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RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A Virginia high school discriminated against a transgender teen by forbidding him from using the boys' restroom, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday in a case that could have implications for a North Carolina law that critics say discriminates against LGBT people. The case of Gavin Grimm has been especially closely watched since North Carolina enacted a law last month that bans transgender people from using public restrooms that correspond to their gender identity. That law also bans cities from passing anti-discrimination ordinances, a response to an ordinance recently passed in Charlotte. In the Virginia case,...

Just reported that Roberts supports Obama's immigration plan. Thanks to Bush and Cruz

BRIDGEPORT, Conn. – A lawsuit can go forward against the maker of the rifle used in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings, a judge ruled Thursday. Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis said that a 2005 federal law protecting gun-makers from lawsuits does not prevent lawyers for the victims' families from arguing that the semi-automatic rifle is a military weapon and should not have been sold to civilians.

In a long-awaited ruling, a federal judge has sided with plaintiffs who argued it was unconstitutional for Los Angeles County supervisors to place a Christian cross on the county seal. A divided Board of Supervisors voted in 2014 to reinstate the cross on top of a depiction of the San Gabriel Mission, which appears on the seal among other symbols of county history. They were sued by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and a group of religious leaders and scholars, who said placement of the cross on the seal unconstitutionally favored Christianity over other religions.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday denied a request from a lawyer who once represented a woman known as the "DC Madam" to release records from her famous escort service. Those records include such sensitive information as customer names, Social Security numbers and addresses— information the lawyer, Montgomery Blair Sibley, has said could affect the 2016 presidential election. The so-called DC Madam Deborah Jeane Palfrey ran a high-priced escort service in the Washington D.C.-area for a number of years before her eventual conviction. She died in 2008. Sibley wanted the Supreme Court to lift a lower court order, in place...

A unanimous Supreme Court ruled Monday that illegal immigrants and other non-citizens can be counted when states draw their legislative districts, shooting down a challenge by Texas residents who said their own voting power was being diluted. The ruling does not grant non-citizens power to vote, but says the principle of “one person, one vote” doesn’t require localities to only count those who are actually eligible to vote. Justice Ruth Baden Ginsburg, writing for the court, said even though only eligible voters are supposed to cast ballots, elected officials represent all people within their districts, and it is that act...

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A federal judge Thursday overturned Mississippi's ban on allowing same-sex couples to adopt children. U.S. District Judge Daniel Jordan, in a preliminary injunction issued Thursday, ruled for the couples who had sued, saying the ban is unconstitutional after recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions legalizing gay marriage and benefits for gay couples. He ordered John Davis, executive director of the Department of Human Services to stop enforcing it.

Democrats hoping to use the death of Antonin Scalia to their political advantage hit upon what they mistakenly thought was another piece of “evidence” in their favor yesterday. To the shock of many with little understanding of the history of the Supreme Court, the justices are back in business and doling out decisions from the current session. On Tuesday, while the world was focused on the awful events in Brussels, SCOTUS delivered the first of what may turn out to be several deadlocked votes, delivering a 4-4 tie in the case of Hawkins v. Community Bank of Raymore. This...

Judge Merrick Garland, Barack Obama's choice to be the next justice on the Supreme Court, ruled against Priests for Life in a case involving the HHS mandate. He also gave ObamaCare subsidies a second chance at life in a separate case. The two rulings give a window into the philosophy of Judge Garland, whom the National Organization for Women referred to as a “cipher” with little paper trail on issues related to abortion or other feminist concerns. ObamaCare's HHS mandate opt-out does not violate the Constitution Priests for Life sued the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) over...

President Barack Obama's nominee to fill the vacancy on the United States Supreme Court once joined an opinion that rejected an evangelical Christian defense based on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Judge Merrick Garland of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia was recently tapped by President Obama as a nominee to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. In a case decided in June 2001, Judge Garland joined an opinion authored by fellow appellate judge A. Raymond Randolph that rejected a RFRA argument for a pair of evangelical Christians who wanted to...

