Mississippi voters will decide winners for one seat on the state Supreme Court and one on the state Court of Appeals.
Runoff elections are Tuesday between candidates who advanced from the Nov. 5 general election. Polls are open 7 a.m.-7 p.m. central.
Voter turnout typically decreases between general elections and runoffs, and campaigns say turnout could be especially challenging two days before Thanksgiving.
Supreme Court Justice Jim Kitchens is seeking a third term and is challenged by state Sen. Jenifer Branning. They are running in District 1, also known as the Central District, which stretches from the Delta region through the Jackson metro area and over to the Alabama border.
Branning received 42% in the first round of voting, and Kitchens received 36%. Three other candidates split the rest.
Mississippi judicial candidates run without party labels, but Democratic areas largely supported Kitchens on Nov. 5 and Republican ones supported Branning.
Branning is endorsed by the state Republican Party. She calls herself a “constitutional conservative” and says she opposes “liberal, activists judges” and “the radical left.”
Kitchens is the more senior of the Court’s two presiding justices, putting him next in line to serve as chief justice. He is endorsed by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Action Fund, which calls itself “a catalyst for racial justice in the South and beyond.”
In September, Kitchens sided with a man on death row for a murder conviction in which a key witness recanted her testimony. In 2018, Kitchens dissented in a pair of death row cases dealing with the use of the drug midazolam in state executions.
The Court of Appeals runoff is in District 5 in the southeastern corner of the state, including the Gulf Coast.
Amy St. Pe’ and Jennifer Schloegel advanced to the runoff from a three-way contest, with St. Pe’ receiving 35% of the vote on Nov. 5 and Schloegel receiving 33%. The runoff winner will succeed Judge Joel Smith, who did not seek reelection.
St. Pe’ is a municipal judge in Gautier. Schloegel is a chancery court judge in Hancock, Harrison and Stone counties.
The Supreme Court is allowing a multibillion-dollar class action investors’ lawsuit to proceed against Facebook parent Meta, stemming from the privacy scandal involving the Cambridge Analytica political consulting firm.
The justices heard arguments in November in Meta’s bid to shut down the lawsuit. On Friday, they decided that they were wrong to take up the case in the first place.
The high court dismissed the company’s appeal, leaving in place an appellate ruling allowing the case to go forward.
Investors allege that Meta did not fully disclose the risks that Facebook users’ personal information would be misused by Cambridge Analytica, a firm that supported Donald Trump ’s first successful Republican presidential campaign in 2016.
Inadequacy of the disclosures led to two significant price drops in the price of the company’s shares in 2018, after the public learned about the extent of the privacy scandal, the investors say.
Meta spokesman Andy Stone said the company was disappointed by the court’s action. “The plaintiff’s claims are baseless and we will continue to defend ourselves as this case is considered by the District Court,” Stone said in an emailed statement.
Meta already has paid a $5.1 billion fine and reached a $725 million privacy settlement with users. Cambridge Analytica had ties to Trump political strategist Steve Bannon. It had paid a Facebook app developer for access to the personal information of about 87 million Facebook users. That data was then used to target U.S. voters during the 2016 campaign.
The lawsuit is one of two high court cases involving class-action lawsuits against tech companies. The justices also are wrestling with whether to shut down a class action against Nvidia. Investors say the company misled them about its dependence on selling computer chips for the mining of volatile cryptocurrency.
The Supreme Court on Friday stepped into a major legal fight over the $8 billion a year the federal government spends to subsidize phone and internet services in schools, libraries and rural areas, in a new test of federal regulatory power.
The justices will review an appellate ruling that struck down as unconstitutional the Universal Service Fund. The Federal Communications Commission collects money from telecommunications providers, who then pass the cost on to their customers.
A conservative advocacy group, Consumer Research, challenged the practice. The justices had previously denied two appeals from Consumer Research after federal appeals courts upheld the program. But the full 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, among the nation’s most conservative, ruled 9-7 that the method of funding is unconstitutional.
The Biden administration appealed that ruling, but the case probably won’t be argued until late March. At that point, the Trump administration will be in place and it not clear whether it will take a different view of the issue.
The 5th Circuit held that the funding method is unconstitutional because Congress has given too much authority to the FCC and the agency in turn has ceded too much power to a private entity.
The last time the Supreme Court invoked what is known as the non-delegation doctrine to strike down a federal law was in 1935. But several conservative justices have suggested they are open to breathing new life into the legal doctrine.
