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The U.S. government can’t be held liable for the death of Kate Steinle on a San Francisco pier based on a federal ranger’s negligent storage of a gun that was stolen and used to shoot her, a Ninth Circuit panel ruled Tuesday.Steinle was killed by a bullet that ricocheted off a concrete walkway and struck her in the back on Pier 14 in San Francisco on July 1, 2015. . . . In arguments before a three-judge Ninth Circuit panel last month, a lawyer for Steinle’s parents argued U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) ranger John Woychowski had a duty...

The Supreme Court struck down a California regulation granting union organizers access to farmworkers on agricultural fields, ruling Wednesday that the 1975 measure violated growers’ private-property rights. The decision, by a 6-3 vote along the court’s conservative-liberal divide, erases a major victory that Cesar Chavez’s farmworker movement achieved in the 1970s, when they argued the nature of agricultural labor made it too difficult to reach workers outside the fields.

The 9th Circuit, acting on a June 10 appeal filed by Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, put Benitez’s ruling on hold pending a full-blown decision. “This leaves our assault weapons laws in effect while appellate proceedings continue,” Bonta said said in a tweet. “We won’t stop defending these life-saving laws.” The 9th Circuit judges on the panel issuing the stay were Barry G. Silverman, a Clinton appointee, Jacqueline Nguyen, an Obama appointee and Ryan D. Nelson, a Trump appointee. Benitez, appointed by former President George W. Bush, said the weapons ban unconstitutionally infringed on the rights of California gun owners and...

9th CIRCUIT COWBOY is the story of Judge Harry Pregerson who, for almost half a century, served on California’s famously liberal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and was known for placing his personal scruples over what he discounted as abstract legalities. “I looked upon being a judge,” he said, “as a chance to help as many people as I could through the law.” Growing up during the Depression in diverse East Los Angeles, Harry enlisted in the Marines in World War II and served in the Pacific. In the bloody Battle for Okinawa, he received a field commission to lieutenant...

Appeals court panel says interstate haulers are not exempt from AB 5 law. Interstate truckers could soon come under California’s highly restrictive independent contractor law because of a recent federal appeals court decision. A three-judge panel for the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals voted 2-1 that a federal law called the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act (FAAAA) does not preclude application of the state’s AB 5 contractor law to trucking companies operating in interstate commerce. In early 2020, before the new law went into effect, a federal district court judge granted an injunction barring the state from enforcing it...

Over a conservative judge’s angry dissent, a federal appeals court refused Thursday to let a group of Republican-led states try to revive a Trump administration rule that denied legal status and work permits to noncitizens who accept public benefits, such as food stamps and Medicaid.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, in an en banc panel, has found there is no “Right to Bear Arms” in the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution. The majority opinion was written by Judge Bybee. The case is the long-delayed Young v. State of Hawaii. It will undoubtedly be appealed to the United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS). Whether SCOTUS will grant a writ of Certiorari is unknown at this time. SCOTUS has refused to grant a hearing to nearly all Second Amendment cases for over a decade.On 15 June, of 2020, SCOTUS refused to hear ten pending Second...

In Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, (9th Cir., March 18, 2021), the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a Washington state school board's dismissal of a high school football coach who insisted on prominently praying at the 50-yard line immediately after football games. The long-running high-profile case was before the 9th Circuit for the second time. (See prior posting.) The court issued a Summary of its decision along with the opinion, saying in part: The panel held that the record before it and binding Supreme Court precedent compelled the conclusion that the District would have violated the Establishment Clause...

On Wednesday, an en banc panel of the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled that the second amendment right to keep and bear arms does not citizens include the right to carry a firearm, either openly or concealed, in public .The court issued the ruling in the case of George Young Jr. V Hawaii, a lawsuit challenging a Hawaii firearm licensing law, which states residents seeking license to openly carry a firearm in public must demonstrate “the urgency or the need” to carry a firearm, must be of good moral character, and must be “engaged in the...

A federal court in California on Thursday ruled against President Trump's order to exclude undocumented immigrants from the census count for apportioning congressional seats, dealing the administration its second court loss over the July executive memorandum. A panel of three judges for the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California ruled that the memo was unconstitutional and violated laws governing the census. "The policy which the Presidential Memorandum attempts to enact has already been rejected by the Constitution, the applicable statutes, and 230 years of history," the panel wrote in a 90-page decision. The order forbids the Commerce...

Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan denied a request from Republicans to stop Montana Gov. Steve Bullock’s (D) plan to mail ballots to all registered voters. Kagan, who has jurisdiction over the case based on geography, denied the request without referring the case to the full court. The suit was brought by Joe Lamm of the Ravali County Republican Central Committee and other voters. The GOP-dominated Legislature banned mail-in ballots for general elections, instead allowing only by-request, no-excuse-required “absentee ballots” and in-person voting compatible with Phase 2 safety restrictions in the governor’s COVID-19 reopening plan. But Bullock argued an emergency declaration...

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday ruled that President Trump’s use of emergency powers to allocate millions of dollars in funding for the construction of a southern border wall was illegal, the latest blow to the Trump administration’s effort to limit immigration. In the 2-1 decision, the court upheld a December 2019 district court summary judgment in favor of a request from the advocacy groups the Sierra Club and the Southern Border Communities Coalition against Defense Secretary Mark Esper, acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf and “all persons acting under their direction ... from using military construction funds...

USA Today embarrassed themselves earlier when they fact-checked a ridiculous, over-the-top Babylon Bee story that nobody—not a single person—believed to be true. Here is the satirical story from The Bee that so-called journalists at a real news outlet somehow felt the need to debunk: The first paragraph reads: In a landmark ruling, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has overturned the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. In a close decision, the judges on the court have ruled RBG's death unconstitutional and will block Trump from nominating a replacement. Instead of cracking a smile at an obvious joke...

by Joe Callen A federal appeals court ruled late Monday that the Trump administration may deport hundreds of thousands of illegal alienswho previously received temporary protected status for "humanitarian" reasons, in some cases decades past the event that spurred the temporary reprieves. The 2-1 ruling by a panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned an injunction protecting aliens from El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua and Sudan from being deported pending litigation. The Trump administration ended their protections, saying their home countries were now safe for them. The decision affects 300,000 non-citizens here illegally -- and a staggering 200,000 of...

On 28 August 2020, Attorney General Becerra of California petitioned the Ninth Circuit to review the case of Duncan v. Becerra. The review would be of the three-judge panel which held the California ban on magazines that hold over 10 rounds of ammunition to be unconstitutional. From the Petition for En Banc: 1 INTRODUCTION AND RULE 35 STATEMENTCalifornia respectfully petitions for rehearing en banc of the panel’s decision, which invalidates a state law restricting large-capacity magazines that can hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition (LCMs). California voters adopted the current LCM law in response to a spate of mass...

What’s Happening: Courts are working overtime, thanks to Democrat efforts to change voting rules before the 2020 election. Many Americans know about the left’s attempts to encourage mail-in ballots. Republicans took them to court in Florida, scoring a big victory. In Oregon, a group seeking to redraw voting districts wanted to collect signatures online. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court. And the highest court gave them the bad news: -The Supreme Court has blocked a lower court ruling that would have made it easier for a group promoting redistricting reform in Oregon to collect signatures in...

The Supreme Court on Friday declined to block the Trump administration from using $2.5 billion in reallocated Pentagon funds to build a U.S.-Mexico border wall. In a 5-4 ruling that broke along ideological lines, the court's conservative majority denied a bid by interest groups to halt construction after a federal appeals court last month said the use of defense funding for the project is illegal. The court's four more liberal justices dissented from the ruling.

The Supreme Court has allowed President Trump to defy Congress and continue to spend more than $6 billion diverted from military funds to pay for the construction of a border wall in parts of Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and California.

The Supreme Court by a 5-4 vote has denied a request to halt construction of President Trump’s border wall over environmental concerns. A number of groups, including the ACLU and Sierra Club, had asked the high court to get involved again after the justices last year cleared the way for the administration to use military funds for construction while the case played out in the courts. A federal appeals court had ruled against the administration last month, but the justices, for now, have given another temporary victory to the administration.

A federal appeals court ruled Monday that the Trump administration cannot withhold federal grants from California sanctuary cities, affirming previous rulings in the state. The U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco said its ruling that the Justice Department cannot block police funds from cities not enforcing immigration laws does not extend nationally, Bloomberg News reported. The decision follows rulings from three other regional federal appeals courts against the administration. But a New York court unanimously ruled in February that the department had the authority to withhold funds from the cities that do not comply with federal authorities' enforcement of...