Free Republic

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...

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...

An appeals court has upheld a lower court’s support for a group of male inmates who argued that the state’s refusal to pay for hormones to change their body type was a form of torture. The court concluded that “plaintiffs could not be effectively treated without hormones” because mental health remedies, such as psychotherapy and antidepressants, “do nothing to treat the underlying disorder” of a perceived incorrect body type, something the court called a “medical condition.” The ruling struck down a Wisconsin law specifying that inmates did not have the right to taxpayer-funded hormone alteration or sex reassignment surgery, although...