Free Republic

Two women were married on a sidewalk outside a county courthouse in Arkansas on Saturday, breaking a barrier that state voters put in place with a constitutional amendment 10 years ago. A day after Pulaski County Circuit Judge Chris Piazza said the ban was “an unconstitutional attempt to narrow the definition of equality,” Kristin Seaton, 27, and Jennifer Rambo, 26, exchanged vows at an impromptu ceremony, officiated by a woman in a rainbow-colored dress.The couple had spent the night in their Ford Focus after traveling to Eureka Springs from their home at Fort Smith, and was the first of about...

The family of a Texas teenager who killed four people in a drunken-driving wreck has agreed to pay more than $2 million to the family of a boy left paralyzed by the accident. Tarrant County court documents show that the liability insurer of Ethan Couch’s parents agreed to pay more than $1 million in cash and the rest in two annuities to a trust established for Sergio Molina. …

State District Judge Jeanine Howard of Dallas has removed herself from a controversial rape case after questioning the victim's innocence and sentencing the admitted rapist to community service at a rape crisis center. Yes, really. Howard voluntary recused herself following an interview with the Dallas Morning News last week, in which she said the girl, 14 at the time, "wasn't the victim she claimed to be," and the attacker, then 18, "is not your typical sex offender." The judge, a Democrat running unopposed for reelection in the fall, cited medical records that showed the girl's past sexual activity and that...

By the time he was arrested for sexually assaulting two siblings, 15-year-old J.B. had been molested by his alcoholic father and subjected to 25 moves among his birth, foster and adoptive families. He had also suffered from untreated attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and depression. Though tried in juvenile court, with its focus on privacy and rehabilitation, he was later required by a 2012 Pennsylvania law to register as a sex offender—branded a long-term danger to society, with no way off the list for at least 25 years. Juvenile law advocates campaigning against such automatic registries argue that they undermine the...

Editor's Note: Column was coauthored by Ken Klukowski. Justice John Paul Stevens doesn’t believe anyone has the right to own a gun, and admits that you would need to rewrite the Constitution to make his preference a legal reality. And that’s exactly what he thinks should happen. Throughout his 35-year tenure on the Supreme Court, Justice Stevens was a lion of the Legal Left. He was an unapologetic advocate of the “Living Constitution”— that judges should continually reinterpret the words of the Constitution in accordance with what they, and other elite members of society, decide is the evolving enlightenment of...

Amidst all the opinions out of the nation's highest court on Tuesday -- majority and minority, concurring in part and dissenting in part, or just too vague to classify -- was there any clear message? Yes. Definitely. But you had to peer through all the legal haze, an admix of angry rhetoric and discreet evasions, in order to divine where the Supreme Court of the United States is headed on the always simmering issue of race-based admissions to the country's colleges and universities. But it's finally headed in the right direction, however many zigs and zags the learned justices may...

RICHMOND — The arrest of a middle school teacher on suspicion of child sexual abuse this week has raised questions about the West Contra Costa Unified School District's hiring practices, because the teacher was hired while police were investigating him. Ron Guinto, 32, of Vallejo, was arrested about 7:45 a.m. Wednesday in the parking lot of Mira Vista Elementary School. The seventh-grade English and science teacher is expected to be charged with 11 counts of lewd acts on a child under 14 years old, two counts of forced oral copulation and one count of assault with intent to commit sodomy,...

John Paul Stevens says he thinks it’s appropriate for Supreme Court justices to factor in political considerations when weighing a decision to retire. Here’s what the former justice tells ABC’s “This Week”: “I think certainly it’s natural and an appropriate thing to think about your successor.” …

A judge has ordered a man convicted of harassing a neighbor and her disabled children to stand on a street corner with a sign that says he is a bully. Municipal Court Judge Gayle Williams-Byers ordered 62-year-old Edmond Aviv to hold the sign for five hours Sunday. The sign reads: “I AM A BULLY! I pick on children that are disabled, and I am intolerant of those that are different from myself. My actions do not reflect an appreciation for the diverse South Euclid community that I live in.” The judge also said the sign’s letters must be large enough...

“You know, it’s almost a life motto (‘Well-behaved women rarely make history’). If you read the book (My Beloved World), you know I’m very law abiding. But I make it very clear that, like all people, there are exceptions. I like driving fast. I’m a pure New Yorker and I jaywalk. None of us is perfect. Sometimes you have to do the unexpected.” […] “In the United States, certain segments of society played with quotas for a number of years. What ended up happening is that the larger population got angry. And the Supreme Court ultimately said that quotas were...

