Free Republic

The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence has been in an ongoing legal battle for years now trying to sue Lucky Gunner, an ammunition supplier, and hold them responsible for James Holmes shooting up the Aurora movie theater. How they managed that mental leap was always a bit of a mystery, but they’ve been able to tie up Lucky Gunner in court for quite a while over it. This week a judge had apparently heard enough and declared the action to be little more than a publicity stunt and a nuisance suit, ordering the Brady Center to pay the...

Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi sued the Obama administration Monday to stop a new regulation asserting federal authority over minor waterways like streams and wetlands. The rule from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is one of the most controversial regulations from the Obama administration, redefining how the EPA enforces the water pollution protections of the Clean Water Act. In the lawsuit, filed in a Houston-based federal court, the states argue that the rule “is an unconstitutional and impermissible expansion of federal power over the states and their citizens and property owners.” The states’ attorneys general — all Republican — said the...

A federal judge has ordered that the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence pay the legal fees of an online ammunition dealer it sued for the Aurora movie theater shooting. [Snip] “A crazed, homicidal killer should not be able to amass a military arsenal, without showing his face or answering a single question, with the simple click of a mouse,” Brady Center’s Legal Action Project Director Jonathan Lowy said at the time. “If businesses choose to sell military-grade equipment online, they must screen purchasers to prevent arming people like James Holmes.” Judge Matsch disagreed with the Brady Center’s argument. He...

No excerpt. It's a PDF. Scalia's dissenting opinion begins on page 27.

Six are the Chief, Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan.

... But as soon as he pressed play on his way home, he was shocked out of his anesthesia-induced stupor: He found that he had recorded the entire examination, and that the surgical team had mocked and insulted him as soon as he drifted off to sleep. And in addition to their vicious commentary, the doctors discussed avoiding the man after the colonoscopy, instructing an assistant to lie to him, and then placed a false diagnosis on his chart. “After five minutes of talking to you in pre-op,” the anesthesiologist told the sedated patient, “I wanted to punch you in...

Tick, tick, tick. A day of reckoning for the IRS gets closer with a unanimous opinion from a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in the Z Street case. Z Street explains: The pro-Israel organization Z STREET was today, once again, vindicated in a court of law in its now nearly five year effort to redress the violation of its Constitutional rights by the Internal Revenue Service. The judges in their Opinion were far more restrained than their reactions to the IRS arguments during the oral argument which took place on May 4, see http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-irs-goes-to-court-1430953480, but their...

The clock is ticking down toward the eventual Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which will supposedly “settle” the gay marriage question once and for all. Most of the observers I’ve seen making predictions seem to feel that they will codify marriage as a right which crosses all boundaries except in cases of children and close familial ties, and some seem to feel that opponents of gay marriage won’t even get all four conservative justices on their side. My own views on the general topic are well known and there’s no need to go into the whole thing...

As it stands now, Uber employs its drivers as third-party contractors, operating as a logistics company that provides access to customer demand and directions, transactions, etc. for the drivers. Uber has argued repeatedly in various courts that it is not a transportation or taxi company, but rather a software platform that matches customer demand with supply. This ruling changes all that, turning Uber into a transportation startup instead of a logistics software company. That puts the company in a position to face a number of legal obstacles, as well as rising costs of employing those drivers directly and offering them...

Rachel Dolezal, the former head of the Spokane chapter of the NAACP, sued Howard University after she received her graduate degree there, claiming the historically black college had discriminated against her because she was white. [Snip] WTTG reported that Dolezal filed her lawsuit against Howard in 2002, asking for damages due to "medical and emotional distress." Dolezal, who then went by her married name, Rachel Moore, claimed the university blocked her appointment as a teaching assistant, failed to hire her as an art teacher upon graduation and removed some of her pieces from a student art exhibition in favor of...

This was in 2002, before the “transition.” According to a Court of Appeals opinion, Dolezal’s lawsuit “claimed discrimination based on race, pregnancy, family responsibilities and gender.” She alleged that Smith and other school officials improperly blocked her appointment to a teaching assistant post, rejected her application for a post-graduate instructorship, and denied her scholarship aid while she was a student.The court opinion also noted that Dolezal claimed that the university’s decision to remove some of her artworks from a February 2001 student exhibition was “motivated by a discriminatory purpose to favor African-American students over” her.As detailed in the court...

