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The developers of Mountain Valley Pipeline have asked the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court for an emergency intervention to allow the project’s construction to progress. The pipeline developers made their application late Friday to vacate the stays of the Fourth Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals. Such applications represent a request for emergency action addressed to a specific justice, in this case Chief Justice John Roberts. Each justice is assigned to circuits to handle such applications, and Roberts has the Fourth Circuit, which includes the region where the pipeline is being developed. The 35-page filing is in...

A record number of bills aimed at restricting the rights of LGBTQ people have become law in the past three years, but the majority of those that have faced legal challenges haven’t held up in court, according to an NBC News analysis, legal experts and the American Civil Liberties Union, which has filed legal challenges against some of the laws. Just this year, state representatives introduced 491 bills aimed at restricting LGBTQ rights, with 77 of them becoming law, according to the ACLU. The majority of bills proposed and passed focused on limiting the ability of transgender youth to receive...

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Republican Attorney General Tim Griffin said they plan to appeal the ruling to the Eighth CircuitA federal judge on Tuesday ruled an Arkansas law that bans hormone treatment, puberty blockers or surgery for transgender minors is unconstitutional. U.S. District Judge Jay Moody said that the first-in-the-nation law violated the due process and equal protection rights of transgender youth and their families and it violated the First Amendment rights of health care providers by prohibiting them from referring patients elsewhere. "Rather than protecting children or safeguarding medical ethics, the evidence showed that the prohibited medical...

Washington — A California man who prosecutors described as "one of the most violent defendants on January 6, 2021" was sentenced to 151 months — about 12 ½ years — in prison Wednesday after pleading guilty to violent and obstructive conduct during the Capitol riot. Daniel "DJ" Rodriguez admitted as part of a plea agreement in February that he attacked former Washington, D.C. police officer Michael Fanone with a taser, causing him to lose consciousness, and that he worked to stop Congress from certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election. Rodriguez will also have to pay $96,000 to cover...

On Friday, a federal judge in Massachusetts ruled a shirt that read "THERE ARE ONLY TWO GENDERS" could be construed as bullying of a protected class and is not protected speech after a 12-year-old and his father filed suit against officials in the Middlesbrough Public School district for First and Fourteenth Amendment rights violations. Judge Indira Talwani said in the court ruling, the boy and his father had "not established a likelihood of success on the merits where he is unable to counter Defendants’ showing that enforcement of the Dress Code was undertaken to protect the invasion of the rights...

It was on Guo’s yacht that Bannon, the former chief White House strategist for Donald Trump, was arrested in a criminal fraud case in 2020.Guo Wengui, a Chinese billionaire and associate of Steve Bannon, was denied bail on Thursday after being charged in a $1 billion fraud case in March. U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres rejected Guo’s proposed bail package, saying he must remain behind bars pending trial because there is “no condition or set of conditions” that would ensure his return to court or the safety of the community, according to the court order. Torres said Guo “has means...

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit tossed a Berkeley, California, ban on gas stoves on Monday, saying that the federal Energy Policy and Conservation Act preempted state and local authorities in regulating natural gas. The Courthouse News Service reported: The three-judge panel’s ruling reverses a federal judge’s dismissal of a lawsuit by the California Restaurant Association claiming the Energy Policy and Conservation Act preempts the San Francisco Bay Area city’s ban. The group said the ordinance would affect chefs’ ability to prepare food the way they are typically trained — using natural gas stoves.

A federal judge has issued a ruling that will stop the sales of abortion drugs nationwide and possibly save hundreds of thousands or even millions of babies from abortions. The abortion drug mifepristone is used for more than half of all abortions in the U.S. every year, or hundreds of thousands of unborn babies, according to the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute. But a new lawsuit, filed by a group of doctors with the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, challenges the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval and later expansion of the deadly drug under the Clinton, Obama and Biden administrations. Represented by...

PORTLAND, Ore. — A federal judge in Texas on Friday ordered that access to a common abortion pill be put on hold across the country, and then minutes later a federal judge in Washington ordered the Food and Drug Administration to keep the drug accessible. The dueling rulings put the medication mifepristone, which has been available for more than 20 years, in limbo. Not long after the rulings, Oregon’s senior U.S. senator, Ron Wyden, a Democrat, told KATU in a telephone interview that the president and the FDA should ignore the Texas judge’s ruling. "I think there's no basis for...

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A lawsuit that Louisiana and other Republican-leaning states filed challenging figures the Biden administration uses to calculate damages from greenhouse gasses was dismissed Wednesday by a federal appeals court. The unanimous decision by three judges on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans was the latest defeat for states challenging the Biden “cost of carbon” policy. It leaves the administration to continue using a damage cost estimate of about $51 per ton of carbon dioxide emissions as it develops environmental regulations. That estimate is under review by the administration and could increase. The...