The names of the six-member jury panel that acquitted George Zimmerman in the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin have been made public for the first time, after a new court order, records show. Circuit Judge Debra Nelson, who had previously ordered the jurors' identifying information be kept confidential, granted access to the names in a ruling March 21.

A New York appeals court has affirmed a lower court’s 2012 ruling that a lesbian chef is owed $1.6 million for being forced to attend weekly prayer meetings where her boss would regularly warn that "gay people" were "going to go to hell." Mirella Salemi sued Gloria's Tribeca Inc., Gloria's Tribecamex and principal owner Edward Globokar for violations of the New York City Human Rights Law after a string of incidents that occurred between 2004 and 2007. Gloria's Tribeca is a Mexican restaurant. Salemi was awarded $400,000 in compensatory damages and $1.2 million in punitive damages in what her lawyer,...

Glenn Reynolds not only runs the indispensable Instapundit website, he is also a distinguished law professor at the University of Tennessee and writes a regular column for USA Today. Today’s column is an important one, “Our Criminal Justice System Has Become a Crime.”

On Wednesday, Feb. 12, pro-life activist Peter D'Attilio was convicted by a jury on three charges stemming from an incident when he held a pro-life sign in front of a school in Brockton, Mass. on March 21, 2012. After a two-day trial in Brockton District Court, the six-person jury found him guilty of disturbing a school, trespass, and resisting arrest. Those verdicts came despite the fact that Peter's lawyer (using testimony by the prosecution's own witnesses) clearly proved that he did not commit any of those crimes. This was a monumental miscarriage of justice. In the end, the facts and...

With full control of the House but not the Senate or the White House, Republicans lack the ability to enact positive legislation; yet they have the power to stop bad bills. Unfortunately, GOP leaders have made it clear they are willing to pass much of the Obama/Reid agenda because they don’t want confrontation with Democrats ahead of the midterm elections. For conservatives, that pretty much leaves us with the strategy of attempting to pass good bills out of the House just for messaging purposes. With unelected federal judges and administration bureaucrats forcing gay “marriage” on sovereign states across the country,...

“We made a commitment to each other in our love and lives, and now had the legal commitment, called marriage, to match. Isn't that what marriage is? ... I have lived long enough now to see big changes. The older generation's fears and prejudices have given way, and today's young people realize that if someone loves someone they have a right to marry. Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that I don't think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have...

NORFOLK, Va. (WTVR) – A federal judge declared late Thursday night that Virginia’s ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional, confirmed Michael Kelly, Director of Communications for Attorney General Mark Herring. The update was first made on Herring’s Facebook page and his Twitter account. MT “@AGMarkHerring: *ALERT* Federal judge declares state's same-sex marriage ban unconstitutional. Issues stay pending appeal.”— Mark Herring (@MarkHerringVA) February 14, 2014 “Equality in Virginia took a big step forward tonight as a federal district judge declared Virginia’s ban on same-sex marriage to be unconstitutional,” Herring wrote. “The judge issued a stay with her injunction pending appeal, meaning...

Not satisfied with President Obama for appointing record numbers of gay, female and minority judges, liberal groups and labor unions are now pressuring the president to nominate more jurists who have backgrounds working for unions and public-interest organizations. The Alliance for Justice, a coalition of more than 100 liberal groups, is lobbying the White House to “broaden the bench” with more judicial nominees who represent what it calls “professional diversity” — judges who are more likely to be aligned with the coalition’s liberal agenda. “We face a federal bench that has a striking lack of diversity,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts...

The owners of a Christian bakery who refused to make a wedding cake for a lesbian couple are facing hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines after they were found guilty of violating the couple’s civil rights. The Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries said they found “substantial evidence” that Sweet Cakes by Melissa discriminated against the lesbian couple and violated the Oregon Equality Act of 2007, a law that protects the rights of the LGBT community. Last year, the bakery’s owners refused to make a wedding cake for Rachel Cryer and Laurel Bowman, of Portland, citing their Christian beliefs....

Six South Florida couples who want to get married, but can't because they're gay, said Tuesday they're filing a lawsuit against the state seeking to overturn the Sunshine State's ban on same-sex marriage. Ten of the 12 plaintiffs, along with the gay rights group Equality Florida and the National Center for Lesbian Rights, announced the filing of their case at a news conference at the Lesbian and Gay Victor Center in Miami Beach.