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Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has been ordered to be deposed due to his decision to reinstate a citizenship status question in the upcoming 2020 census. A U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman of the Southern District of New York "Secretary Ross must sit for a deposition because… his intent and credibility are directly at issue, had an unusually strong personal interest and that he went through with this action despite "strong and continuing opposition" from the U.S. Census Bureau… there is a “heightened risk in the current political climate” that the question will lead to a lower response rate “because of...

AGJeff Sessions is telling Justice Department lawyers to push back against federal judges who have imposed nationwide injunctions against many of the Trump administration’s policies. "A number of such injunctions in recent years have brought to the fore 'the problem of judges acting outside the bounds of their authority' and granting relief that reaches far beyond the confines of the particular case or controversy before them,”.. adding, “Consistent with the longstanding position of the Ex. Branch under Administrations of both parties, the Dept.of Justice opposes the issuance of such nationwide injunctions.” In the memo, Sessions tells lawyers to remind the...

A federal judge on Friday ordered 32 Florida counties to provide sample Spanish language ballots that could help more than 30,000 Puerto Ricans, including many displaced by last year’s Hurricane Maria, to cast votes in the November election. Chief Judge Mark Walker of the federal court in Tallahassee, the state capital, said failing to help eligible voters would likely violate the federal Voting Rights Act, which blocks states from conditioning the right to vote on an ability to understand English. “Puerto Ricans are American citizens,” wrote Walker, an appointee of former President Barack Obama. “Unique among Americans, they are not...

Judge Robert S. Lasnik, United States District Judge of the Western District of Washington, at Seattle, issued a permanent injunction against the Trump Administration State Department. The injunction is to prevent the State Department from implementing a court settlement with Defense Distributed, allowing them to exercise their First Amendment rights. The permanent injunction was issued on the 27th of August, 2018, in Seattle, Washington State.  The temporary restraining order had been issued on 31 July.   Judge Lasnik has taken the power of deciding what may or may not be lawful, based on the principle of potential harm. Potential, or irreparable...

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster is not giving up on his promise to protect his state taxpayers from funding the largest abortion group in America, Planned Parenthood. On Thursday, McMaster said he plans to contest a judge’s ruling blocking his efforts, WCNC News reports. “My position is the taxpayers of South Carolina who do not support the promotion of abortion should not have to support with their tax money the promotion of abortion, and that’s what Planned Parenthood does any way you look at it,” McMaster told reporters. In July, McMaster took a bold stance against the abortion industry by...

A federal judge on Monday granted a preliminary injunction to a coalition of states seeking to block a Texas-based company from posting online blueprints for how to make 3D-printed guns. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Robert S. Lasnik followed an initial temporary restraining order he granted in late July that blocked the federal government from implementing terms of a settlement the company, Defense Distributed, struck with the State Department earlier this year that would have allowed founder Cody Wilson to start posting the files again. The ruling Monday means the blockade will continue while the judge considers the broader...

WASHINGTON – In a landmark decision, a federal judge has ruled that President Trump violated the U.S. Constitution and laws providing checks and balances in the federal government by attempting to deny more than 2 million federal workers their legal right to representation. Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled late friday that the Trump administration’s May 25 executive order on official time violated the 1st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the separation of powers as established in law. The American Federation of Government Employees, which was the first union to challenge President Trump’s...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. federal judge on Saturday rejected key elements of President Donald Trump’s May executive orders that would make it easier to fire federal employees and reduce their ability to bargain collectively. Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, said in a court order that Trump’s orders, which also would reduce the amount of time low-performing employees had to improve their performance before being fired, “undermine federal employees’ right to bargain collectively.” Trump signed three executive orders in May that administration officials said would give government agencies greater ability to...

Washington's Supreme Court has cleared the way for a gun-control initiative to appear on the November ballot. The court late Friday afternoon reversed a judge's decision earlier this month that threw out more than 300,000 signatures used to qualify Initiative 1639, saying the petition format did not follow election law. Thurston County Superior Court Judge James Dixon had said the signature petitions did not clearly identify what would change in the law and the font was too small to be readable. He ordered the secretary of state to stop certification of the measure. But the Supreme Court ruling, written by...

A federal judge Friday knocked the Trump administration for withholding information from those suing it over the transgender military ban as she decided to withhold ruling on the case. In an order issued Friday, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly denied both the defendant’s and the plaintiff’s motions for summary judgment, which is when a judge makes a ruling on case without a full trial. Rather than granting either party’s motion for summary judgment, she concluded, “the court will allow plaintiffs the opportunity to complete discovery.” In a memo accompanying the order, Kollar-Kotelly wrote that...

