Free Republic

A federal judge has ruled against censured Maine State Rep Laurel Libby, siding with State House Speaker Ryan Fecteau. Libby filed a federal lawsuit after she was censored in the House chamber over a social media post that depicted a high school trans-identified male winning the state championship, despite President Donald Trump’s order banning trans-identified males competing in women’s sports. District Judge Melissa R. DuBose wrote in her ruling, "After carefully considering the case law, the details presented by the parties about the House governing rules, and the process by which the House adopted the Resolution and imposed the censure...

It's about time a president goes full Andrew Jackson on these unelected activist judges appointed by the Democrats. A D.C. judge has ordered a preliminary injunction in favor of a trans activist in the military who sued the U.S. over the President's executive order ban on trans service members. Judge Ana C. Reyes ordered the U.S. military go back to its former Biden-era policy. Judge Reyes was nominated to the position by President Biden and is celebrated for being an immigrant who identifies as LGBTQ+. Yes, a Biden diversity hire, gay, female, Latina, immigrant, is telling the president what he...

This isn’t even first-year law student or high school level argumentation, it’s stuff worthy of The View.Clinton judges were bad, Obama judges were worse and Biden judges are just unhinged shrieking activists who don’t understand the law.Meet Judge Ana Reyes who was put in charge of deciding whether the Pentagon can remove servicemembers with mental problems that cause them to believe they’re women.Judge Reyes said that the government “egregiously misquoted” and “cherry picked” scientific studies to incorrectly assert that transgender soldiers decrease the readiness and lethality of the military.There is no reality in which having mentally ill and delusional people...

A federal judge on Wednesday signaled that she was deeply skeptical that the Pentagon's handling of transgender service members complies with federal law, grilling a government attorney for hours about the scientific basis for the decision, its impact on military readiness, and the alleged harms to unit cohesion. U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes said she plans to issue a ruling on the policy as early as next week, but appeared to rebuff most of the arguments defending the policy made by a DOJ attorney, who frequently appeared to be at a loss for words regarding how to respond to the...

You love to see it.Judge Ana Reyes, a Biden appointee, ripped into lawyers for the fired inspectors general suing to get their jobs back.As previously reported, eight inspectors general fired by Trump filed a lawsuit to get their jobs back.President Trump last month fired over a dozen inspectors general in a late night purge shortly after he was sworn into office.Real Clear Politics reporter Susan Crabtree explained that many of these IGs, who are in a position to identify and clean up waste and abuse, have long histories of whitewashing reports and playing politics.President Trump kept current Department of Homeland...

President Donald Trump has signed an executive order pardoning the 23 pro-life Americans Joe Biden imprisoned for protesting abortion. “This is a great honor to sign this,” Trump said, condemning Biden’s lawfare, especially targeted at “elderly people.” Trump granted pardons for 23 pro-life advocates who faced weaponized prosecutions brought against them by the Biden Department of Justice under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. Earlier this month, Thomas More Society attorneys submitted to the Trump administration formal requests for presidential pardons on behalf of 21 of those pro-life advocates who have been unjustly prosecuted, convicted, and in...

Hours after President Donald Trump signed an executive order pardoning all 23 pro-life prisoners that Joe Biden unjustly imprisoned for protesting abortion, pro-life advocate Bevelen Williams has been released. The plight of Bevelyn Williams and 22 other pro-life Americans who are hoping and praying for pardons from President Donald Trump is finally over. Video Player VIDEO ON LINK!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 00:00 02:17 Williams, who was found guilty of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act for blocking access to an abortion clinic in 2020, is in the process of appealing appealing her sentence of 41 months in prison. Williams...

Pro-life activist and mother of a young daughter, Bevelyn Beatty Williams, announced on Tuesday that her stay of appeal request has been denied by the judge who sentenced her on charges of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE Act), and that she is to report to federal prison in Alabama on Thursday. She will be in prison for at least a month as her attorney appeals the decision. “I wanted to give you all an important update,” she wrote. “My legal team worked tirelessly to submit a stay of appeal so I could be home on...

Thirty-three-year-old pro-life activist Bevelyn Beatty Williams has been sentenced to three years and five months in prison by a Manhattan federal court for violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act by protesting outside an NYC abortion clinic.The Christian was convicted of “interference, including by threats and force, with individuals seeking to obtain and provide” abortions in the early days of the pandemic in 2020, according to a statement from the Department of Justice (DOJ).The Tennessee wife and mother was sentenced after preaching the Gospel outside an NYC abortion clinic and allegedly injuring a clinic worker’s hand and...

Democrats hate the gig economy, since they can’t force independent contractors to join unions (and thus rake off their union dues). So Biden’s NLRB issued a “joint-employer standard” to force companies to treat gig employees and subcontractors as subject to union representation. Well, a federal judge in Texas squashed that rule. Last week, a federal judge in Texas issued a ruling that struck down a new joint-employer standard by the U.S. National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that would have classified numerous companies as “employers” of specific contract and franchise employees, obligating them to negotiate with unions representing those workers. U.S....

In Ciraci v. J.M. Smucker Company, (6th Cir., March 14, 2023), the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals held that employees of a company that sells food products to the federal government may not assert a 1st Amendment free-exercise claim against the company for denying them a religious exemption from a COVID vaccine mandate imposed by the company after the federal government required government contractors to do so. The court said in part: Constitutional guarantees conventionally apply only to entities that exercise sovereign power, such as federal, state, or local governments.... Smucker’s may be a big company. But it is...

A federal appeals court upheld a decision to temporarily block the federal government’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for federal contractors in three states.A judge in Louisville, Kentucky, issued a ruling blocking the mandate for Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee in November. And on Wednesday, the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals upheld the injunction in a 2–1 ruling.The Sixth Appeals Court majority wrote in its Wednesday order that the injunction was upheld “because the government has established none of the showings required to obtain a stay.”States are “imminently threatened in their proprietary capacities should they renew those existing contracts (thus triggering the...

This afternoon a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit rejected the Biden Administration's request for a stay of a lower court injunction barring enforcement of a COVID-19 vaccination requirement for employees of federal contractors in Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee. Judge Bush wrote for the court in Commonwealth of Kentucky v. Biden, joined by Judge Suhrenreich. Judge Cole (who recently announced his intent to take senior status upon the confirmation of his successor) dissented.Here is how Judge Bush summarizes his opinion:In 1949, Congress passed a statute called the Federal Property and Administrative Services Act ("Property...

The federal government thus claims authority to suspend residential evictions for any reason, including an agency's views on "fairness." Id. at 53:11-23. Given the open-textured nature of the relevant constitutional text, "the question of congressional power under the Commerce Clause 'is necessarily one of degree.'" United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549, 566 (1995) (quoting NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., 301 U.S. 1, 37 (1937)). Reasonable minds may differ given the lack of "precise formulations." Id. at 567. But here, after analyzing the relevant precedents, the court concludes that the federal government's Article I power to regulate interstate...