BISMARCK, N.D. — A federal judge on Wednesday found the state of North Dakota entitled to nearly $28 million for responding to protests of the Dakota Access oil pipeline in 2016 and 2017 — a win for the state in its multiyear effort to recoup the costs from the federal government.

The state filed the lawsuit in 2019, seeking $38 million for policing the protests. The sometimes-chaotic demonstrations drew international attention for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s opposition to the pipeline’s Missouri River crossing upstream of the tribe’s reservation. The tribe has long opposed the pipeline, fearing an oil spill polluting its water supply.

A trial played out over several weeks in early 2024 in federal court in Bismarck, the state capital. People who testified included former North Dakota governors Doug Burgum, who took office in December 2016 during the protests’ height, and Jack Dalrymple, whose administration responded to the protests’ early months.

U.S. District Judge Daniel Traynor found the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers liable to the state on all claims and for more than $27.8 million in damages.

The judge wrote: “The bottom line: United States had a mandatory procedure, it did not follow that procedure, and harm occurred to the state of North Dakota. The law allows reimbursement for this harm. More than that, the rule of law requires this Court to hold the United States liable to remind it of its role in the larger picture of ensuring peace, not chaos.”

Thousands of people camped and demonstrated against the pipeline near the crossing for months. Hundreds of arrests resulted. Sometimes-violent clashes occurred between protesters and law enforcement officers. Law enforcement officers from around the state and region responded to the protests.

“It was a violent, unlawful protest. And ‘protest’ is a gentle word,” North Dakota Attorney Drew Wrigley said last year before trial.

The protest camps were cleared in February 2017. An attorney for the state said the protests ended in a response of more than seven months involving 178 agencies, resulting in 761 arrests and requiring four days of cleanup of the camp to remove millions of pounds of trash.

“Although the unlawful protest was burgeoning before everyone’s eyes and the damages and dangers were so apparent, the federal government refused to offer assistance and enforce the legal obligations on the people who were encamped,” Wrigley said.

Attorneys for the government said at trial that U.S. Army Corps of Engineers officials “acted reasonably given limited options at their disposal” during the protests, and that the state’s claim is “greatly overstated.” The government asked the judge to find a lack of legal jurisdiction for the state’s claims, that the state hasn’t proven its claims and is not entitled to damages.

The pipeline has been transporting oil since June 2017. Many state government officials and industry leaders support the pipeline as crucial infrastructure in the country’s No. 3 oil-producing state. The pipeline carries roughly 5% of the United States’ daily oil production.

In 2017, the pipeline company, Energy Transfer, donated $15 million to help cover the response costs. That same year, the U.S. Justice Department gave a $10 million grant to the state for reimbursing the response. It wasn’t immediately clear how that amount affected the damages.

Then-President Donald Trump denied a 2017 request from the state for the federal government to cover the costs through a disaster declaration.

The pipeline is operating while a court-ordered environmental review of the river crossing is carried out.

A North Dakota jury recently found Greenpeace liable for defamation and other claims brought by the pipeline’s builder in connection with protest activities, with damages surpassing $660 million for three Greenpeace organizations.

NEW YORK — A retrial is set to begin Monday for Sarah Palin’s libel lawsuit claiming The New York Times libeled her in an editorial eight years ago.

The onetime Republican vice presidential candidate and ex-governor of Alaska gets another chance to prove to a federal jury that the newspaper defamed her with the 2017 editorial falsely linking her campaign rhetoric to a mass shooting. Palin said it damaged her reputation and career.

The Times has acknowledged the editorial was inaccurate but said it quickly corrected an “honest mistake.”

The trial, expected to last a week, comes after the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals restored the case last year. Jury selection is scheduled to begin Monday morning.

In February 2022, Judge Jed S. Rakoff in Manhattan rejected Palin’s claims in a ruling issued while a jury deliberated. The judge then let jurors deliver their verdict, which went against Palin.

In restoring the lawsuit, the 2nd Circuit said Rakoff’s dismissal ruling improperly intruded on the jury’s work. It also cited flaws in the trial, saying there was erroneous exclusion of evidence, an inaccurate jury instruction and an erroneous response to a question from the jury.

