By MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday refused for now to block enforcement of a Mississippi law aimed at regulating the use of social media by children, an issue of growing national concern.

The justices rejected an emergency appeal from a tech industry group, NetChoice, that is challenging laws passed in Mississippi and other states that require social media users to verify their ages. The court had been asked to keep the law on hold while a lawsuit plays out.

There were no noted dissents from the brief, unsigned order. But Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote to say that NetChoice could eventually succeed in showing that the law is indeed unconstitutional.

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Kavanaugh said he nevertheless agreed with the court’s decision because the tech group had not shown it would suffer legal harm if the measure went into effect as the lawsuit unfolded.

NetChoice argues that the Mississippi law threatens privacy rights and unconstitutionally restricts the free expression of users of all ages.

A federal judge agreed and prevented the 2024 law from taking effect. But a three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled in July that the law could be enforced while the lawsuit proceeds.

It’s the latest legal development as court challenges play out against similar laws in states across the country.

Parents and even some teenagers are growing increasingly concerned about the effects of social media use on young people. Supporters of the new laws have said they are needed to help curb the explosive use of social media among young people, and what researchers say is an associated increase in depression and anxiety.

Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch told the justices that age verification could help protect young people from “sexual abuse, trafficking, physical violence, sextortion, and more,” activities that Fitch noted are not protected by the First Amendment.

NetChoice represents some of the country’s most high-profile technology companies, including Google, which owns YouTube; Snap Inc., the parent company of Snapchat; and Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram.

NetChoice has filed similar lawsuits in Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Ohio and Utah.

By ANTHONY IZAGUIRRE

Since New York began licensing recreational marijuana stores about three years ago, the state has been using a simple tactic to ensure pot shops are kept a legally-mandated distance from local schools: Measure from the door of the dispensary to the door of the school.

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But officials recently made a startling admission: They’d misread the law and had been measuring incorrectly the whole time. Now, about 100 cannabis shops are in limbo, crossing their fingers for a legislative fix while wondering whether they’ll have to relocate.

The news was like dropping “a grenade in the laps” of business owners, said Osbert Orduña, who owns a New York City dispensary called The Cannabis Place that is now deemed to be too close to a nearby preschool.

“The way that they executed this was a complete and utter failure in leadership,” he said.

The admission is just the latest bungle from New York’s beleaguered legal marijuana program, which has been hamstrung by legal challenges, a slow rollout and gaps in the law that allowed an illicit market to flourish.

Business owners found out about the issue from the Office of Cannabis Management last month, which admitted it should have been measuring from the edge of a school’s property line, rather than its entrance, to ensure weed stores were kept at least 500 feet away.

“To give you this news, and for the weight of it, I am incredibly sorry,” said Felicia A.B. Reid, acting executive director of the cannabis agency, said in notices to the businesses.

A sign is displayed outside of Yerba Buena in the Brooklyn borough of New York, Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

The error impacts a sizable share of the state’s roughly 450 cannabis dispensaries.

About 60 of those were licensed using the erroneous measurement system, mostly in New York City, plus around another 40 that have licenses but are yet to open their doors.

On top of that, there are almost 50 other businesses that have applied for licenses under the incorrect measurement system and are awaiting final approval from the agency. The state has set aside a pot of money where applicants can get up to $250,000 to help relocate.

The existing shops have been told they can remain open for now, and even continue to operate with their expired licenses as long as the businesses file an application for a renewal.

Regulators say they are urging state lawmakers to create a permanent fix that will allow the shops to stay put. But they have also noted that is not guaranteed. The state Legislature isn’t scheduled to sit again until January.

Meanwhile, business owners say they’re being forced to operate in a gray area.

Jillian Dragutsky, who opened a dispensary called Yerba Buena in Brooklyn a few months ago, worries the issue still jeopardizes a dispensary’s ability to bank, get insurance and purchase inventory since they are supposed to have valid licenses in place.

Jillian Dragutsky, CEO and founder of Yerba Buena, talks with a customer at her marijuana dispensary in the Brooklyn borough of New York, Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

“How do you grow your business not knowing where you’re going to be a few months from now?” Dragutsky said.

In a statement, the cannabis office said businesses can obtain “proof of a valid license or a letter of good standing to operate” by contacting the agency.

An internal review of the cannabis office released last year detailed numerous problems at the agency, including inexperienced management and shifting licensure rules, while state leaders promised an administrative overhaul.

Gov. Kathy Hochul, who has previously said the program has been a “disaster,” called the school proximity problem “a major screw up” and vowed to find a legislative fix.

“These people have worked hard. They’ve waited a long time. They put their life savings into something that they thought was going to help them support their families,” she said. “So what I’m been doing is first of all reassuring them that you’re going to be OK. Secondly, we need to get the law changed to have a fix.”

