Post Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine standing PETA spends significant amounts of money trying to get people to voluntarily not eat meat. If the government had outlawed eating meat, people would be forced to not eat meat, and so it would not have been necessary to spend money to convince them not to. Given that the government's inaction has caused PETA considerable expense, and taking Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v FDA as precedent, does PETA have standing to sue the government for failing to outlaw the consumption of meat? EDIT: AHM v FDA holds that if a group advocates a position, and incurs expenses doing so, and there is some government action that would have decreased or eliminated those expenses, then that group has standing. One way an organization can establish standing is by identifying specific projects that [it] had to put on hold or otherwise curtail in order to respond to the [challenged action Tex. State LULAC v. Elfant, 52 F.4th 248 , 253 (5th Cir. 2022) (internal marks omitted). This is not a heightening of the Lujan standard, but an example of how to satisfy it by pointing to a non litigation-related expense. OCA,867 F.3d at 612. Plaintiffs need not identify specific projects that they haveplaced on hold or otherwise curtailed. La Unión del Pueblo Entero v.Abbott,No. 5:21-CV-0844-XR,2022 WL 3052489 , at *31 (W.D. Tex. Aug. 2,2022). Rather,this is simply the most secure foundation to establish organizational standing. 13A Charles Alan Wright &amp; Arthur R. Miller,Federal Practice and Procedure § 3531.9.5 (3d ed. 2022). Furthermore, [a]t the pleading stage , we liberally construe allegations ofinjury. Bezet v.United States,714 Fed. Appx . 336,339 (5th Cir.2017)(quoting Little v. KPMG LLP, 575 F.3d 533,540 (5th Cir.2009)). Here, Plaintiff medical associations have standing via diversionary injury . Because of failure to require reporting of all adverse events , Plaintiffs allege FDA's actions have frustrated their ability to educate and inform their member physicians ,their patients ,and the public on the dangers of chemical abortion drugs .ECF No. 7 at 12. As a result,Plaintiffs attest they have See Lujanv . Defs. ofWildlife, 504 U.S. 555 ( 1992) . Atthehearing, Danco arguedElfant held there was no standing where organizations failed to identify specific projectsputon hold. ECF No. 136 at 125. This is incorrect. The FifthCircuit inElfantassumed withoutdeciding the plaintiffspled an injury-in- fact but heldthey did not have standingbecausethe causation and redressability elements were notmet. See 52 F.4th at 255. 12 Case 2 :22- cv- 00223- Z Document137 Filed 04/07/23 Page 13of 67 4435 diverted valuable resources away from advocacy and educational efforts to compensate for the lack of information.See ECF No. 1at 91. Such diversions expend considerable time,energy,and resources,to the detriment of other priorities and functions and impair Plaintiffs ability to carry out their educational purpose.Id at 92; N.A.A.C.P. v. City ofKyle, Tex.,626 F.3d 233, 238 (5th Cir.2010) Similarly, Plaintiffs allege their efforts to respond to actions have tak[en] them away from other priorities such as fundraising and membership recruitment and retention. ECF Nos.1-4 at 6, 1-5 at 11. Consequently, Plaintiffs have re-calibrated their outreach effortsto spend extra time and money educating their members about the dangers of chemical abortion drugs.Combined,these facts are sufficient to confer organizational standing.See OCA,867 F.3d at 612 (finding organizational standing even where the injury was not large ); Fowler, 178 F.3d at 356 (injuries in fact need not measure more than an identifiable trifle ) (internal marks omitted). It is to this that I am referring: given the legal argument here, does it give PETA standing? I am not asking about cause of action or anything else, nor am I advocating that PETA should have standing. I am simply asking, if PETA does not have standing, why logic would distinguish it from this case.
There is no parallelism between the Texas decision and the proposed lawsuit. In the anti-mifepristone lawsuit, there exists a statute granting the FDA authority to regulate and review new drugs, and a petition procedure whereby citizens can state ground for the Commissioner of Food and Drugs to consider a regulatory action. There is no statutory basis on which a ban of meat-eating could be created by executive action. Congress cannot be sued for not passing a law (failure or refusal of Congress to pass a particular law is not justiciable). If, for example someone were to submit a petition to the FDA urging such a regulation, the petition would have to be denied because the FDA does not have statutory authority to issue such a regulation. As argued here, the anti-mifepristone plaintiffs lack standing in that case, so one can expect that to be a substantial issue in the subsequent appeal.
