Governor Robert Bentley is calling a special session next week to try once again to pass a state budget. The governor announced he is bringing lawmakers back to Montgomery on September 8th. The regular session and a first special session ended in a deadlock over proposed solutions to a projected general fund budget shortfall. Bentley has proposed raising $300 million in new taxes to resolve the budget rather than make cuts to state agencies.
No Fee Recovery
A federal appeals court says Shelby County, cannot recover $2 million in attorney fees from the U.S. government in a case that nullified a key part of the Voting Rights Act. Shelby County had prevailed in the case when, in 2013, the Supreme Court voted 5-4 to eliminate the Justice Department's ability under the act to stop potentially discriminatory voting laws before they took effect. Shelby argued that the law lets the winning party recover attorney fees. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the county's civil rights lawsuit did not advance the law's anti-discriminatory purposes, and therefore didn't qualify for fee recovery.
Parker Trial
A trial has begun for an Alabama police officer facing a federal charge of using excessive force against an Indian man who was thrown down and partially paralyzed during a confrontation in a suburban neighborhood. Madison police officer Eric Sloan Parker is charged with violating the civil rights of 58-year-old Sureshbhai Patel who was staying with his son near Huntsville in February and was walking in the neighborhood when police received a call about a suspicious person walking in the area.