* Press release…
Attorney General Kwame Raoul, as part of a coalition of 25 states, has secured a temporary restraining order (TRO) from the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, temporarily blocking a new rule by the U.S. Postal Service that would have imposed burdensome requirements on vote-by-mail systems ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm elections.
The order blocks the Postal Service from requiring states to obtain the federal government’s approval of ballot and return-envelope designs, register for a new Postal Service portal for tracking voter information, input information for each of their state’s voters into the portal and comply with other provisions. […]
In granting the TRO, the court found that compliance with the rule before the November elections is “practically impossible,” noting that states do not have the time to redesign and produce new ballots, update state-administered election systems, train state and local election officials and upload a massive set of voter information to a new federal portal.
The court also found that these requirements create a significant risk of disenfranchisement, particularly because the Postal Service’s rule neither provided a deadline to the states for ballot and envelope designs nor guaranteed a turnaround time for the Postal Service’s approval of those designs. The court concluded that states face irreparable harm because many had already ordered their ballots, with some states required by state law to begin sending them to voters as early as next week.
* Tribune…
Illinois will use its share of a multibillion-dollar legal settlement with Meta to help fix the problems the company’s social media platforms caused for children, state Attorney General Kwame Raoul told the Tribune, arguing that calls for specific spending were “premature” after a prominent teachers union pushed for the money to fill in education funding gaps.
In what Raoul has called a “monumental victory for online safety,” Meta agreed Wednesday to pay up to $18 billion and add stronger safety measures for kids on its two top social media platforms — Facebook and Instagram. Illinois’ share of the settlement is up to about $768 million, ending a case targeting the role Meta’s platforms played in undermining kids’ mental health.
The majority of the money will go toward addressing youth mental health problems, social media overuse and other harms the dozens of states, Washington, D.C., and several U.S. territories said Meta caused, according to the Illinois attorney general’s office. That could include funding for suicide hotlines, training for medical providers on social media use and body dysmorphia, or programming that promotes youth mental health, the office said.
* Reuters…
A group of mostly Democratic-led U.S. states filed a lawsuit on Thursday seeking to block President Donald Trump’s administration from stripping funding for family planning services for low-income and uninsured people from states and providers that oppose the Republican president’s agenda.
The lawsuit by officials from 23 states, filed in Maryland federal court, claims that new conditions on what is known as Title X funding will unlawfully penalize states and providers that refuse to discourage contraception or provide gender-affirming care to transgender people. […]
The lawsuit is led by New York, Maryland and Massachusetts, which were joined by California, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey and Virginia, among other states.
Created in 1970, Title X provides about $286 million in annual grants for family planning and related health services such as cancer screenings and treatment for sexually transmitted infections. Under federal law, Title X funds cannot be used to pay for abortion services.
* AG Raoul…
The Illinois Department of Public Health Illinois Family Planning Program has been a Title X grantee since the 1980s. The program delivers services to approximately 15,000 clients a year at clinics across the state. A majority of individuals served by Title X programs in Illinois have incomes that fall below 100% of the Federal Poverty Level.
* More…
