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A federal judge in Oklahoma on Tuesday struck down a key provision supporting the Affordable Care Act, in yet another judicial move that threatens to derail President Obama’s vision of national health care reform. US District Judge Ronald White said in a 20-page opinion that the Internal Revenue Service lacked the authority to enact a regulation that allows the federal government to provide tax credits to qualified health care policyholders through health care exchanges in every instance. At issue in the lawsuit was whether the IRS regulation conflicted with the clear language of ACA, also known as Obamacare, which appears...

The Supreme Court’s conservatives cleared the way Monday for Ohio to restrict early voting in the state, on the eve of the day it was to start. The court granted the state’s request to stay decisions of lower courts that threw out the state’s new plan, passed by the Republican-led legislature. But the court’s four liberal justices said they would have stayed out of the case and left those decisions in place. Ohio argued that the new plan--reducing from 35 to 28 the number of days voters could cast an early ballot--could not be seen as violating the rights of

A divided Supreme Court has put off the start of early voting in Ohio, which had been set to begin Tuesday. The justices' order by a 5-4 vote Monday granted a request from state officials, who have been trying to trim the number of days for early voting and restrict weekend and evening hours. The moves prompted a lawsuit from black churches and civil rights groups that the new rules would make it difficult for residents to vote and disproportionately affect low-income and black voters Early voting in the swing state now will start on Oct. 7, under a state...

Oral argument in the Kansas Supreme Court has now completed in the case of Kobach v. Taylor, on the question whether Taylor’s name can be removed from the Kansas U.S. Senate ballot. The issue is especially important with incumbent Republican Senator Pat Roberts now trailing independent Greg Orman in recent polling and with the fate of the Senate potentially hanging in the balance. While it is always hazardous to predict outcomes from oral argument (because Justices sometimes ask rhetorical questions or minds change after argument), I think it is likely the Justices will quickly issue an order removing Taylor’s name...

The civil processing department of Louisiana´s 19th Judicial District issued two subpoenas Wednesday to Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) compelling her appearance in court on Friday, September 5 in the case of Paul Hollis versus Mary L. Landrieu and Tom Schedler, Louisiana Secretary of State, according to several sources in the 19th Judicial District. Sharon Zito, Deputy Clerk in Section 25 of the 19th Judicial District, confirmed to Breitbart News Wednesday afternoon that Ann Brandon in the civil processing department issued two subpoenas addressed to Senator Mary L. Landrieu on Wednesday morning. One subpoena was sent via mail to her listed

The U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana has struck down the City of Baton Rouge's ban (pdf) on the possession of firearms or other weapons in places that sell alcohol, and their parking lots.   The lawsuit was filed under Section 1983.   The court granted default judgment to the plaintiff.   A  permanent injunction was ordered against enforcement of the ordinance, which was passed in 2012.   A hearing to determine the amount of damages will be held on October 23, 2014. The facts are clear and undisputed.  On October 13, 2012, at about 1:35 a.m., Earnest Taylor was...

The Supreme Court has turned aside all Second Amendment challenges since a pair of landmark rulings in 2008 and 2009 confirmed the rights of individuals to keep and bear arms. But some believe a California case could make the high court return to the controversial area and determine whether gun ownership rights extend beyond the corners of one's home. [Snip] In February, a divided three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled in Laxson's favor concluding that as responsible citizens she and the other plaintiffs have the right to carry a concealed weapon for self-protection. The San...

Last Saturday, Breitbart News uncovered three reports and analysis written by Jonathan Gruber, an MIT economist and chief architect of Obamacare, stating that subsidies or tax credits will be provided to individuals “to purchase health insurance from private companies through state-organized exchanges.” These reports were discovered after a video clip surfaced of Gruber making similar comments on the clip. Gruber said his remarks were a "mistake" made while "speaking off-the-cuff." One of the three reports, titled “The Facts Straight on Health Care Reform,” was written by Gruber for The New England Journal of Medicine in December 2009. Breitbart has since

Over the past two years, the Obama administration has published hundreds and hundreds of rules — on how wheelchairs should be stowed aboard U.S. aircraft, how foreign trade zones should be regulated, how voting assistance should be provided for U.S. citizens overseas, and so on. There’s a problem, however: Technically speaking, these and some 1,800 other regulations shouldn’t be in effect because they weren’t reported to Congress as required. Yet there is little that lawmakers or the courts can do about it. The situation illustrates the obscure, Byzantine process used to create federal regulations — and how easily it can...

