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Supreme Court Stays Out of Planned Parenthood Fight

by CodyTullpqfu Posted on November 16, 2015

Mother Jones

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Since this summer’s release of doctored sting videos targeting Planned Parenthood, Congress has been embroiled in a fiery debate over funding for the women’s health care provider. On Monday, the Supreme Court made clear that it wants nothing to do with this fight. The court declined to hear a case involving federal funds for Planned Parenthood and the organization’s privacy in the face of continued probes by anti-abortion activists.

The case, New Hampshire Right to Life v. Department of Health and Human Services, centered on a 2011 public records request filed by New Hampshire Right to Life, an anti-abortion group, with the US Department of Health and Human Services, asking for documents filed by Planned Parenthood when applying for federal funding. The women’s health provider had historically received federal funds for family planning services through New Hampshire’s state government. But in 2011, the state administration decided to stop accepting and distributing this federal money, concerned that it was being used to “subsidize abortions.”

To fill the gap in Planned Parenthood’s funding, HHS decided to provide funds to the group directly for 16 months. It required the group to file documentation about its internal policies—including its medical standards manual and its fee schedule—in order to receive the funds, which Planned Parenthood did.

New Hampshire Right to Life filed its request to HHS under the Freedom of Information Act, asking for access to these Planned Parenthood filings and to internal HHS memos tied to the department’s decision to provide the reproductive health provider with a federal grant. When HHS refused, New Hampshire Right to Life sued the agency for the documents. HHS ultimately turned over about 2,500 pages of internal agency records. But it withheld most of the Planned Parenthood filings and some internal documents, primarily citing FOIA’s Exemption 4, a portion of the law that exempts certain types of commercial information filed by private groups from disclosure.

A federal district court and circuit court both upheld HHS’ refusal. Now that the Supreme Court has refused to wade into the disclosure debate, it’s cemented that refusal as final.

Attorneys for New Hampshire Right to Life painted the court’s decision not to hear the case as another example of government favoritism in the ongoing battle over public funds for Planned Parenthood. “We had hoped the US Supreme Court would consider this case,” said attorney Michael Tierney in a statement, “which would have addressed whether the government can continue to veil its support for Planned Parenthood.”

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Supreme Court Stays Out of Planned Parenthood Fight

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The Biggest Difference Between Clintons’ and Sanders’ Policies Isn’t Their Substance

by FernandoBon885 Posted on November 14, 2015

Mother Jones

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The contrasts between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are largely differences of degree. He’s a self-proclaimed socialist; she fashions herself a “progressive that likes to get things done.” He hopes to bust up the biggest banks and offer free tuition at public colleges and universities; she wants to tamp down on risky Wall Street behavior and require students to work part-time in order to attend college without building up debt.

But these discrepancies would likely disappear if either Democratic candidate wins the presidency and attempts to push these bills through a Republican Congress that considers all of the proposals too far left for its liking.

The real difference between Sanders and Clinton might come down less to the what of their policies than to the how of implementing them. When Sanders unveils a new policy as part of his presidential campaign, he tends to pair it with legislation he introduces in the Senate. Judging from his campaign, a President Sanders would spend much of his time trying to convince Congress to pass massive legislative overhauls.

Clinton, on the other hand, often pair ideas for legislation with promises of executive action in her policy fact sheets. When she rolls out a new policy proposal, the most details are usually in descriptions of the unilateral actions she would take through the power of the executive branch.

Take the two campaigns’ recent approaches to reforming marijuana laws. Sanders introduced a bill in the Senate that would end the federal prohibition on the drug (which, like other far-reaching bills he’s introduced alongside campaign pledges, has not yet received even a committee vote). Clinton’s approach isn’t more modest just in substance, but also in approach. She’d change the classification of marijuana on the federal drug schedule, which would allow it to be used for medical purposes. That’s within the purview of the executive branch without congressional intervention. (Neither campaign responded to requests for comment on how each candidate views the role of legislation and executive action.)