The retrial occurs as President Donald Trump and others in agreement with his views of news coverage have been aggressive toward media outlets when they believe there has been unjust treatment.

Trump sued CBS News for $20 billion over the editing of a “60 Minutes” interview with his 2024 opponent, former Vice President Kamala Harris, and also sued the Des Moines Register over an Iowa election poll that turned out to be inaccurate. ABC News settled a lawsuit with Trump over its incorrect claim the president had been found civilly liable for raping writer E. Jean Carroll.

Kenneth G. Turkel, a lawyer for Palin, did not return a request for comment.

Charlie Stadtlander, a spokesperson for the Times, said Palin’s claim stemmed from “a passing reference to an event in an editorial that was not about Sarah Palin.”

“That reference was an unintended error, and quickly corrected. We’re confident we will prevail and intend to vigorously defend the case,” Stadtlander said in a statement.

WASHINGTON — Democratic officials in 19 states filed a lawsuit Thursday against President Donald Trump’s attempt to reshape elections across the U.S., calling it an unconstitutional invasion of states’ clear authority to run their own elections.

The lawsuit is the fourth against the executive order issued just a week ago. It seeks to block key aspects of it, including new requirements that people provide documentary proof of citizenship when registering to vote and a demand that all mail ballots be received by Election Day.

“The President has no power to do any of this,” the state attorneys general wrote in court documents. “The Elections EO is unconstitutional, antidemocratic, and un-American.”

Trump’s order said the U.S. has failed “to enforce basic and necessary election protection.” Election officials have said recent elections have been among the most secure in U.S. history. There has been no indication of any widespread fraud, including when Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020.

The order is the culmination of Trump’s longstanding complaints about how U.S. elections are run. After his first win in 2016, Trump falsely claimed his popular vote total would have been much higher if not for “millions of people who voted illegally.” In 2020, Trump blamed a “rigged” election for his loss and falsely claimed widespread voter fraud and manipulation of voting machines.

Trump has argued his order secures the vote against illegal voting by noncitizens, though multiple studies and investigations in the states have shown that it’s rare.

It has received praise from the top election officials in some Republican states who say it could inhibit instances of voter fraud and will give them access to federal data to better maintain their voter rolls.

The order also requires states to exclude any mail-in or absentee ballots received after Election Day, and puts states’ federal funding at risk if election officials don’t comply. Some states count ballots as long as they are postmarked by Election Day or allow voters to correct minor errors on their ballots.

Forcing states to change, the suit says, would violate the broad authority the Constitution gives states to set their own election rules. It says they decide the “times, places and manner” of how elections are run.

Congress has the power to “make or alter” election regulations, at least for federal office, but the Constitution doesn’t mention any presidential authority over election administration.

“We are a democracy – not a monarchy – and this executive order is an authoritarian power grab,” said New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said the Trump administration is requiring states to either comply with an unconstitutional order or lose congressionally approved funding, something he said the president has no authority to do.

“In one fell swoop, this president is attempting to undermine elections and sidestep the Congress, and we’re not going to stand for it,” he said.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta said Trump’s executive order was an attempt to impose “sweeping voting restrictions” across the country and disenfranchise voters.

The attorney general and secretary of state in Nevada, a presidential battleground, defended their state’s elections as fair, secure and transparent, and objected to the president’s attempt to interfere in how they are run. Attorney General Aaron Ford praised Nevada’s automatic systems for registering voters and distributing mail ballots.

“While this order is on its face unconstitutional and illegal, it is also unnecessary,” he said.

A request for comment sent to the White House was not immediately returned.

The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts by the Democratic attorneys general of Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin.

Other lawsuits filed over the order argue it could disenfranchise voters because millions of eligible voting-age Americans do not have the proper documents readily available. People are already required to attest to being citizens, under penalty of perjury, in order to vote.

Under the order, documents acceptable to prove citizenship would be a U.S. passport, a REAL ID-compliant driver’s license that “indicates the applicant is a citizen,” and a valid photo ID as long as it is presented with proof of citizenship.