Louisiana’s plan to make all of the state’s public school classrooms post the Ten Commandments next year remains on hold under an order Wednesday by a federal appeals court in New Orleans.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a state request to temporarily stay an earlier order by U.S. District Judge John deGravelles in Baton Rouge while litigation continues. Arguments before a 5th Circuit panel are scheduled for Jan. 23, meaning the judge’s order stays in effect well past the law’s Jan. 1 deadline to post the commandments.
The state contends that deGravelles’ order affects only the five school districts that are defendants in a legal challenge. But it’s unclear whether or how the law would be enforced in the state’s 67 other districts while the appeal progresses. Also, deGravelles ordered that all schools in every district be notified of his decision that the law is unconstitutional, a requirement maintained by Wednesday’s ruling.
“We’re pleased that the Court of Appeals left the district court’s injunction fully intact,” said Sam Grover, an attorney with the Freedom From Religion Foundation. “As the district court ruled, this law is unconstitutional on its face.”
State Attorney General Liz Murrill said in an emailed statement that her office would “continue to defend this clearly constitutional law.”
DeGravelles ruled that the law, passed by the GOP-dominated Legislature, was “overtly religious” and “unconstitutional on its face.” He also said it amounted to unconstitutional religious government coercion of students, who are legally required to attend school.
Republican Gov. Jeff Landry signed the bill into law in June, prompting a group of Louisiana public school parents of different faiths to sue. They argue the law violates the First Amendment’s provisions forbidding the government from establishing a religion or blocking the free exercise of it. They also say the proposed poster-sized display would isolate students, especially those who are not Christian. The parents further argue that the version of the Ten Commandments specified in the law is favored by many protestants and doesn’t match any version found in Jewish tradition.
Proponents say the Ten Commandments are not solely religious and have a historical significance to the foundation of U.S. law. Murrill, the Republican attorney general, has said she disagreed with deGravelles’ ruling and that the law is constitutional under Supreme Court precedents.
The state’s loss in court on Wednesday came after a partial victory last week, when a 5th Circuit panel temporarily blocked instructions in DeGravelles’ order that state education officials notify schools in all districts of his finding that the law is unconstitutional.
Two New Hampshire fathers who were barred from school district events for wearing pink wristbands marked “XX” to represent female chromosomes insisted at a federal court hearing Thursday that they didn’t set out to harass or otherwise target a transgender soccer player at the game they attended.
But a judge hearing the case suggested the message the parents sent may matter more than their intentions.
Kyle Fellers and Anthony Foote sued the Bow school district after being banned from school grounds for wearing the wristbands at their daughters’ soccer game in September. The no-trespass orders have since expired, but a judge is deciding whether the plaintiffs should be allowed to wear the wristbands and carry signs at upcoming school events, including basketball games, swim meets and a music concert, while the case proceeds.
Testifying at Thursday’s hearing, both men said that they did not view the wristbands as a protest against Parker Tirrell, a transgender girl on the opposing team, but rather as a show of support for their daughters and their teammates. U.S. District Court Judge Steven McAuliffe questioned whether there is a meaningful distinction and whether their intentions matter.
“Sometimes the message you think you’re sending might not be the message that is being sent,” he said.
McAuliffe asked Foote whether it occurred to him that a transgender person might interpret the pink XX wristbands as an attempt to invalidate their existence.
“If he’s a trans female, pink might be a color he likes,” Foote said.
McAuliffe also noted that while both plaintiffs said they had no problem with transgender people outside the issue of sports, they repeatedly referred to the athlete in question as a boy.
“You seem to go out of your way to suggest there’s no such thing as a trans girl,” McAuliffe said. Foote disagreed, saying it was “like learning a new language” to refer to transgender people.
In a separate courtroom earlier Thursday, another judge held a hearing on a lawsuit brought by Parker Tirrell and another student challenging the state law that bans transgender athletes in grades 5 to 12 from teams that align with their gender identity. It requires schools to designate all teams as either girls, boys or coed, with eligibility determined based on students’ birth certificates “or other evidence.”
U.S. District Court Chief Judge Landya McCafferty ruled earlier this year that the teens can try out for and play on girls school sports teams. The order only applies to those two individuals for now as they seek to overturn the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act on behalf of all transgender girl students in New Hampshire.
Lawyers for the teens said in court Thursday they hoped the matter could go to trial and be resolved before the start of the next school year in September. They said the teens’ school districts and others in the state have asked for guidance regarding the statute. Lawyers for the state said they needed more time to prepare.