The past two presidents have both slowly ramped up the frequency of presidential action without consulting Congress. Following 9/11, George W. Bush expanded the scope of surveillance and the executive’s international actions. “We’ve been able to restore the legitimate authority of the presidency,” Dick Cheney once bragged. President Obama, despite promising to “reverse” that expansion in his 2008 campaign, has only furthered the trend. Upon first gaining office, with friendly Democratic majorities in Congress, Obama pushed expansive laws like the stimulus and the Affordable Care Act. But once Republicans took the House in 2010, Obama’s ability to pass major changes through Congress was stymied, and he’s turned to executive action, such as using the Clean Air Act to lower carbon emissions from coal plants after Congress failed to pass a cap-and-trade bill.

With Democrats unlikely to retake the House anytime soon, if a Democrat wins the presidency in 2016, most progressive gains will probably have to come in areas where the president doesn’t have to seek congressional approval—through the courts and executive actions.

Sanders is hardly opposed to an expansive view of what a president can accomplish through executive order. Earlier this spring, before launching his presidential campaign, Sanders wrote a letter urging the Obama administration to close several corporate tax loopholes through executive fiat and and boost revenues by $100 billion. He’s cheered Obama’s use of executive orders to force federal contractors into more liberal employment practices.

But on the campaign trail, Sanders shows his instincts as a senator. While Clinton’s plan for financial reform pledged to appoint more aggressive regulators to crack down on Wall Street’s bad actors and focused on what she’d veto, Sanders’ issues page on Wall Street is a litany of changes that would have to clear Congress: a bill breaking up the biggest banks, a return to the Glass-Steagall law that separated commercial and investment banking, and a financial transaction tax.

When Clinton released her plan to tackle gun violence, she offered up a slew of ideas for the kind of legislation she’d like to see passed and said she’d push Congress to expand background checks. But in the likely event that a Republican Congress didn’t help her in passing that legislation, Clinton said, she’d focus on how she could use executive orders to close the gun show loophole. She made clear that she’d prefer to pursue the traditional legislative route, but was resigned to the realities of dealing with a Republican-controlled Congress.

Clinton’s proposals for executive action might be easier to enact, but they carry plenty of risk. Laws last until they’re overturned, which often involves relitigating the entire fight. Executive orders and instructions to federal agencies can be wiped out as soon as a successor enters the White House. And ambitious executive actions often stand on shaky ground while awaiting judicial approval. Take Obama’s executive order known as the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents, or DAPA, which offered millions of undocumented immigrants a reprieve from deportation. He signed the order last year, but it’s remained in judicial limbo ever since. Earlier this week, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the order unconstitutional, leaving the fate of the policy in the hands of the Supreme Court.

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The Biggest Difference Between Clintons’ and Sanders’ Policies Isn’t Their Substance

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The Supreme Court Just Agreed to Hear a Case that Could Destroy Roe v. Wade

by Brenton1405 Posted on November 13, 2015

Mother Jones

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On Friday, the Supreme Court announced that it will hear its first abortion case in nine years. At issue in Whole Woman’s Health v. Cole is HB 2, an omnibus Texas abortion law that made national headlines in 2013 after Texas Sen. Wendy Davis spent 11-hours filibustering the bill that eventually passed anyway.

Since 1992, the court has ruled on three abortion cases, each time affirming further abortion restrictions. In 1992, in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a divided court upheld the right to abortion, but left it to the states to set abortion restrictions, saying that these regulations can’t put an “undue burden” on abortion access. This broad ruling opened the door for the hundreds of so-called Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers or TRAP laws that states have passed in recent years—onerous regulations placed on abortion providers, often purporting to protect women’s health. In its last ruling in 2007, the court upheld a law outlawing dilation-and-extraction second-trimester abortions. If the court continues its pattern of voting against abortion rights and rules to allow Texas to move forward with several burdensome abortion restrictions, it will open the door for other states to do the same, dealing a serious blow to the right to legal abortion guaranteed by Roe v. Wade.

“The Court now has the opportunity to decide whether we will continue to allow elected officials to play politics with women’s health,” wrote Ilyse Hogue, the president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, in a statement. “This case represents the greatest threat to women’s reproductive freedom since the Supreme Court decided Roe vs. Wade over 40 years ago. Laws like the ones being challenged in Texas are designed to subvert the Constitution and end the right to a safe and legal abortion.”

