Free Republic

The ATF can’t go after NRA members over guns with pistol braces on them. That’s the outcome of a preliminary injunction issued by a federal judge on Friday. US District Judge Sam A. Lindsay sided with the gun-rights group and enjoined the federal agency from enforcing its rule reclassifying pistol-brace-equipped guns as short barrel rifles (SBRs) under the 1934 National Firearms Act (NFA). The decision keeps any NRA member who owns a braced gun from facing six-figure fines or imprisonment if they didn’t register their gun by last year’s deadline–something most owners didn’t do. “[C]ompliance with the Final Rule is...

A judge in Texas struck down a Biden administration rule on March 28 that required states to measure and report the greenhouse gas emissions from any vehicles using the national highway system. The rule was issued by the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT)’s Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) in 2023 as part of President Biden’s efforts to slash carbon emissions in half by 2030. Specifically, it required state transportation departments and metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) to both measure their transportation-related emissions on the U.S. highway system and set their own emission reduction targets. Additionally, the measure required state DOTs and MPOs...

A Lubbock, Texas federal judge ruled Tuesday that lawmakers unconstitutionally passed the $1.7 trillion government funding bill in 2022 when they did so under a pandemic-era rule allowing members of the U.S. House of Representatives to vote on the matter by proxy instead of in person. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, requested the courts to block a provision of the funding bill that gave pregnant workers stronger legal protections. U.S. District Judge Wesley Hendrix reviewed the request and gave a "limited" ruling on one of two provisions Paxton sought to have blocked. Hendrix, who was appointed by former...

Yesterday, American attorney Aaron Siri announced that a judge had ordered the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (“CDC”) to release additional text-based information collected by the V-safe online application. The information pertains to 7.8 million records submitted by more than 10 million V-safe users, typically detailing injuries after being injected with a covid “vaccine.”V-safe is a smartphone-based tool that uses text messaging and web surveys to provide personalised health check-ins after receiving a covid injection. The after-vaccination health checker app was developed and implemented to monitor covid-19 “vaccine” safety and as an active surveillance supplement to existing CDC...

Good news for Elon Musk. A judge appointed by former President Donald Trump will oversee the high-profile lawsuit filed by Musk against the far-left organization Media Matters. As The Gateway Pundit previously reported, Elon Musk’s X Corp., formerly known as Twitter, has filed a defamation lawsuit against Media Matters on Monday, accusing the “radical anti-free speech organization” of publishing a report that falsely claimed that X was allowing ads to run next to pro-Nazi content. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas Fort Worth Division, alleges that Media Matters’ report was “malicious” and...

The ATF can’t arrest anyone for owning a pistol-brace-equipped gun.That’s the outcome of a ruling handed down by United States District Court Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk on Wednesday. He granted a motion to stay enforcement of the agency’s rule banning the possession of effectively all braced guns that weren’t registered earlier this year. He found the ATF exceeded its power when crafting the rule.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., urged a top U.S. judge in Texas to reform his district’s case-assignment rules that he says have allowed plaintiffs to effectively “hand-pick” their preferred judges. Schumer’s demand to Chief Judge David Godbey of northern Texas federal court came after a heated legal battle over the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of an abortion pill sparked accusations of “judge shopping” by conservative litigants. Multiple court divisions in Godbey’s district have just one or two district judges. The rules currently allow for plaintiffs to target those divisions for civil cases — letting them “effectively choose the...

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...

A new ruling by a U.S. district court judge in Texas has stripped the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval of the medication abortion pill, mifepristone.

A federal judge on Thursday struck down a key provision of the Affordable Care Act, jeopardizing free coverage of a wide range of preventive services including mammograms, colonoscopies and mental health screenings for nearly 168 million people on employer health insurance and on Obamacare’s individual market. District Court Judge Reed O’Connor, the author of several previous rulings against Obamacare, sided with conservative employers and individuals in Texas who argued that the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force that set those requirements has been acting unconstitutionally since 2010. The decision blocks enforcement of the rules nationwide.

In the Fifth Circuit, the entire Court has ruled, en banc, that mere civil restraining orders may not infringe rights protected by the Second Amendment. The unconstitutional infringement was placed into law by the infamous Lautenberg Amendment in 1996. Hundreds of thousands of lives have been turned upside down and ruined by this infamous and unjust law. In the opinion published by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, Circuit Judge James C. Ho writes a particularly well-argued and presented concurrence. The concurrence is worth reading. It is quoted below, without the footnotes:James C. Ho, Circuit Judge, concurring:The right to keep...

