Free Republic

Jan Brewer is asking a federal court to disallow foreign governments from joining the federal lawsuit. | AP Photo Close By SCOTT WONG | 10/6/10 9:57 AM EDT Updated: 10/6/10 7:21 PM EDT In a new twist in the fight over Arizona’s immigration law, Republican Gov. Jan Brewer on Tuesday asked a federal court to disallow foreign governments from joining the U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit to overturn the law. The move comes in response to a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling issued Monday, allowing nearly a dozen Latin American countries — Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Costa Rica, Ecuador,...

SAN FRANCISCO – A federal appeals court put same-sex weddings in California on hold indefinitely Monday while it considers the constitutionality of the state's gay marriage ban. The decision, issued by a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, trumps a lower court judge's order that would have allowed county clerks to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples on Wednesday. Lawyers for the two gay couples that challenged the ban said Monday they would not appeal the panel's decision on the stay to the Supreme Court.

BReaking Hot!!! 9th Circus flips lid, says hold the marriages off 'til the case finishes appeals..

The Ninth Circuit has stayed Judge Vaughn Walker's ruling in the high-profile Constitutional challenge to California's same-sex marriage ban. The case is scheduled to be heard in early December. So hold the wedding bells. There is some good news, though, for the same-sex plaintiffs: The court warned in its order that it's considering dismissing the appeal on the grounds that the appelants -- who don't include the Governor or Attorney General -- lack standing. "In addition to any issues appellants wish to raise on appeal, appellants are directed to include in their opening brief a discussion of why this appeal...

It’s been thirty years, and I still miss the classroom. I taught American Political Theory to mostly seniors, Pre-Law or Political Science majors, that long ago. If any of them had submitted a paper as ill-thought-out as Judge Susan Bolton’s decision on the Arizona immigration law, I’d have given them an F, and made them rewrite it from scratch. Here’s why: The largest point is that this US District Judge ignored the very case that was presented to her for decision. The federal complaint attacked the Arizona law for only one general flaw. It claimed that the state law preempted...

A top Senate Republican hammered liberal law professor Goodwin Liu’s writings as “vicious, emotionally and racially charged” at his confirmation hearing Friday – igniting the first real test of whether Republicans will be able to block the most controversial of President Barack Obama’s lower court judicial nominees. Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) slammed Liu’s testimony against Samuel Alito during his confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court. “Judge Alito’s record envisions an America where police may shoot and kill an unarmed boy to stop him from running away with a stolen purse … where a black man may be sentenced to death...

WASHINGTON -- A federal appeals court ruling allowing a school district to veto an orchestral religious piece at high school graduation survived Supreme Court review Monday over a dissent by a conservative justice, who said the decision would stifle freedom of expression. The justices denied a 12th-grade musician's appeal of a ruling in September by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The appeals court said school officials' decision to keep the graduation program secular was a reasonable effort to avoid a constitutional controversy and did not violate students' rights. The ruling, in a case from Washington...

I'm not sure who is more unpopular with FReepers, the SIEU or the IRS, but they went head-to-head today before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and IRS came out ahead, to the tune of $52,000 and change. it's hard to post a link directly to the court's decision, but the link above is to a blog post which in turn links to the decision.

Speaking of law professors at the University of California at Berkeley, the Los Angeles Times reported this morning that ... Obama will nominate Professor Goodwin Liu to a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit today.

SAN FRANCISCO -- A divided federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld a school district's refusal to let a band play a religious piece at a high school graduation, saying the superintendent had reasonably decided to avoid a constitutional controversy by ordering a secular program. The district's veto of an instrumental version of "Ave Maria" by German composer Franz Biebl at the 2006 graduation ceremony in Everett, Wash., did not violate students' freedom of speech or religion, said the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

Ashcroft liable for detentions, court finds By Tony Romm - 09/04/09 04:18 PM ET Former Attorney General John Ashcroft may be sued and held liable for wrongly detaining witnesses after the Sept. 11 attacks, a federal appeals court ruled on Friday. In its decision, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that Abdullah Al-Kidd, a U.S. citizen detained as a material witness for two weeks, may sue the former attorney general for breaching his constitutional rights. Al-Kidd claimed during the case that his brief imprisonment caused him to lose a scholarship and crippled his chances of finding employment, according...

