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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (June 13, 1979)
THE BATTALION Page 5 WEDNESDAY, JUNE 13, 1979 the state ourt overturns abuse decisions United Press International WASHINGTON —The Supreme , closing federal courthouse ors a little tighter, ruled 5-4 icsday that federal judges should ve abstained from reviewing a uple’s challenge to parts of Texas’ ild abuse law. ■ The majority said a three-judge t federal panel should have thrown fo it the lawsuit in light of pending | ate proceedings — despite the rents’ claim they could not get prompt and meaningful review of their rights under Texas proce dures. The high court’s opinion over turned the lower-court’s decision finding sections of the Texas statute unconstitutional. The Supreme Court, in a 1971 decision criticized by civil liberties groups, held that federal courts should abstain from interfering with pending state criminal prosecutions except in extraordinary circum stances or when a statute flagrantly violates constitutional provisions. In 1975, that principle was ex tended to civil proceedings that are closely related to enforcement of criminal statutes in which the state is a party and has a strong interest. In Tuesday’s case, Justice William Rehnquist noted Texas law appears to raise no procedural barriers for the parents to raise their constitu- by Man Amt >d major, conj ;e life, asdd meli se fri > mat s Inteniiitiooil he Japanestj ice in produ ons. nelons, wiu and transpoij, lements reluctantly signs ar bill despite veto threat on a coma United Press International AUSTIN — Gov. Bill Clements Jgned a bill Tuesday continuing the existence of the State Bar as well as its present spending methods, re versing his earlier position that he would veto the measure if it did not make the Bar accountable to the state treasury. The governor said he was disap- inted the Legislature did not re rite the Bar bill to require the fewyer agency to place its funds in the state treasury and account for its ending as required of other state encies. Clements said he decided to back wn from his earlier position be- use vetoing the bill would have ade the state Supreme Court as sume responsibility for policing the legal profession or would have forced him to call a special session of the Legislature this summer. “I certainly never advocated that we would do away with the Bar per se,” Clements said. "If I vetoed it and I did accept the fact that we must have and should have a Bar I would have had to call a special session of the Legislature be tween now and Sept. 1 and I do not want to do that,” Clements said. “I don’t know of anything as such that makes the Bar different from other agencies,” Clements said. The Bar bill was the most con troversial agency on lawmakers’ 1979 agenda for sunset review primarily because of sharp criticism the lawyers have received for bor rowing money to build a lavish Texas Law Center and then impos ing a mandatory assessment on the state’s 32,000 attorneys to pay off the debt when donations did not come in as predicted. Critics said the Bar, as a state agency, had no legal authority to mortgage state property but Bar of ficials said the Texas Law Center be longed to the Bar rather than the state. The governor said he discussed the situation several times for sev eral hours with the chief justice of the State Supreme Court, Joe Greenhill. “He has made it very clear that he does not want this hot potato on his plate,” Clements said. Clements said Greenhill indi cated he favored — and believed 35 to 40 percent of the state’s 32,000 attorneys favor — major revisions in the Bar bill such as requiring the agency to account to the Legislature for its spending. leveloped yuki 0no hods a “W le at a major j re last weei initial sural man admiteq are simpf Nuisance case to go before Court United Press International WASHINGTON — The Supreme lourt Tuesday agreed to consider whether Texas statutes permitting Vie closing of public nuisances for I: pne year are constitutional when melons applied to obscenity cases. K The justices will hear arguments tu In the'‘■ ex t term on appeals by Texas law jnforcement officials claiming a fed- inej;.®jral appeals court erred in holding ne nuisance law unconstitutional ecause it amounted to a prior re- traint on materials a court has not leclared obscene. p The case was one of 20 involving __^obscenity taken before before a three-judge federal trial court in classifieds I4973. The panel selected three rep- 5-2611 resentative cases to consider. This case began in San Angelo, here King Arts Theater Inc. was erating an adult motion picture eater showing sexually explicit llms. The county attorney, George L-ity, an elon, >y 7 inches, en. So will’d ■Ion when anj n at the samtj ? McCrea, told the building’s land lord he intended to have the theater declared a public nuisance and ob tain an injunction to bar showing of any possibly obscene films. When the landlord notified King Arts its lease would be terminated on Nov. 15 because of McCrea’s statement, King Arts sued to bar McCrea from taking any action. The suit was transferred to the three-judge court, which in July 1975 held the nuisance statutes amounted to an unconstitutional prior restraint on distribution of ma terials not yet determined obscene by a judge. Reviewing the case, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Sept. 28, 1977, reversed the lower court and found the nuisance laws con stitutional, saying they permitted an injunction only after a judicial de termination that obscene material had been shown. When the full 5th Circuit reheard the case, it split 8-6 and reversed the panel on the nuisance laws, holding they “clearly create a prior restraint” because they allow the state to close — for up to one year — a theater that has exhibited obscene films. Bands at A&M Jazz Bluegrass Rock Country If you are interested in planning and/or participating* come to room 140 MSC on Thursday at 3:30 p.m. tional claims in state court. The lower court “inverts tra ditional abstention logic when it states that because the interests in volved are important, abstention is appropriate,’ he said. “Family relations is a traditional area of state concern,” he agreed, but said “we are unwilling to con clude that state processes are un equal to the task of accommodating the various interests and deciding the constitutional questions that may arise in child welfare litiga tion.” Dissenters, led by Justice John Paul Stevens, charged Tuesday’s ruling extends the abstention doc trine “beyond its logical bounds.” Stevens said the court majority was “implicitly sanctioning a depri vation of parental rights without procedural protections which, as the state itself agrees, are constitution ally required.” “If there is no requirement that federal plaintiffs initiate constitu tional litigation in state rather than federal court in the first instance — and this court has repeatedly held that there is not — then the coinci dence of an unrelated state proceed ing provides no justification for im posing such a requirement,” he said. Sections of the Texas child abuse law were challenged by John and Mary Sims of Montgomery County, whose son, Paul, and two daughters were taken into state custody March 25, 1976, after authorities at a Hous ton elementary school reported the boy apparently had been beaten. After efforts to be heard in state court, they finally went to federal court in Houston, where 42 days later their children were returned to them. Later, the federal court ruled on provisions, including failure of the state law to always provide par ents a prompt hearing after a child is seized. The district court concluded it could assert jurisdiction over the case because the litigation was “multi-faceted, ” involved custody of children, and was the product of procedural confusion in the state courts. Beautiful Cedar Ridge A Nice Place To Live RENT BY THE MONTH WE OFFER YOU 2 Bdrm Unfurnished, All Built-Ins including Dish washer, Laundry Hook-Ups, $240. Brand New Units Located on Pinfeather Rd. 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