The city’s latest budget includes funds to grow the number of apartments in the Justice-Involved Supportive Housing program (JISH) from 120 to 500. That expansion was among the commitments the city made in its 2019 agreement to close Rikers Island.

A May 2023 rally calling for the city to move forward with plans to close Rikers, citing the costs of incarceration compared to supportive housing. (Neha Gautam/Urban Justice Center)

In 2019, when Mayor Bill de Blasio and the New York City Council passed a plan to eventually close the notorious jail complex at Rikers Island, the “Points of Agreement” struck as part of the deal included a pledge to expand the city’s Justice Involved Supportive Housing (JISH) program, from 120 units to 500.

The city launched JISH in 2015 to provide affordable housing and support services to New Yorkers with behavioral health needs who tend to shuffle back and forth between shelters, hospitals, and jail or prison—what advocates and experts describe as a “vicious cycle” that feeds both the city’s homeless and shelter populations.

But that expansion has yet to take off, despite the city releasing a $93.7 million Request for Proposals (RFP) six years ago. Providers declined to bid on that RFP, telling City Limits the funding rates were too low to adequately provide the housing and services the program requires.

The city’s latest budget deal, however, includes an additional, baselined $4.8 million that officials and advocates say will finally allow JISH to grow to the promised 500 units. This builds on earlier discretionary funding the City Council allocated last year so the program’s existing three providers can enhance their services.

“This, to us, is a smart investment,” said Stanley Richards, president and CEO at the Fortune Society, which currently operates JISH housing for 60 people in scattered-site apartments in Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens and Manhattan.

“It is an investment we need to make when we talk about reducing our footprint on mass incarceration,” he added. “Providing some of our most vulnerable people access to supportive housing and to stop the cycle of hospitalization, homelessness and incarceration.”

The number of people in the city’s shelters and behind bars at Rikers Island has swelled in recent years, and access to supportive housing plays a role in both, experts and advocates say.

JISH is modeled after an earlier Bloomberg-era program called FUSE. Participants housed through that initiative spent 256 fewer days in shelter and an average of 95 fewer days in jail than members of a comparison group, one study found.

In addition to affordable housing, Fortune Society’s JISH clients get access to medical and behavioral health care, medication management, job training, art programs and other resources.

“Those are key components to increasing public safety,” Richards said. “Public safety is not just about policing, police enforcement, incarceration. That’s a piece of it; that’s not the total picture. The other side of public safety is when you provide people with opportunity to rebuild their lives, when you connect them.”

Richards said the higher reimbursement rate provided by the extra City Council funds has allowed Fortune to restructure its existing JISH portfolio so that each participant has their own unit, rather than doubled up with a roommate in a two-bedroom, as they had previously.

“The [prior] amount of funding wasn’t sufficient to pay fair market rent and to provide the level of services we need to ensure people are engaged and connected,” he said.

Kandra Clark, director of policy at Urban Pathways, another organization that runs 30 JISH units, said they’re looking forward to applying to operate more with the city at the new, higher funding rates.

“We would like studios, but all within the same building, then that way it’ll be much easier to do case management,” she said. That work can include providing people with everything from doctor’s appointments to basic life skills training.

“Some of our folks have been in [prison] for decades. They don’t know how to use computers. They don’t know how to use the MTA,” Clark said. “It just looks a little different, even from our regular supportive housing sites, because of those barriers that they’ve had for so long.”

Unlike JISH, other types of supportive housing are often inaccessible to people coming out of jail or prison. For many supportive apartments, applicants must prove they’re “chronically” homeless, meaning they’ve been unhoused for long stretches of time, typically a year. A stint in jail for more than 90 days would disqualify someone from most units, restarting that clock.

The City Council is expected to pass a bill Thursday that would amend that requirement when it comes to city-funded supportive housing programs, allowing time spent behind bars to count as time spend unhoused.

“We must update our housing policies to be sensitive to the unique vulnerability faced by people cycling in and out of the jail system,” the bill’s sponsor, Councilmember Carlina Rivera, told City Limits last year.

Reducing the population at Rikers is key to the city’s ability to close the troubled island jail complex, as required by a law passed under the de Blasio administration, which will replace it with four new, smaller jail facilities across four of the five boroughs.

The number of people being held at Rikers surpassed 7,000 this spring, several thousand more than what the future borough-based jails will be able to accommodate. While the law requires the city to close Rikers by 2027, it’s currently unlikely to meet that deadline.

At a press conference earlier this month, City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and other lawmakers urged the Adams administration to implement the new JISH funding as quickly as possible, along with other recent mental health reforms they say will help reduce the number of people in jail.

