Free Republic

Judge James Ho of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit responded to the Supreme Court charging a district court with “inaction” for not ruling on an emergency injunction in A.A.R.P v. Trump in 42 minutes by arguing they had over 14 hours. Alleged members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang the U.S. government has designated as a foreign terrorist organization, sent an injunction in April seeking a temporary restraining order to prevent their deportation or removal from the U.S., according to Ho’s concurring opinion. The district court told petitioners it would give the government a 24-hour...

The decision revives a lawsuit against a Texas officer who shot a driver after endangering himself by jumping onto a moving car. ============================================================= During a routine traffic stop near Houston in 2016, a police officer killed Ashtian Barnes by blindly firing two shots into his car after jumping onto the doorsill as Barnes began to drive away. Last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled that the shooting was justified by the threat that the officer, Harris County Constable Roberto Felix Jr., faced when he shot Barnes. Last Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously rejected the...

On Friday afternoon, the Supreme Court remanded A.A.R.P. v. Trump to the Fifth Circuit with very precise instructions. [snip] Last Friday, the Supreme Court vacated the judgment of our court, which had dismissed this appeal for lack of jurisdiction. The Court remanded the case back to us for further proceedings, and directed us to proceed "expeditiously." A.A.R.P. v. Trump, 605 U.S. _, _ (2025). Accordingly, this matter is expedited to the next available randomly designated regular oral argument panel. Judge Ho wrote an seven-page concurrence. He defended his colleague, Judge Wes Hendrix, against an unfair attack from the Supreme Court:...

President Donald Trump faces a bevy of district court judges issuing restraining orders and injunctions blocking his executive actions, and Josh Hammer suggests the president take a leaf out of Abraham Lincoln’s book on the issue. Trump has responded to the orders with calls for Congress to impeach lower court judges or restrain them in other ways, and observers on the Left have claimed Trump’s actions are creating a constitutional crisis. Chief Justice John Roberts publicly chided Trump over the judicial impeachment call. Hogwash, says Hammer, a lawyer who clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit....

Interesting things are happening in the Fifth Circuit case involving silencers, USA v Peterson. A three-judge panel ruled that silencers were not “arms” as defined by the text of the Second Amendment. Peterson and his attorneys have asked the case be reheard in an en banc review. The Fifth Circuit has been reasonably diligent in its Second Amendment cases, so an en banc (review by the whole court) has a good chance of reversing the three-judge panel. The Peterson case appears to be seriously considered by the Fifth Circuit. The court has sent a request to the parties involved to...

CV NEWS FEED // The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Feb. 26 that Planned Parenthood is not required to pay back millions of dollars it defrauded from Medicaid, reversing a lower court ruling. POLITICO reported that both Texas and Louisiana attempted to remove the local branches of Planned Parenthood from their Medicaid programs after a whistleblower revealed that the abortion company provided fetal tissue from abortions to researchers in 2015. During years of litigation to remove Planned Parenthood, the company’s attorneys advised that the Texas and Louisiana branches continue billing Medicaid. Texas ultimately succeeded in removing Planned Parenthood from...

A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that a decades-old ban on federally licensed firearms dealers selling handguns to people aged 18, 19 and 20 is unconstitutional. In a unanimous ruling, the three-judge panel on the New Orleans-based 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals slammed the Biden administration’s attempt to argue that the handgun ban was in line with the “nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation” — a test for gun laws set by the Supreme Court’s landmark 2022 ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen. ... “Ultimately, the text of the Second Amendment includes eighteen-to-twenty-year-old...

The government failed to persuade the appeals court that 18-to-20-year-olds are not part of "the people" or that the age restriction is consistent with the "historical tradition of firearm regulation."The federal ban on handgun sales to adults younger than 21 violates the Second Amendment, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled today. That law is "unconstitutional in light of our Nation's historic tradition of firearm regulation," a three-judge panel unanimously concluded in Reese v. ATF. "Today's ruling is yet another critical FPC win against an immoral and unconstitutional age-based gun ban," said Brandon Combs, president of the...

NEW ORLEANS (January 30, 2025) – Today, Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) announced that the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the federal government’s handgun ban for adults aged 18 to 20 years old is unconstitutional. The opinion in Reese v. ATF can be viewed at firearmspolicy.org/reese. “Ultimately, the text of the Second Amendment includes eighteen-to-twenty-year-old individuals among ‘the people’ whose right to keep and bear arms is protected. The federal government has presented scant evidence that eighteen-to-twenty-year-olds’ firearm rights during the founding-era were restricted in a similar manner to the contemporary federal handgun purchase ban [...] In sum,...

