Free Republic

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A federal judge ruled Monday that absentee ballots in battleground Wisconsin can be counted up to six days after the Nov. 3 presidential election as long as they are postmarked by Election Day. The highly anticipated ruling, unless overturned, means that the outcome of the presidential race in Wisconsin likely will not be known for days after polls close. Under current law, the deadline for returning an absentee ballot to have it counted is 8 p.m. on Election Day. Democrats and their allies sued to extend the deadline in the key swing state. U.S. District Judge...

Trump spoke privately with McConnell on Friday night following the news of Ginsburg’s death, laying out his preferences for who should replace the liberal justice, according to several people familiar with the conversation. In the phone call, Trump said he liked Judge Amy Coney Barrett of the Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit and Barbara Lagoa of the 11th Circuit, according to two people briefed on the discussion. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose details of a private conversation.

In Illinois Republican Party v. Pritzker, (7th Cir., Sept. 3, 2020), the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected arguments by the Illinois Republican Party that Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker's COVD-19 Order limiting gatherings (including political gatherings) to 50 people is unconstitutional because there is an exemption from the limit for religious services. The court, denying a preliminary injunction, said in part: A careful look at the Supreme Court’s Religion Clause cases, coupled with the fact that EO43 is designed to give greater leeway to the exercise of religion, convinces us that the speech that accompanies religious exercise has a...

CHICAGO - A lawsuit over the planned Obama Presidential Center’s campus in Jackson Park has stalled after a federal appeals court panel ruled the plaintiffs did not suffer actual harm and that many of their grievances were not within the court’s jurisdiction. The 7th Circuit for the U.S. Court of Appeals issued the ruling on Friday, more than two years after community group Protect Our Parks Inc. filed suit alleging the Chicago Park District and the city of Chicago improperly transferred public park land to the Obama Foundation for private use. The decision to remand the case means the lawsuit...

A federal judge in Washington has blocked federal executions scheduled for this week, citing concerns that the lethal injection protocol involved is "very likely to cause extreme pain and needless suffering." Judge Tanya Chutkan said the last-minute ruling only hours before executions were set to resume for the first time in 17 years was "unfortunate," but she blamed the Justice Department for racing ahead before legal challenges had been fully aired. The judge said the prison's plan to use a single drug, pentobarbital, could cause pulmonary edema, producing a sense that the condemned men were drowning. That would violate the...

ERRE HAUTE, Indiana (Reuters) - A U.S. federal judge issued an injunction on Monday delaying what would have been the first federal execution in 17 years, scheduled for later in the day, thwarting at least for now the Trump administration’s goal of reviving capital punishment at the federal level. Judge Tanya Chutkan of the U.S. district court in Washington ordered the U.S. Department of Justice to delay four executions scheduled for July and August to allow continuation of the condemned men’s legal challenges against a new lethal injection protocol announced in 2019. “The scientific evidence before the court overwhelmingly indicates...

Chief District Judge Jane Magnus-Stinson ruled Friday in Indiana that the execution would be delayed because of concerns from the victims’ family about the coronavirus pandemic. The Justice Department (DOJ) argued that the judge’s order misconstrued the law and asked the appeals court to immediately overturn the ruling. The appeals court found that the claim from the victims’ family “lacks any arguable legal basis and is therefore frivolous." The Justice Department also argued that while the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) has taken measures to accommodate the family and implemented additional safety protocols because of the pandemic, the family’s concerns “do...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday sent two Indiana abortion disputes back to lower courts including a fight over a restriction that would require women to undergo an ultrasound procedure at least 18 hours before terminating a pregnancy. The nine justices tossed lower court rulings that blocked two Republican-backed state laws from taking effect, one of which is the ultrasound measure passed by the state legislature in 2016 and signed by Vice President Mike Pence when he was Indiana's governor before Donald Trump selected him as his running mate. The second law would require that parents be...

While caring for the hungry 'requires teams of people to work together in physical spaces ... churches can feed the spirit in other ways,' the court ruled.June 22, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against an Illinois church suing the state over its COVID-19 restrictions on freedom of religious assembly, potentially setting up another First Amendment showdown before the nation’s highest court. In May, Illinois Democrat Gov. J.B. Pritzker laid out a five-phase plan for lifting the state’s public-health emergency, which among other things holds that, should COVID-19 cases continue to decline, public gatherings such as...

When people ask Jeremy Chong about his Friday night plans, they don’t get the typical college sophomore response. He and his friends usually head to downtown Chicago. But the point isn’t to party—it’s to evangelize. And thanks to a federal judge, the group of Wheaton students can finally resume that without harassment. For months, students like Chong and Matthew Swart would pass out gospel tracts at Millennium Park. They were just simple threefold pamphlets telling people about faith in Jesus Christ. “[We were] passing those out to anyone who would take [them] and having conversations when we were approached.” Simple...

