Free Republic

Alice Marie Beard: The Ninth Circuit has apparently held, in the Nordyke case, that the Second Amendment is incorporated against the states via the Fourteenth Amendment; opinion to come shortly. I will certainly blog more when I can read the opinion. Please note the possibility of error in all such breaking news stories, posted before the opinion is read; I will certainly correct any such error as soon as possible if it turns out the initial account is indeed mistaken.

·11250 Waples Mill Road ·   Fairfax, Virginia 22030    ·800-392-8683 Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Holds that the Second Amendment Applies to the States Tuesday, April 21, 2009 Fairfax, Va. – Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit marked a milestone in Second Amendment history by ruling that the Second Amendment limits state and local government infringements on our right to keep and bear arms through the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. NRA has been involved in, and supportive of, this case for the past ten years and has filed several amicus briefs...

Last June, the Supreme Court ruled in District of Columbia v. Heller that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to keep and bear arms, at least in the home for self-defense.  Here’s our own Bob Levy, who masterminded the Heller litigation, talking about that decision: While the Court’s ruling was a watershed in constitutional interpretation, it technically applied only to D.C., striking down the District’s draconian gun ban but not having a direct effect in the rest of the country.Well, today the Ninth Circuit (the federal appellate court covering most Western states) ruled that the Second Amendment restricts the power of state...

We therefore conclude that the right to keep and bear arms is “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.” Colonial revolutionaries, the Founders, and a host of commentators and lawmakers living during the first one hundred years of the Republic all insisted on the fundamental nature of the right. It has long been regarded as the “true palladium of liberty.” Colonists relied on it to assert and to win their independence, and the victorious Union sought to prevent a recalcitrant South from abridging it less than a century later. The crucial role this deeply rooted right has played in...

BELLEVUE, Wash.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Second Amendment Foundation today applauded the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco for ruling that the Second Amendment is incorporated against the states and local governments. The majority opinion was written by Judge Diarmuid F. O'Scannlain, with a concurring opinion from Judge Ronald M. Gould, who wrote, “The right to bear arms is a bulwark against external invasion…That we have a lawfully armed populace adds a measure of security for all of us and makes it less likely that a band of terrorists could make headway in an attack on any community before more...

....Birthed in Gold Rush calamity and come of age on the lawless frontier, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has been resolving disputes for 150 years in a region once prone to settling differences with pistols at high noon. If one looks closely at the bench in the main courtroom, there is a nick left by a bullet fired during the 1917 Hindu German Conspiracy Trial. Conservatives have been gaining sway over a court that for many years was widely perceived as one of the country's last bastions of judicial liberalism. Now, President Obama is about to start putting...

A federal appeals court on Thursday blocked Royal Dutch Shell from drilling oil wells off Alaska’s North Slope after finding that the Interior Department had failed to conduct an environmental study before issuing the company’s drilling permit. In a long-awaited ruling, the court said that the Minerals Management Service, the federal agency in charge of offshore leasing, had violated the 1970 National Environmental Policy Act by failing to take a “hard look” at the impact that offshore drilling would have on bowhead whales in the Beaufort Sea as well as indigenous communities on the North Slope. The decision canceled Shell’s...

Schools may not strip-search students for drugs based on an unverified tip, a federal appeals court ruled Friday. Overturning two other rulings, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said an assistant principal at an Arizona middle school violated the constitutional rights of a 13-year-old by ordering her to be strip-searched. He thought the honor student had prescription-strength ibuprofen; she did not. The 6-5 ruling by the San Francisco-based court reinstated a lawsuit that a divided three-judge circuit panel threw out last year. The lawsuit was brought by the parents of Savana Redding, who was an eighth-grader at Safford Middle...

Howard Kaloogian is a lawyer and a former member of the California State Assembly. GITMO AND GUNS are getting all the press. But energy mavens are talking about another recent far-reaching — but little noted — U.S. Supreme Court decision on the California energy crisis: It took them seven years but they finally figured it out. The revisionist part of the story is well known: Big bad oil traders like Enron gamed the market and drove up energy costs fifteen-fold. The blackouts, insolvent utilities and economic chaos are remembered as the worst energy crisis in American history. But the Supreme...

A federal appeals court gave an anti-abortion group the go-ahead Wednesday to drive trucks with enlarged photos of aborted fetuses past California schools, saying the Constitution protects the display of disturbing messages.  Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies interfered with free speech by ordering the driver of one such truck to move away from a middle school, said the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The deputies had cited a state law barring disruptive activities near public school grounds.  "The government cannot silence messages simply because they cause discomfort, fear or even anger," said a panel of three...

