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On August 19, 2022, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals summarily remanded the Young v. Hawaii case back to the District Court for a re-hearing after the Supreme Court granted cert, vacated the previous Ninth Circuit decision, and remanded the case back to the Ninth Circuit for a rehearing. In 2011, George Young applied twice to obtain a permit to carry a firearm for self-defense outside his home in Hawaii, either openly or concealed. Both his applications were denied by the Chief of Police, Harry Kubojiri, who cited Hawaii law.Young filed a lawsuit claiming his Constitutional right to keep and...

Civil Rights The panel reversed the district court’s denial of a motion for a preliminary injunction sought by a derecognized student club, the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and directed the district court to enter an order reinstating the Fellowship as a student club within the San Jose Unified School District. The Fellowship of Christian Athletes (“FCA”) requires students serving in leadership roles to abide by a Statement of Faith, which includes the belief that sexual relations should be limited within the context of a marriage between a man and a woman. The San Jose Unified School District (the “School District”)...

Biden nominated Roopali Desai to the 9th Circuit Appeals Court.. ... serves on the board of a group that backed calls to defund the police and has called to abolish prisons. ... Desai serves on the board of Just Communities Arizona (JCA), a self-described "abolitionist organization" that envisions "a world in which prisons and jails are unnecessary." ... The organization has taken several radical stances on the criminal justice system, including claiming that "the criminal punishment system isn't really about justice" and mourning Arizona’s execution of Frank Atwood last month. Atwood was convicted in 1987 of raping and murdering 8-year-old...

A Supreme Court decision may force over 70,000 truck owner-operators in California to stop driving, creating another choke point in the already stressed West Coast logistics networks. The AB5 law restricts the use of independent contractors and will soon be enforced against the trucking industry after the court declined to hear their appeal. The California Trucking Association said in a statement that gasoline has been poured on the fire that is the ongoing supply chain crisis, and the decision by the Supreme Court could deny a judicial review of a lower court ruling. In an end-of-term orders list released in...

A U.S. appeals court ruled Wednesday that California's ban on the sale of semiautomatic weapons to adults under 21 is unconstitutional. In a 2-1 ruling, a panel of the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Wednesday the law violates the Second Amendment right to bear arms and a San Diego judge should have blocked what it called "an almost total ban on semiautomatic centerfire rifles" for young adults.

LOS ANGELES -- A U.S. appeals court ruled Wednesday that California's ban on the sale of semiautomatic weapons to adults under 21 is unconstitutional. In a 2-1 ruling, a panel of the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Wednesday the law violates the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms and a San Diego judge should have blocked what it called "an almost total ban on semiautomatic centerfire rifles" for young adults.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, however, ruled that a hunting license requirement for purchases of rifles or shotguns by adults under 21 who are not in the military or law enforcement was reasonable A U.S. appeals court on Wednesday ruled that California's ban on the sale of semiautomatic weapons to adults under 21 is unconstitutional, a move gun-rights advocates hope will pave the way for similar rulings in other courts. The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the law violates the Second Amendment and that a San Diego judge should have blocked what is called...

Former President Carter is taking the rare step of weighing in on judicial proceedings, saying that an appeals court is misinterpreting a conservation law he signed. On Monday, Carter filed a briefing chastising a ruling that upheld a Trump-era decision to build a road through a national wildlife refuge in order to enable medical evacuations nearby.

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — U.S. officials improperly downplayed the climate change effects from burning coal when they approved a large expansion of an underground Montana coal mine that would release an estimated 190 million tons of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, a court ruled. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in a 2-1 ruling that Interior Department officials “hid the ball” during the Trump administration, by failing to fully account for emissions from burning the fuel in a 2018 environmental analysis. A judge previously ruled against the disputed expansion of Signal Peak Energy’s Bull Mountain mine in 2017,...

RENO, Nev. (AP) — A federal appeals court has lifted a temporary ban on construction of a Nevada geothermal power plant opposed by a tribe and conservationists who say the site is sacred and home to a rare toad being considered for endangered species protection. U.S. District Judge Robert C. Jones in Reno had granted the 90-day injunction last month sought by opponents of Ormat Technologies’ Dixie Meadows project at the high-desert site bordering wetlands fed by hot springs east of Fallon. A two-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco issued a one-page ruling...

