2012 in the United States


Events in the year '''2012 in the United States.'''

Incumbents

Federal government

Governors

Lieutenant governors

Events

January

  • January 1 – New laws that go into effect on January 1:
  • *Hawaii and Delaware's civil union laws go into effect.
  • * Illinois allows motorcyclists the right to yield at red lights since magnetic streetlight sensors will not recognize motorcycles.
  • * Utah bans discounts or specials on alcoholic drinks, essentially banning happy hour.
  • * Arizona, Oregon, Washington, Montana, Colorado, Ohio, Vermont and Florida raise their minimum wage.
  • * San Francisco raises the minimum wage within its jurisdiction to over $10 per hour, making it the highest minimum wage in the country.
  • * California adds the historical contributions of sexual minorities and disabled people to its school curriculum.
  • * Kansas, Texas, Rhode Island, and Tennessee will now require photo identification for voters as a measure to combat voter fraud.
  • January 3 – Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum wins the Republican Iowa Caucus by a record low margin of 34 votes over former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.
  • January 4 – Michele Bachmann, a Republican presidential candidate, drops out of the race.
  • January 5 – Classified documents are leaked detailing a range of advanced non-lethal weapons proposed or in development by the U.S. Armed Forces. Among the systems described are a laser-based weapon designed to divert hostile aircraft, an underwater sonic weapon for incapacitating SCUBA divers and a heat-based weapon designed to compel crowds to disperse.
  • January 9 – White House Chief of Staff William M. Daley steps down. The Office of Management and Budget Director Jack Lew takes his place.
  • January 10
  • *Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour pardons 200 prisoners. On January 12, a Mississippi judge blocks the release of 21 of those inmates.
  • * Alaska sees record snowfall.
  • * The U.S. Supreme Court makes an 8–1 decision in Minneci v. Pollard that abused inmates cannot sue a privately, state-hired prison company in federal court. The ruling went against prisoner Richard Lee Pollard in a dispute of damages over a violation of the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, claiming that Wackenhut/GEO, a privately run federal prison in California, had deprived him of adequate medical care. Writing for the majority, Associate Justice Stephen Breyer said that "... the existence of an Eighth Amendment-based damages action... against... a privately operated federal prison.. state tort law authorizes adequate alternative damages actions,... actions that provide both significant deterrence and compensation... For these reasons, where, as here, a federal prisoner seeks damages from privately employed personnel working at a privately operated federal prison, where the conduct allegedly amounts to a violation of the Eighth Amendment, and where that conduct is of a kind that typically falls within the scope of traditional state tort law, the prisoner must seek a remedy under state tort law. We cannot imply a Bivens remedy in such a case. The judgment of the Ninth Circuit is reversed."
  • January 14 – Miss Wisconsin, Laura Kaeppeler, wins Miss America pageant.
  • January 16
  • * Zappos.com computer system is hacked, compromising the personal information of 24 million customers.
  • * Jon Huntsman, a Republican presidential candidate, drops out of the race.
  • January 17 – Volunteers in Wisconsin submit more than a million signatures to start a recall election of Governor Scott Walker in protest of his public fight last year to restrict collective bargaining rights of public workers and his cuts in the social safety net.
  • January 18
  • * The U.S. Supreme Court makes a unanimous 9–0 decision that telephone consumers can gain standing in federal courts to sue abusive telephone marketers. The ruling went against Arrow Financial Services, a debt-collection agency, in a dispute of standing over the federal jurisdiction of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991. The act was passed so that out-of-state telemarketers, by operating interstate, could not escape state-law prohibitions on intrusive nuisance calls. Petitioner Marcus D. Mims filed a damages action in Federal District Court, alleging that respondent Arrow, seeking to collect a debt, violated the TCPA by repeatedly using an automatic telephone dialing system or prerecorded or artificial voice to call Mims's cellular phone without his consent. Writing for the unanimous court, Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that "We find no convincing reason to read into the TCPA's permissive grant of jurisdiction to state courts any barrier to the U. S. district courts' exercise of the general federal-question jurisdiction... We hold, therefore, that federal and state courts have concurrent jurisdiction over private suits arising under the TCPA... The Eleventh Circuit erred in dismissing Mims's case for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction... The judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion."