In this case, the justices are expected to focus on two of the Texas law’s most onerous requirements: that abortions be performed in ambulatory surgical centers, hospital-like facilities that specialize in outpatient surgery, and the requirement that abortion providers obtain admitting privileges at a nearby hospital. Many medical professionals argue that these restrictions put unnecessary burdens on abortion providers: Building and maintaining an ASC is expensive, given the strict requirements regarding features like hallway width and ventilation. Nor do ASCs enhance the standard of care for abortion; the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and other medical groups have repeatedly noted that the procedure can be safely performed in a typical doctor’s office. The admitting privileges’ provision gives hospitals in conservative communities or with a religious affiliation the power to effectively stop abortions by denying the necessary admission privileges to doctors.

“The common-sense measures Texas has put in place elevate the standard of care and protect the health of Texas women,” wrote Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in a statement released following Friday’s Supreme Court’s announcement. “We look forward to demonstrating the validity of these important health and safety requirements in Court.”

The number of abortion clinics in Texas has already been cut by more than half, as elements of HB 2, such as restrictions on medication abortion, a 20 week abortion ban, and the admitting privileges requirement, have gone into effect over the last two years. Before the law, there were 41 clinics in Texas. Today, there are 18. As my colleague Molly Redden reported in September, this has created large swathes of the state where women must travel hundreds of miles to get abortion care. If the Supreme Court upholds HB2 in full, including the ambulatory surgical center requirement, the number of abortion clinics in Texas could fall to ten.

The Supreme Court has intervened on HB 2 twice before. In October 2014, the court reinstated a district court’s ruling that blocked the ambulatory surgical center provisions of HB2 from going into effect and triggering more clinic closures while the Fifth Circuit court considered the case. At that time the high court also overturned the admitting privileges requirement for two Texas facilities. In June 2015, after the Fifth Circuit ruled to allow the HB2 provisions to go forward, the Supreme Court put an emergency stay on these requirements, to remain in effect while the court decided whether to take on Whole Woman’s Health for a full review.

Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers in Texas have been preparing to comply with HB2’s new requirements since mid-2014, when the law was originally slated to go into effect. Planned Parenthood, for instance, has spent millions to build or refurbish several ambulatory surgical centers in the state. Mother Jones traveled to Texas to observe these preparations for HB2. Check out our video footage below. (Some of the video numbers have since changed slightly.)

The court has not yet announced whether it will also take Jackson Women’s Health Organization v. Currier, a case that centers on a Mississippi law that requires abortion providers to obtain admitting privileges at a nearby hospital, but given that they’ve taken the Texas case, it is unlikely. Mississippi currently has only one abortion clinic, and its abortion providers are board-certified OB-GYNs. But because hospitals in the area have been unwilling to grant—or sometimes even process—the doctors’ applications for admitting privileges, if this law stands, it will close down Mississippi’s last abortion clinic. In July 2014, the fifth circuit court of appeals ruled that the law was unconstitutional, upholding a lower court’s ruling.

A decision in the Texas case will come down in the first half of 2016, likely making reproductive rights a central issue in the presidential election. “Although this is the first step in a much longer process,” said Amy Hagstrom-Miller, the president and CEO of Whole Woman’s Health, the main plaintiff in the case. “I am hopeful that the Supreme Court will uphold the rights that have been in place for four decades and reaffirm that every woman should be able to make her own decision about continuing or ending a pregnancy.”

This is a breaking story. We will update this post as the story develops.

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The Supreme Court Just Agreed to Hear a Case that Could Destroy Roe v. Wade

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The Supreme Court Will Take Up Affordable Care Act Contraceptive Cases

by StellaPoe56 Posted on November 6, 2015

Mother Jones

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The Supreme Court announced today it will hear more appeals from religious groups that seek exemption from the Affordable Care Act’s contraception requirements, marking the fourth challenge to President Obama’s health care law that has made it to the nation’s highest court.