A federal appeals court has dealt a critical blow to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, a controversial Obama-era policy that has shielded over half a million illegal immigrants from deportation. As President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office, this ruling signals a potential turning point in America’s battle against illegal immigration. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit upheld a lower court ruling that found the Biden administration’s attempt to codify DACA violated U.S. immigration law. The decision affirms that the 2012 Obama-era memo, which unilaterally created DACA without congressional approval, was both unconstitutional and...

A federal appeals court on Wednesday stopped the federal government from destroying a fence of razor wire that Texas installed along the U.S.-Mexico border near Eagle Pass to deter migrants from entering the country illegally. The ruling, criticized by activists, came hours before Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum told President-elect Donald Trump that immigrants headed to the U.S. are being “taken care of” in her country. Texas had placed more than 29 miles of wire in the Eagle Pass area by last September when Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the Biden administration over Border Patrol agents’ alleged illegal destruction of state...

Judicial Watch Victory: Federal Appeals Court Rules against Counting of Ballots Received after Election Dayicial Watch Victory: Federal Appeals Court Rules against Counting of Ballots Received after Election Day Judicial Watch announced today that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has issued an opinion reversing a lower court ruling on Mississippi’s election law that permitted absentee ballots to be received as late as five business days after Election Day.

The 5th Circuit’s ruling in a Mississippi case could have implications for other states with similar laws. A federal appeals court Friday ruled invalid a Mississippi law that allows election officials to count mail ballots that arrive after Election Day as long as they are postmarked by then. The ruling came less than two weeks before the Nov. 5 presidential election and could have implications for other states with similar laws. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit did not rule on how the state should handle ballots for this election, saying that matter should be addressed later...

A U.S. federal appeals court ruled against Mississippi’s mail ballot law that allows election officials to count ballots that are postmarked by Election Day but arrive afterward, setting the stage for a possible Supreme Court review. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which has jurisdiction over Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, sent the issue back to a lower court for further review. The decision would only impact Mississippi should a federal district court judge agree to bar the state from counting late-arriving mail-in ballots. The decision, issued by a panel of 5th Circuit judges, some of which appointed by former President...

MASSIVE ELECTION INTEGRITY VICTORY: The 5th Circuit has just ruled that ballots must be received BY ELECTION DAY to be counted — not days after — following an RNC lawsuit. This is a seismic win for fair, accurate, secure, and transparent elections

A federal appeals court will hear arguments on a high-stakes case that could determine whether hundreds of thousands of people will lose their ability to work and remain in the United States.On Oct. 10, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals will revisit the case challenging Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which since 2012 has shielded more than 830,000 people who came to the United States illegally as children from deportation and provided them with renewable work permits.The prolonged legal battle over the fate of DACA, which was promulgated through executive action by President Barack Obama and never approved by...

On Tuesday, a federal appeals court in New Orleans ruled that illegal aliens do not have the right to bear arms under the Second Amendment, due to the fact that they are not American citizens. As reported by Fox News, a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals determined that federal law prohibiting illegal aliens from owning firearms is legal, as the Constitution does not apply to anyone who has entered the United States illegally.(Snip) After hearing the appeal of the illegal’s lawyers, the three-judge panel ruled that the rights granted to American citizens by the Constitution...

After nearly three months of silence, the U.S. Government has now appealed the June 13, 2024, pistol brace decision to the U.S Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. The appeal was announced on August 12, 2024. The case is Mock v. Garland, and it was brought by the Firearms Policy Coalition. The ATF pistol brace rule targets stabilizer braces attached to AR pistols, claiming the braces turn AR pistols into short barrel rifles (SBRs). And since SBRs are regulated under the National Firearms Act (1934), the ATF issued its rule on AR-pistol braces to stop what it saw as...

A “Gun Free School Zone” case has been appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. The appeal attacks the Gun Free School Zone Act (GFSZA) as being an unconstitutional infringement of rights protected by the Second Amendment. An amicus brief has been filed by the California Rifle and Pistol Association (CRPA), the Second Amendment Law Center, and the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF). From January 5th to the 29th of 2023, Ahmed Allam spent several hours in the afternoon and evening parked across the street from a parochial school, St. Anthony Cathedral Basilica School in Beaumont,...

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled that Texas can keep the buoys Governor Greg Abbott ordered installed in the Rio Grande. The Biden-Harris administration sued the State of Texas to stop Texas from placing the barriers in the river that separates Mexico from the U.S. “Biden tried to remove them. I fought to keep them in the water,” Abbott posted on social media. “That is exactly where they will stay.” ...