Democrats argue that millions of Americans do not have easy access to their birth certificates, about half don’t have a U.S. passport, and married women would need multiple documents if they had changed their name. That was a complication for some women during recent town elections in New Hampshire, the first ones held under a new state law requiring proof of citizenship to register.

Not all REAL ID-compliant driver’s licenses designate U.S. citizenship.

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Cassidy reported from Atlanta. Associated Press writers Tran Nguyen in Sacramento, California, Holly Ramer in Concord, New Hampshire, and Rio Yamat in Las Vegas contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Wednesday sided with a truck driver who wants to sue for triple damages over a CBD hemp product he says was falsely advertised as being free from marijuana’s active ingredient and resulted in him getting fired.

The 5-4 opinion clears the way for the trucker to seek triple damages under an anti-mob law. It doesn’t decide his underlying claims that the product’s THC content got him fired.

Douglas Horn said he wanted to treat chronic shoulder and back pain after a serious accident. He chose the product because it was advertised as being free from THC, which gives marijuana its high. CBD is a generally legal hemp compound that is widely sold as a dietary supplement.

But lab tests taken after Horn was fired for failing a routine drug test confirmed the product did have THC, he claimed.

Horn sued the Vista, California-based Medical Marijuana Inc. and sought triple damages under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, often known as RICO.

The company pushed back, disputing Horn’s account and saying he can’t sue for higher damages because he’s claiming a personal injury rather than harm to his business.

Horn says his firing was a business injury and he’s been financially ruined, and an appeals court allowed Horn’s claim to go forward.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court at https://apnews.com/hub/us-supreme-court.

CHICAGO — A federal judge has temporarily blocked the U.S. Department of Labor from implementing parts of President Donald Trump’s executive orders aimed at curbing diversity, equity and inclusion efforts among federal contractors and grant recipients.

Judge Matthew Kennelly of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois halted the Labor Department from requiring federal contractors or grant recipients from certifying that they don’t operate any programs in violation of Trump’s anti-DEI executive orders.

That certification provision has stepped up pressure on companies and other organizations to revisit their DEI practices because if the government were to determine they violated the provision, they would be subject to crippling financial penalties under the False Claims Act.

Thursday’s ruling is in response to a lawsuit filed by Chicago Women in Trades, a nonprofit founded in 1981 that helps prepare women for work in skilled construction trades and has several contracts with the Department of Labor. There was no immediate reaction from Chicago Women in Trades to Kennelly’s order. The Department of Justice did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

A hearing on Chicago Women in Trades’ bid for a longer-lasting halt on Trump’s anti-DEI executive orders is scheduled for April 10.

The organization’s lawsuit is one of several challenging Trump’s executive orders targeting DEI programs in both the private and public sectors.

Trump signed an order his first day in office directing federal agencies to terminate all “equity-related” grants or contracts. He signed a follow-up order that included a requirement that federal contractors and grantees certify that they don’t “operate any programs promoting DEI that violate any applicable Federal anti-discrimination laws.”

Kennelly’s decision comes nearly two weeks after an appeals court lifted a broader nationwide injunction against Trump’s anti-DEI executive orders in a separate lawsuit in Baltimore. But Thursday’s ruling is limited in scope because Kennelly declined to extend the temporary restraining order to other federal agencies.

Chicago Women in Trades, which filed its case against the Trump administration last month, argued that the president’s executive orders on DEI are so broad and vague that the organization had no way to ensure compliance, and thus they threaten its core mission.

Kennelly wrote that Chicago Women in Trades, which is being represented by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, was likely to succeed in its arguments that parts of the executive orders are a violation of free speech rights and are unconstitutionally vague.

Although the government argued that the certification provision “implicates only illegal DEI programs, it has studiously declined to shed any light on what this means. The answer is anything but obvious,” Kennelly wrote.

Kennelly wrote that he extended his order to all Labor Department contractors and grant recipients because the vagueness of Trump’s executive orders, coupled with the threat of financial penalties, would likely pressure organizations to curb DEI programs in potential violation of free speech rights.