Judge Talesha Saint-Marc suggested the timing of the trial was ambitious and asked that both sides talk further about scheduling. Gov. Chris Sununu, who signed the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act into law in July, has said it “ensures fairness and safety in women’s sports by maintaining integrity and competitive balance in athletic competitions.” About half of states have adopted similar measures.
In the Bow case, school district officials have said they acted appropriately in sanctioning the parents for conduct they knew violated school policy at athletic events. They’ll explain their evidence on Friday. On Thursday, the plaintiff’s lawyer, Endel Kolde, accused the district of “breathtaking” overreach by asserting that the wristbands target transgender students in general, regardless of whether such students were present at the events.
The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants on Thursday for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his former defense minister and Hamas officials, accusing them of war crimes and crimes against humanity over their 13-month war in Gaza and the October 2023 attack on Israel respectively.
Netanyahu condemned the arrest warrant against him, saying Israel “rejects with disgust the absurd and false actions.” In a statement released by his office, he said: “There is nothing more just than the war that Israel has been waging in Gaza.”
The decision turns Netanyahu and the others into internationally wanted suspects and is likely to further isolate them and complicate efforts to negotiate a cease-fire to end the fighting. But its practical implications could be limited since Israel and its major ally, the United States, are not members of the court and two of the Hamas officials were killed in the conflict.
Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders have condemned ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan’s request for warrants as disgraceful and antisemitic. U.S. President Joe Biden blasted the prosecutor and expressed support for Israel’s right to defend itself against Hamas. Hamas also slammed the request.
The three-judge panel issued a unanimous decision to issue warrants for Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant.
“The Chamber considered that there are reasonable grounds to believe that both individuals intentionally and knowingly deprived the civilian population in Gaza of objects indispensable to their survival, including food, water, and medicine and medical supplies, as well as fuel and electricity,” the decision said.
The court also issued a warrant for Mohammed Deif, one of the leaders of Hamas, over the October 2023 attacks that triggered Israel’s offensive in Gaza. The ICC chief prosecutor withdrew his request for warrants for two other senior Hamas figures, Yahya Sinwar and Ismail Haniyeh, after they were both killed in the conflict.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry said in September that it had submitted two legal briefs challenging the ICC’s jurisdiction and arguing that the court did not provide Israel the opportunity to investigate the allegations itself before requesting the warrants.
“No other democracy with an independent and respected legal system like that which exists in Israel has been treated in this prejudicial manner by the Prosecutor,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Oren Marmorstein wrote on X. He said Israel remained “steadfast in its commitment to the rule of law and justice” and would continue to protect its citizens against militancy.
The ICC is a court of last resort that only prosecutes cases when domestic law enforcement authorities cannot or will not investigate. Israel is not a member state of the court. The country has struggled to investigate itself in the past, rights groups say.
Despite the warrants, none of the suspects is likely to face judges in The Hague anytime soon. The court itself has no police to enforce warrants, instead relying on cooperation from its member states.
Pennsylvania’s state Supreme Court on Monday weighed in on a flashpoint amid ongoing vote counting in the U.S. Senate election between Democratic Sen. Bob Casey and Republican David McCormick, ordering counties not to count mail-in ballots that lack a correct handwritten date on the return envelope.
The order is a win for McCormick and a loss for Casey as the campaigns prepare for a statewide recount and press counties for favorable ballot-counting decisions while election workers are sorting through thousands of provisional ballots.
McCormick’s campaign called it a “massive setback” for Casey.
The Democratic-majority high court’s order reiterates the position it took previously that the ballots shouldn’t be counted in the election, a decision that Republicans say several Democratic-controlled counties nevertheless challenged.
In a statement, Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, said a lack of legal clarity had surrounded the ballots, putting county officials in a position where they were “damned if they did and damned if they didn’t — likely facing legal action no matter which decision they made on counting.”
It comes amid a gust of fresh litigation in recent days filed by both campaigns, contesting the decisions of about a dozen counties over whether or not to count thousands of provisional ballots.
Casey’s campaign says the provisional ballots shouldn’t be rejected for garden-variety errors, like a polling place worker forgetting to sign it. Republicans say the law is clear that the ballots must be discarded.
The Associated Press called the race for McCormick last week, concluding that not enough ballots remained to be counted in areas Casey was winning for him to take the lead.
As of Monday, McCormick led by about 17,000 votes out of almost 7 million ballots counted — inside the 0.5% margin threshold to trigger an automatic statewide recount under Pennsylvania law.
Statewide, the number of mail-in ballots with wrong or missing dates on the return envelope could be in the thousands.
Republicans last week asked the court to bar counties from counting the ballots, saying those decisions violate both the court’s recent orders and its precedent in upholding the requirement in state law that a voter write the date on their mail-in ballot’s return envelope.
Democratic-majority election boards in Montgomery County, Philadelphia and Bucks County voted to count the ballots that lacked a correct date, echoing election officials around the state who say the date tells them nothing about a voter’s eligibility or a ballot’s legitimacy.
Republicans maintain that the date is a critical element of ballot security.
At first, Republicans also asked a court to block the count in Centre County. They later withdrew the protest of two ballots and its challenge to a third was filed too late, a court ruled. Centre County said one ballot had too many characters in the “date” boxes, another voter had changed a digit and another voter wrote the date as day-month-year, rather than month-day-year.
The vast majority of counties — including several heavily populated counties controlled by Democrats — didn’t count them.
Democrats cast more mail-in ballots than Republicans, and Democrats in the past have supported counting ballots that trip over what they view as meaningless clerical requirements in state law.
Various courts have ruled against the dating requirement in at least a half-dozen cases — including once by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — but higher courts have always reinstated it.
Meanwhile, the state Supreme Court has put off ruling on a pending case that calls into question whether the law violates the constitutional right to vote.
A Georgia appeals court on Monday canceled oral arguments that were scheduled for next month on the appeal of a lower court ruling allowing Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to continue to prosecute the election interference case she brought against President-elect Donald Trump.
Trump and other defendants had asked the Georgia Court of Appeals to hold oral arguments in the case, and the court had set those arguments for Dec. 5. But in a one-line order with no further explanation, the appeals court said that hearing “is hereby canceled until further order of this Court.”
A Fulton County grand jury in August 2023 indicted Trump and 18 others, accusing them of participating in a sprawling scheme to illegally try to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. Four defendants have pleaded guilty after reaching deals with prosecutors, but Trump and the others have pleaded not guilty.
But with Trump set to return to the White House in January, the future of the case against the once and future president was already in question even if the Court of Appeals ultimately says Willis shouldn’t be disqualified.
Trump and other defendants filed the appeal seeking to get Willis and her office removed from the case and to have the case dismissed. They argue that a romantic relationship Willis had with special prosecutor Nathan Wade created a conflict of interest. Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee in March found that no conflict of interest existed that should force Willis off the case, but he granted a request from Trump and the other defendants to seek an appeal of his ruling from the Court of Appeals.
McAfee wrote that “reasonable questions” over whether Willis and Wade had testified truthfully about the timing of their relationship “further underpin the finding of an appearance of impropriety and the need to make proportional efforts to cure it.” He allowed Willis to remain on the case only if Wade left, and the special prosecutor submitted his resignation hours later.
The allegations that Willis had improperly benefited from her romance with Wade resulted in a tumultuous couple of months in the case as intimate details of Willis and Wade’s personal lives were aired in court in mid-February.
Spirit Airlines said Monday that it has filed for bankruptcy protection and will attempt to reboot as it struggles to recover from the pandemic-caused swoon in travel and a failed attempt to sell the airline to JetBlue.
Spirit, the biggest U.S. budget airline, has lost more than $2.5 billion since the start of 2020 and faces looming debt payments totaling more than $1 billion over the next year.
Spirit said it expects to operate as normal as it works its way through a prearranged Chapter 11 bankruptcy process and that customers can continue to book and fly without interruption. All tickets, credits and loyalty points remain valid, the airline said, as are affiliated credit cards and other membership perks.
Shares of Spirit Airlines Inc., based in Miramar, Florida, dropped 25% on Friday, after The Wall Street Journal reported that the airline was discussing terms of a possible bankruptcy filing with its bondholders. It was just the latest in a series of blows that have sent the stock crashing down by 97% since late 2018 — when Spirit was still making money. Shares rose nearly 4% before the opening bell Monday.
CEO Ted Christie confirmed in August that Spirit was talking to advisers of its bondholders about the upcoming debt maturities. He called the discussions a priority, and said the airline was trying to get the best deal it could as quickly as possible.
“The chatter in the market about Spirit is notable, but we are not distracted,” he told investors during an earnings call. “We are focused on refinancing our debt, improving our overall liquidity position, deploying our new reimagined product into the market, and growing our loyalty programs.”
People are still flying on Spirit Airlines. They’re just not paying as much.
