Free Republic

An appeals court panel has ruled against a New York law that prohibits the carrying of firearms into houses of worship, upholding a lower court decision that blocked the law from taking effect.On Friday, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit released a 261-page opinion regarding four cases centered on multiple challenges to New York’s Concealed Carry Improvement Act.Regarding the Act’s provision banning concealed carry in places of worship, the panel ruled that “Plaintiffs have sufficiently alleged that the CCIA burdens their sincerely held religious practice.”“CCIA is not neutral because it allows the...

Gun owners didn’t get complete vindication from a three-judge panel on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, but the panel did uphold injunctions on several important parts of New York’s “Concealed Carry Improvement Act” in a decision released Friday morning. The state’s default ban on carrying on private property cannot be enforced, according to the court, along with its social media disclosure requirement for concealed carry applicants. The court also ruled that New York’s ban on lawful concealed carry in places of worship cannot be enforced against Pastor Michael Spencer and the members of the Tabernacle Family Church, though other...

The 7-month prison sentence of Douglass Mackey has been stayed per a federal judge. He was convicted in March for circulating a satirical meme that encouraged Hillary Clinton voters to cast their votes via text in the lead up to the 2016 election. The Motion Order reads: "granting motion for release pending appeal, at docket entry 16 Mackey's surrender date is stated. The District Court is ordered to determine the appropriate terms of release, without prejudice to the government's making a future request for detention, on behalf of Appellant Douglass Mackey, It is further ordered that this appeal is expedited....

In 2018, Joseph Srour applied for a license to possess rifles and shotguns at his home in New York City. He was denied. In 2019, he applied for a license to possess handguns in his home. He was denied. The denials involved the application of the issuing authorities’ subjective judgment on Srour’s moral character and the subjective judgment of the issuing authorities’ determination of “good cause.” Joseph Srour appealed the decision. After the Bruen decision by the Supreme Court, he amended his appeal to a direct (facial) challenge of the constitutionality of New York City law. The Case is known...

In the Progressive utopia championed by Woodrow Wilson and his successors, government will iron out the imperfections in human affairs through the use of regulatory agencies run by non-political experts. Such people, being experts and completely non-political, would pose no reason for concern about abuse of power, because of course they would never seek go outside their proper regulatory portfolio to use their authority to stamp out the freedoms and speech of their political opponents on important topics of the day. In the real world government regulators since the creation of their agencies have inevitably used their powers to disadvantage...

A federal judge rejected an effort by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg to block a Congressional subpoena of a former prosecutor for that office who had worked on an investigation into former President Donald Trump. Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil ruled that she has no standing to block the subpoena, writing that the House Judiciary Committee has claimed to have legitimate legislative purposes for its inquiry. The committee and its Republican chairman, Rep. Jim Jordan, have aggressively confronted Bragg in the weeks since Trump was indicted in Manhattan. The Judiciary Committee says it is conducting its investigation in support of possible...

A federal judge on Wednesday shot down Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s attempt to block a former prosecutor in his office from testifying before the House Judiciary Committee about the criminal case against Donald Trump. The committee and its chairman, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), had subpoenaed ex-assistant district attorney Mark Pomerantz to give testimony about the DA’s investigation into Trump, 76, that culminated in the former president’s indictment in March. Bragg filed suit against Jordan and the Judiciary Committee, claiming the subpoena was an overreach by the GOP-led House and an attempt to influence a state criminal proceeding.

A federal appeals court in New York on Tuesday handed former President Trump a partial victory in a defamation lawsuit brought by a woman who accused Trump of raping her in the 1990s, with the court ruling that presidents are covered by a federal law that gives broad legal immunity to government employees. A divided three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit said a lower court erred when it ruled that Trump’s accuser, E. Jean Carroll, could sue Trump personally for the allegedly defamatory statements he made about her during his presidency.

U.S. District Judge Sarah Merriam dismissed Dr. Bandy Lee’s wrongful termination lawsuit against Yale University. The lawsuit accused Yale of violating Lee’s free speech and professional obligations when she was not reappointed to her role with the school. She claims she was fired over her public statements criticizing then-President Donald Trump and his inner circle. Lee blames her termination on a letter sent to Yale by Trump’s friend Alan Dershowitz. Dr. Lee was not considered a staff member or employee of Yale University. She was a voluntary, unpaid staff member. She sued Yale last March over breach of contract and...

The Supreme Court on Friday shot down an appeal from a group of New York City school teachers who sought to block a COVID-19 vaccine mandate, arguing it violated their religious freedom.Justice Sonia Sotomayor rejected the emergency appeal on Friday, the same day as the deadline for city employees to comply with the mandate or face losing their jobs.Sotomayor did not offer an explanation, which is the court’s usual procedure.The appeal was filed Tuesday by 15 Department of Education workers, who claimed the city was violating their religious freedoms by not accepting their exemption claims.The city requires that religious exemption...

