Page 6 • Thursday, June 24, 1999
Court boosts states’ rights
5-4 decision rejects charges of federal-rights violations
WASHINGTON (AP) — State governments can
not be sued against their will in state courts by
people seeking to enforce some federal right, the
U.S. Supreme Court said yesterday in a major de
cision on states’ rights.
By a 5-4 vote, the justices killed a state court
lawsuit by dozens of state probation officers seek
ing to enforce a federal labor law and collect over
time pay from Maine.
The court ruled the Consti
tution’s “structure and histo
ry” shields states not only from
being sued in federal courts,
but also makes them immune
from individuals’ state court
lawsuits seeking to enforce a
federal right.
The decision leaves Maine’s
probation officers with a fed
erally protected right to be paid
for overtime work but with no
way to enforce that right be-
“Congress must
accord states the
esteem due to them
as joint participants
in a federal system.”
— Anthony M. Kennedy
sides trying to get the federal government to sue
the state for them.
The decision continues a recent trend in the
nation’s highest court. In a series of cases de
cided by 5-4 votes, the justices have shown in
creasing sensitivity to how individual states’
authority fares when pitted against the federal
government’s power.
The conservative coalition of Chief Justice
William H. Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day
O’Connor, Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy
and Clarence Thomas again prevailed yesterday
over more liberal colleagues. Justices John Paul
Stevens, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg
and Stephen G. Breyer.
Writing for the court yesterday, Kennedy said
mmmmmammmmmmm Congress lacked the authority,
when enacting the Federal Labor
Standards Act of 1938, to waive
states’ sovereign immunity from
being sued in state courts.
“Congress has vast power
but not all power,” Kennedy
said. “The powers delegated to
Congress under the Constitu
tion do not include the power
to subject nonconsenting
states to private suits for dam
ages in state courts.”
In an extraordinarily lengthy
U.S. Supreme Court Justice
courtroom session in which the court closed out its
1998-99 term, Kennedy read portions of his 51-page
opinion, emphasizing the importance of a nation
built on the idea of two distinct sovereignties — the
federal government and the individual states.
“Congress must accord states the esteem due
to them as joint participants in a federal system,”
he said.
Jurors convict Klansman
in Virginia cross-burning
HILLSVILLE, Va. (AP) — An all-
white jury convicted a Ku Klux Klan
leader of cross-burning Wednesday,
rejecting claims by his black ACLU
lawyer that he was legally exercising
his right to free speech.
The jury took 25 minutes to con
vict Barry Black of Johnstown, Pa.,
for violating a Virginia law against
burning a cross to intimidate others.
Black, 51, could receive up to five
years in prison.
Prosecutors said Black, of the In
ternational Keystone Knights of the
Klan, led a rally in which 18 robed
Klansmen held torches as they
stood around a burning cross. The
August gathering was on private
property with the owner’s consent.
Black’s lawyer, David Baugh of the
ACLU, argued: 'The cross was
burned as a part of their ceremony,
not because they want to intimidate
anyone. Mr. Black has the right to ex
press, by sign or gesture, any feel
ings he has."
CODY WAGES
Welder Calvin Appelt hammers a brace atop The Zone Wednesday. The cross section Appelt is working
support the rafters of the upper deck of The Zone.
Clinton faces possible court date
WASHINGTON (AP) — In a move that could
complicate the first lady’s political aspirations, pros
ecutor Kenneth Starr has named
Hillary Rodham Clinton a poten
tial witness for the trial of former
law partner Webster Hubbell,
sources said Wednesday.
The independent counsel’s
office submitted Clinton’s
name April 21 as one of 63 po
tential witnesses in the Hubbell
case, said the sources, who
spoke under condition of
CLINTON
anonymity. Hubbell’s lawyers countered with a
list of 17 possible defense witnesses May 25. The
defense filed both lists under seal in federal court.
At a hearing Wednesday, U.S. District Judge
James Robertson estimated the trial — scheduled
to begin Aug. 9 — would last five weeks at most.
Clinton is pondering a race for the Senate seat
from New York.
If Starr calls her to the witness stand, it would
be her second appearance to testify at the feder
al courthouse in Washington.
Her first was in January 1996, amid a furor
over the discovery of her law firm billing records
that revealed the work she and Hubbell had done
on a fraudulent Arkansas real estate development
called Castle Grande.
The billing records turned up in the White
House family residence under still-unexplained
circumstances in early January 1996, two years
after prosecutors subpoenaed them."
prints of Clinton, Hubbell and
ner Vincent Foster were on them.
Hubbell, a former associate atton
in the Clinton administration, is
concealing his and Clinton’s
tie Grande.
The project, which federal banking
concluded was riddled with “insideri
titious sales and land flips," wa$i
Hubbell’s father-in-law, Seth Ward.aniO
Whitewater business partner, Jim V
Federal regulators concluded Cast 1 :
transactions cost McDougal’s savingi-
nearly $4 million, contributing to theirs
failure.
Forme
at the
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