Free Republic

U.S. Supreme Court limits where patent-infringement cases can be filed; decision could limit venue-shopping “The Supreme Court on Monday limited the ability of patent holders to bring infringement lawsuits in courts that have plaintiff friendly reputations, a notable decision that could provide a boost to companies that defend against patent claims,” Brent Kendall reports for The Wall Street Journal. “The high court, in an opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas, ruled unanimously that a lower court has been following an incorrect legal standard for almost 30 years that made it possible for patent holders to sue companies in almost any U.S....

Rumors are flying that the Supreme Court to hear the appeal to the 9th Circuit decision on Peruta v. California.  It makes sense that the Court would agree to hear the appeal now that Justice Gorsuch is on the Court.  From scotusblog.com: There is only one new relist this week – but oh, what a relist it is. Peruta v. California, 16-894, asks whether the Second Amendment entitles citizens to carry handguns outside the home for self-defense – including concealed carry when carrying firearms openly is forbidden by state law. Under California law, openly carrying a handgun outside the...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Supreme Court decisions in a half-dozen cases dealing with immigration over the next two months could reveal how the justices might evaluate Trump administration actions on immigration, especially stepped up deportations. Some of those cases could be decided as early as Monday, when the court is meeting to issue opinions in cases that were argued over the past six months. The outcomes could indicate whether the justices are retreating from long-standing decisions that give the president and Congress great discretion in dealing with immigration, and what role administration policies, including the proposed ban on visits to the...

One of Neil Gorsuch’s sharpest dissents as an appeals court judge came just six months before he was nominated for the Supreme Court. That’s when he sided with a New Mexico seventh-grader who was handcuffed and arrested after his teacher said the student had disrupted gym class with fake burps. Nearly a year later, Gorsuch sits on the nation’s highest court and the boy’s mother is asking the justices to take up her appeal. She’s using Gorsuch’s words to argue that she has a right to sue the officer who arrested her son. The court could act as early as...

Time for more winning As I’ve argued many times before, the Supreme Court was the real win last November. If President Trump were to be impeached tomorrow (he won’t be, but if he were) the appointment of Neil Gorsuch would make it all worthwhile. Factor in the rumors that he’ll get another bite at the SCOTUS apple this summer, and it’s conceivable that a two-term Trump administration could see a total of four such opportunities. That’s great news, because the judiciary is complete mess and Trump’s list of judges is highly regarded among conservatives.

In an early show of independence, Justice Neil Gorsuch declined to join the Supreme Court’s “cert pool,” an administrative division of labor that allows for efficient review of the deluge of petitions the justices receive each term. snip On the other hand, it may simply reflect a preference for the work product of his own clerks, an inclination shared by other federal judges including Judge Alex Kozinski of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. He may also feel that opting out of the pool ensures greater scrutiny is given to each petition. The decision also suggests Gorsuch might share...

He hasn’t been wearing the robes very long, but Supreme Court Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch (and I swear I will never get tired of typing that phrase) is striking out on his own path at the nation’s highest court. The Daily Caller put up this report yesterday and it deals with a somewhat controversial decision that Gorsuch made pretty much as soon as he’d taken his seat. It has to do with what’s referred to as the “cert pool” which is the method the court uses to determine which of the thousands of petitions they receive every year are...

This is a three minute video that explains a free tactic by the liberals. It's time we stopped giving them a pass on this little trick of theirs. The Mainstream

Why am I a Catholic? There are a thousand ways to answer that question, and this book will take up many of them. By its end, there will be one answer. -SNIP- ...and in America (continuing racism), with the recognition that hatred of the Other (whether Jews, blacks, or, say, Muslims) is still virulent. Women came to a new self-understanding, from the workforce jolt of World War II to the claustrophobia of the suburbs in the 1950s to the liberation of the 1960s (the birth control pill) and 1970s (Roe v. Wade). Sexual sensibility itself was upended, with gay rights,...

