IN GOVERNOR SIGNS EXECUTIVE ORDER 17-31 INDIANA Gov. Eric Holcomb (R) signs Executive Order 17-31 , which grants full-time Hoosier State public workers up to 150 hours of paid leave to be with their newborn or newly adopted children. Part-time workers...
ILLINOIS Gov. Bruce Rauner (R) signs SB 1298, which allows a Prairie State resident entering the hospital to designate a caregiver prior to discharge to the patient's home or transfer to another facility. The new law requires hospitals to notify the...
Social Policy In MD & AL The MARYLAND Court of Appeals unanimously rules that non-biological parents who live with and help raise children also have parental rights. The court’s decision allows family-court judges to consider whether a person...
Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin (R) signed a quartet of bills last week aimed at reducing the Sooner State’s burgeoning prison population. Oklahoma leads the nation in incarceration rate for women and is second nationally for men. The measures,...
NE Legislature Passes LB960 - Infrastructure Bank Bill NEBRASKA lawmakers approved a bill ( LB 960 ) allowing the state to use $400 million over the next 17 years from the gas tax increase approved by the Legislature last year and $50 million from...
Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner hates how much money government workers are paid. Hate, hates, hates it! Well, except for when said worker works for him. In that case, all bets are off. As the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports, Rauner’s largesse there...
On the surface, a campaign aimed at keeping testosterone-fueled young males from getting drunk and driving sounds like a really good idea. But then there is the campaign that Tennessee recently ran. As the Nashville Tennessean reports, the federally-funded...
Utah Approves HB 94 The UTAH House gives final approval to HB 94, a so-called “right-to-try” bill that allows terminally ill patients to use experimental drugs and devices that have yet to receive full approval from federal regulators....
The MASSACHUSETTS House and Senate endorse HB 4570 , legislation that would establish a 20-cent-per-ride surcharge on ridesharing companies like Uber and Lyft. The measure, which also requires the companies to perform background checks on drivers they...
New York Approves SB 8117 NEW YORK Gov. Andrew Cuomo approves SB 8117 , which requires that sexual offense evidence, or rape kits, are processed in a timely manner. The law also requires kits to be tracked from the originating police agency to forensic...
Since a series of Supreme Court decisions in the 1960s, including Baker v. Carr and Reynolds v. Sims , the state legislative and congressional districts drawn by state legislatures or commissions after each decennial census have had to be roughly equal...
Republican governors played a leading, perhaps decisive, role in the collapse of their party’s long-promised legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA), known as Obamacare. With Gov. John Kasich of Ohio and Gov. Brian Sandoval of Nevada...
Greitens Calls MO Abortion Special Session MISSOURI Gov. Eric Greitens (R) said he will call a special session this week to consider new abortion regulations, in part to counter a St. Louis city ordinance he said made it an “abortion sanctuary...
OR GOV CALLS ON GOP LAWMAKER TO RESIGN : OREGON Gov. Kate Brown (D) called on Sen. Jeff Kruse (R) to resign last week after an independent investigator determined he had repeatedly subjected women to uncomfortable hugging and unwanted touching even...
AL Signs Prison Reform Legislation ALABAMA Gov. Robert Bentley (R) signs sweeping prison reform legislation that, among many things, adds hundreds of parole and pardons staff, reduces penalties for technical violations and authorizes the Alabama Law...
Last week the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that Arizona voters acted legally when they amended the state’s Constitution in 2000 to transfer the power to draw the state’s congressional districts from lawmakers to an independent redistricting...
A local ballot measure that will be contested on Nov. 8 could open the door for a statewide income tax in Washington. The citizen initiative on the ballot in Olympia, which would tax household incomes over $200,000, will likely face a legal challenge...
California Approves SB 1257 The CALIFORNIA Senate gives final approval to SB 1257 , which would require Golden State law students to perform a minimum of 50 hours of pro bono legal work before being allowed to take the bar exam. The measure moves to...
No Impeachment for LePage Democrats in the MAINE House rejected an effort last week to launch possible impeachment proceedings against Gov. Paul LePage (R). Lawmakers instead endorsed a resolution that extols the virtues of statesmanship and working...
Crime & Punishment in CT The CONNECTICUT Supreme Court upholds its own earlier ruling that it would be unconstitutional to execute inmates on the state’s death row given the state abolished the death penalty in 2012. The court’s decision...
Last month a full panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled 7-4 in Peruta v. San Diego that “the right to keep and bear arms” granted by the Second Amendment doesn’t extend to concealed weapons. The case originated...
Stephen M. Shapiro, a former federal worker from Bethesda, Maryland, filed a lawsuit in 2013 challenging the state’s congressional district map. No one paid much attention to the suit at the time, because the map, drawn after the 2010 census, had...
Washington gridlock has evidently taken a toll on lobbying at the federal level. After peaking at $3.52 billion in 2010, federal lobbyist spending dropped to $3.24 billion in 2014, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. Lobbyist spending...
Wisconsin lawmakers have given initial approval to Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) nearly $3 billon proposal to lure Chinese electronics company Foxconn to build its first U.S. manufacturing plant in the Badger State. But if successful, he might not be...
Colorado Approves HB 1339 The COLORADO House approves HB 1339 , which would use public bonds to help ease the way to decommissioning aging coal plants. The measure, which would also use some of the bond sale revenue to help displaced workers from shuttered...