  • * The U.S. Supreme Court makes a 6–2 decision that restores copyright status to some foreign works previously in the public domain. The case challenges the constitutionality of the application of Section 514 of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act, a treaty seeking to equalize copyright protection on an international basis. The practical effect of the decision is that some works that were once free to use, The Third Man, the works of Igor Stravinsky, several works of H. G. Wells, including the film Things to Come now must be paid for. The ruling went against Lawrence Golan, and many others, in a dispute of URAA bringing some works whose copyright had lapsed back under copyright. Writing for the majority, Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that "... ... copyright protection abroad... ... the same full term of protection... ...U. S.... Congress did so in §514 of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act, which grants copyright protection to preexisting works of Berne member countries, protected in their country of origin, but lacking protection in the United States... The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit is therefore affirmed."
  • January 19
  • * Kodak files for bankruptcy protection. Kodak is best known for its wide range of photographic film products.
  • * Rick Perry, a Republican presidential candidate, drops out after seeing no way to continue his campaign past South Carolina.
  • January 22
  • *U.S. House Representative Gabby Giffords of Arizona announces her resignation from office to focus on her recovery after surviving an attempted assassination in 2011.
  • *Joe Paterno, the winningest football coach in Penn State history, dies at the age of 85 from lung cancer.
  • January 23
  • *The U.S. Supreme Court makes a unanimous 9–0 decision that government officials must obtain a search warrant permitting them to install a Global-Positioning-System tracking device on citizens' private property. The ruling involves a Fourth Amendment case, the requirement of obtaining a valid warrant in searches by law enforcement. The court ruled in favor of Antoine Jones in a dispute that attaching a GPS device to private property in a public space still constitutes a search and therefore falls under the Fourth Amendment. The opinion of the court was written by Associate Justice Antonin Scalia who said that "We decide whether the attachment of a Global-Positioning-System tracking device to an individual's vehicle, and subsequent use of that device to monitor the vehicle's movements on public streets, constitutes a search or seizure within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment... The Fourth Amendment provides in relevant part that 'he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.' It is beyond dispute that a vehicle is an 'effect' as that term is used in the Amendment. United States v. Chadwick, 433 U. S. 1, 12. We hold that the Government's installation of a GPS device on a target's vehicle, and its use of that device to monitor the vehicle's movements, constitutes a 'search.'"
  • *An intense EF3 tornado strikes the northeastern part of the Birmingham, Alabama metropolitan area, killing one person, injuring 75 others, and caused over $18 million in damage.
  • January 24
  • * President Barack Obama delivers his 2012 State of the Union Address.
  • * 84th Academy Awards: Nominations are announced at 5:38 am. PST at Samuel Goldwyn Theater. The Best Picture nominees are The Artist, The Descendants, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, The Help, Hugo, Midnight in Paris, Moneyball, The Tree of Life, War Horse
  • January 25 – The Indiana House of Representatives passes right to work legislation, becoming the first state in the Rust Belt to pass such a measure.
  • January 26 – The United States Department of Transportation requires airline companies to disclose in advance all price constituents.
  • January 29 – 10 people die in a suspected arson on the Interstate 75 south of Gainesville, Florida.
  • January 30 – In Illinois, the Byron nuclear power plant loses power and is vented to reduce pressure, releasing radioactive steam.
  • January 31 – A teacher, Mark Berndt, is charged with molesting 23 Los Angeles elementary school students.

    February

  • February 5
  • * Super Bowl XLVI: The National Football Conference champion New York Giants defeat the American Football Conference champion New England Patriots 21–17 at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. It was officially the most watched program in the history of United States television with 111.3 million viewers in the United States.
  • * Disappearance of Susan Powell: Josh Powell, who was widely suspected in his wife's disappearance, kills himself and the couple's two children.
  • February 7 – A federal appeals court upholds the district court decision that struck down California's ban on same-sex marriage.
  • February 11 – Singer Whitney Houston is found dead at the age of 48 in her suite at the Los Angeles Beverly Hilton Hotel, which coincided with the 2012 Grammy Awards and triggered a worldwide outpouring of grief. Her death later impaired several major websites and services.
  • February 13 – Washington Governor Chris Gregoire signs a bill legalizing same-sex marriage, becoming the seventh state to legalize gay marriage.
  • February 15 – The Kellogg Company purchases snack maker Pringles from Procter & Gamble for US$2.7 billion.
  • February 16
  • *Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the so-called "underwear bomber", is sentenced to life imprisonment for attempting to detonate a bomb on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 in Detroit, Michigan.
  • * Researchers at Dartmouth College find that many organic food products that contain organic brown rice syrup have a much higher concentration of the toxic element arsenic. Brown rice syrup, used as an alternative for the much-maligned high fructose corn syrup, is said to contain environmental arsenic absorbed by the husk of the rice.
  • February 18 – Legendary singer Whitney Houston is laid to rest in a private televised funeral in her hometown of Newark, New Jersey at the New Hope Baptist Church in which she was raised.
  • February 21
  • * The Dow Jones Industrial Average goes above 13,000 points for the first time since May 2008.
  • * The U.S. Supreme Court makes a 6–3 decision that law enforcement officials do not need to issue Miranda warnings to prison inmates under questioning if these inmates are warned that they may end the interrogation at any time. The ruling involves an inmate who was removed from the general prison population and questioned. The court ruled against convict Randall Fields in a dispute that questioning without Miranda invocation was proper as long as the convict was advised of his freedom to leave. The opinion of the court was written by Associate Justice Samuel Alito who said that "The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held that our precedents clearly establish that a prisoner is in custody within the meaning of Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436, if the prisoner is taken aside and questioned about events that occurred outside the prison walls. Our decisions, however, do not clearly establish such a rule, and therefore the Court of Appeals erred inholding that this rule provides a permissible basis for federal habeas relief under the relevant provision of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, 28 U. S. C. §2254. Indeed, the rule applied by the court below does not represent a correct interpretation of our Miranda case law. We therefore reverse."
  • February 22
  • * In Charlottesville, Virginia, former University of Virginia men's lacrosse player George Huguely is found guilty of second-degree murder in the 2010 death of former UVA women's lacrosse player Yeardley Love. The jury recommends a 26-year prison sentence; he was sentenced to 23 years in prison.
  • * Seven US Marines die when two helicopters collide and crash on the border of the states of California and Arizona. The Bell AH-1 SuperCobra attack helicopter and the UH-1Y Huey utility chopper accident occurs during a nighttime training exercise.
  • February 23 – The case against Gabe Watson in relation to the death of his newlywed wife Tina on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia is dismissed in Alabama.
  • February 26
  • * 84th Academy Awards: The ceremony, hosted by Billy Crystal, is held at the Hollywood and Highland Center Theatre. Michel Hazanavicius' The Artist wins five awards, including Best Director and Best Picture, the first silent film to win the latter award since Wings in 1927 and the first black-and-white film since Schindler's List in 1993. Martin Scorsese's Hugo ties in award wins and leads in nominations with 11. The telecast garners nearly 39.5 million viewers.
  • * A trial begins in Cairo of 16 Americans and 27 others linked to an Egyptian government crackdown on non-government organizations which has created tension between the U.S. and Egypt.
  • * Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black 17-year-old, is fatally shot by George Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida. The killing receives widespread attention focusing on aspects including the possible role of Martin's race and the initial lack of prosecution against Zimmerman, who is later charged with second degree murder.
  • February 27
  • * Teenager Thomas Lane kills three students at Chardon High School in Chardon, Ohio.
  • * 2012 Daytona 500: In a first ever delay, the race is postponed to Monday due to heavy rain in Daytona. Matt Kenseth wins on Tuesday morning.
  • * WikiLeaks begins disclosing 5 million e-mails from the private intelligence company Stratfor.
  • February 29
  • * 2012 Leap Day tornado outbreak: Tornados hit the midwestern United States with 14 people killed, six in Harrisburg, Illinois.
  • * Egypt lifts a travel ban on seven Americans employed by pro-democracy U.S. groups, including the son of U.S. Transportation secretary Ray LaHood, who is among 16 Americans on trial in Egypt for trying to foment unrest and incite protests against the nation's military rulers.