The court has decided to review seven appeals total from religious nonprofits challenging the requirement for contraception coverage— but instead of addressing each case separately, the court has decided to consolidate them. The plaintiffs range from a nursing home chain, Little Sisters of the Poor Home for the Aged, to religious universities.

This appeal is different from the Hobby Lobby v. Burwell case, which provided protection for a for-profit company under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Nonprofits with religious affiliations were not addressed in the ruling, which was a 5-4 decision by the court.

The ACA requires employers with at least 50 full-time employees to provide insurance plans with “minimum essential coverage,” including access to contraception for women that does not require them to pay copayments or deductibles.

The case will likely be decided by June.

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The Supreme Court Will Take Up Affordable Care Act Contraceptive Cases

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A Closer Look at 2016 Obamacare Enrollment

by OsvaldoTeague Posted on October 17, 2015

Mother Jones

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Warning: Lotsa numbers ahead. Sorry about that. If you’re not interested, you can skip down to the last two paragraphs for the bottom line.

A couple of days ago, HHS projected that Obamacare exchange enrollment would reach 10 million by the end of 2016. That’s not much higher than the 9.1 million who are expected to be enrolled at the end of 2015. Has Obamacare enrollment stalled?

Maybe. But keep two things in mind:

This is probably a lowball figure. HHS would rather set a low bar and beat it than set a higher bar and have to explain why they missed it.
Charles Gaba, who has a pretty good track record with this stuff, estimates that 14.7 million people will sign up and 12.2 million will remain by the end of the year.

If Gaba is right, that’s an increase of about one-third from 2015. Not too bad. Still, it’s considerably less than the CBO’s original estimate of 21 million enrollees by 2016. Again, though, keep a couple of things in mind:

The CBO figure is for “average annual enrollment.” Since people drop out as the year progresses, this is probably equivalent to about 19 million by year-end.
CBO had estimated a drop of 8 million people from employer and other insurance plans. However, those numbers appear to have turned out lower than CBO’s estimates. This is a good thing—we’d prefer that people stay on their current coverage instead of being kicked off—but it obviously reduces the market for Obamacare enrollment. We should probably reduce CBO’s estimate by 3 million or so to account for this.

In other words, on an apples-to-apples basis, a best guess suggests that we’ll end up 2016 at 12 million compared to a CBO projection of 16 million. It’s still lower than CBO’s original estimates, but not by a huge amount. This could be due to (a) an overestimate by CBO, (b) weak performance by Obamacare, (c) an improving economy, or (d) nothing more than a difference in how fast Obamacare ramps up.

Bottom line: Because of all this, a more reliable metric of success is to skip all the details of who’s insured via what, and simply count the total number of uninsured. CBO originally estimated that the uninsured population would drop to 8 percent by 2016. That estimate changed after the Supreme Court made Medicare expansion voluntary, and CBO now figures that in 2016 the total number of uninsured will come to about 11 percent. The CDC estimates that in the most recent quarter the number of uninsured dropped to 10.7 percent. If Gaba’s numbers are correct, that will decline to about 10 percent or so by the end of 2016.

In other words, once you clear away all the underbrush it looks like Obamacare is meeting or beating its goals. Some of this might be due to an improving economy, but who cares? If the economy is doing well enough that more people are getting employer coverage and fewer are being forced onto the exchanges, that’s a good thing, not a knock on Obamacare.

POSTSCRIPT: Surveys consistently show that about half of the uninsured say they’re not on Obamacare because it’s too expensive. So for anyone who’s truly concerned that Obamacare isn’t hitting its enrollment targets, there’s an easy answer: increase the federal subsidies for the working poor so that more of them can afford coverage.

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A Closer Look at 2016 Obamacare Enrollment

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Obamacare Has Now Been MIA in Two Debates

by deqc16rl Posted on September 17, 2015

Mother Jones

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In the first Republican debate, Obamacare was barely mentioned. Over at National Review, Ian Tuttle notes that last night it was also MIA:

Beyond a few brief in media res mentions from candidates, a repeal line in Cruz’s closing address, and an allusion or two (e.g., the question about John Roberts), the president’s signature piece of legislation was a non-issue.

