Word: branches
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Obama Administration lawyers are likely still scratching their heads over how to respond to an extraordinary ruling in San Francisco. Last week, the chief judge of one of America's most prominent federal courts ordered an Executive Branch agency to stop interfering with a court employee's efforts to secure health insurance coverage for her wife...
...Chief Judge Alex Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals. He gave the Administration 30 days to permit Karen Golinski, a lawyer employed by the Ninth Circuit, to include the woman she married under California law last year on her family health-insurance plan. "Some branch must have the final say on a law's meaning. At least as to laws governing judicial employees, that is entirely our duty and our province. We would not be a co-equal branch of government otherwise." (See a photographic history of the struggle for gay rights...
...issuing such a stern challenge to the power of the Executive Branch, Kozinski managed to do what even the most sweeping state-court constitutional decisions on gay marriage have not: put the issue of equal treatment for gays to President Barack Obama in a way he will find hard to ignore. The unusual order is only incidentally about gay rights - the judge sidestepped the constitutional question about gays entirely - and is instead a fiery defense of the rights of the judiciary to manage its own employees. But if the Administration chooses to fight the order, it will have to tread...
...comply with the judge's ruling, submitting Golinski's insurance form to Blue Cross Blue Shield, and the case would have probably gone away - had the Obama Administration not stepped in. "After the AO submitted Ms. Golinski's form, I thought this matter had concluded," Kozinski wrote. "The Executive Branch, acting through the Office of Personnel Management, thought otherwise. It directed the insurance carrier not to process Ms. Golinski's form 2809, thwarting the relief I had ordered. I must now decide what further steps are necessary to protect Ms. Golinski and the integrity of the Judiciary's EDR [employee...
While Harvard officials say that Securitas, not the University, is directly responsible for the guards’ health care coverage, the security guards have been pleased with Harvard’s willingness to cooperate thus far, said Matthew Gulish, an organizer for the local branch of Service Employees International Union, which represents the security staff...