Post by pavel on Feb 18, 2016 8:02:09 GMT -6
Two Arkansas doctors who successfully challenged the state's 12-week abortion ban want the state to pay their legal fees of nearly $30,000 for responding to Attorney General Leslie Rutledge's failed effort to get the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case.
Attorneys for the state fought back Tuesday, urging a federal judge to deny the request altogether because it was filed a day late. But if a fee is awarded, they argued, the court should cut the amount requested in half "to account for the excessive, redundant, duplicative and unnecessary work of Plaintiffs' overstaffed battalion of attorneys."
The requests are pending before U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright, who on March 14, 2014, declared the 12-week provision of Act 301 of 2013 -- also known as the Arkansas Human Heartbeat Protection Act -- unconstitutional. She left intact two other sections of the law. One requires a woman seeking an abortion in Arkansas to undergo an ultrasound to see whether a fetal heartbeat can be detected. The second requires doctors to tell the woman whether a heartbeat had been detected.
On Jan. 19, the Supreme Court denied without comment Rutledge's petition asking the justices to review the case, which was upheld by a three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on May 27, 2015.
Read more: www.arkansasonline.com/news/2016/feb/18/state-fights-abortion-case-fees-2016021/?latest
Attorneys for the state fought back Tuesday, urging a federal judge to deny the request altogether because it was filed a day late. But if a fee is awarded, they argued, the court should cut the amount requested in half "to account for the excessive, redundant, duplicative and unnecessary work of Plaintiffs' overstaffed battalion of attorneys."
The requests are pending before U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright, who on March 14, 2014, declared the 12-week provision of Act 301 of 2013 -- also known as the Arkansas Human Heartbeat Protection Act -- unconstitutional. She left intact two other sections of the law. One requires a woman seeking an abortion in Arkansas to undergo an ultrasound to see whether a fetal heartbeat can be detected. The second requires doctors to tell the woman whether a heartbeat had been detected.
On Jan. 19, the Supreme Court denied without comment Rutledge's petition asking the justices to review the case, which was upheld by a three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on May 27, 2015.
Read more: www.arkansasonline.com/news/2016/feb/18/state-fights-abortion-case-fees-2016021/?latest