more than 30 limitations on abortion could be challenged.

Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights adviser and law professor Jessie Hill stated, “The state supreme court is going to be the ultimate arbiter of the meaning of the new constitutional amendment that the people voted for and organized around.” (1993). I am astounded by the magnitude of that power.

Republicans will want to expand their control of the court, while Democrats have a chance to switch the majority. Three seats are up for vote, and the current Republican majority is 4-3.

Hill stated that the “very high-stakes election” will be another gauge of the abortion issue’s impact on voter turnout.

“We witnessed a remarkable surge in participation for that amendment and a tremendous outlay of resources for those campaigns,” Hill chimed in. “I believe that next year, Ohio will also witness a comparable level of focus and funding.”

According to David Niven, a political science professor at the University of Cincinnati, redistricting is expected to play a significant role in the state’s supreme court races. This is because the court has been politically realigned since it issued a series of rulings finding Ohio’s congressional and legislative maps unconstitutionally gerrymandered to favor Republicans. He estimates that the campaigns will cost millions of dollars.

“These races are simply so utterly consequential in very tangible, practical ways that touch voters’ everyday lives,” he said, adding that the topic of such elections is rarely discussed.

Potentially relevant in North Carolina are pending litigation involving legislative and congressional redistricting.

The North Carolina Republican Party is aiming to increase its majority in the state court, which it took over from the Democrats in the 2022 election. After the court’s balance shifted to the GOP in 2023, it reversed its earlier decisions that had invalidated a photo voter identification legislation passed in 2018 and legislative and congressional district boundaries for the state.

Both parties are likely to direct their attention to Michigan, the site of the state Supreme Court’s 4-3 Democratic majority. Even though they are nominated by political parties, candidates do not have their political affiliations printed on the ballot.

At the ballot box in 2024 will be two sitting officials, one a Democrat and one a Republican. Despite a liberal group’s efforts to have former President Donald Trump removed off the state’s ballot, the court recently upheld his inclusion. At the moment, it is considering a prominent case involving a Republican legislative move that undermined a voter-supported minimum wage increase.

A 4-3 majority for Democrats was achieved in the 2023 Wisconsin Supreme Court election, which was largely influenced by abortion. The campaign broke all prior national records for expenditure on state supreme court elections.

Justice Janet Protasiewicz, who leans liberal, defeated Dan Kelly, a longtime Republican and supporter of the state’s most prominent anti-abortion organizations.

This year, Republicans threatened to impeach Protasiewicz over remarks she made on the campaign trail regarding redistricting, claiming that she had already decided on a case involving the state’s severely gerrymandered parliamentary districts.

Many state supreme court campaigns have become more political due to the increased spending and media attention, according to experts. This dispute is a prime example of this trend.

Following a race in which tens of millions of dollars were spent, the Democratic majority in Pennsylvania’s court was expanded. Dan McCaffery, a Democrat, was able to secure victory by casting himself as an outspoken advocate for abortion rights.

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Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding, But Still Accounting 48% Search Revenue

Google

Google is so closely associated with its key product that its name is a verb that signifies “search.” However, Google’s dominance in that sector is dwindling.

According to eMarketer, Google will lose control of the US search industry for the first time in decades next year.

Google will remain the dominant search player, accounting for 48% of American search advertising revenue. And, remarkably, Google is still increasing its sales in the field, despite being the dominating player in search since the early days of the George W. Bush administration. However, Amazon is growing at a quicker rate.

google

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

Amazon will hold over a quarter of US search ad dollars next year, rising to 27% by 2026, while Google will fall even more, according to eMarketer.

The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the forecast.

Lest you think you’ll have to switch to Bing or Yahoo, this isn’t the end of Google or anything really near.

Google is the fourth-most valued public firm in the world. Its market worth is $2.1 trillion, trailing just Apple, Microsoft, and the AI chip darling Nvidia. It also maintains its dominance in other industries, such as display advertisements, where it dominates alongside Facebook’s parent firm Meta, and video ads on YouTube.