As a rule, few things are less likely to be the source of humor than court decisions. Sometimes there are excellent puns or low-key snark, but you don’t find belly-laugh material. Usually. Last Friday, a panel of the Ninth Circuit published a decision on a complaint arising from Ventura, California, that covered both the COVID panic and the Second Amendment. During the height of the COVID panic, that county ordered firing ranges, and gun shops closed. Presumably, this is because the Wuhan virus has a particular affinity for recreational venues. Several groups and individuals sued to overturn the order as...

In one opinion published last week, 9th Circuit Judge Lawrence VanDyke said Ventura County, California, violated the Second Amendment when it shut down gun stores early in the COVID-19 pandemic. In another opinion the same day, VanDyke said the county's policy was perfectly consistent with the constitutional right to keep and bear arms. That second, tongue-in-cheek opinion was meant to illustrate the disrespect that the 9th Circuit and other federal appeals courts have shown for the Second Amendment since 2008, when the Supreme Court explicitly recognized that the provision guarantees an individual right to armed self-defense. The Court may finally...

The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued a stay Tuesday which prevents the enforcement of California’s “large-capacity” magazine ban while an appeal is made to the Supreme Court.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit sided with a California seminary on Monday, ruling that it is entitled to ignore federal anti-discrimination law and expel students in same-sex marriages. Graduate students Nathan Brittsan and Joanna Maxon... sued the seminary, claiming that Fuller Theological Seminary accepts federal funding and is therefore bound by Title IX’s anti-discrimination mandate. In turn, the school argued that it is entitled to a defense based on what is known as the “religious exemption” under 20 U.S.C. § 1681(a)(3). ...

PHOENIX (AP) — A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that Arizona doesn’t have to give voters who forget to sign their mail ballot time after the election to resolve the issue, rejecting a lawsuit filed by Democrats. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 decision, overturned a lower-court ruling that found it’s unconstitutional for Arizona to give voters time after an election to resolve mismatched signatures but not missing signatures. The appellate judges said Arizona’s interest in reducing the burden on busy poll workers justifies the disparity. The overwhelming majority of Arizona voters cast mail ballots, which...

U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)- The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed the three-judge panel decision in Duncan v. Becerra, the ban on magazines that hold over 10 rounds. The opinion was released on November 30, 2021.Update: The case nomenclature has changed from Duncan v. Becerra to Duncan v. Bonta, because of the change in the California Attorney General.At the end of March, in 2019, Judge Roger T. Benitez wrote a well-reasoned opinion that found the California ban on magazines of over 10 rounds to be an unconstitutional infringement on the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. The case was...

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...

A federal appeals court decided 2-1 Wednesday to overturn a nationwide order requiring federal immigration authorities to monitor and possibly release detainees at high risk of dying or suffering long-term complications from COVID-19. A three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said a Riverside-based federal district judge overreached when he issued a preliminary injunction in April, 2020 requiring the government to identify and track immigration detainees with certain health risks and establish directives for release during the pandemic.... ...In court filings, ICE argued that concern about detainees contracting the virus amounted to "mere speculation” and releasing large...

The Supreme Court on Monday sided with law enforcement in a pair of cases that implicated “qualified immunity,” the controversial legal doctrine that gives police broad protection from lawsuits. In a pair of unsigned summary rulings issued without noted dissent, the justices reversed two federal appeals courts that had permitted excessive force lawsuits to proceed against officers in separate cases arising from California and Oklahoma. The justices ruled the officers should be granted qualified immunity, which shields government officials from liability unless it is proven they violated a “clearly established” right, a difficult legal hurdle. Both lawsuits dealt with police...

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) is facing criticism after congratulating a Korean American judicial nominee on Wednesday, commenting on the “hard work ethic” of “you and your people.” “What you said about your Korean background reminds me a lot of what my daughter-in-law of 45 years has said: ‘If I learned anything from Korean people, it’s a hard work ethic. And how you can make a lot out of nothing,’ ” the 88-year-old told judicial nominee Lucy Koh on Wednesday. “So I congratulate you and your people,” he added. Koh thanked the senator following the comments. Grassley, who is running for...