Free Republic

A bill signed into law this week by California Governor Gavin Newsom may signal the beginning of the end of a decades-long dispute between the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid and the heirs of a Jewish collector over the rightful ownership of a work sold under duress during the Nazi regime. In 1939, Lilly Cassirer Neubauer was forced to sell an 1897 oil by Camille Pissarro to a Nazi art appraiser in order to flee Germany before the impending war. According to court documents, the Pissarro, titled Rue Saint-Honoré in the Afternoon, Effect of Rain, fetched only $360 (modern USD). The...

An appeals court on Friday overturned the conviction and life sentence of a man found guilty of killing a U.S. Border Patrol agent whose death exposed the botched federal gun operation known as “Fast and Furious” has been overturned, a U.S. appeals court said Friday. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the convictions of Heraclio Osorio-Arellanes, saying his constitutional due process rights had been violated, and sent the case back to the U.S. District Court in Arizona for further proceedings. Osorio-Arellanes was sentenced in 2020 in the Dec. 14, 2010, fatal shooting of Agent Brian Terry while he...

Voters in Arizona who register with the state and do not provide proof of citizenship will be rejected. "This is a victory for election integrity in Arizona. Only U.S. citizens should be allowed to vote in our elections. It sounds like common sense, but the radical left elected officials in our state continue to reject this notion, disrespecting the voices of our lawful Arizona voters. We are grateful the court is upholding this provision in our law, and it's time for Congress to take action to ensure only lawful U.S. citizens are voting in federal races."

The COVID shot was put on trial in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and coming from California the result might surprise you. Three of four judges agree it was never a “traditional vaccine” and therefore could not legally be mandated. The case was against the Los Angeles Unified School District (“LAUSD”) that “required employees to get the COVID-19 vaccination or lose their jobs.” While this case was making its way thru the courts, LAUSD was playing Hokey-Pokey with their policy on “vaccination” which didn’t play well in their litigation strategy, as it allowed the case...

Four innocent hostages brought home, and a legal blow against presumptuous government action. In a daring feat masterfully executed, the Israeli Defense Force rescued four of the hostages in Gaza. Most touching of all was the rescue of Noa Argamani, whose mother is dying of brain cancer, who had prayed she’d be reunited with her daughter before she died. The hostages had been held by private citizens in two separate apartments 200 feet apart within the central market of Nuseirat in Gaza and the rescuers had to stage a difficult simultaneous operation to free them. They operated under heavy fire...

A DEA agent accused of killing a cyclist in Salem while on duty had his case presented before a federal appeals court today in Seattle. At the center of today’s hearing was whether the agent could claim immunity from state prosecution because he was an on-duty federal agent. On March 28, 2023, Marganne Allen was riding her bike home from work in southeast Salem. Video from that day shows a black pickup truck running a stop sign moments before striking and killing the cyclist.

On Thursday a three-judge panel from the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit decided that Steven Duarte, a felon, has a “right to possess a firearm for self-defense.” Courthouse News Service noted Duarte has five felony convictions and was a member of a street gang in Los Angeles. The decision upholding Duarte’s gun rights was split, with George W. Bush appointee Carlos Bea and Donald Trump appointee Lawrence VanDyke deciding in the majority. Bea wrote the majority opinion, noted the panel tested the prohibition against felons possessing guns in light of Bruen (2022) and found the government...

On March 11, 2024, Judge William Q. Hayes of the United States District Court, Southern District of California, granted a summary judgement in the case of Nguyen V. Bonta. The case is a challenge to California’s one gun a month law. Judge Hayes ruled the law violated the text of the Second Amendment and there were no reasonable analogies in the relevant legal history of the United States. Judge Hayes granted one month for an appeal to be filed to the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The case was sent to a three judge panel of the Ninth...

Today a unanimous panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit granted the U.S. Department of Justice's petition for a writ of mandamus seeking dismissal of Juliana v. United States, the so-called "Kids Climate Case." The brief order was short and direct. It noted that the Ninth Circuit had previously concluded that the plaintiffs lacked standing and ordered the case dismissed. Contrary to the plaintiffs' claims, no intervening decisions changed that fact, and that there was no basis for the district court to allow the plaintiffs to amend the complaint. This decision should not have been a...

We have often discussed how cities and universities will use the threat of protests to block or shutdown free speech, particularly of conservative speakers or groups. We now have a major decision out of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that could prove an important precedent in resisting the growing anti-free speech movement in the United States. In Meinecke v. City of Seattle, the court ruled against Seattle in a case involving the arrest of a pro-life protester. Matthew Meinecke was harassed by Antifa and other counterprotesters, but police arrested Meineche when he refused to yield...