Rather than face potentially crippling penalties, “it is likely that many of these grantees will take the safer route and choose to simply stop speaking on anything remotely related to what the government might consider to promote DEI or equity. A nationwide restraining order is appropriate to protect grantees who cannot afford the risks inherent in biting the hand that feeds them,” Kennelly wrote.

The judge also blocked the DOL from freezing or canceling any funding with Chicago Women in Trades, and the Trump administration from pursuing any False Claims Act enforcement against them.

During a hearing on Tuesday, the Trump administration argued that Chicago Women in Trades’ motion for relief was premature because its arguments rely on speculation as to how the executive orders will be implemented.

But Chicago Women in Trades noted in court filings that it has multiple communications from the Department of Labor directing them to ensure compliance with both DEI executive orders. The organization also said in court and has already lost a subcontract with a contractor trying to comply with the executive order.

Chicago Women in Trades has a long history of partnering with companies, state and federal agencies and other industry stakeholders to provide guidance and training on best practices for recruiting and retaining women in the trades — including training to combat bias and harassment that is prevalent in one of the country’s most male-dominated industries.

Its grant work with the federal government dates back years, including two grants awarded under the first Trump administration under the Women in Apprenticeship and Nontraditional Occupations, which aims to expand pathways for women seeking to enter skilled trades.

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The Associated Press’ women in the workforce and state government coverage receives financial support from Pivotal Ventures. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump’s shoot-from-the-lip style kept Americans on the edge of their seats during last year’s campaign. But now that he’s speaking as a president and not as a candidate, his words are being used against him in court in the blizzard of litigation challenging his agenda.

The spontaneity is complicating his administration’s legal positions. Nowhere has this been clearer than in cases involving Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency, the driving force in Trump’s efforts to downsize and overhaul the federal government.

The latest example came earlier this week, when U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang ruled that Musk had likely violated the Constitution by dismantling the United States Agency for International Development.

The lawsuit turned on the question of whether the billionaire entrepreneur had overstepped his authority. Justice Department lawyers and White House officials insist that Musk is merely a presidential adviser, not the actual leader of DOGE.

But Trump has said otherwise — in speeches, interviews and public remarks — and Chuang quoted him extensively in his decision.

Trump most notably boasted of creating DOGE during his primetime address to a joint session of Congress and said it was “headed by Elon Musk.” Republicans gave Musk a standing ovation, who saluted from the gallery above the House chamber.

“Trump’s words were essential, central and indispensable,” said Norm Eisen, one of the lawyers for USAID employees who filed the lawsuit. “His admissions took what would have been a tough case and made it into a straightforward one.”

The looseness with words is a shift from predecessors like President Barack Obama, who used to say that he was careful because anything he said could send troops marching or markets tumbling.

Trump has no such feeling of restraint, and neither do other members of his administration like Musk.

Chuang, who is based in Maryland and was appointed by Obama, also cited social media posts from Musk, who writes frequently on X, the platform that he owns.

For example, Musk posted “we spent the weekend feeding USAID to the woodchipper” on Feb. 3. The agency was being brought to a standstill at that time, with staff furloughed, spending halted and headquarters shut down.

“Musk’s public statements and posts … suggest that he has the ability to cause DOGE to act,” Chuang wrote in his ruling.

Harrison Fields, principal deputy press secretary at the White House, said Trump was fulfilling his campaign promise “to make the federal government more efficient and accountable to taxpayers.”

“Rogue bureaucrats and activist judges attempting to undermine this effort are only subverting the will of the American people and their obstructionist efforts will fail,” he said.

Anthony Coley, who led public affairs at the Justice Department during President Joe Biden’s administration, said statements involving civil litigation were always coordinated between his office and the West Wing.

“The words could be used to support what we’re doing or undermine what we’re doing,” he said. “It’s a carefully choreographed effort to make sure there was no daylight between what was said in the court of public opinion and what could ultimately play out in the court of law.”

In comparison to how things were done in the past, Coley said, Trump has a “ready-fire-aim approach of doing business.”

Trump doesn’t usually let legal disputes force him to turn down the volume. During a criminal investigation over his decision to keep classified records at Mar-a-Lago after leaving the White House following his first term, Trump spoke extensively about the case in an interview with Fox News.