Rep. Mondaire Jones criticized GOP-appointed judges' abilities to issue nationwide injunctions. He referred to a Trump-appointed judge blocking student-debt relief for millions of Americans. His new bill would channel that authority to D.C. courts and the Supreme Court only. A Democratic lawmaker doesn't think conservative judges should have the power to halt Democratic policies for millions of Americans. Last week, New York Rep. Mondaire Jones penned an opinion piece criticizing Republican-appointed judges' "unrestrained use of nationwide injunctions" to block Democratic policies. For example, federal Texas Judge Mark Pittman — appointed by former President Donald Trump — ruled President Joe Biden's...

A federal judge has prevented the Biden administration from ending the “Remain in Mexico” immigration policy introduced by the Trump administration, ruling on Thursday that it should stay in place while legal challenges play out. Under the policy, which was enacted in 2019 and is formally known as the Migrant Protection Protocols, asylum-seekers — including those not from Mexico — have been sent to Mexico to await proceedings in their cases. President Biden moved to end the policy, under which more than 70,000 asylum-seekers were sent to Mexico from the United States, upon taking office. Texas and Missouri took legal...

(Reuters) - A federal judge in Texas ruled on Friday that President Joe Biden's administration had wrongly interpreted an Obamacare provision as barring health care providers from discriminating against gay and transgender people. U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Amarillo ruled that a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2020 holding that a law barring workplace discrimination protects gay and transgender employees did not apply to the healthcare law. Kacsmaryk said Congress, when adopting the law, known as Obamacare, in 2010, during the tenure of former Democratic President Barack Obama, could have included "sexual orientation" or "gender identity" in the...

A federal judge in Texas struck down President Biden's student loan handout in a Thursday night ruling. Biden's plan, which aims to cancel up to $20,000 in student loan debt for Pell Grant recipients in college and up to $10,000 for others who borrowed using federal student loans. "Whether the Program constitutes good public policy is not the role of this Court to determine. Still, no one can plausibly deny that it is either one of the largest delegations of legislative power to the executive branch, or one of the largest exercises of legislative power without congressional authority in the...

A federal judge in Texas ruled that a provision of the Affordable Care Act that mandates free coverage of certain drugs that prevent HIV infections violates the religious beliefs of a Christian-owned company, according to reports.The ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed by former Texas solicitor general Jonathan Mitchell on behalf of Braidwood Management Inc. The lawsuit challenges a provision in the ACA that required free coverage of HIV drugs Truvada and Descovy, commonly known as PrEP.“Defendants do not show a compelling interest in forcing private, religious corporations to cover PrEP drugs with no cost-sharing and no religious...

A federal judge in Texas ruled on Wednesday that a mandate requiring most health insurance companies to cover medicine that prevents HIV infection violates the religious freedom of certain businesses. The ruling from U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor partially resolves a lawsuit brought by Braidwood Management Inc., a Christian for-profit corporation owned by Republican mega-donor Steven Hotze that employs about 70 people. Hotze claimed that forcing his company to cover pre-exposure prophylaxis drugs, more commonly known as PrEP, under the Affordable Care Act would make the company “facilitate and encourage homosexual behavior.” According to the Centers for Disease Control and...

Another court – the third – now has ruled that Joe Biden's demand inserted into one of the many COVID-19 relief programs instituted by the federal government that states cannot cut their citizens' taxes while accepting the help cannot stand. "All federal courts to have reached the merits to date have held that Congress cannot use its spending power to intrude upon the states’ sovereignty and dictate to them that they may not cut state taxes, even indirectly," explained Peggy Little, senior litigation counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance. "These courts have fulfilled their duty to enforce the Constitution...

All 4,000 Navy members seeking a religious exemption to the abortion-tainted jab have been granted a temporary reprieve.FORT WORTH, Texas (LifeSiteNews) — A federal district court judge in Texas issued a preliminary injunction preventing the Navy from requiring 4,000 service members to take abortion-tainted COVID jabs. Judge Reed O’Connor issued a preliminary injunction on Monday against the Department of Defense (DOD) jab mandate. He previously stopped the DOD from enforcing it against dozens of Navy SEALs in a January 3 ruling. The ruling covers the 3,320 active-duty sailors and 864 reserve sailors who have religious objections to the COVID vaccines....