Top federal judges ruled this week that their own court has gone too far in holding up logging projects, saying western judges from now on must show more deference to the agencies planning the cutting. The ruling involving an Idaho timber sale is a blow to environmental groups that have increasingly relied on federal courts to block projects they see as unsound. The decision is especially striking because it comes from the federal appeals court that encompasses most national forest land in the West and is known for its liberal bent and for often siding with environmental interests. The...

9th Circuit Court of Appeals Hands First Amendment Victory to Center for Bio-Ethical Reform COLUMBUS, OH– July 3, 2008 – A federal appellate panel ruled Wednesday that the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department violated the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform's (CBR) free speech rights when two CBR associates were forced to move a mobile billboard display of enlarged photos of early-term aborted fetuses away from a Rancho Palos Verdes middle school campus.   The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform (CBR), a non-profit pro-life educational foundation, sued the LA County Sheriff's Department and an assistant principal at Dodson Middle School, claiming civil rights...

Ninth Circuit Rules Against Military's 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' By Pete Winn CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer May 21, 2008 (CNSNews.com) - The future of the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy was cast into doubt on Wednesday. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, Calif., ruled that it is no longer enough for the military to state the policy -- which says that "homosexuality is incompatible with military service" -- when it discharges members of the armed services it discovers to be homosexuals. In a split decision, a three-judge panel ruled that the U.S. Air Force will have...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A roommate-finding site cannot require users to disclose their sexual orientation, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Thursday, in the latest skirmish over whether anti-discrimination rules apply to the Web. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said Roommates.com, which obliges users to list their sexual orientation, was different than Internet sites where people can volunteer or withhold personal information. To inquire electronically about sexual orientation would not be different from asking people in person or by telephone if they were black or Jewish before conducting business, the panel said in an 8-3 ruling that partly...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger praised a Sunday decision by a U.S. Supreme Court justice to keep a convicted killer behind bars. Justice Anthony Kennedy put a hold on a federal court's decision ordering the release on parole of Fred McCullough, who was convicted of second-degree murder in Los Angeles in 1983. McCullough is serving a term of 15 years to life. "The governor's top priority is public safety," said spokeswoman Lisa Page, who said Schwarzenegger will continue to seek to deny McCullough parole. The state parole board twice before recommended McCullough for parole, citing his good behavior. In 2002, then- governor...

Some columns write themselves. Some are a struggle and leave me confused, conflicted and a little angry. This is one of those. It started out as a tongue-in-cheek look at the recent action by the city council in Berkeley, Calif., to oust the U.S. Marine Corps recruiting office and brand the Marines “uninvited and unwelcome intruders.” I planned to compare the situation in that strange city with our fairly-liberal-but-not-ridiculously-so approach here in Corvallis. Then I started doing research. I learned that an anti-military organization has access to our high school students equal to that of the U.S. Armed Forces. The...

Services will be Friday for Joseph Sneed of San Francisco, a conservative judge on a liberal federal appeals court for more than three decades and a member of the judicial panel that appointed Kenneth Starr to look into President Bill Clinton's financial dealings. Judge Sneed, a senior judge on the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, died Saturday at his home. He was 87. Among his survivors is daughter Carly Fiorina, who was chief executive of Hewlett-Packard Co. from 1999 to 2005.

The U.S. Senate has approved adding another judge to the nation’s busiest appellate court, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, based in San Francisco. Judges on the court have the highest caseload in the nation, says U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., one of the sponsors of the legislation. The measure transfers a judgeship from the District of Columbia Circuit to the Ninth Circuit. “California needs more judges. The Senate has recognized that it makes sense to take a judgeship from where it is needed least, and put it in California where it is needed most,” says Ms. Feinstein. According to...

Two blockbuster religious liberty cases - involving the constitutionality of the Pledge of Allegiance in schools and "In God We Trust" on our money - will be heard this week by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. PJI Chief Counsel Kevin Snider will be arguing alongside lawyers for the Department of Justice in defense of the national motto, "In God We Trust." Both lawsuits were filed by atheist Michael Newdow, who claims that the Pledge of Allegiance and national motto are unconstitutional "establishments" of religion. Ninth Circuit judges have previously heard and agreed with Newdow's position that...

When I was browsing Rough & Tumble this morning and saw that Associated Press had come up with its own in-depth analysis of the governor's health care proposal, I was hopeful that the global wire service would take a close look at the vast evidence that the gov's plan was illegal under a 1974 federal law known as ERISA. No such luck. Even though the only state in the union with a law mandating that employers provide or pay for health insurance is the one (Hawaii) with a congressional exemption from the federal law, this fact has barely been acknowledged...