To put those “other” firms in context, each is worth more than Delta Air Lines’ total market value. So, yeah, Google is not going anywhere.

Nonetheless, Google faces numerous dangers to its operations, particularly from antitrust regulators.

On Monday, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that Google must open up its Google Play Store to competitors, dealing a significant blow to the firm in its long-running battle with Fortnite creator Epic Games. Google announced that it would appeal the verdict.

In August, a federal judge ruled that Google has an illegal monopoly on search. That verdict could lead to the dissolution of the company’s search operation. Another antitrust lawsuit filed last month accuses Google of abusing its dominance in the online advertising business.

Meanwhile, European regulators have compelled Google to follow tough new standards, which have resulted in multiple $1 billion-plus fines.

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Pixa Bay

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

On top of that, the marketplace is becoming more difficult on its own.

TikTok, the fastest-growing social network, is expanding into the search market. And Amazon has accomplished something few other digital titans have done to date: it has established a habit.

When you want to buy anything, you usually go to Amazon, not Google. Amazon then buys adverts to push companies’ products to the top of your search results, increasing sales and earning Amazon a greater portion of the revenue. According to eMarketer, it is expected to generate $27.8 billion in search revenue in the United States next year, trailing only Google’s $62.9 billion total.

And then there’s AI, the technology that (supposedly) will change everything.

Why search in stilted language for “kendall jenner why bad bunny breakup” or “police moving violation driver rights no stop sign” when you can just ask OpenAI’s ChatGPT, “What’s going on with Kendall Jenner and Bad Bunny?” in “I need help fighting a moving violation involving a stop sign that wasn’t visible.” Google is working on exactly this technology with its Gemini product, but its success is far from guaranteed, especially with Apple collaborating with OpenAI and other businesses rapidly joining the market.

A Google spokeswoman referred to a blog post from last week in which the company unveiled ads in its AI overviews (the AI-generated text that appears at the top of search results). It’s Google’s way of expressing its ability to profit on a changing marketplace while retaining its business, even as its consumers steadily transition to ask-and-answer AI and away from search.

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Google has long used a single catchphrase to defend itself against opponents who claim it is a monopoly abusing its power: competition is only a click away. Until recently, that seemed comically obtuse. Really? We are going to switch to Bing? Or Duck Duck Go? Give me a break.

But today, it feels more like reality.

Google is in no danger of disappearing. However, every highly dominating company faces some type of reckoning over time. GE, a Dow mainstay for more than a century, was broken up last year and is now a shell of its previous dominance. Sears declared bankruptcy in 2022 and is virtually out of business. US Steel, long the foundation of American manufacturing, is attempting to sell itself to a Japanese corporation.

Could we remember Google in the same way that we remember Yahoo or Ask Jeeves in decades? These next few years could be significant.

SOURCE | CNN

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2024 | Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

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Washington — Trump Media,  The Supreme Court announced Monday that it will not hear an appeal from social media platform X about a search warrant acquired by prosecutors in the election meddling case against former President Donald Trump.

The justices did not explain their rationale, and there were no recorded dissents.

The firm, which was known as Twitter before being purchased by billionaire Elon Musk, claims a nondisclosure order that prevented it from informing Trump about the warrant obtained by special counsel Jack Smith’s team violated its First Amendment rights.

The business also claims Trump should have had an opportunity to exercise executive privilege. If not reined in, the government may employ similar tactics to intercept additional privileged communications, their lawyers contended.

trump

Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

Two neutral electronic privacy groups also joined in, urging the high court to hear the case on First Amendment grounds.

Prosecutors, however, claim that the corporation never shown that Trump utilized the account for official purposes, therefore executive privilege is not a problem. A lower court also determined that informing Trump could have compromised the current probe.

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Trump utilized his Twitter account in the weeks preceding up to his supporters’ attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, to spread false assertions about the election, which prosecutors claim were intended to create doubt in the democratic process.

The indictment describes how Trump used his Twitter account to encourage his followers to travel to Washington on Jan. 6, pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to reject the certification, and falsely claiming that the Capitol crowd, which battered police officers and destroyed glass, was peaceful.

musk trump

Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

That case is now moving forward following the Supreme Court’s verdict in July, which granted Trump full immunity from criminal prosecution as a former president.

