National Briefing

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/28/us/national-briefing.html

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Gov. Bill Haslam signed a bill Wednesday that allows mental health counselors to refuse to treat patients based on the therapist’s religious or personal beliefs. The American Counseling Association called the legislation an “unprecedented attack” on the counseling profession and said Tennessee was the only state to ever pass such a law. Opponents say the legislation is part of a wave of bills around the nation that legalizes discrimination against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. Supporters say it protects the rights of therapists. The bill does not allow counselors to turn away people who are in imminent danger of harming themselves or others. It requires them to refer patients to other therapists if they decline to treat them.(AP)

A measure to amend the State Constitution to give legal protections to people who refuse service to same-sex couples because of “sincere religious belief” was defeated in a House committee on Wednesday, making it unlikely that lawmakers will take up the bill before the end of their session in mid-May. Three Republicans joined three Democrats to vote against the bill, resulting in a split vote that effectively killed it. The measure would still have required approval by the House before it would have been placed on the ballot for a statewide referendum in November. Opponents and legal scholars said it was overly broad and would effectively make prosecuting hate crimes impossible. Todd Richardson, the House speaker, said in a statement that he was disappointed by the vote but that he remained “committed to fighting for the religious freedoms of all Missourians.”JULIE BOSMAN

Justice David Prosser of the State Supreme Court announced Wednesday that he planned to retire this summer after nearly 18 years on the court. He did not give a reason. Justice Prosser, 73, one of five conservative-leaning justices who control the court, made headlines in 2011 when he placed his hands around the throat of a liberal-leaning justice, Ann Walsh Bradley, during an argument over the timing of the release of a divided Supreme Court decision upholding Gov. Scott Walker’s signature law restricting public workers’ collective bargaining rights. Mr. Walker, a Republican, has the power to appoint a successor to finish the justice’s term, which ends in 2021. (AP)

An environmental effort in Seattle to stop residents from tossing food scraps and other compost into the trash was ruled unconstitutional on Wednesday by a judge who said sanitation workers collectors poking through people’s garbage violates privacy rights. Judge Beth M. Andrus of King County Superior Court voided enforcement of the city ordinance. The rule went into effect early last year, and it required trash collectors to tag garbage cans that contain more than 10 percent compostable material with education information. Lawyers for a group of homeowners who sued the city said it made garbage collectors snoop through trash like police detectives. Judge Andrus wrote that trash collectors’ search of garbage is a disturbance of people’s private affairs. (AP)