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Trump administration on Friday night in a case that contested the president’s “public charge” rule, which critics have called a “wealth test” for legal immigrants. The policy in question, the Immigration and Nationality Act, would make it harder for immigrants who are “likely at any time to become a public charge” to obtain green cards. The policy discourages legal immigrants in the process of obtaining permanent legal status or citizenship from using public assistance, including Medicaid, housing vouchers and food stamps. The case heard by the court, Wolf v. Cook County, sought...

Overzealous, out of control, and power-hungry prosecutors wanted to send a message with the Rod Blagojevich case: if you dare to have the audacity to exercise your Constitutional rights and challenge their false claims at trial, they will use the entire weight of the United States of America to destroy your reputation in the court of public opinion, and see to it that the court imposes the most devastating of fines, penalties, and prison sentences. They will do everything in their power to destroy you personally, professionally, and financially, and worse than anything else, they insure that in the end...

The Supreme Court has voted to allow the Trump administration to enforce its new rule that restricts the eligibility of new immigrants who are deemed to likely become “public charges” if they receive visas.The top court justices voted 5-4 on Monday to grant a stay on nationwide injunctions issued by a lower court, allowing the Trump administration to enforce its “public charge” rule across the country, except for Illinois, while the appeals play out in court. A separate injunction ordered by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois remains in effect but only in that state.Justices...

The Supreme Court on Tuesday issued an order that will allow Indiana to enforce a law mandating the burial or cremation of fetal remains following an abortion. The order marks the first case under the more conservative Supreme Court makeup to challenge the parameters of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that legalized abortion nationwide. The Indiana case was closely watched since the Supreme Court began discussing it in January. The justices met about it more than a dozen times. The order by the Supreme Court overturns an appeals court decision from the 7th Circuit that held Indiana’s stated interest...

Organized labor, already reeling from a potentially major financial hit thanks to a Supreme Court ruling last week that could result in millions of public-sector workers cutting off funding, could be subject to another blow from the justices: class-action suits from those workers seeking to get paid back from the unions. In a little-noticed action, the Supreme Court invalidated a ruling last week by the 7th Circuit Court denying class-action certification in a case called Riffey v. Rauner. The case involved nonunion state-subsidized Illinois home healthcare workers seeking to be repaid the funds that for years they were forced to...

The Senate confirmed two more of President Trump’s judicial nominees to the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday. In a 90-0 vote, Michael Scudder, a Chicago-based lawyer, was cleared and Amy St. Eve, a judge for the Northern District of Illinois, was confirmed by a 91-0 vote. The Senate plans to vote on the confirmation of two other judicial nominees, one for the 6th and one for the 10th circuit, on Tuesday in a push by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, to reshape the federal bench. If the Senate also confirms Mr. Trump’s two nominees on...

A federal appeals court Tuesday issued a decision that could have far-reaching implications for transgender students, siding with a transgender boy whose Wisconsin school district had sought to bar him from the boys’ bathroom to protect the privacy of other students. High school senior Ash Whitaker sued Kenosha Unified School District No. 1 last summer, arguing that its bathroom policy violated his civil rights. In a unanimous decision, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit upheld a preliminary injunction that temporarily stops the district from enforcing that policy while the case is tried.

A federal appeals court in Chicago on Tuesday ruled that the 1964 Civil Rights Act also protects LGBT employees from workplace discrimination, the first time a federal appellate court has come to that conclusion. The decision by the full 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago comes just three weeks after a three-judge panel in Atlanta ruled the opposite, saying employers aren’t prohibited from discriminating against employees based on sexual orientation. It also comes as President Donald Trump’s administration has begun setting its own policies on LGBT rights. Late in January, the White House declared Trump would enforce an...

Last month, U.S. District Court Judge James Peterson struck down what he deemed was a much too strict voter ID law in Wisconsin and suggested that proponents of the law were overly paranoid about voter fraud. As a result the judge's ruling, voters would not have to provide a valid form of identification at their polling stations and residency requirements would be relaxed. On Wednesday, however, a U.S. appeals court issued a stay in the case, allowing the "strict" practices to remain in place. A Justice Department statement said that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit issued...

The 7th Circuit federal court of appeals will hear a case against a local ban on some common rifles, handguns, shotguns, and magazines.  The city of Highland Park, notorious for its anti-second amendment laws, passed an ordinance that requires residents to turn in, modify or remove the banned items from the city.   Ordinance 136(pdf) deals with "Assault Weapons".  The ordinance includes very broad boilerplate language.   Some claim that the ordinance was lifted from the City of Chicago. The definitions are broad and cover most semi-automatic rifles, and a fair number of pistols and shotguns.   Highland Park has a...