Which makes one wonder: Is it a non-issue?….I suspect that the anti-Obamacare fervor is in a period of quiescence. We have now seen Obamacare implemented sans “death spiral.” The website works. The Supreme Court has handed the Obama administration two affirmative Supreme Court decisions. And the president has made sure to do much in the interim — immigration executive actions and Iran deals, for example — to draw fire away from his healthcare law. Conservative heads have a limited supply of steam.

Tuttle is right. Obamacare has become a brief, pro forma applause line these days, but not much more. Partly this is for the reason Tuttle rather surprisingly concedes: It’s up, it’s running, and it’s working reasonably well. The nation still stands, and it’s hard to keep whipping up hysteria for years and years over something that, it turns out, just isn’t affecting all that many people.

I don’t think this means that Obamacare is going away as a political issue. But I do think that the repeal movement has lost a lot of steam as a winning issue for Republicans. The tea party types are starting to realize that nothing in their lives has changed, and the more moderate types realize—maybe via personal experience, maybe via news reports—that it’s doing a lot of good for poor and working class folks. So it’s become something of a wedge issue: Pounding on it loses about as many votes as it gains.

This is becoming a real problem for the GOP. A lot of issues that used to be pretty reliable winners have now turned into dangerous wedge issues: gay marriage, taxes, terrorism, illegal immigration, military adventurism, abortion, crime, education, global warming, Ukraine, free trade, Social Security cuts—the list goes on and on. And this is coming at the same time that their bread and butter, the angry white guy demographic, is declining. I’m not sure what they’re going to end up doing about this. The GOP has a tough decade ahead.

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Obamacare Has Now Been MIA in Two Debates

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Seattle Teacher Strike Is the Latest Front Line in America’s Public School Wars

by KelleeKarr3 Posted on September 15, 2015

Mother Jones

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UPDATE: Tuesday, September 15, 2015, 6 PM, P.S.T.: Nearly twelve hours after Seattle’s school district and teachers union bargaining team reached a tentative agreement, the union’s leadership and representative assembly voted to recommend its ratification and end the strike. School will start on Thursday for Seattle schools, but the strike won’t be officially over until Sunday, when the full union membership has a chance to vote on the contract agreement.

Seattle’s first teacher strike in 30 years appears to be nearing its end. After months of contract negotiations between the city’s school district and teachers union broke down, Seattle teachers unanimously voted to go on strike last Wednesday, shuttering the city’s schools for five days so far. Bargaining between the district and the teachers union resumed this weekend, and after negotiating through the night, the two sides reached a tentative agreement early this morning.

Neither the district nor the union has released details of the agreement, and teachers will continue picketing today until the Seattle Education Association’s leadership can review the proposed contract and make recommendations to its membership of 5,000 teachers, specialists, paraprofessionals, and administrative workers. Here’s what’s at stake, for teachers and students alike, in the first teacher strike in a major US city since Chicago’s 2012 strike.

Why are Seattle teachers on strike?

The conflict between striking teachers and the school district is in part about teachers’ salaries. Seattle teachers have not received cost-of-living raises in more than six years, despite Seattle’s skyrocketing rents. Many teachers, whose salaries range from $44,000 to more than $86,000, have struggled to afford life in the city. Furthermore, the district wants to increase the length of the school day by 20 minutes without adequately compensating teachers for the extra time, according to union negotiators.

But the union’s grievances extend beyond pay. It is also seeking to address racial and social inequality in Seattle schools by setting up equity teams to study achievement gaps and discipline trends in 60 of the district’s 97 schools. Recess has also became a sticking point: At some schools, students get as little as 15 minutes for lunch and recess, forcing them to choose between food and play. Schools with more low-income students and students of color tend to have less recess than wealthier, whiter ones. The union wants the contract to ensure that every elementary school student gets at least 30 minutes of time to play outside the classroom. Finally, capping the caseloads for school psychologists and specialists, like occupational and speech therapists, who are often disproportionately overworked at underprivileged schools, is another demand.

The union’s proposed contract also addresses over-testing by imposing limits on the number of tests students take and increasing teacher involvement in deciding which tests are given and how they are used. A recent Mother Jones investigation found that the average American student now takes 10 to 20 standardized tests a year.