On March 6, 2023, federal Judge Brian C. Wimes ruled the Missouri Second Amendment Protection Act was unconstitutional, claiming the Act violates the Supremacy clause of the US Constitution, invalidates federal law, and violates the doctrine of “intergovernmental immunity”. On June 12, 2021, Governor Parson signed the Missouri Second Amendment Protection Act (SAPA). The act prohibits state and local officers from cooperating with Federal agents to enforce certain federal laws, mostly to do with firearms.The Federal court system has long held states cannot be compelled to use their resources to enforce federal laws. States are not required to explain why...

Google “adopted a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy for keeping messages, at the expense of its preservation duties,” a federal judge said. The court ordered Google to pay attorney fees involved in the dispute but is still deciding remedies.

A trio of federal appellate judges upheld a prior legal ruling on Thursday that bars the state of Florida from enforcing the ‘Stop WOKE Act’ while it faces ongoing legal battles related to its constitutionality. The measure, supported by Gov. Ron DeSantis, imposes restrictions on the instruction of race-related concepts in Florida’s public universities. The decision affirmed a ruling ordered by Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker last year, where he granted a preliminary injunction against the legislation, finding that it violated First Amendment rights. “Neither the state of Florida’s authority to regulate public school curriculum nor its interest in...

A federal judge ruled that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration did not violate a court order regarding the state’s "Stop WOKE Act," which prohibits colleges from promoting critical race theory lessons and targets other "woke" concepts prevalent on higher education campuses. "Although this court would not hesitate to compel compliance with its preliminary injunction, this court finds there has been no violation of the injunction at this time," U.S. District Judge Mark E. Walker wrote on Thursday, according to the Orlando Sentinel. Plaintiffs had challenged the law, known as the "Stop Wrongs To Our Kids and Employees Act" or "Stop...

A panel of three federal judges in South Carolina ruled Friday the state’s 1st District was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander and ordered state lawmakers to redraw the congressional map before any more elections can be held. The decision gave lawmakers until March to draw new lines for the district, which runs along the state’s southern coast and is currently represented by Republican Nancy Mace. The ruling is the latest in suits over this decade’s congressional redistricting based on the 2020 census results, including in states such as Florida and Texas. An individual voter and the state’s NAACP filed the lawsuit...

The Biden Administration signed off on Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, regulations to protect small streams, wetlands and waterways as part of the Clean Water Act, just before the end of 2022.President Biden’s signing of the regulations ultimately repealed Trump-era regulations that made many waterways susceptible to pollution and were thrown out by federal courts.The EPA signed off on the revised definition of "Waters of the United States," on Dec. 29, while the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers signed off on the revised definitions on Dec. 28.The revised rules define what types of water bodies are protected under the Clean...

The U.S. Justice Department has asked a federal judge to hold Donald Trump's office in contempt of court for failing to fully comply with a subpoena to return all classified documents in the former president's possession, the Washington Post reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell has not yet held a hearing or ruled on the request, the newspaper reported. One of the key areas of disagreement centers on the Trump legal team's repeated refusal to designate a custodian of records to sign a document attesting that all classified materials have been...

Democrat attorneys general seek to force Catholic schools to hire homosexual teachersThe lawyers' amicus brief argues that Catholic high schools do not have a right to hire and fire people in accordance with Church teaching.CHARLOTTE, North Carolina (LifeSiteNews) — Eighteen Democrat attorneys general have joined in an amicus brief against a Catholic high school who fired a substitute teacher in a homosexual “marriage.” The brief, filed last week, argued that the Catholic high school does not have a right to not hire individuals that live a lifestyle incongruent with Catholicism. A federal court ruled in September 2021 against the high...

A judge in Arizona on Thursday ordered the governing board of a ruby-red county in the southeastern corner of the state to certify the results of the Nov. 8 election, finding that its members had no authority to shirk a duty required under state law...The denouement in Cochise County played out as a federal judge, also on Thursday, sanctioned lawyers for Kari Lake and Mark Finchem, the unsuccessful GOP candidates for governor and secretary of state, respectively. Taken together, the orders show how judges are scorning efforts to politicize ministerial roles and undermine election administration.The federal judge, John Tuchi of...

Obama Judge John Tuchi in Arizona ruled on Wednesday afternoon, November 23, 2022, the day before Thanksgiving, that Maricopa County was justified in discriminating against TGP reporter Jordan Conradson and preventing him access to the County’s press room after another corrupt election disaster in the county. Judge Tuchi who was appointed by Barack Obama to the District Court in Arizona waited until Wednesday afternoon, the day before Thanksgiving, to announce his ruling on the case between The Gateway Pundit and Maricopa County in Arizona.