The warrant arrived at Twitter amid quick changes implemented by Musk, who bought the company in 2022 and has since cut off most of its workforce, including those dedicated to combating disinformation and hate speech.

He also welcomed back a vast list of previously banned users, including Trump, and endorsed him for the 2024 presidential election.

SOURCE | AP

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The Supreme Court Turns Down Biden’s Government Appeal in a Texas Emergency Abortion Matter.

Supreme Court

(VOR News) – A ruling that prohibits emergency abortions that contravene the Supreme Court law in the state of Texas, which has one of the most stringent abortion restrictions in the country, has been upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States. The United States Supreme Court upheld this decision.

The justices did not provide any specifics regarding the underlying reasons for their decision to uphold an order from a lower court that declared hospitals cannot be legally obligated to administer abortions if doing so would violate the law in the state of Texas.

Institutions are not required to perform abortions, as stipulated in the decree. The common populace did not investigate any opposing viewpoints. The decision was made just weeks before a presidential election that brought abortion to the forefront of the political agenda.

This decision follows the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that ended abortion nationwide.

In response to a request from the administration of Vice President Joe Biden to overturn the lower court’s decision, the justices expressed their disapproval.

The government contends that hospitals are obligated to perform abortions in compliance with federal legislation when the health or life of an expectant patient is in an exceedingly precarious condition.

This is the case in regions where the procedure is prohibited. The difficulty hospitals in Texas and other states are experiencing in determining whether or not routine care could be in violation of stringent state laws that prohibit abortion has resulted in an increase in the number of complaints concerning pregnant women who are experiencing medical distress being turned away from emergency rooms.

The administration cited the Supreme Court’s ruling in a case that bore a striking resemblance to the one that was presented to it in Idaho at the beginning of the year. The justices took a limited decision in that case to allow the continuation of emergency abortions without interruption while a lawsuit was still being heard.

In contrast, Texas has been a vocal proponent of the injunction’s continued enforcement. Texas has argued that its circumstances are distinct from those of Idaho, as the state does have an exemption for situations that pose a significant hazard to the health of an expectant patient.

According to the state, the discrepancy is the result of this exemption. The state of Idaho had a provision that safeguarded a woman’s life when the issue was first broached; however, it did not include protection for her health.

Certified medical practitioners are not obligated to wait until a woman’s life is in imminent peril before they are legally permitted to perform an abortion, as determined by the state supreme court.

The state of Texas highlighted this to the Supreme Court.

Nevertheless, medical professionals have criticized the Texas statute as being perilously ambiguous, and a medical board has declined to provide a list of all the disorders that are eligible for an exception. Furthermore, the statute has been criticized for its hazardous ambiguity.

For an extended period, termination of pregnancies has been a standard procedure in medical treatment for individuals who have been experiencing significant issues. It is implemented in this manner to prevent catastrophic outcomes, such as sepsis, organ failure, and other severe scenarios.

Nevertheless, medical professionals and hospitals in Texas and other states with strict abortion laws have noted that it is uncertain whether or not these terminations could be in violation of abortion prohibitions that include the possibility of a prison sentence. This is the case in regions where abortion prohibitions are exceedingly restrictive.

Following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which resulted in restrictions on the rights of women to have abortions in several Republican-ruled states, the Texas case was revisited in 2022.

As per the orders that were disclosed by the administration of Vice President Joe Biden, hospitals are still required to provide abortions in cases that are classified as dire emergency.

As stipulated in a piece of health care legislation, the majority of hospitals are obligated to provide medical assistance to patients who are experiencing medical distress. This is in accordance with the law.

The state of Texas maintained that hospitals should not be obligated to provide abortions throughout the litigation, as doing so would violate the state’s constitutional prohibition on abortions. In its January judgment, the 5th United States Circuit Court of Appeals concurred with the state and acknowledged that the administration had exceeded its authority.

SOURCE: AP

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