How did the school district respond?

It initially threatened to bring legal action against the teachers, but finally decided not to. Before negotiations resumed, members of the district’s school board argued that while they would like to pay teachers more, they “simply do not have the funds.” They pointed to a statewide education funding crisis that led the state supreme court to hold the state legislature in contempt for failing to fund basic education for Washington’s children. The state Supreme Court is currently fining the legislature $100,000 a day for not fulfilling its constitutionally mandated responsibility to fund schools adequately. Washington is one of seven states without an income tax; many people point to this as the main reason that the state hasn’t been able to come up with the money. Meanwhile, the school district has been using a patchwork of local taxes to raise funds to pay teachers.

The district has also argued that students need more classroom time in order to meet state standards, noting that Seattle schools already have among the shortest school days in the state.

So is this really just the state’s fault?

The union recognizes that lack of state funding is part of the problem, but the they have accused the district of exaggerating how much money teachers are asking for. They argue that despite the state funding fiasco, the school district can make budget adjustments that prioritize teachers and use some of the nearly $40 million that the legislature was able to allocate to the district earlier this year to allow teachers to earn a higher wage.

The issues in the contract dispute are part of a larger national debate over education that’s been playing out in Seattle, too. On one side, local billionaires like Bill Gates have spent hundreds of millions of dollars in recent years to push Common Core standards and testing in order to create data-driven ways to evaluate teachers and students. On the other side, teachers in Seattle and elsewhere have pushed back against overtesting, saying standardized tests are expensive, take up valuable class time, and measure racial and socioeconomic inequality better than aptitude.

Is this related to the state supreme court’s charter school ruling?

Last week, the state supreme court ruled that charter schools were unconstitutional because they use public funds without oversight from an elected governing board. This news is not directly related to the teacher strike, but many critics of using public money for charter schools, which were first made legal in Washington by a 2012 referendum, also oppose Common Core standards. And many Common Core advocates, including Gates, have also helped bring charter schools to Seattle. One charter school opened in Washington last year, and eight more were slated to open this school year, but their future is now uncertain.

What’s next?

Until union leadership reviews the tentative agreement and its members’ representatives are able to vote on the proposed contract, teachers will continue to picket and schools will continue to stay closed. If the contract is approved, schools could open their doors on Thursday, but there is still a chance it will be voted down. We will update this post as new details emerge.

This post has been updated.

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Seattle Teacher Strike Is the Latest Front Line in America’s Public School Wars

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Oklahoma May Execute an Innocent Man on Wednesday

by OfeliaTZUZ Posted on September 15, 2015

Mother Jones

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In June, the US Supreme Court cleared the way for Oklahoma to execute Richard Glossip—who has been sitting on death row since 1998, when he was convicted of first-degree murder—using a controversial drug that’s been implicated in several botched executions. Barring a last-minute stay by Gov. Mary Fallin, the state plans to put him to death on Wednesday. But if it does, it may execute an innocent man.

Glossip’s landmark Supreme Court petition challenging the method of his execution is a footnote to a larger story that highlights the death penalty’s many flaws.

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Oklahoma May Execute an Innocent Man on Wednesday

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Federal Court to EPA: No, You Can’t Approve This Pesticide That Kills Bees

by DavidPigdon Posted on September 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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On Thursday, a federal appeals court struck down the Environmental Protection Agency’s approval of a pesticide called sulfoxaflor. Marketed by agrichemical giant Dow AgroSciences, sulfoxaflor belongs to a class of pesticides called neonicotinoids, which have been implicated by a growing weight of evidence in the global crisis in bee health. In a blunt opinion, the court cited the “precariousness of bee populations” and “flawed and limited data” submitted by Dow on the pesticide’s effects on beleaguered pollinating insects.

Before winning approval for sulfoxaflor back in 2013, the company hyped the product to investors, declaring that it “addresses a $2 billion market need currently unmet by biotech solutions,” particularly for cotton and rice.

