Judges Deny Stem Cell Plaintiffs’ Motion To Stack Panel

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Source: The Wonk Room

Earlier this week, the Wonk Room noted that the plaintiffs seeking to end all federal embryonic stem cell funding requested that the same three right-wing judges who handled a preliminary issue in this case be reassigned to hear the case again. To those judges’ credit, they denied this request:

Opponents of stem cell research that uses discarded or unwanted embryos have failed in their bid to, in essence, hand pick the judges who will hear an appeal of a lower court’s groundbreaking ruling barring federal funding of all embryonic stem cell research.

The request got some attention, since it seemed to be a bid to guarantee a conservative panel to take up Lamberth’s ruling and perhaps the Justice Department’s request for a stay that would allow the status quo policy to go remain in place while the appeal is heard. . . .

However, it doesn’t seem to have been reported that on Thursday the three GOP appointees passed up their right under court rules to reclaim the case. So the appeal and possibly the stay will go to a randomly-selected panel, which may or may not include some of the original judges but is highly unlikely to be exactly the same as the original panel.



Read more: http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2010/09/04/no-stacked-panel/

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GOP-named judges pass up stem cell appeal
http://www.politico.com/blogs/joshgerstein/0910/GOPnamed_judges_pass_up_stem_cell_appeal_.html?showall

[formercia]

1. Why fight the Taliban over there, when we have our own Bubbatollahs right at home?

jus' askin'

[cosmicone]

2. Our own Evangeliban n/t