Free Republic

Judge issues temporary injunction on Trump campaign use of the song ‘Hold On, I’m Coming’ The decision came after the estate of the late R&B artist and songwriter Isaac Hayes sought an emergency injunction to stop the Trump campaign from using the song at campaign events, alleging the campaign does not have approval.

A three-judge panel in the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has delivered a critical decision affirming Fourth Amendment protections and the right to keep and bear arms.On November 12, 2018, Basel Soukaneh’s life was significantly disrupted. Soukaneh was looking for a house he was considering purchasing, but the GPS on his phone, held in a holder on the dash of his car, had frozen. He was unfamiliar with the area. Soukaneh pulled over to correct the problem, left the engine running, and had the interior lights on. A Waterbury police officer quickly knocked on his window and demanded...

That conduct, as alleged by Plaintiff-Appellee Basel Soukaneh, is that in the course of a routine traffic stop, Andrzejewski unlawfully and violently handcuffed and detained Soukaneh in the back of a police vehicle for over half an hour and conducted a warrantless search of Soukaneh’s vehicle after Soukaneh presented a facially valid firearms permit and disclosed that he possessed a firearm pursuant to the permit. On appeal, Andrzejewski argues we should reverse the district court’s denial of qualified immunity because the presence of the lawfully owned firearm in the vehicle gave him the requisite probable cause to detain Soukaneh, search...

An appeals court on Friday overturned the conviction and life sentence of a man found guilty of killing a U.S. Border Patrol agent whose death exposed the botched federal gun operation known as “Fast and Furious” has been overturned, a U.S. appeals court said Friday. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the convictions of Heraclio Osorio-Arellanes, saying his constitutional due process rights had been violated, and sent the case back to the U.S. District Court in Arizona for further proceedings. Osorio-Arellanes was sentenced in 2020 in the Dec. 14, 2010, fatal shooting of Agent Brian Terry while he...

A federal court has blocked the Federal Communications Commission‘s reinstatement of net neutrality rules that expanded government oversight over the internet. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’s ruling against the FCC on Thursday came after the federal agency voted earlier this year to reinstate former President Barack Obama’s net neutrality regulations. “The final rule implicates a major question, and the commission has failed to satisfy the high bar for imposing such regulations,” the court wrote. “Net neutrality is likely a major question requiring clear congressional authorization.” The court has paused the regulation, saying it will pick up the case...

Voters in Arizona who register with the state and do not provide proof of citizenship will be rejected. "This is a victory for election integrity in Arizona. Only U.S. citizens should be allowed to vote in our elections. It sounds like common sense, but the radical left elected officials in our state continue to reject this notion, disrespecting the voices of our lawful Arizona voters. We are grateful the court is upholding this provision in our law, and it's time for Congress to take action to ensure only lawful U.S. citizens are voting in federal races."

A federal judge has decided not to rule on a South Dakota lawsuit challenging a pro-abortion ballot measure initiative — for now. The ballot measure would enshrine the “right” to abortion in the state’s constitution, and Judge Karen Schreier said she wants to hear from a state court before she rules. In June, the pro-life organization Life Defense Fund filed a federal lawsuit against the ballot measure, alleging that the group behind the measure, Dakotans for Health, broke election laws in its process of gathering petition signatures, and misled people as to what they were signing. In her Friday ruling,...

A Catholic school in North Carolina was within its legal rights to dismiss a substitute teacher because he was in a same-sex marriage, a federal appeals court ruled.A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Wednesday that Charlotte Catholic High School could fire Lonnie Billard for marrying a man.Circuit Judge Pamela Harris, an Obama appointee, authored the majority opinion, concluding that the Catholic school was protected by the "ministerial exception," noting that Billard's employment involved an inherently religious element."We conclude that the school entrusted Billard with 'vital religious duties,' making him a 'messenger' of its...

Today a unanimous panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit granted the U.S. Department of Justice's petition for a writ of mandamus seeking dismissal of Juliana v. United States, the so-called "Kids Climate Case." The brief order was short and direct. It noted that the Ninth Circuit had previously concluded that the plaintiffs lacked standing and ordered the case dismissed. Contrary to the plaintiffs' claims, no intervening decisions changed that fact, and that there was no basis for the district court to allow the plaintiffs to amend the complaint. This decision should not have been a...

On Tuesday a 2-1 Democrat majority of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit invalidated a good West Virginia law protecting girls’ sports against invasion by male-bodied transgender students. The Richmond-based tribunal held that West Virginia’s Save Women’s Sports Act violates the federal Title IX law, which was enacted to protect girls’ sports, and also that West Virginia’s protection of girls’ sports may further violate the Constitution. The Biden-appointed judge who wrote this absurd decision repeatedly used the propaganda term “sex assigned at birth,” as if sex were arbitrary and merely “assigned” to a newborn. On the contrary,...