Longtime defense lawyers were startled — defendants are usually encouraged to keep mum while facing an indictment. But the situation panned out for Trump. His legal team delayed the case, and the special counsel’s office dropped the charges after he won the election because presidents can’t be prosecuted while in office.

DOGE has been the focus of nearly two dozen lawsuits. It’s often prevailed so far in cases involving access to government data, where several plaintiffs have struggled to convince judges to block the organization’s actions.

But it’s also run into challenges, such as a lawsuit over whether DOGE must comply with public records requests. The Trump administration asserted in court that DOGE is part of the White House, meaning it’s exempt.

Judge Christopher Cooper, also appointed by Obama, disagreed, siding with a government watchdog group called Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW.

“Musk and the President’s public statements indicate that USDS” — the original acronym for the organization that was renamed as DOGE — “is in fact exercising substantial independent authority,” wrote Cooper, who is based in Washington.

Cooper concluded that DOGE can “identify and terminate federal employees, federal programs, and federal contracts. Doing any of those three things would appear to require substantial independent authority; to do all three surely does.”

He ordered DOGE to start responding to requests about the team’s role in mass firings and disruptions to federal programs. The administration unsuccessfully asked the judge to reconsider, saying the judge “fundamentally misapprehended” the agency’s structure.

Just because Musk claims credit online for deep agency cuts, doesn’t necessarily translate to DOGE having authority in the eyes of the law, Stanford Law School professor Michael McConnell argued in a recent debate on the issue.

DOGE is recommending changes, he said, but it’s the agency heads who are actually putting them into effect.

“And that’s all that the courts are going to care about as to what the Supreme Court is going to do,” McConnell said at the debate hosted by the National Constitution Center.

COLUMBUS, Ohio — The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati will hear arguments Wednesday in a legal dispute that pits a suburban Ohio school district’s policy requiring use of students’ preferred pronouns against the free speech rights of classmates who believe there are only two genders.

The lawsuit brought by Parents Defending Education, a national Christian organization, against the Olentangy Local School District in 2023 has captured broad national attention from groups ranging from the American Civil Liberties Union to the conservative Manhattan Institute. Ohio’s solicitor general has asked to participate in oral arguments on behalf of 22 U.S. states that have interests in the case.

A lower court rejected the group’s arguments that the policies violated students’ First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment rights, and a three-judge panel of the 6th Circuit affirmed that decision in July.

The full court will reconsider that decision in a rare en banc hearing Wednesday. Here’s what you need to know:

The lawsuit takes issue with overlapping district policies that prohibit the use of gender-related language that other students might deem insulting, dehumanizing, unwanted or offensive and call for the use of peers’ “preferred pronouns.”

The district’s electronic devices policy — which applies both on and off school time — prohibits transmitting “disruptive” material or material that could be seen as harassing or disparaging other students based on their gender identity or sexual orientation, among other categories.

A separate antidiscrimination policy prohibits students from engaging in “discriminatory language” during times when they’re under the school’s authority. That is defined as “verbal or written comments, jokes, and slurs that are derogatory towards an individual or group based on one or more of the following characteristics: race, color, national origin, sex (including sexual orientation and transgender identity), disability, age, religion, ancestry, or genetic information.”

The district’s code of conduct echoes many of the same themes a third time.

Parents Defending Education, founded in 2021 amid the culture wars over schools’ teachings on race, diversity and sexuality, argues that the policies compel students and parents who belong to their group to “affirm an idea that gender is fluid” in contradiction of their religious beliefs.

“These students have views that the District disfavors,” the group wrote in a court filing. “Specifically, they believe that people are either male or female, that biological sex is immutable, and that sex does not change based on someone’s internal feelings. Accordingly, they ‘d(o) not want to be forced to ‘affirm’ that a biologically female classmate is actually a male — or vice versa — or that a classmate is ’nonbinary’ and neither male nor female.”

The group argues that the policies unconstitutionally compel “viewpoint-based” speech by forcing students who believe in only two genders to use pronouns that suggest otherwise. They say that violates the First Amendment’s guarantees to free speech and similar protections contained in the 14th Amendment, particularly since students are subject to punishment for violating the policies.