In a ruling with broad implications for computer privacy, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled that federal investigators went too far when they seized the digital records of a drug testing company and kept the results of confidential drug tests performed on all Major League baseball players during the 2002 season. According to published reports, 104 players tested positive for performance enhancing drugs. The names of four of them — Alex Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez, David Ortiz, and (now retired) Sammy Sosa — were leaked to the press by an anonymous source or sources. The court...

The federal appeals court ruling against the government Wednesday in the long running Major League Baseball drug-testing case has several far-reaching ramifications. The decision means that leaking the names of steroid-tainted players to Sports Illustrated and The New York Times likely constituted crimes, and that an investigation could be launched to identify the leakers. It also means that the blockbuster revelations about steroid cheating by Alex Rodriguez(notes), Sammy Sosa(notes), Manny Ramirez(notes) and David Ortiz(notes) were based on evidence gathered in an illegal search by lead BALCO investigating agent Jeff Novitzky. Unless the Ninth Circuit decision is successfully appealed to the...

(IStockPhoto) A federal appeals court on September 24 will hear a high-profile gun rights case that's a leading candidate to end up before the U.S. Supreme Court. The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is likely to decide whether the Second Amendment's guarantee of a right to "keep and bear arms" restricts only the federal government -- the current state of affairs -- or whether it can be used to strike down intrusive state and local laws too. A three-judge panel ruled that the Second Amendment does apply to the states. But now a larger Ninth Circuit panel will rehear...

<p>SAN FRANCISCO -- A Northern California family whose daughter underwent forced circumcision in Indonesia is entitled to seek political asylum in the United States, a federal appeals court said Monday.</p> <p>The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco criticized immigration officials who, in ordering the family deported, decided that the girl had suffered no serious harm when her genitals were mutilated as a newborn.</p>

A panel of judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco today overturned a lower court ruling that put a halt to a controversial lawsuit concerning extraordinary rendition, the practice of flying suspected terrorists to their home (or other) countries. Click here for the story, from the San Jose Mercury News; here for the AP story. The lawsuit was filed by the ACLU on behalf of five men who say they were subjected to the government’s extraordinary rendition program — that they were kidnapped and sent to overseas prisons where they were tortured. The...

It may seem utterly impossible, but a fairly decent ruling regarding the Second Amendment came from a California court this week. The San Francisco-based Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals actually ruled that private citizens can challenge state and local gun laws under the Second Amendment. Jokingly referred to as the Ninth “Circus” Court of Appeals for its historically horrendous opinions (it’s one of the most overturned appeals court in the nation), it is stunning to read the majority opinions in the case, Nordyke v. King. The majority opinions read more like a historical chronology of gun rights produced by...

WASHINGTON — The last time a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress banned civilian sales of military-style assault weapons, it took American voters just seven weeks to rebel. They handed Republicans control of the House and the Senate for the first time in 40 years. One of the casualties in the backlash was Rep. Jack Brooks, D-Beaumont, who sponsored the ban and then promptly lost his seat in Congress in 1994 after 42 years of service. The lesson wasn’t lost on President Obama when Mexican President Felipe Calderon suggested reviving the defunct weapons’ ban to help combat drug cartel violence...

Believe it or not, the Ninth Circuit Court ruled today that the second amendment restricts the right powers of state and local governments to interfere with the individual right to gun ownership. The decison even observes that the right to bear arms is “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.” Notes Cato Institute's Ilya Shapiro, "I rarely get a chance to say this, but the Ninth Circuit gets it exactly right." On a related matter, I just got around to Brian Doherty's Gun Control on Trial: Inside the Supreme Court Battle Over the Second Amendment. It's a terrific accounting...

America, Liberty has won the day today! Our Civil Rights, as stated in the Bill of Rights in the Constitution have been upheld. Today, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the Second Amendment, the right to keep and bear arms, and incorporated that decision onto the states through the 14th Amendment. In a victory for constitutionalists and Gun Rights advocates, Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain’s Opinion in the case Nordyke vs. King states in part the following: