Free Republic

A judge has sided with a Colorado company whose owners oppose contraception and blocked a federal mandate that the company’s health insurance for employees include birth control coverage. The mandate stems from President Obama’s controversial Affordable Care Act. Senior U.S. District Judge John Kane issued an order Friday that bars the government from enforcing the requirement against Hercules Industries, Inc., a Denver heating and air conditioning company. The judge, in an 18-page decision, cited the owners’ religious rights as the basis for his temporary injunction. The owners are Roman Catholics whose religious beliefs are consistent with the church’s teaching against...

A Sacramento federal judge has struck down as unconstitutional the part of California's so-called Victims' Bill of Rights that governs parole revocation. The law, enacted by voter approval of a 2008 ballot initiative known as Proposition 9, was a sweeping amendment to the state constitution, conferring a long list of entitlements on crime victims. The sections dealing with parole revocation were made part of the state's Penal Code. U.S. District Judge Lawrence K. Karlton ruled Tuesday that those sections fall short of providing the minimum due process guaranteed by the Constitution and two U.S. Supreme Court decisions, Morrissey v. Brewer...

A federal district judge in Detroit has ruled that the Bush administration's NSA surveillance of phone conversations is unconstitutional.