Nation roundup for July 29

House delivers airlines a victory

WASHINGTON (AP) — In a victory for airlines and their workers’ unions, the House rejected consumers’ complaints and easily passed legislation Monday letting airline advertising emphasize the base price of tickets, before taxes and fees are added.

The bipartisan legislation would roll back federal regulations that since 2012 have required ads to most prominently display the full ticket price. Under the bill, the base price could be the figure most prominently shown in ads and ticket-selling websites as long as taxes and fees are displayed separately, such as in footnotes or pop-up ads.

The measure was approved by voice vote, with individual lawmakers’ votes not recorded. That process is used often for non-controversial bills, but it can also allow legislators avoid taking a public position on a touchy issue.

Groups representing airline passengers and companies that rely on corporate travel derided the bill’s name, the Transparent Airfares Act of 2014, as Orwellian. They said the measure’s enactment would return the country to an earlier era of misleading and confusing advertising.

“Their main goal is to be able to offer the public a low-ball price,” said Charlie Leocha, chairman of Travelers United, which represents people who travel.

But the airlines — backed by unions representing pilots, mechanics and flight attendants — say including taxes and fees in their advertised prices hurts business and hides from consumers the extra costs that government imposes on air travel.

Showing the full price “can dampen demand for travel and ultimately cost even more jobs in an industry that has lost nearly one-third of its work force since 2001, typically resulting in reduced service to small and rural communities,” according to an April letter to lawmakers from Airlines for America, the industry’s chief trade group, and other airline and labor organizations.

Va. gay marriage ban struck down

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Virginia’s same-sex marriage ban was ruled unconstitutional on Monday in the first such decision by a federal appellate court in the South.

“We recognize that same-sex marriage makes some people deeply uncomfortable. However, inertia and apprehension are not legitimate bases for denying same-sex couples due process and equal protection of the laws,” Judge Henry F. Floyd wrote.

The 2-1 ruling applies throughout the circuit that also includes West Virginia, Maryland, and the Carolinas, where the attorneys general split Monday on what they’ll do next. North Carolina’s top lawman, Roy Cooper, quickly announced that he’ll stop defending his state’s ban, saying it is “time to stop making arguments we will lose.” But a spokesman for South Carolina’s attorney general, Alan Wilson, said he sees no need to change course.

The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond is the second federal appellate court to overturn gay marriage bans, and the first to affect the South, a region where the rising tide of rulings favoring marriage equality is testing concepts of states’ rights that have long held sway.

Virginians voted 57 percent to 43 percent in 2006 to amend their constitution to ban gay marriage. Virginia laws prohibit recognizing same-sex marriages performed in other states.