A pair of federal Appeals Court rulings have sown further confusion regarding ObamaCare, even as they illuminate stark differences in ideologically-inspired interpretations of the law. First, a three-judge panel from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that Americans are not entitled to subsidies for their healthcare premiums if they live in a state where the federal government set up a healthcare exchange.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office isn’t the only federal authority that has taken a stance against the name of the Washington Redskins. A federal judge in Maryland issued a ruling last week that purposely did not contain the team’s name, which has been described as an offensive slur against Native Americans. U.S. District Judge Peter J. Messitte, who is presiding over a lawsuit that former New York Giants linebacker Barrett Green brought against the Redskins, issued a 21-page ruling with this footnote on the first page: “Pro Football’s team is popularly known as the Washington ‘Redskins,’ but the Court...

Monday's U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the Harris v. Quinn case means that parents of disabled children, relatives and friends taking care of loved ones and child care providers can no longer be forced to financially support unions simply because they receive taxpayer-provided assistance. "I felt like doing back flips," said Sherry Loar, when asked her reaction to the high court's decision. Loar is the Petoskey child care provider, who in 2009 brought the first forced unionization of workers to the attention of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. "Trying to bring to light the fact that this is about...

The United States Supreme Court said today that workers who indirectly receive state funds for taking care of the disabled or elderly cannot be forced to pay union dues. The Justices ruled 5-4 in favor of an Illinois mom and a group of Illinois personal care assistants who said their First Amendment rights of free speech and free association had been violated by a forced unionization. The case, Harris v. Quinn, was similar to a scheme in Michigan in which the Service Employees International Union took more than $34 million from the elderly and disabled who received Medicaid money from...

Many observers misunderstood the Hobby Lobby dispute and others like it as a First Amendment case, but it wasn’t. It primarily related to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), with an indirect reference to the constitutional freedom of religious expression. A case in Louisiana may be the real McCoy, though. The Louisiana Supreme Court has ruled that a priest must testify in a case about what he heard in a confessional — an order that would result in automatic excommunication and damnation, according to the doctrine and canon law of the Catholic Church: The state high court’s decision, rendered...

Richard Kopf, a senior United States district judge in Nebraska, thinks the Supreme Court needs to learn when to "stfu." Kopf made the recommendation in a post on his personal blog July 5, where he argued the recent Hobby Lobby ruling demonstrated the high court's need to stay away from "hot button cases."

The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) is supporting the case of a legal Australian immigrant in North Carolina.   This test case will likely result in the removal of the restriction on the issuance of a concealed carry permit to people who are not U. S. citizens in North Carolina law.   SAF won a similar case in New Mexico at the end of March of this year.  In the New Mexico case, Alan M. Gottlieb stated one of the purposes of this action.    From the Washington Times: Alan M. Gottlieb, executive vice president of the foundation, said the discrimination ruling makes...

The Illinois Supreme Court ruled today that subsidized health care premiums for retired state employees are protected under the Illinois Constitution, signaling potential trouble for an overhaul of pension benefits that’s also being challenged in court. Today’s ruling also could affect the city of Chicago’s ongoing phase-out of retiree health insurance subsidies, a program Mayor Rahm Emanuel was counting on to save millions of dollars a year, as well as legislation recently approved to modify the pension plans of city workers and laborers. The 6-1 decision centers around a 2012 law that allowed the state to charge retired workers for...

The U.S. Supreme Court went out with a bang on Monday, ending its 2013-2014 term with Justice Samuel Alito's majority opinion in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., in which the Court held that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act violated federal law by placing a substantial burden on the exercise of religion when it required two "closely held" private corporations to cover certain forms of birth control in their employee health plans. It was a painful legal defeat for the Obama administration—and it was not the only such defeat in recent days. In fact, in the past month...

e U.S. Supreme Court has decided not to hear an appeal by Google over whether it violated federal wiretapping law when its Street View mapping cars collected consumers' personal data. That leaves intact a federal appeals court ruling that the U.S. Wiretap Act protects the privacy of information on unencrypted in-home Wi-Fi networks and means Google can face lawsuits over the matter, according to a Bloomberg report. The issue stems from Google's Street View, a comprehensive mapping program that provides images of areas around the world. Google has admitted that its camera-equipped Street View cars inadvertently captured emails, passwords and...

Democrats are putting the Supreme Court in their cross hairs, using its decision against ObamaCare’s contraception mandate to rally their base ahead of the midterm elections. Within hours of the high court’s decision that closely held companies cannot be compelled to offer contraception coverage as part of their employee health plans, Democrats were trying to raise cash and rally voters to their side. Strategists said the issue of women’s reproductive health could play well in elections across the country, helping the party in contests that could largely be won and lost on turnout. “It could play in almost all of...