Topics: Your Personal Rights - 9 results

A jury has ordered a nursing home to pay $3.7 million to the daughter of an elderly woman who died during a five-day stint at a nursing home. Janet Smith was a patient at Belmont Lodge Health Care Center in Pueblo, Colo. in May 2011. She planned to stay for only five days while she recovered after breaking her ankle. Smith knew the place well; she had worked there 30 years ago. But according to Smith’s daughter, Margaret, the nursing …

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on Thursday vetoed a law passed by the legislature that would ban employers from asking for the social media passwords of workers and applicants. Christie said that he would sign the bill if it were amended to exclude some of its more restrictive components. New Jersey would have been the eighth state to stop businesses from snooping into their current or prospective employees’ Facebook and Twitter accounts, although the Jersey law would have gone several …

The Iowa Supreme Court ruled on May 3 that the state must recognize children born to lesbian couples as having two parents on their birth certificate, ensuring full parental rights for both parents and equal treatment for gay and heterosexual couples.   ‘Biology’ Cited by State Heather and Melissa Gartner, a lesbian couple, were legally married in Iowa in 2009 after the state’s “Defense of Marriage Act” was held unconstitutional. They had already wed via a civil commitment ceremony and …

THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) is the chemical ingredient in marijuana that gets users high. Although federal and state laws conflict on the legality of pot, including medical marijuana, drug testing in schools and the workplace continues. The www.HomeHealthTesting.com infographic below provides some estimates on the time frames when different types of tests can detect THC. California NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) emphasizes there are no simple guidelines for cannabis detection tests. For NORML’s more comprehensive information on marijuana …

The days of putting convicted criminals to death in the United States could be on the wane. Six states have gotten rid of capital punishment in the last six years, while more could be on the way. Most recently, Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley last week signed a law abolishing the death penalty in the state, while Delaware’s House of Representatives considered but put aside for now a bill that would do the same after it was passed by the state …