After a long battle in the courts, pro-lifers in North Carolina will finally be allowed to display their support for unborn babies on their license plates. On Thursday, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the “Choose Life” license plates that state lawmakers approved in 2011 are constitutional, according to WRAL. The battle over the North Carolina pro-life plates went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court last year, LifeNews reported. In June 2015, the high court ordered the 4th Circuit Court, which previously struck down the law, to reconsider the case in light of the Supreme...

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts rejected a plea Thursday to block a contentious air pollution rule for power plants, in a big victory for the Obama administration. Roberts’s order came despite his court’s 5-4 decision last year ruling that the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) regulation, known as mercury and air toxics standards, is illegal. Michigan led a group of 20 states last month, empowered by the Supreme Court’s recent unprecedented decision to halt the EPA’s climate change rule for power plants, in asking the court to live up to its ruling last year and block the regulation’s enforcement. “Unless...

A Louisiana judge has ruled unconstitutional a new state law requiring priests to report sexual abuse that is mentioned in a sacramental confession. Judge Mike Caldwell made his ruling in a long-running and complicated case in which Father Jeff Bayhi had been directed to testify about what a young woman reportedly told him in a confession. The young woman has said that she told Father Bayhi about being molested by a member of his parish. Father Bayhi had refused to testify, citing the inviolability of the confessional seal. Judge Caldwell ruled that the state law making priests mandated reporters of...

A New York judge will hear arguments on Tuesday in a lawsuit that challenges Republican Sen. Ted Cruz’s ability to run for president given that he was born in Canada. State Supreme Court Justice David Weinstein will hear the claim of two men who contend that Cruz is not a citizen of the U.S. and is therefore ineligible to run for president, NBC has reported. Cruz was born in Alberta, Canada. Barry Korman and William Gallo will argue that despite Cruz’s mother being an American, the senator is not a citizen because such status cannot be passed from parent to...

A U.S. District judge in Pennsylvania has ruled that the First Amendment does not guarantee the right to record police unless the video is meant to be used as evidence. Judge Mark Kearney made the ruling against Philadelphians Richard Fields and Amanda Geraci, whose cameras were confiscated by police while the two were recording the officers breaking up a house party. The Third Circuit judge ruled that unless police are recorded with the "stated purpose of being critical of the government," any such video isn't protected speech.

(Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Wednesday allowed Louisiana to enforce a restrictive 2014 abortion law critics say is aimed at shutting clinics, ending a halt to the measure handed out by a lower court judge earlier this year. The Louisiana-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit granted a request from the state to put into effect the law requiring physicians who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles (48 km) of the place where the abortion is performed. "We reversed the district court and permitted the law to go into effect...

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — The Iowa Supreme Court says a stun gun, under Iowa law, is a dangerous weapon. The court made the conclusion as it affirmed the conviction of a woman charged with carrying a dangerous weapon after police found a stun gun in her purse in 2013 during an arrest for theft at a Waterloo Walmart. Taquala Howse, who is 25, appealed saying her small hand-held stun gun isn’t dangerous. A district judge convicted Howse, finding the state had proven it was dangerous.

As the nation and official Washington prepared to mourn the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, watchers of the high court began to assess the immediate impact of his death on several pending cases whose decisions might have had momentous political implications. Among these is Friedrichs v. California Teacher’s Association, set to have been a landmark case regarding the mandatory collection of union dues and their use for political purposes. The ruling could have meant the death knell of collective bargaining and the political might of America’s unions. newzf After oral arguments in the case in January, The Washington Post...

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who died Saturday at the age of 79, wrote many notable opinions and dissents during his 30 years on the bench. But there is one case that stands out: Scalia's 2008 majority decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, which struck down a Washington, DC, handgun ban and led to a slew of lawsuits questioning the constitutionality of gun control. "It was the first Supreme Court decision to authoritatively interpret the Second Amendment. It is rare for [a] justice to write on a constitutional issue where there is no prior case law," UCLA law professor...

GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump says he does not agree with comments from Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia questioning the efficacy of affirmative action. "I don't like what he said, no, I don’t like what he said. I heard him, I was like, 'Let me read it again,' because I actually read it in print, and I’m going, I read a lot of stuff, and I’m going, 'Woah,'" Trump said in an interview televised Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union." The billionaire said he thought Scalia's comments were "very tough to the African-American community." Trump, who has supported affirmative...