May 1 - The US Supreme Court on Monday left intact California's ban on "gay conversion" therapy aimed at turning youths under age 18 away from homosexuality, rejecting a Christian minister's challenge to the law asserting it violates religious rights. The justices, turning away a challenge to the 2012 law for the second time in three years, let stand a lower court's ruling that it was constitutional and neither impinged upon free exercise of religion nor impacted the activities of clergy members.

The Supreme Court has again rejected a challenge to California's ban on so-called gay conversion therapy. The justices did not comment Monday in turning away an appeal from a San Diego minister and others who argued the law violated their First Amendment religious freedoms. The federal appeals court in San Francisco had previously upheld the law in dismissing the constitutional challenge.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ruled against an American oil drilling company that claimed Venezuela unlawfully seized 11 drilling rigs in 2010. Siding with Venezuela, the justices ruled 8-0, with Justice Neil Gorsuch not participating, to throw out a 2015 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

President Trump will stick with the same list of potential nominees for the next Supreme Court vacancy, he told The Washington Times in an exclusive interview in which he also waved aside the lack of a honeymoon from Capitol Hill, saying Republicans are “going to get there” and Democrats are still smarting over losing an election they thought they couldn’t lose. .. He also said he expects the near-universal opposition to his agenda from congressional Democrats to wane. “I notice it calming down,” he said. Reflecting on his first weeks, the businessman turned statesman took pride in having upended traditional...

The Supreme Court is heading toward the home stretch of an eventful and unusual term. Here is a quick update of the major cases heard in Court since October, with a few other cases left undecided. In some ways, the 2016 Term has been dominated by the wait for a ninth Justice to replace the late Antonin Scalia. President Barack Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, was denied consideration last year. President Donald Trump’s successful nominee, Neil Gorsuch, will only hear a few cases in the current term. The following is a list of significant cases considered by the Supreme Court since...

A few months after lefty activists crowded Washington D.C. for the Women's March, activists from many of those same organizations went to bat for a serial rapist and murderer. Ledell Lee's victims were all women.  While he was on trial for the rape and murder of Debra Reese, the testimony of three of his rape victims was presented. Lee had made a habit of knocking on doors and asking to borrow some tools to see whether a woman's husband might be home. Debra Reese called her mother and told her that a strange man had tried to borrow some tools....

Those who want to preserve our constitutional republic spent a lot of time and energy getting Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court. There is no doubt that his confirmation was an important step toward achieving that goal. But with rumors swirling that another slot could open as soon as this summer, the public should realize that it is President Trump's next pick that will provide the opportunity to finally solidify a conservative majority that will protect the Bill of Rights and enforce the Constitution’s limits on the power of the federal government.

U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts took issue on Wednesday with the Trump administration's stance in an immigration case, saying it could make it too easy for the government to strip people of citizenship for lying about minor infractions. Roberts and other Supreme Court justices indicated support for a deported ethnic Serb immigrant named Divna Maslenjak over her bid to regain her U.S. citizenship after it was stripped because she falsely stated her husband had not served in the Bosnian Serb army in the 1990s after Yugoslavia's collapse. Roberts seemed particularly concerned that the government was asserting it could revoke citizenship...

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote Monday that the court is developing a “disturbing trend” of siding with police officers accused of excessive force at the expense of their alleged victims, a notion disputed by two of her colleagues. Sotomayor was arguing that the court should have accepted the case of Richardo Salazar-Limon, who was shot in the back by Houston police officer Chris Thompson in 2010. A federal district judge dismissed Salazar-Limon’s suit before trial, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit upheld that decision.

It’s not entirely fair to judge a Supreme Court justice based on his first vote. Urgent matters arise unexpectedly, and the court must sometimes act quickly. Still, it’s worth paying special attention to Justice Neil Gorsuch’s vote late Thursday night to deny a stay of execution for Ledell Lee, an Arkansas man who was sentenced to death in 1995 for murdering a woman named Debra Reese with a tire thumper. After Justice Gorsuch, along with the four other conservative justices, denied his final appeal without explanation, Mr. Lee, who maintained his innocence until the end, was executed by lethal injection....

Full title................... The U.S. Supreme Court is refusing to block the first of two scheduled Arkansas lethal injections in one night............