The situations cannot reasonably be compared legally. In Wynn v. Vilsack, a motion for preliminary injunction was granted (and the program was not ruled unconstitutional). In the ruling, the court found that the evidence &quot;does not support a finding that USDA continues to be a participant, passive or active, in discrimination&quot;, and does find that there were past successful remediation efforts, thus &quot;the Court expresses serious concerns over whether the Government will be able to establish a strong basis in evidence warranting the implementation of Section 1005's race-based remedial action&quot;, moreover &quot;Plaintiff has convincingly shown that the relief provided by Section 1005 is not narrowly tailored to serve that interest&quot;. The court finds that there is a good-enough case that the law fails strict scrutiny. Incidentally, Congress repealed that law. On the other hand, in Evanston, we have no facts or concrete legal allegations (e.g. drafts of a legal complaint). The cited memorandum is a recommendation, not a law. There does exist at least one available council action from 2019 which says that The Chief Financial Officer is hereby authorized to divert all adult use cannabis funds received by the Illinois Department of Revenue for sales of adult use cannabis to a separate fund in a City account for local reparations. SECTION 3: The City may receive donations to this fund from separate organizations, corporations, and individuals established herein by the City Council. The city also has a page referring to Ordinance 102-O-20 (not available) indicating that &quot;The Committee will work with residents, City staff and experts to explore and identify programs and opportunities to be supported by the Reparations Fund&quot;. The Program Guidelines §3 indicates that a person may be eligible for money if they are an ancestor, direct descendant, or &quot;other&quot; who has suffered from a &quot;City ordinance, policy, or procedure that served to discriminate against the Applicant in the area of housing&quot;. It thus does not exclude Asian and Hispanic homeowners, LGBTQIA2S+, Catholic, Muslims or anyone else, except insofar as a Catholic was not demonstrably the victim of such discrimination. The city also provides an extensive historical study of past government discrimination in housing. You may be able to eke out more concrete information on what they have done here, at the reparations committee website. In terms of potential differentia between the USDA program and the Evanston program, the most obvious difference would be in terms of prior remediation efforts. If you sue Evanston for their program, they could defend the program as providing the remediation that justifies the program – which had already been provided in the USDA program.
If such a bill passes as written, it removes any federal criminal prohibitions against marijuana (assuming their research was sufficiently thorough), and raises marijuana to the same legal status as celery salt, which simply is not mentioned by federal criminal law. There would be no federal declaration that marijuana is now legal, and therefore, when federal law is silent, state law can say something. If silence at the federal level precluded state law on the topic, there could be not any state law – the Supremacy Clause only addresses conflicts. The bill could also be written to include a positive declaration that there shall be no laws against marijuana, and that would create a conflict with state law. Often, conflicts are avoided by crafting a jurisdictional difference, such as having laws that only apply while on federal property, or w.r.t. federal employees. The Constitution is structured to separate what the federal government can do versus what state governments can do, so that conflicts don't arise – however, the Commerce Clause ends up being used to expand federal power (e.g. the Controlled Substances Act). As Nate Eldredge comments, there is a huge difference between what is allowed under federal vs. (certain) state laws w.r.t. fireworks, and even town-to-town variations in fireworks laws. Numerous &quot;professional&quot; acts are completely legal w.r.t. federal law but are illegal at the state level. No federal law prohibits me from practicing as an attorney: it's state law that does that (likewise, being a cosmetologist or selling beer).
