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Tag Archives: Favoring
Supreme Court issues rare emergency order favoring voters challenging elections rules
The move was a rare example of the conservative court siding with voters over state officials in disputes regarding election rules, especially when the court is asked to act on an emergency basis.
The Supreme Court restored a district court ruling requiring that this year’s election for two of the commission seats be postponed so that the legislature could create a new system for electing commissioners.
The unsigned order from the Supreme Court left the door open for the state’s Republican officials to try again to get Georgia’s rules for electing the commission revived for November’s election. However, later Friday, Georgia indicated in a court filing that it would not ask again for the appeals court to halt the trial judge’s order before November’s election while the appeal on the merits played out.
Nico Martinez, a partner at Bartlit Beck LLP who represented the challengers, said the Supreme Court’s order was an “important step toward ensuring that this November’s PSC elections are not held using a method that unlawfully dilutes the votes of millions of Black citizens in Georgia.”
“We look forward to presenting the merits of our case on appeal and are confident the district court’s well-reasoned decision will ultimately be upheld,” Martinez said in a statement.
The commission is Georgia’s regulator for investor-owned utilities like power plants and telecommunications. Among its duties is setting residential, commercial and industrial utility rates.
Each of the five commission seats is assigned a specific district where the commissioner must reside, but the commissioners themselves are elected in state-wide elections on a staggered six-year calendar.
The district court judge ruled the at-large system for electing members to the commission diluted Black political power in violation of the federal Voting Rights Act.
But the judge’s ruling was then put on hold by the US 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, prompting the voters to seek the Supreme Court’s intervention this week.
Arguments in the appeal have focused, in part, on the so-called Purcell principle, which discourages federal court actions that would disrupt election planning close to an election.
The Supreme Court said that the 11th Circuit should not have used the principle to justify halting the trial judge’s order. The voters challenging the election rules had pointed out that Georgia officials said the principle would not come into play if they appealed any ruling against the current election system for the commission.
The Supreme Court order comes after a string of cases in which the justices broke down along ideological lines on whether lower court rulings in favor of voting rights advocates should be put on hold because of upcoming elections.
In redistricting cases out of Alabama and Louisiana, the conservative majority reversed lower court rulings that would have required maps found to be illegal to be redrawn before the November elections. (The high court did decline to disturb certain rulings in which a state supreme court, rather than federal courts, had ordered the maps redrawn).
Similarly, during the 2020 election, the Supreme Court put on hold several lower court rulings that would have made it easier to vote during the pandemic.
Many of those orders have been handed down without explanation from the majority, but on a few occasions, conservative justices have written to emphasize that their moves were motivated by adherence to the Purcell principle.
Fla. police chief Larry Scirotto fired for favoring non-white officers
A Florida police chief has been given the boot after an investigation found he engaged in discriminatory promotion practices, and remarked “that wall is too white” when looking at pictures of the department’s command staff.
Larry Scirotto — who took over the Fort Lauderdale Police Department in August — was fired by the city manager on Thursday, according to a press release. The report followed several discrimination complaints that alleged Scirotto, 48, made hiring and promotion decisions with an illegal race-based approach.
Scirotto, a former assistant chief in Pittsburgh, became the first openly gay chief hired in Fort Lauderdale last year. He is of mixed race.
A 12-page investigation into the bias complaints concluded that Scirotto created a “divisive atmosphere” in the department, and that he once pointed to a conference room wall of photos of the department’s command staff and declared, “that wall is too white,” and “I’m gonna change that,” according to CNN.
In another incident, the investigation found that Scirotto said “which one is blacker?” when considering a promotion — an incident the former police chief denies took place.
The report quoted Scirotto, who headed the police department for just six months, as saying he intended to “consider diversity at every opportunity.”
“Overall, there is a very divisive atmosphere within the department based on the perception the chief is intentionally using race, gender and sexual orientation as attributes necessary for promotions,” the reads the report. “While the goal to diversify is an important and laudable goal it must be accomplished in a legally permissible manner.”
On Saturday, Scirotto told CNN he promoted 15 people from August to November, just six were ethnic or gender minorities, and said the report was “vague on the facts.”
In an interview with Fox affiliate 7News, Scirotto defended himself, insisting the non-white candidates “deserved to be promoted.”
“Those minority groups are now being treated as if they were less than deserving, and that’s not the case, and it never was,” he told the TV station.
“The promotions that I made are of the minority candidates, were because they were exceptional candidates, and they excelled in every level of the organization,” he reportedly added. “They deserved to be promoted, and by the way, they happened to be minority. It wasn’t because they were minority.”
Of the “Which one is blacker” remark, Scirotto told the outlet he never said that.
But on Friday, Fort Lauderdale City Manager Chris Lagerbloom said the report revealed the diversity promotion was conducted illegally.
“We strive to be diverse in our organization. We strive to represent the community that we serve. There’s just certain lawful ways to allow that diversity to happen,” he said, according to 7News, “and in this case, the investigative report indicated we didn’t quite follow the law in how we were working towards those diverse positions.”
The firing came after in October two Fort Lauderdale cops alleged they had been passed over for promotions based on race, sexual orientation and gender, according to the Sun Sentinel. In response, Lagerbloom reportedly put a halt to promotion in order to “address concerns surrounding the recent police department promotions.”
With Post wires
Bitcoin returns to $42K as bets start favoring ‘short squeeze’ higher for BTC
Bitcoin (BTC) broke through $42,000 on Jan. 11 as expectations of a fresh “short squeeze” mounted.
