Free Republic

U.S. District Judge Sarah Merriam dismissed Dr. Bandy Lee’s wrongful termination lawsuit against Yale University. The lawsuit accused Yale of violating Lee’s free speech and professional obligations when she was not reappointed to her role with the school. She claims she was fired over her public statements criticizing then-President Donald Trump and his inner circle. Lee blames her termination on a letter sent to Yale by Trump’s friend Alan Dershowitz. Dr. Lee was not considered a staff member or employee of Yale University. She was a voluntary, unpaid staff member. She sued Yale last March over breach of contract and...

A federal district court judge in Michigan on Thursday denied Democrat Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s efforts to dismiss a lawsuit against her office for failing to remove deceased registrants from the state’s voter rolls. In November, the Public Interest Legal Foundation filed the suit, claiming their analysis determined 25,975 dead Michiganders were registered to vote as of August 2021. Of those, 23,663 had been dead for five or more years, while 17,479 had been dead for more than a decade and 3,596 had been dead for at least 20 years.

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson has failed to convince a judge to dismiss a case that could force the state to remove 25,975 deceased people from its voter rolls. Benson moved for dismissal of a case brought against her in November 2021 by the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) for her failure to clean up the state’s voter registration rolls—in an alleged violation of Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993. On Aug. 25, Benson’s motion to dismiss the case was denied by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan. The court also...

(Reuters) -President Joe Biden on Friday nominated a lawyer who represented the Mississippi clinic at the heart of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to overturn its landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade abortion rights decision to become a federal appeals court judge. Biden's latest slate of nine new judicial nominees included Julie Rikelman, an abortion rights lawyer with the Center for Reproductive Rights whom the president picked to serve on the Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Biden's latest nominees continued the White House's push to diversify the federal bench. They include Daniel Calabretta, a California state court judge nominated...

At today’s hearing on Marilyn Mosby’s motion to have the federal charges against her thrown out, her lawyer argued that Leo J. Wise, the lead prosecutor, “has a penchant for prosecuting Black elected officials.” “All we did was draw the logical conclusion from his past conduct that this prosecution is consistent with his history of prosecuting Black elected officials,” asserted attorney A. Scott Bolden. U.S. District Judge Lydia Kay Griggsby, who is Black, pushed back. “Are you aware, Mr. Bolden, of any evidence that Mr. Wise has been found to have prosecuted someone because of their race?” she asked. “In...

Some on the right were concerned when Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell indicated a potential willingness to support the confirmation of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court. Republicans indeed have shown more openness to support the nominees of Democrat presidents compared to vice versa, and given that Jackson’s confirmation wouldn’t change the balance of the court, it seemed possible that McConnell might ultimately join with Democrats and support her confirmation.But, Jackson has squandered that goodwill with her evasive answers during her confirmation hearings, and McConnell has since expressed concern that Jackson has been “evasive and unclear.”“She’s declined to...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who will be nominated for the Supreme Court, worked for seven years as a judge on the federal trial court in Washington, D.C., before Biden appointed her to the appeals court that meets in the same courthouse. Here are excerpts from some notable opinions: PRESIDENTIAL POWER In 2019, Jackson ruled on a dispute between Democrats who control the House of Representatives and the Trump administration over lawmakers’ efforts to subpoena former White House counsel Don McGahn to testify to Congress. The administration appealed, and the case bounced around the D.C. Circuit through the...

Pro-life Sen. Josh Hawley expressed alarm Wednesday about U.S. Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson’s “soft” record on child sex offenders amid growing concerns about protecting children from abuse. Jackson, President Joe Biden’s nominee to replace retiring Justice Stephen Breyer, also has a pro-abortion record that includes working with abortion activists on a case about suppressing pro-life advocates’ free speech. Her record on unborn babies’ rights has pro-life advocates opposing her nomination. Now, Hawley’s findings are raising additional concerns about other vulnerable children. “Judge Jackson has a pattern of letting child porn offenders off the hook for their appalling crimes,...

Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's membership in a Harvard University student group that once invited a controversial anti-Semitic speaker to campus has surfaced ahead of her confirmation hearings later this month. In 1992, Jackson was a member of the Harvard Black Students Association when they invited Leonard Jeffries, a professor known for making anti-Semitic remarks, to speak at the university, Fox News reports. According to the Anti-Defamation League, Jeffries first gained public attention in 1991, “when the New York Post published an account of a vitriolic anti-Semitic and racist speech he made on July 20 at the Empire...

Article was published anonymously in 1996 by Harvard Law Review, but Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson did not disclose her authorship until the Senate Judiciary Committee asked her to list published writings as part of her confirmation process. ******************************************************************************* President Joe Biden's Supreme Court nominee, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, admitted on a questionnaire for the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee that she had authored a paper criticizing the "excessiveness" of sex offenders' punishments, which she said could be "unfair and unnecessarily burdensome." Jackson authored "Prevention Versus Punishment: Toward a Principled Distinction in the Restraint of Released Sex Offenders," which was published anonymously...

Yesterday, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected former President Donald Trump’s claim of executive privilege, holding that the archivist of the United States could provide a tranche of Trump’s presidential records to the House’s “Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.”In a unanimous ruling, the federal appellate court concluded that President Biden’s conclusion that “an assertion of executive privilege is not in the best interests of the United States” controlled and that the archivist, therefore, must hand over the first of three sets of documents requested. The court added, however, that it would...

A federal appeals court ruled Thursday against an effort by former President Donald Trump to shield documents from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. In a 68-page ruling, the three-judge panel tossed aside Trump's various arguments for blocking through executive privilege records that the committee regards as vital to its investigation into the run-up to the deadly riot aimed at overturning the results of the 2020 presidential election. Judge Patricia Millett, writing for the court, said Congress had “uniquely vital interests” in studying the events of Jan. 6 and said President Joe Biden had made...

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has granted former President Trump's request for an "administrative" injunction, temporarily blocking the release of his White House records from the National Archives to the House Committee Investigating the January 6 Capitol attack. "The National Archives and Records Administration and the Archivist be enjoined from releasing the records requested by the House Select Committee over which appellant asserts executive privilege, pending further order of this court," the order reads.