Parents Defending Education further challenges the electronic devices policy for applying outside school hours and off school property. The ACLU has sided with the parents’ group on this point, arguing the district’s policies are overbroad.

Olentangy Local School District outside Columbus, one of the state’s largest districts, maintains the policies protect students against abuse and harassment and asserts that Parents Defending Education represents “Christian, cisgender” students “seeking dispensation under the free speech clause of the First Amendment to harass other students based on their gender identity.”

“They are not illegal immigrants subject to deportation. They are not gay soldiers under Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. They’re not African Americans in the Jim Crow south. They’ve not been systematically oppressed,” the district’s lawyers told the lower court. “They’re members of the majority who want to — under the guise of the First Amendment — openly voice their opposition to an historically maligned minority group, transgendered people.”

Olentangy argues that Parents Defending Education has failed to provide evidence of injury — as the lawsuit was filed before disciplinary action had been brought against any student. The district also says that its policies leave open other options for students who don’t wish to use someone’s preferred pronouns. That includes calling the person by their first name, using a gender-neutral pronoun or simply not referring to them at all.

The availability of such options, an argument against the policies unconstitutionally compelling students to say certain things, played a role in the three-judge panel’s 2-1 ruling in favor of the district last summer.

WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a lawsuit from Republican attorneys general in 19 states aimed at blocking climate change suits against the oil and gas industry from Democratic-led states.

The justices acted on an unusual Republican effort to file suit in the Supreme Court over the Democratic states’ use of their own state courts to sue fossil fuel companies for deceiving the public about the risks of their products contributing to climate change.

The Supreme Court typically hears only appeals, but the Constitution gives the court authority to hear original lawsuits states file against each other.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito said they would have allowed the lawsuit to proceed for now. The justices don’t have the discretion to reject the complaint at this stage, Thomas wrote in a dissent that did not deal with the merits of the claim.

The Republicans’ complaint, led by Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, asserts that the Democratic states are trying to dictate national energy policy and will drive up the cost of energy across the country.

The Supreme Court also has so far turned away appeals by the energy companies seeking to get the justices involved in the issue.

The lawsuits filed by dozens of state and local governments allege that fossil fuel companies misled the public about how their products could contribute to the climate crisis. The lawsuits claim billions of dollars of damage from such things as severe storms, wildfires and rising sea levels.

The Republican action specifically sought to stop lawsuits brought by California, Connecticut, Minnesota, New Jersey and Rhode Island.

Only the federal government can regulate interstate gas emissions, and states have no power to apply their own laws to a global atmosphere that reaches well beyond their borders.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court at https://apnews.com/hub/us-supreme-court.

PHOENIX — Lawyers for 25,000 people incarcerated in Arizona have asked a judge to take over health care operations in state-run prisons and appoint an official to run them, saying the state is not capable of fixing deep failures in care even though it has been required to do so over the last decade.

In a filing Tuesday, the attorneys said a takeover is urgently needed because the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry lacks the leadership to comply with changes ordered by a judge in a 2012 lawsuit over the quality of medical and mental health care for prisoners.

The first constitutional violation in the case was found in 2015, they said, and “A decade later, defendants still have not demonstrated the will, knowledge, or capacity to reform their prison healthcare system.”

Arizona settled the case in 2014 but for years was dogged by complaints that it failed to follow through on its promises. The court slapped the state with contempt fines of $1.4 million in 2018 and $1.1 million in 2021. The settlement was eventually thrown out due to Arizona’s noncompliance, and a trial was ordered.

In a blistering 2022 verdict, U.S. District Court Judge Roslyn Silver ruled that the state was violating prisoners’ constitutional rights by providing them with inadequate care, knew about the problem for years and refused to correct it.

She also said prison health care deficiencies resulted in preventable deaths and issued an injunction requiring corrections authorities to fix the constitutional violations.

In September 2019 lawyers representing the prisoners made a similar request for a takeover, also known as a receivership. Though Silver has previously shied away from granting that, she later said she would revive that possibility if the state acts in bad faith or fails to comply with the court-ordered changes.