Attorney General Jeff Sessions is reversing the closed-door “administrative closure” amnesty for 350,000 migrants which was quietly created by officials working for former President Barack Obama. The huge amnesty was carried out by Obama’s judges in the immigration courts who told roughly 350,000 migrants that their case files were being placed in storage facilities instead of being used in trials to send them home. But Sessions has ordered that the files be pulled from storage and sent back into the immigration courts, alarming immigration lawyers, and progressives. The migration industry is denouncing the amnesty reversal as an intrusion on the...

Tuesday was a lucky day for Imran Awan, the former IT administrator for Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla. A federal judge sentenced him to three months of supervised release and no fine for one count of bank fraud – sparing him any jail time. Awan could have faced much more serious charges and a long prison sentence if he had been tried and convicted on accusations that he ran a spy ring inside Congress and stole congressional computer equipment. Yet stunningly, Awan was not charged with those crimes. Instead, federal prosecutors ignored their own compelling evidence implicating him in the...

A federal judge issued a nationwide injunction Thursday against the Trump administration for delaying the Obama-era Waters of the United States rule, dealing a setback to a key piece of President Trump's deregulatory agenda. The decision by the U.S. District Court in South Carolina means that the so-called Clean Water Rule is again operative in 26 states where district courts have not halted the regulation.

A judge agreed to appoint an independent “firewall” lawyer to review pretrial evidence related to special counsel Robert Mueller’s case against Russians who allegedly interfered in the 2016 election. The evidence will be screened for possible national security issues before it is turned over to a Kremlin-linked defendant, Bloomberg News reported Monday. U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich approved the request for the counsel because Mueller is concerned with providing evidence to Yevgeny Prigozhin, a wealthy Russian businessman and longtime associate of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Department of Justice’s legal team warned against Prigozhin gaining access to “sensitive” evidence. That...

A U.S. court on Monday ruled the Trump administration could not enforce an updated policy barring certain transgender people from serving in the U.S. military, becoming the second court in the country to rule against the government since it unveiled the policy in March. Trump announced on March 23 that he would endorse a plan by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to restrict the military service of transgender people who experience a condition called gender dysphoria. The policy replaced an outright ban on transgender service members that Trump announced last year on Twitter, citing concern over military focus and medical costs....

U.S. District Court Judge Robert Lasnik in Seattle issued a temporary restraining order blocking the release of downloadable blueprints for 3D-printed firearms. Lasnik’s ruling comes a day after Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson filed a suit challenging the Trump administration’s decision to allow the release of the blueprints. A federal judge in Seattle has granted a temporary restraining order blocking a Texas man from releasing downloadable blueprints for 3D-printed plastic firearms. U.S. District Court Judge Robert Lasnik’s ruling Tuesday comes a day after Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson filed a suit challenging the Trump administration’s decision last month...

The Trump administration suffered another legal defeat on its sanctuary city crackdown after a judge Friday permanently blocked the government from retaliating against Chicago’s sanctuary policy by stripping away its police grant money. U.S. District Judge Harry D. Leinenweber, a Reagan appointee to the bench, said the administration is free to track down illegal immigrants on its own, but it cannot force Chicago to cooperate in reporting or turning them over. His ruling follows similar defeats for the Trump administration in California and Philadelphia, where judges have also ruled against the administration’s attempts to condition Byrne Justice Assistance Grant money...

The Supreme Court Matters to Us Allv July 10, 2018 by Lily Categories: I just had to say this Tags: justice, U.S. Supreme Court We are all susceptible to being lulled into a false sense of security that makes us think all is right with the world, or at least our little corner of it. But if you needed a reminder that these times are anything but normal, you just got it by way of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent rulings, and Donald Trump’s nominee to the court: Brett Kavanaugh. The justices delivered an eardrum-splitting, 200-decibel wakeup call in the...

The Trump administration on Monday lost a bid to persuade a federal court to allow long-term detention of migrant families, a significant legal setback to the president’s immigration agenda. In a ruling that countered nearly every argument posed by the Justice Department, Judge Dolly M. Gee of the Federal District Court in Los Angeles held that there was no basis to amend a longstanding consent decree that requires children to be released to licensed care programs within 20 days. The government said that long-term confinement was the only way to avoid separating families when parents were detained on criminal charges....

Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) on Monday said a restaurant gave him free food because the owner "appreciated" what he was doing in his fight against President Trump's "zero tolerance" immigration policy. "My experience at restaurants: I ordered take out at a Greek restaurant," Lieu tweeted. "When I arrived, the owner saw me & threw in a free baklava (one of my favorite desserts). He said he appreciated what I was doing. I guess that's what happens when one opposes ripping kids away from parents." Lieu's tweet comes as he and many other lawmakers are pressuring the Trump administration to reunite...