Short-term squeeze “reasonably likely”
Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView followed BTC/USD as it recovered from Monday’s dip to $39,600 — its first breach of the $40,000 mark since September.
While short-term bullish prognoses were conspicuously absent on the day, attention focused on the potential for derivatives markets to spark another “short squeeze.”
With open interest near all-time highs despite the downturn and sentiment clearly favoring further downside, a surprise uptick could have the impact of “squeezing” short positions and providing some relief for bulls.
As on-chain analytics firm Glassnode noted in the latest edition of its weekly newsletter, “The Week On-Chain,” such an event is overdue. Longs have suffered almost constantly since November’s $69,000 all-time highs, and “squeezes” further occur when the market least expects a certain outcome.
“Short traders, who have not been punished for taking on increasing risk, may find themselves candidates for a near-term squeeze,” researchers forecast.
Such an event could well be amplified thanks to “tepid” demand for spot BTC and futures open interest leverage, which is approaching 2% of the Bitcoin market capitalization, Glassnode continued.
“Alongside very oversold indicators in on-chain spending activity, this suggests a short squeeze is actually a reasonably likely near-term resolution for the market,” the newsletter concluded.
For every short, there’s a long
Analysts, meanwhile, considered alternatives to the high open interest being removed via another leg down toward $30,000.
Related: ‘Most bullish macro backdrop in 75 years’ — 5 things to watch in Bitcoin this week
Despite no “wipeout” of open interest yet occurring, a surprise upside move could yet be the event that resets market composition, popular Twitter account Credible Crypto argued on the day.
“What if the major OI wipeout everyone is looking for ends up happening because of a squeeze to the upside rather than a move further down?” he quizzed in response to data from fellow analyst William Clemente.
“Happened in August ‘21 as we moved off the 30K bottom. Think we probs see that play out again. Bears bout to be wiped clean.”
As Cointelegraph reported, $40,000 has been forming a significant price zone from multiple points over the past 12 months.
Amherst College Ends Legacy Admissions Favoring Children of Alumni
Amherst College announced on Wednesday that it would no longer give the children of alumni a boost in the admissions process, becoming one of the first highly selective colleges in the country to abandon a practice that has held back efforts to diversify the top echelons of American higher education.
With the announcement, Amherst, a private liberal arts school in Massachusetts, joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Johns Hopkins University and the California Institute of Technology in the handful of highly selective schools that have opted against having so-called legacy admissions programs.
“We want to be a leader among higher education institutions, in policies and programs that support access and equity,” said Matthew L. McGann, Amherst’s dean of admissions and financial aid.
About 11 percent of the students admitted to Amherst in recent years have been children of people who graduated from the college. Most members of this year’s freshman class are students of color, and 18 percent are first-generation college students.
In the past, Mr. McGann said, admissions committees had been encouraged to give some preference to qualified applicants who had a parent who graduated from the college. He added that an applicant’s legacy status was evaluated as one of many factors, and not according to any formula or point system.
Legacy preferences are commonly used at prestigious private universities to give the children and grandchildren of alumni, who are often donors, an advantage in the admissions process. Those universities have said that doing so helps encourage donations that can be used to finance scholarships for others who need them.
But some research suggests that legacy admissions programs do not affect donor funding, and they have functioned as a barrier to diversifying college campuses. Critics say they tend to give white or wealthier students an unfair advantage, ultimately entrenching racial and socioeconomic inequities.
According to a 2018 survey from Inside Higher Ed, 42 percent of admissions directors at private colleges and universities included legacy status as a factor in admissions. About 6 percent of public institutions did the same.
Amherst also announced on Wednesday that it would expand its financial aid program by about $4 million, to $71 million annually, making additional allowances for families’ expenses and adding more grants for low-income students.
Amherst acknowledged that its deep financial resources, including an endowment of nearly $3.8 billion, allowed it to make this decision. “We are doing what we’re doing because we can, and because we should,” Biddy Martin, the college’s president, said.
In a statement, Amherst said that under the new program, which goes into effect next year, students from 80 percent of American households would be likely to receive a scholarship covering full tuition if they were accepted and enrolled at Amherst.
Richard D. Kahlenberg, an education expert and senior fellow at the Century Foundation, said that despite Amherst’s small size — its total enrollment is about 1,850 students — it has long been seen as a pacesetter among liberal arts colleges.
He noted that other schools, including Texas A&M and the University of Georgia, dropped legacy considerations more than a decade ago after court rulings forced them to abandon race-based affirmative action policies, since one is hard to justify without the other. But Amherst’s decision seemed to be more deliberate.
“What’s especially surprising, and also significant, about Amherst’s announcement is that this is an elite liberal arts college,” Mr. Kahlenberg said. “And those are the institutions that are most likely to use legacy preferences.”
Recent litigation opened a window into how legacy preferences have affected admissions at Harvard, one of the most selective schools in the country.
A study presented as evidence in a lawsuit over affirmative action found that students of alumni had a stark advantage: Over six admission cycles, Harvard admitted legacy applicants at a rate of 34 percent, which was more than five times the acceptance rate for applicants with no family connection to the school.
Nationally, calls to end the practice are growing louder, Mr. Kahlenberg said, pointing to a group of recent graduates of prestigious schools who are withholding donations in an effort to end legacy admissions. In May, Gov. Jared Polis of Colorado signed a bill to ban legacy admissions at public colleges and universities.