Four Ways the Ghislaine Maxwell Trial Is Already Rigged Nobody likes a Debbie Downer, but I’m being realistic when I say I’m not expecting a ton of bombshell revelations to come from the Ghislaine Maxwell trial. We aren’t going to see Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, or anyone significant taken down as a result of the major revelations. I hope I’m wrong, but the cards seem to be stacked against the truth. Here are four reasons for my pessimism: No Coverage It should be the biggest story of the day (yes, bigger than Omicron) yet it’s barely a blip on mainstream...

Alison Julie Nathan has previously served as a special assistant to resident Barack Obama and also as his associate White House counsel.. As the trial of Ghislaine Maxwell begins on November 29, 2021, some questions may finally be answered about the sex scandal involving late Jeffery Epstein. Maxwell was arrested on July 2, 2020, and is one of the few remaining links investigators have to Epstein after he died suspiciously while he was in jail. The trial is likely to finally tell us how far, wide and deeply Epstein's sex trafficking ring had spread, especially in the elite circles he...

Judge Alison Nathan is likely to be nominated to the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit The federal judge overseeing British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex trafficking case is set to be recommended for higher court – sparking concerns about possible ethical conflicts. New York Senator Chuck Schumer announced on Tuesday he is going to recommend to President Joe Biden that he nominate Alison J. Nathan, 49, to the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Senator Dianne Feinstein was absent from the Senate yesterday, so Senate Republicans had the votes to defeat the cloture motion on controversial Second Circuit nominee Myrna Perez, director of the left-wing Brennan Center for Justice. Had Republicans stuck together, they would have defeated the motion by a vote of 50 to 49. Instead, Senators Lindsey Graham and Lisa Murkowski voted for cloture, giving Perez a 51-48 margin and paving the way for her confirmation. I’m reliably informed that Graham has not voted against cloture or against final confirmation of a single Biden judicial nominee. Indeed, Graham’s vote in committee yesterday...

From the very beginning of his tenure at the White House, questions about how resident Biden’s Catholic faith square with most of his policy and personnel choices have been met with the response: “the President is a devout Catholic.” To paraphrase Inigo Montoya in the classic movie The Princess Bride: “You keep using that phrase, I do not think it means what you think it means.” Few personnel choices stand out for their record of hostility towards the Catholics more than Beth Robinson, Joe Biden’s nominee to be a Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second...

A federal appeals court on Tuesday rejected efforts by four Democratic-leaning U.S. states to overturn former Republican President Donald Trump's decision to limit federal deductions on state and local taxes. In a 3-0 decision, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said the federal government had authority to impose a $10,000 cap on the state and local taxes that households' itemizing deductions could write off their federal returns. The decision is a defeat for New York, Connecticut, Maryland and New Jersey, which challenged the so-called SALT cap implemented as part of a $1.5 trillion tax overhaul in 2017....

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul speaks at the A.R. Bernard-led Christian Cultural Center in Brooklyn on September 26, 2021 An attorney for a conservative group argued in the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan Wednesday that New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has unfairly used God to encourage people to take COVID-19 vaccines as she argues there are no legitimate religious reasons to avoid taking them.On Thursday, a three-judge panel partly granted a motion by We The Patriots USA attorney Cameron Lee Atkinson on behalf of three clients who stated religious objections to taking the COVID-19 vaccine to...

A federal appeals court ruled Monday a COVID vaccine mandate for New York City teachers and other public school workers can go into effect. A three-judge panel lifted a temporary ban on the mandate that was originally set to take effect Monday. “Federal appeals exhausted. Done. The mandate moves forward,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said. The United Federation of Teachers said 3% of teachers (about 3,400) remain unvaccinated. School workers now have until 5 p.m. Friday to get their first dose, or risk losing their jobs, de Blasio said. “If you have not gotten that first dose by Friday 5:00,...

A federal appeals court has slammed the brakes on the city’s mandate that all teachers and other school workers be vaccinated by Monday - but a reprieve for the holdouts may be short-lived. On Friday evening, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit granted a temporary injunction against the mandate, and sent the case to a three-judge panel for an “expedited review.” A hearing is scheduled for Wednesday. “We’re confident our vaccine mandate will continue to be upheld once all the facts have been presented, because that is the level of protection our students and staff deserve,” said...

New York City’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for teachers and other Department of Education staffers is on pause after a federal judge late Friday granted a request to temporarily block it. Plaintiffs, a group of teachers, asked for a temporary injunction pending review by a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. U.S. Appeals Court Judge Joseph Bianco, a George W. Bush nominee, in a one-page order granted the request. The panel will now decide whether to impose an injunction pending appeal or allow the mandate to take effect. Rachel Maniscalco and three other New York...