The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a federal sex discrimination lawsuit on behalf of a Virginia high school student who has been prohibited from using the boys bathrooms and locker rooms on school premises. The student plaintiff, 16-year-old Gavin Grimm, attends Gloucester High School in quiet, coastal Virginia, reports the Daily Press of Newport News. The reason school officials have prevented Grimm from using facilities reserved for boys on campus is because Grimm was born a girl and by all accounts remains a girl. Nevertheless, Grimm, her family and the ACLU want a court order forcing the local school...

hey chanted, “Hail Satan,” as they worshiped at the altar of abortion. They tried to drown out the voice of the people to defeat a lifesaving law. They failed. This was the bill the Left abhorred, abortionists loathed, and the Culture of Death feared. Today, the abortion industry’s grand attempts to bury a critical pro-life law in Texas went down in flames. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a pro-life law in Texas that requires abortion clinics to abide by basic safety standards and mandates that abortionists in those clinics have critical lifesaving hospital admitting privileges should they...

Republicans in Congress are worried the Supreme Court will hand them a major headache this month if it rules against the federal health insurance exchanges in more than 30 states, ending subsidies for millions of people. While the Affordable Care Act remains broadly unpopular, two new polls show a majority of Americans don’t want to do away with its subsidies, a core component of the law. This poses a conundrum for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Speaker John Boehner. They are under pressure from colleagues up for reelection in swing states and districts to extend the subsidies, at...

Before the month ends, the U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether millions of Americans will be able to keep government subsidies used to purchase health insurance. It’s unclear how the court will rule, but the high-stakes case has already ignited a flurry of doomsday predictions and political posturing in the event the subsidies are struck down. Republicans, who control Congress, have put forward a few proposals that would protect the subsidies in some form but only by repealing major tenets of the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama’s signature health law. But some health experts and advocacy groups say these...

CAIR files lawsuit to prevent ICE from asking Muslims entering US about jihad-related activities, relatives U.S. border officials are using a questionnaire about religion to harass Muslim travelers, a Muslim advocacy group charges. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement questionnaire was released by the Department of Homeland Security in response to a lawsuit by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Intercept reports. The questions that were revealed — the document was heavily redacted — include “Have you participated in any formal religious training or schooling?” “What house of worship do you attend?” and “Do you have any relatives or friends...

GOP-led House sued the Obama administration, citing changes to the Affordable Care Act made without permission from Congress  Republicans' case also complains that the administration is spending money on the program that Congress never appropriatedFederal judge blasted the Justice Department attorney before her on Thursday who claimed Congress hadn't been harmed by those choices'You don't really believe that, do you?' she asked?  'I have a very hard time taking that statement seriously'Judge demanded to know how changing the Obamacare law without Congress isn't 'an insult to the Constitution, as the House believes' Obama administration attorneys urged a federal judge Thursday...

Bill and Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation have been hit with a racketeering lawsuit in Florida court. The lawsuit, filed by Larry Klayman of Freedom Watch, includes a legal request to have the Florida judge seize the private server on which Hillary Clinton and her aides hosted their emails while she served as secretary of state. Klayman has filed dozens of lawsuits against the Clintons and other prominent politicians. The racketeering, influenced and corrupt organizations, or RICO, case alleges the former first couple and their family philanthropy traded political favors for donations or generous speaking fees for Bill Clinton...

A novice rider is suing a rodeo company in Vernon over a bull named Slow Poke that he alleges failed to live up to its name and caused him serious injury. [Snip] [The plaintiff] is seeking damages and health-care costs. "Contrary to representation, Slow Poke was violent," his claim reads.

Companies in the United States are now facing more than twice as much litigation as companies in other countries. That’s the disturbing finding of a survey recently conducted by the third-largest law firm in the world. The firm, Norton Rose Fulbright, which happens to be the largest law firm in the world based outside the US, conducted a poll of more than 800 corporate counsel representing companies across 26 countries, and the results are not good for American companies or the job seekers who would like to work for them. While the survey is performed to identify litigation trends across...