Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, May 4, 1993 TAG: 9305040058
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The justices ruled unanimously in a Houston case that federal law and regulations do not bar some public employers from refusing to negotiate with employee unions about overtime compensation.
The decision means the Harris County Sheriff's Department does not have to give deputies the option of getting overtime pay instead of compensatory time off for working extra hours.
The ruling is a victory also for public employers in other states that, like Texas, restrict or bar collective bargaining with public employees.
Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the court that the Harris County Sheriff's Department may continue reaching "individual comp time agreements" with deputies rather than negotiate with a union that represents about 400 deputies.
Federal law generally requires employers to pay employees for overtime work at one and a half times the employees' regular wages. In 1985 the high court ruled that public employers must comply with that law.
But Congress responded by providing an exception for state and local governments: they may offer extra time off instead of overtime pay.
In other decisions, the court:
Unanimously decided that a criminal suspect's constitutional protections against unlawful police searches do not automatically extend to evidence seized from an alleged partner in crime.
The justices flatly rejected a federal appeals court's ruling in an Arizona case that had allowed co-conspirators to share each other's privacy-right protections.
The case began when Arizona troopers found 560 pounds of cocaine in a car trunk and prosecutors tried to use it as evidence against the operation's ringleaders.
The federal appeals court decided that co-conspirators have a legitimate expectation of privacy in each others' cars and other property. The leaders of the conspiracy were not present when the courier's car was stopped and searched.
But the Supreme Court's decision shuts down a newly created but broad constitutional avenue for drug conspirators trying to keep incriminating evidence from being used against them at trial.
Made it harder, in a California case, for companies to collect antitrust awards from competitors they say tried to harass them by filing phony lawsuits. A lawsuit cannot be called a "sham" unless no reasonable person could expect to win it, the court said.
Ruled that the federal government does not violate its contracts with some private owners of low-income housing when it revises the way it pays rent subsidies.
Set new limits on federal judges' sentencing power, ruling in a Florida case that possession of a gun cannot be treated as a "crime of violence" to lengthen a defendant's prison term.
Barred Idaho, and all other states, from requiring the federal government to pay filing fees when it appears in state courts in legal fights over water rights.
by CNB