In the first six months of this year, Spirit passengers flew 2% more than they did in the same period last year. However, they are paying 10% less per mile, and revenue per mile from fares is down nearly 20%, contributing to Spirit’s red ink.
It’s not a new trend. Spirit failed to return to profitability when the coronavirus pandemic eased and travel rebounded. There are several reasons behind the slump.
Spirit’s costs, especially for labor, have risen. The biggest U.S. airlines have snagged some of Spirit’s budget-conscious customers by offering their own brand of bare-bones tickets. And fares for U.S. leisure travel — Spirit’s core business — have sagged because of a glut of new flights.
The Association of Flight Attendants told union members early Monday that it does not expect any furloughs, or changes to pay or working conditions. The union also said that it has retained bankruptcy counsel.
The premium end of the air-travel market has surged while Spirit’s traditional no-frills end has stagnated. So this summer, Spirit decided to sell bundled fares that include a bigger seat, priority boarding, free bags, internet service and snacks and drinks. That is a huge change from Spirit’s longtime strategy of luring customers with rock-bottom fares and forcing them to pay extra for things such as bringing a carry-on bag or ordering a soda.
In a highly unusual move, Spirit plans to cut its October-through-December schedule by nearly 20%, compared with the same period last year, which analysts say should help prop up fares. But that will help rivals more than it will boost Spirit. Analysts from Deutsche Bank and Raymond James say that Frontier, JetBlue and Southwest would benefit the most because of their overlap with Spirit on many routes.
Spirit has also been plagued by required repairs to Pratt & Whitney engines, which is forcing the airline to ground dozens of its Airbus jets. Spirit has cited the recall as it furloughed pilots.
The aircraft fleet is relatively young, which has made Spirit an attractive takeover target.
Frontier Airlines tried to merge with Spirit in 2022 but was outbid by JetBlue. However, the Justice Department sued to block the $3.8 billion deal, saying it would drive up prices for Spirit customers who depend on low fares, and a federal judge agreed in January. JetBlue and Spirit dropped their merger two months later.
U.S. airline bankruptcies were common in the 1990s and 2000s, as airlines struggled with fierce competition, high labor costs and sudden spikes in the price of jet fuel. PanAm, TWA, Northwest, Continental, United and Delta were swept up. Some liquidated, while others used favorable laws to renegotiate debts such as aircraft leases and keep flying.
The last bankruptcy by a major U.S. carrier ended when American Airlines emerged from Chapter 11 protection and simultaneously merged with US Airways in December 2013.
An Indiana law banning gender-affirming care for minors can remain in effect, a federal appeals court has ruled months after allowing the ban to take effect.
A panel of judges on the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 Wednesday that the law’s restrictions are within the purview of the Indiana General Assembly and do not infringe on the constitutional rights of transgender children, their parents or medical providers, The Times of Northwest Indiana reported.
Wednesday’s ruling follows a February decision by the Chicago-based appeals court that allowed the law to take effect by removing a temporary injunction that had blocked the law. The new ruling vacates that injunction entirely and definitively authorizes state officials to enforce the law.
Indiana’s law was enacted in spring 2023 amid a national push by GOP-led legislatures to curb LGBTQ+ rights. It was slated to go into effect on July 1, 2023, but the month before, U.S. District Court Judge James Patrick Hanlon issued an injunction preventing most of the law from taking effect. Hanlon blocked the state from prohibiting minors’ access to hormone therapies and puberty blockers but allowed the law’s prohibition on gender-affirming surgeries to take effect.
Hanlon’s order had also blocked provisions of the law that would prohibit Indiana doctors from communicating with out-of-state doctors about gender-affirming care for their patients younger than 18.
Since 2021, more than 20 states have enacted laws restricting or banning such treatments, even though they have been available in the United States for over a decade and are endorsed by major medical associations. Most of those state bans on gender-affirming care for minors have been challenged with lawsuits.
The Texas Supreme Court on Friday ruled that a legislative subpoena cannot stop an execution after Republican and Democratic lawmakers who say Robert Roberson is innocent used the novel maneuver to pause his execution at the last minute.
The ruling clears the way for Roberson’s execution to move forward, weeks after a bipartisan group of state House lawmakers bought him more time by subpoenaing Roberson as he waited to be taken to the nation’s busiest death chamber.
Roberson was sentenced to death in 2003 for killing his 2-year-old daughter, Nikki Curtis. He would be the first person in the United States to be executed over a conviction tied to “shaken baby syndrome,” a diagnosis that has been questioned by some medical experts.