Well, moral obligations are not laws, nor sometimes even moral obligations. Some laws are based on what some courts and legislatures think are moral obligations. We think cannibals have a moral obligation not to eat people; cannibals think non-cannibals are fools for passing up a good BBQ. As for a leader's moral responsibility for millions of lives, we can take as extreme examples Mao, Hilter, Stalin, Pol Pot, etc., that there are no obligations. The law that could apply in the case of a POTUS who does not "faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States..." (oath of office for POTUS) is that of "High Crimes and Misdemeanors", the grounds for most impeachments. But "faithfully executing the Office of President" has no moral obligation; it has legal implications, that's all. High crimes or misdemeanor are legal definitions, not moral, and depend on previous cases of what a crime or misdemeanor is. Insobriety can be illegal; there are laws on the books concerning public drunkenness. But in the contest of POTUS (one who is hopefully not passed out on the sidewalk in front of the WH), it remains to be seen if insobriety is a high crime or misdemeanor. That would be up to the House Judiciary Committee and US House of Representatives, which by Constitutional powers handles impeachment proceedings. The Twenty-fifth Amendment outlines who succeeds the president due to "Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office," but it does not state who has the power to declare a President incapacitated. It's possible that a POTUS who incapacitates himself with alcohol is guilty of a "high crime or misdemeanor." But how drunk do you have to be to be incapacitated? Drunk enough to think a Game Boy is the nuclear football? Again, that's up to the House. Some past presidents have arguably been functional alcoholics (or functional recovered alcoholics.) But incapacitated? That can be subjective when it comes to the application of the law. And morals have little to do with it, unless those morals have a basis in that same law. Update 12/04/16: Some federal judges have been impeached due to drunkenness: http://www.fjc.gov/history/home.nsf/page/judges_impeachments.html and http://www.crf-usa.org/impeachment/high-crimes-and-misdemeanors.html
Actually, there is not a government kill list, that is just a meme. The First Amendment says (starts) &quot;Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...&quot;. That means a number of different concrete things: there shall be no laws prohibiting any religion, or preferring a religion, not may there be laws impeding or promoting the practice of a religion. The government therefore cannot reward or punish a person for believing in skin walkers, nor for turning themselves into a coyote (if they can do it). The old practice of burning witches at the stake is illegal, similarly at least under current understandings of the law it would be illegal to punish those without a religion with a fine or death. The aforementioned person can thus practice witchcraft – up to a point. One cannot get away with murder by claiming that they are just practicing the Ásatru ritual of blót. Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah is an example of how the government can not restrict a religious practice (banning animal sacrifices of a particular religion), Employment Division v. Smith is an example of a neutral prohibition which happens to impinge on a religion (outlawing certain drugs limits a religious practice).
There is no prospect for equitable relief in such an outcome. The Texas state government enjoys sovereign immunity, except as specified under the Tort Claims Act. Under that law, immunity is waived only in the case of damage caused by negligence of a state employee, and is limited primarily to vehicle accidents and physical injuries. So the state cannot be sued for passing a law found to be unconstitutional. An individual would not enjoy such immunity, but given the law, there is no identifiable defendant to seek relief from (everybody is a potential defendant). An former abortion provider who now declines to perform an abortion can't be sued, because doctors in general have no obligation to perform particular medical procedures (most doctors in Texas won't perform an abortion, even before SB8), and the course will not render a judgment against a doctor on the grounds that they obeyed an existing law but should have known that it would be found unconstitutional.
Not at all. A US business always had the authority to require employees to be vaccinated before entering the workplace, except if a valid state law prohibits this. The EEOC has confirmed that none of the Federal laws which it enforces prevent such a requirement. The proposed mandate under the OSHA Act would merely have required a business subject to the mandate to do what it had the right to do anyway. Even if it is held that the US Federal Government does not have constitutional authority to impose such a mandate, that would not in any way impair any business which chooses to do so from imposing such a requirement on its employees, subject to the requirements under the ADA and the Civil Rights act to offer reasonable accommodations for sincere religious objections, and for disabilities that would interfere with accepting vaccination. Businesses generally are not &quot;covered entities&quot; under HIPPA, and so can ask employees for health information such as a vaccination record, if they choose to. Or they can choose to trust an employee's word on the matter.
I think it's important to keep in mind the essence of your actions. @Mowzer gave a great answer on the matter in hand, but I'd like to add a point of view. Is it illegal to eat while driving? Like pointed out by @Mowzer, if no law prohibits it, it's allowed by default (lots of countries have this premise). But what about the consequences of your actions? Maybe there's no law against eating in the car, but there sure is one in my country that specific says that you are not allowed to drive without using both hands in the wheel. The only exception to this rule is to take out your hand from the wheel to use the stick to change gears. Another point of view to add is the liability. Let's say you're minding your own business while driving and a lunatic trying to commit suicide jumps in front of your car. It's a pretty straight-forward case, you have no reason to be blamed. Now, let's add to the same scenario your snack; with a small change, you are now facing a accident that may have been caused by reckless driving (another thing commonly illegal). To sum up, the law is not really like math that have axioms that determine true or false statements without any distinguishment. That's why every case is single handled in the law by it's particularities.