Lawyers for prisoners pointed to a recent report from a court-appointed expert who said health care for prisoners “remains poor, has shown little improvement since the start of the Injunction, and continues to place the residents at significant risk of serious harm, including death.”

The corrections department and Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs’ office did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment on the request.

Past receiverships have been ordered for prisons in other states. In California in 2005, a federal judge seized control of the prison medical system after finding that an average of one inmate a week was dying of medical neglect or malpractice.

The Arizona lawsuit does not cover the nearly 10,000 people incarcerated in private prisons for state convictions.

SEATTLE — A federal judge who already questioned the constitutionality of President Donald Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order is set to hear arguments Thursday over a longer-term pause of the directive, which aims to end citizenship for children born to parents not legally in the country.

U.S. District Judge John Coughenour in Seattle has scheduled a hearing involving lawyers from the Trump administration, four states suing to stop the order, and an immigrant rights organization, which is challenging it on behalf of a proposed class of expectant parents.

The latest proceeding comes just a day after a Maryland federal judge issued a nationwide pause in a separate but similar case involving immigrants’ rights groups and pregnant women whose soon-to-born children could be affected.

Here’s a closer look at where things stand on the president’s birthright citizenship order.

The president’s executive order seeks to end the automatic grant of citizenship to children born on U.S. soil to parents who are in the country illegally or who are here on a temporary, but lawful, basis such as those on student or tourist visas.

For now, though, it’s on hold. Two weeks ago, Coughenour called the order “blatantly unconstitutional” and issued a 14-day temporary restraining order blocking its implementation. On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman followed that up with an injunction keeping it on hold long-term, until the merits of the case are resolved, barring a successful appeal by the Trump administration.

Asked by Boardman if the administration would appeal, an attorney for the administration said he didn’t immediately have the authority to make that decision.

On Thursday, the birthright citizenship issue is back before Coughenour, a Ronald Reagan appointee. During a hearing last month, he said the case stood out in his more than four decades as a federal judge. “I can’t remember another case where the question presented was as clear as this one is,” he told a Justice Department attorney.

His temporary order blocking the executive action was set to expire Thursday when he’ll hear arguments over whether he should issue an injunction similar to the one issued by the judge in Maryland.

In total, 22 states, as well as other organizations, have sued to try to stop the executive action.

The matter before the Seattle judge Thursday involves four states: Arizona, Illinois, Oregon and Washington. It also has been consolidated with a lawsuit brought by the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project. Eighteen states, led by Iowa, have filed a “friend-of-the-court” brief supporting the Trump administration’s position in the case.

Yet another hearing is set for Friday in a Massachusetts court. That case involves a different group of 18 states challenging the order, including New Jersey, which is the lead plaintiff.

At the heart of the lawsuits is the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1868 after the Civil War and the infamous Dred Scott Supreme Court decision, which held Scott, an enslaved man, wasn’t a citizen despite having lived in a state where slavery was outlawed.

The plaintiffs argue the amendment, which holds that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside,” are indisputably citizens.

The Trump administration has asserted that children of noncitizens are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and therefore not entitled to citizenship.

“The Constitution does not harbor a windfall clause granting American citizenship to … the children of those who have circumvented (or outright defied) federal immigration laws,” the government argued in reply to the Maryland plaintiffs’ suit.

Attorneys for the states have argued that it certainly does — and that has been recognized since the amendment’s adoption, notably in an 1898 U.S. Supreme Court decision. That decision, United States v. Wong Kim Ark, held that the only children who did not automatically receive U.S. citizenship upon being born on U.S. soil were children of diplomats, who have allegiance to another government; enemies present in the U.S. during hostile occupation; those born on foreign ships; and those born to members of sovereign Native American tribes.

The U.S. is among about 30 countries where birthright citizenship — the principle of jus soli or “right of the soil” — is applied. Most are in the Americas, and Canada and Mexico are among them.

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Catalini is based in Trenton, New Jersey. Associated Press writer Michael Kunzelman contributed from Greenbelt, Maryland.