On December 20, 2023, US District Judge Cormac J. Carney issued an order granting a preliminary injunction against the defendants (the State of California government). The injunction stopped the state from enforcing the blatantly unconstitutional SB-2 law declaring most of California as “sensitive places” where even licensed concealed carriers were forbidden to carry arms in public. The state asked for an order to stop the injunction from going into effect on December 22, 2023. The stay was granted on December 30, 2023, by an administrative three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit. The stay was appealed to the Ninth Circuit three-judge...

A federal appeals court on Thursday ruled against Nirvana and revived a child pornography lawsuit filed by the man who appeared as a nude baby on the cover of the band’s 1991 album Nevermind.Spencer Elden, now in his 30s, claimed the photo – one of the most iconic album covers in rock history – violated federal child pornography laws by displaying a sexualized image of a minor. But a lower ruled last year that he had waited far too long to bring his lawsuit. In a decision overturning that ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled...

The panel affirmed the district court’s dismissal for lack of standing of an action, brought before the 2022 general election by former Republican nominees for Governor and Secretary of State of Arizona, alleging that Arizona’s use of electronic tabulation systems violated the federal Constitution. The gravamen of Plaintiffs’ operative complaint is that notwithstanding safeguards, electronic tabulation systems are particularly susceptible to hacking by non-governmental actors who intend to influence election results. On appeal, Plaintiffs conceded that their arguments were limited to potential future hacking, and not based on any past harm. The panel held that because Plaintiffs are no longer...

A California law ostensibly aimed at restricting the marketing of firearms to minors infringes on the free speech rights of adults, according to a three-judge panel on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. In its ruling handed down on Thursday morning, the panel vacated a lower court decision denying an injunction against the law’s enforcement and delivered a resounding win for both First and Second Amendment advocates. Writing for the majority, Judge Kenneth Lee ruled that the law forbidding marketing and advertising firearms that “reasonably appear to be attractive to minors” is likely to infringe on the First Amendment, given...

The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) just filed a reply brief in support of its petition for writ of certiorari with the United States Supreme Court. The petition was filed to correct the unjust result in a major abortion case involving Planned Parenthood. The newly filed brief responds to Planned Parenthood’s opposition to that petition. Since early 2016, the ACLJ has been representing Troy Newman, a former board member of the Center for Medical Progress (CMP), in a federal lawsuit filed by Planned Parenthood. The abortion giant sued Newman and his co-defendants after CMP released videos from its...

The measure barred trans women and girls of all ages from participating in female sports teams at public schools in the state, from primary school through college. A federal appeals court on Thursday refused to allow Idaho to enforce a first-in-the-nation ban on transgender women and girls from participating in female sports leagues, saying the measure likely was unconstitutional. A 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel delivered a victory to LGBTQ rights advocates by upholding an injunction blocking Idaho’s Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, the first of many such laws to be enacted by Republican-led states. “This is an...

An Oregon law that forbids recording in public without consent runs afoul of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment, a U.S. court has ruled.James O'Keefe, founder Project Veritas, at the Values Voter Summit in Washington on Oct. 12, 2019. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)Oregon law 165.540, first enacted in 1955 and subsequently broadened to bar secret recording of conversations, is unconstitutional, Judge Sandra Ikuta, a George W. Bush appointee writing for the majority in the 2–1 ruling, said.Exceptions to the prohibition include recording at public meetings, such as city council hearings; while a felony that endangers human life is being committed; and...

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit tossed a Berkeley, California, ban on gas stoves on Monday, saying that the federal Energy Policy and Conservation Act preempted state and local authorities in regulating natural gas. The Courthouse News Service reported: The three-judge panel’s ruling reverses a federal judge’s dismissal of a lawsuit by the California Restaurant Association claiming the Energy Policy and Conservation Act preempts the San Francisco Bay Area city’s ban. The group said the ordinance would affect chefs’ ability to prepare food the way they are typically trained — using natural gas stoves.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has declined to reconsider its decision to uphold the dismissal of a case over the practice known as “conversion therapy,” teeing up a circuit split that may ultimately land the case before the U.S. Supreme Court. Licensed marriage and family therapist Brian Tingley sued Washington state in 2021, claiming that a 2018 law that prohibited licensed mental health professionals from subjecting minors to conversion therapy violated his First Amendment rights. The Ninth Circuit issued its decision Monday not to rehear the appeal of a Washington state therapist’s challenge to a 2018...

The Miss United States of America (USOA) pageant has a rule that only natural women are allowed to compete. But when “Anita” Green’s application for the pageant was denied and his funds reimbursed, he sued the pageant.While other pageants, such as the Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants, have allowed biological males who “identify” as women to compete against real women, the Miss USOA pageant specifically requires that contestants are natural-born females.The pageant argued that it has a First Amendment right to free association, and allowing males who identify as transgender women would “undermine its vision” of “empowering only biological...