A federal appeals court on Tuesday overturned the West Virginia law banning transgender girls from playing on girls' sports teams, finding that it violates Title IX, the federal civil rights law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in schools. The ruling comes amid a wave of anti-trans legislation cropping up across the country, as well as efforts to fight back against it. The ban in West Virginia was originally signed into law by Gov. Jim Justice in 2021, and introduced as the "Save Women's Sports Act." It required that any official or unofficial school-sanctioned event involving athletics determine each athlete's participation in...

The ATF can’t go after NRA members over guns with pistol braces on them. That’s the outcome of a preliminary injunction issued by a federal judge on Friday. US District Judge Sam A. Lindsay sided with the gun-rights group and enjoined the federal agency from enforcing its rule reclassifying pistol-brace-equipped guns as short barrel rifles (SBRs) under the 1934 National Firearms Act (NFA). The decision keeps any NRA member who owns a braced gun from facing six-figure fines or imprisonment if they didn’t register their gun by last year’s deadline–something most owners didn’t do. “[C]ompliance with the Final Rule is...

A federal judge ordered the FBI to release the writings of the transgender woman who shot and killed six people at a Christian school in Nashville on March 27, 2023. In the hours after the shooting, Breitbart News noted that police indicated Audrey Hale identified as transgender. Less than a month after the shooting, Breitbart News pointed out that Hale left behind a suicide note, 19 journals, and other items, and all of them have been kept from the public since the attack occurred. (The exception was a November 2023 leak of three pages, purportedly from the shooter’s writings. Seven...

federal judge ordered the FBI to provide Covenant School shooter Audrey Hale's manifesto and other documents for a private review as part of a lawsuit from Star News Digital Media Inc., the parent company of The Tennessee Star. "The court's order today is a significant victory for the public’s right to know about the motives of Audrey Elizabeth Hale, who murdered six innocent Nashvillians at the Covenant School on March 27, 2023," Tennessee Star Editor-in-Chief Michael Patrick Leahy said. Star News sued the FBI in May 2023, claiming the bureau had violated the First Amendment by rejecting multiple Freedom of...

A federal appeals court Monday rejected restrictions that Gov. Ron DeSantis and Republican lawmakers placed on addressing race-related issues in workplace training — part of a controversial 2022 law that DeSantis dubbed the “Stop WOKE Act. The workplace-training part of the law listed eight race-related concepts and said that a required training program or other activity that “espouses, promotes, advances, inculcates, or compels such individual (an employee) to believe any of the following concepts As an example of the concepts, the law targeted compelling employees to believe that an “individual, by virtue of his or her race, color, sex, or...

A federal court dismissed a case Tuesday against Republican Iowa Gov. Kimberly Reynolds’ prohibition of mask mandate in school districts across the state, official documents showed. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit found “persuasive” the argument that “the general risks associated with COVID-19, even though COVID-19 remains an ever-present concern in society, are not enough to show ‘imminent and substantial’ harm,” court papers showed in part. The court also decided that “because Plaintiffs have only alleged the potential risk of severe illness should they contract COVID-19 at school, the risk of harm is too speculative to satisfy...

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — A federal judge on Wednesday affirmed a $5 million arbitration award against MyPillow chief executive Mike Lindell in favor of a software engineer who challenged data that Lindell said proves China interfered in the 2020 U.S. presidential election and tipped the outcome to Joe Biden. Lindell said he plans to appeal. Asked if he can afford to pay, he pointed out that the breach-of-contract lawsuit was against one of his companies, Lindell Management LLC, and not against him personally. “Of course we’re going to appeal it. This guy doesn’t have a dime coming,” Lindell said.

Trump must pay $ 83.3 MILLION to E. Jean Carroll for defamation, a federal jury has ruled

U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon on Friday granted James Cromitie, 58, compassionate release from prison, six months after the three other members of the "Newburgh Four" were freed. The group was arrested in 2009 on charges of conspiracy to bomb Jewish buildings in New York and shoot down National Guard planes. The group was convicted in 2011 and sentenced to twenty-five years in prison. Last July, Judge McMahon ordered the other three conspirators released on the grounds that they had been manipulated into the plot by the FBI...

Ohio’s 2023 election integrity law requiring residents to present a form of ID when casting their ballots is constitutional, a federal court ruled on Monday. Writing for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, Judge Donald Nugent, a Clinton appointee, ruled that Democrat-backed groups provided no evidence to justify their claims that HB 458 places an undue “burden” on Ohioans and their ability to vote. Specifically, plaintiffs — a coalition of left-leaning groups like the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless, the Ohio Federation of Teachers, the Ohio Alliance for Retired Americans, the Union Veterans Council, and...