“These investments, which we have consistently championed and were a part of the independent Rikers commission’s updated blueprint to close Rikers, are critical to our goal of keeping our city safe, reducing the inflated jail population and ultimately closing Rikers for good,” Speaker Adams said at the time.

A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, which oversees JISH, said the 2019 RFP remains open on a rolling basis and that the administration is discussing the best approach to using the extra funds from the most recent budget.

While finally expanding the program to the planned 500 units would be a win, advocates say the need is even greater than that, and would like to see the program grow further.

In 2022, an analysis by the Corporation for Supportive Housing estimated that some 2,500 people held at Rikers Island in a given year fit the criteria of need for supportive housing, generally meaning they’re homeless and have a behavioral health diagnosis.

“We’re very confident that the 2,500 number is a conservative estimate,” said Cassondra Warney, CSH’s senior program manager. 

To reach the editor, contact Jeanmarie@citylimits.org

Want to republish this story? Find City Limits’ reprint policy here.

The post Funding Boost Could Fulfill City’s Pledge to Expand Housing for New Yorkers Who Cycle Between Shelter and Jail appeared first on City Limits.

By HANNAH SCHOENBAUM

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A Rhode Island man accused of faking his death and fleeing the United States to evade rape charges was found guilty late Wednesday of sexually assaulting a former girlfriend in his first of two Utah trials.

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An eight-person jury in Salt Lake County found Nicholas Rossi guilty of a 2008 rape after a three-day trial in which his accuser and her parents took the stand. Rossi, 38, declined to testify on his own behalf. He will be sentenced on Oct. 20 and is set to stand trial in September on another rape charge in Utah County.

First-degree felony rape carries a punishment in Utah of five years to life in prison, said Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill.

“We are grateful to the survivor in this case for her willingness to come forward, years after this attack took place,” Gill said in a statement. “It took courage and bravery to take the stand and confront her attacker to hold him accountable.”

Utah authorities began searching for Rossi, whose legal name is Nicholas Alahverdian, when he was identified through a decade-old DNA rape kit in 2018. He was among thousands of rape suspects identified and later charged when Utah made a push to clear its rape kit backlog.

Months after he was charged in Utah County, an online obituary claimed Rossi died on Feb. 29, 2020, of late-stage non-Hodgkin lymphoma. But police in his home state of Rhode Island, along with his former lawyer and a former foster family, cast doubt on whether he was dead.

He was arrested in Scotland the following year while receiving treatment for COVID-19 after hospital staff recognized his distinctive tattoos from an Interpol notice.

Extradited to Utah in January 2024, Rossi insisted he was an Irish orphan named Arthur Knight who was being framed. Investigators say they identified at least a dozen aliases Rossi used over the years to evade capture.

He appeared in court this week in a wheelchair, wearing a suit and tie and using an oxygen tank.

Rossi’s public defender denied the rape claim and urged jurors not to read too much into his move overseas years later.

“You’re allowed to move, you’re allowed to go somewhere else, you’re allowed to have a different name,” attorney Samantha Dugan said. She declined further comment following the verdict.

Prosecutors painted a picture of an intelligent man who used his charm to take advantage of a vulnerable young woman. The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly.

FILE- Nicholas Rossi leaves Edinburgh Sheriff and Justice of the Peace Court during his extradition hearing in Edinburgh, Scotland, June 30, 2023. (Andrew Milligan/PA via AP, File)

The woman was living with her parents and recovering from a traumatic brain injury when she responded to a personal ad Rossi posted on Craigslist. They began dating and were engaged within about two weeks.

She testified Rossi asked her to pay for dates and car repairs, lend him $1,000 so he wouldn’t be evicted, and take on debt to buy their engagement rings. He grew hostile soon after their engagement and raped her in his bedroom one night after she drove him home, she said.

Deputy Salt Lake County District Attorney Brandon Simmons told jurors Wednesday that the woman did not consent. “This is not romantic, this is not her mistaking things.”

The woman said her parents’ dismissive comments convinced her not to go to the police. She came forward a decade later after seeing him in the news and learning he was accused of another rape from the same year.

Rossi’s lawyers said the woman built up years of resentment after he made her foot the bill for everything in their monthlong relationship. They argued she accused him of rape to get back at him years later when he was getting media attention, and sought to undermine her credibility with jurors.

Rossi’s accuser in the Utah County case, who testified at this week’s trial, is also a former girlfriend. She went to police at the time of that alleged rape. He is accused of attacking her at his apartment in Orem in September 2008 after she came over to collect money she said he stole from her to buy a computer.

When police initially interviewed Rossi, he claimed she raped him and threatened to have him killed.

Rossi grew up in foster homes in Rhode Island and returned there before allegedly faking his death. He was previously wanted in the state for failing to register as a sex offender. The FBI says he faces fraud charges in Ohio, where he was convicted of sex-related charges in 2008.