US beekeepers were less enthusiastic—a group of national beekeeping organizations, along with the National Honey Bee Advisory Board, quickly sued the EPA to withdraw its registration of sulfoxaflor, claiming that the EPA itself had found sulfoxaflor to be “highly toxic to honey bees, and other insect pollinators.”

Thursday’s ruling, a response to that suit, took their side. It applies only to sulfoxaflor, which Dow markets as a foliar spray on a variety of crops, including cotton, soybean, citrus, stone fruit, nuts, grapes, potatoes, vegetables, and strawberries. It has no bearing on the EPA’s equally controversial approval of other neonics like clothianidin and imidacloprid, which are widely used as seed treatments on the two most prominent US crops: corn and soybeans.

But Greg Loarie, an attorney for EarthJustice who argued the case for the beekeeper’s coalition, told me that the decision has broad significance because the ruling “makes clear” that when the EPA is assessing new pesticides, it must assess robust data on the health impacts on the entire hive, not just on individual adult bees.

In its opinion, the court rebuked the EPA for approving sulfoxaflor despite “inconclusive or insufficient data on the effects…on brood development and long-term colony health.” That’s a problem, the court added, because pesticides can cause subtle harm to bees that don’t kill them but that “ripple through the hive,” which is an “interdependent ‘superorganism.'” Indeed, many independent studies have demonstrated just such effects—that low-level exposure to neonics is “sub-lethal” to individual bees but compromises long-term hive health.

“The EPA doesn’t have that hive-level information on very many insecticides, if any,” Loarie said.

And in the case of sulfoxaflor, the agency didn’t try very hard to get that information. In January 2013, because of major gaps in research on the new chemical’s effect on bees, the EPA decided to grant sulfoxaflor “conditional registration” and ordered Dow to provide more research. And then a few months later, the agency granted sulfoxaflor unconditional registration—even though “the record reveals that Dow never completed the requested additional studies,” the court opinion states.

In an even more scathing addendum to the court’s main opinion, Circuit Judge N.R. Smith added, “I am inclined to believe the EPA…decided to register sulfoxaflor unconditionally in response to public pressure for the product and attempted to support its decision retroactively with studies it had previously found inadequate.” The judge added, “Such action seems capricious.”

Sulfoxaflor’s twisted path through the EPA’s approval process isn’t the first time the agency has green-lighted a neonicotinoid pesticide under dodgy circumstances, as I showed in this 2010 piece on clothianidin, a widely marketed pesticide marketed by Dow’s European rival, Bayer.

In 2013—the same year the EPA approved sulfoxaflor—the European Union placed a two-year moratorium on clothianidin and two other major neonics, citing pollinator health concerns. For a study released last year, the US Geological Survey found neonic traces in all the Midwestern rivers and streams it tested, declaring them to be “both mobile and persistent in the environment.” In addition to harming bees, neonics may also harm birds and fish, Canadian researchers have found.

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Federal Court to EPA: No, You Can’t Approve This Pesticide That Kills Bees

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Obama’s Climate Plan Just Won Another Key Victory in Court

by AntoniaDavison Posted on September 9, 2015

Mother Jones

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Last year, President Barack Obama released an early version of his plan to crack down on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants—the cornerstone of his climate change agenda. Right away, a dozen coal-reliant states and coal companies fired back with a pair of lawsuits aimed at blocking the plan from going into effect. The challenges failed: A federal court in DC ruled that they would have to wait until the rules were finalized.

They tried again last month, when the final details were announced. But this afternoon, they got smacked down again because the rules, while now final, still haven’t been published in the federal register (that process typically takes months). Here’s the ruling:

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Once again, the complaining parties were just too eager to chomp at the bit, said David Doniger, director of climate policy at the Natural Resources Defense Council. Counting this challenge, the previous one, and several prior attempts to squelch Obama’s climate plan, he said, “they’re batting 0-8 in premature challenges.”

“It’s not a great track record. You don’t want to bring a succession of losing cases, because you get a bad reputation before the court.”

The battle isn’t over yet: You can count on the same cast of characters trying the same shenanigans when the rule is finally published sometime in October.

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Obama’s Climate Plan Just Won Another Key Victory in Court

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