A new execution date for Roberson has not been set, but it is certain to proceed unless Republican Gov. Greg Abbott grants a 30-day reprieve. Abbott did not move to do so before Roberson’s original execution date and his office challenged the subpoena tactic used by lawmakers, accusing them of overstepping their power.
The state’s all-Republican high court agreed, ruling that “under these circumstances the committee’s authority to compel testimony does not include the power to override the scheduled legal process leading to an execution,” wrote Republican Justice Evan Young, issuing the opinion of the court.
The ruling addressed a subpoena issued for Roberson by the Texas House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee. Roberson was scheduled to die by lethal injection on Oct. 17 when lawmakers, in a last-ditch effort, issued a subpoena to have him testify at the Texas Capitol days after his planned execution.
This spurred a legal conundrum between the state’s criminal and civil courts, which ultimately led to the Texas Supreme Court temporarily ruling in Roberson’s favor while it considered the matter. Roberson has gained bipartisan support from lawmakers and medical experts who say he was convicted on faulty evidence of “shaken baby syndrome,” which refers to a serious brain injury caused when a child’s head is hurt through shaking or some other violent impact, like being slammed against a wall or thrown on the floor.
Rep. Joe Moody, who has led the effort to stop Roberson’s execution, said delaying the execution with the subpoena was “never our specific intention” and added that the court “rightly agreed” that the subpoena and lawsuit were valid.
South Korean opposition leader Lee Jae-myung was convicted of violating election law and sentenced to a suspended prison term Friday by a court that ruled he made false statements while denying corruption allegations during a presidential campaign.
If it stands, the ruling could significantly shake up the country’s politics by potentially unseating Lee as a lawmaker and denying him a shot at running for president in the next election. But Lee, who faces three other trials over corruption and other criminal charges, is expected to challenge any guilty verdict and it remains unclear whether the Supreme Court will decide on any of the cases before the presidential vote in March 2027.
Lee told reporters that he plans to appeal Friday’s verdict by the Seoul Central District Court, which gave him a sentence of one year in prison, suspended for two years. Under South Korean law, Lee would lose his legislative seat and be barred from running in elections for five years if he receives either a penalty exceeding a 1 million won ($715) fine for election law violations or any prison sentence for other crimes.
“There are still two more courts left in the real world, and the courts of public opinion and history are eternal,” he said, apparently referring to plans to take the case to the Supreme Court. “This is a conclusion that’s impossible to accept.”
Lee, a firebrand liberal who narrowly lost the 2022 election to conservative President Yoon Suk Yeol, has steadfastly denied wrongdoing. Choo Kyung-ho, the floor leader of Yoon’s People Power Party, said the verdict showed that “justice was alive” and called for the judiciary to conclude the case swiftly.
The ruling drew intense media coverage and seemingly thousands of protesters. Surrounded by police lines, Lee’s supporters and critics occupied separate streets near the court, shouting opposing slogans and holding signs that said “Lee Jae-myung is innocent” and “Arrest Lee Jae-myung.” There were no immediate reports of major clashes.
Prosecutors indicted Lee in 2022 over charges that he made false claims related to two controversial development projects in the city of Seongnam, where he was mayor from 2010 to 2018, while campaigning as the presidential candidate for the Democratic Party.
One of the comments cited by prosecutors is related to suspicions that Seongnam city in 2015 changed the land-use designation to allow a housing project on a site previously preserved as green space due to lobbying by private developers.
Lee said during a parliamentary hearing in October 2021 that the city was instead “coerced” by the national government to make the change to the site in the district of Baekhyeon-dong. Prosecutors say there’s no evidence to back Lee’s claim, which has been denied by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport.
Prosecutors also cited a TV interview Lee gave in December 2021, when he said he didn’t know a senior official at Seongnam city’s urban development arm during his time as mayor. Lee spoke a day after the official was found dead during an investigation into a property development project in the district of Daejang-dong, which reaped huge profits for a small asset management firm and its affiliates and raised suspicions about possible corrupt links between them, city officials and politicians.
Prosecutors argued that Lee was lying to the public to distance himself from the controversies and improve his chances of winning the election. They had sought a two-year prison sentence for him.
The court found Lee guilty over the comments related to the Baekhyeon-dong project, saying it was clear that the city’s decision to change the site’s land-use designation wasn’t based on demands by the land ministry. It acquitted Lee on most of the charges related to his Daejang-dong comments, citing a lack of evidence.