Free Republic

A federal judge ruled on Monday that a federal prisoner is entitled to surgical procedures that will alter his body in order to accommodate his “transgender” identity. As reported by USA Today, Judge Nancy Rosenstengel of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois ordered the United States Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to provide a surgeon who will perform the operation for a prisoner going by the name of Christina Iglesias, a man who believes that he is a woman. The decision ended a case that has lasted for three years. Under the conditions of Rosenstengel’s ruling, BOP...

WASHINGTON (CN) — A federal judge imposed a prison sentence plus house arrest and probation on a Tennessee man who stormed the Capitol, saying the government wants to keep an eye on people like him as the 2024 presidential election approaches. U.S. District Chief Judge Beryl Howell spoke at the Thursday hearing about the “conundrum” many sentencing judges are facing as they decide how to sentence a nonviolent Capitol riot defendant like Blake Reed, who pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of entering and remaining in a restricted building. There’s a trade-off in punishment, she said, with jail time on...

U.S. District Judge Mark Walker ruled that portions of the law restricting the use of ballot drop-boxes, assistance for voters, and third-party voter registration drives violated the Voting Rights Act and constitutional protections because they were passed "with the intent to discriminate against Black voters."

Quite a blockbuster ruling from the federal district court. The court found that in enacting certain election laws limiting registration outreach and the use of drop boxes, Florida violated the Voting Rights Act. The court also found that Florida acted intentionally discriminating against the state’s black voters. And although the parties hardly briefed it, the Court imposed a very strong remedy of requiring that certain changes in voting rules in Florida be precleared before the court for a period of 10 years under section 3c of the Voting Rights Act.

A federal judge on Friday blocked a legal challenge to Rep. Madison Cawthorn’s (R-N.C.) candidacy filed over allegations he helped spur the Jan. 6, 2021, riot on Capitol Hill. Richard Myers, a Trump-appointed federal judge in the eastern district of North Carolina, approved Cawthorn’s request for a preliminary injunction to the challenge to his reelection bid.

WASHINGTON — A judge on Friday blocked a shameless Democrat electoral challenge that sought to disqualify Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina from running for re-election by labeling him an insurrectionist.U.S. District Judge Richard E. Myers II, an appointee of President Donald J. Trump, stepped in to squelch an effort by Democrat lawyers in North Carolina who had filed a motion before the state’s Board of Elections declaring Mr. Cawthorn, 26, ineligible for re-election under the Constitution. They had contended that the first-term Republican’s support for Patriots who entered the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, made him an “insurrectionist,” and therefore...

The first Black federal judge in Alabama spoke out against one of President Biden's potential Supreme Court picks in a letter addressed to the commander in chief that was obtained by NBC News. U.W. Clemon, a former chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama, urged the president not to consider Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson for the vacancy. The retired judge said that there are "several exceptionally well-qualified black female aspirants for the Supreme Court" but that he "strongly" believes Jackson should not be considered. Clemon referenced the case Ross v. Lockhead as reasoning for...

A federal judge on Tuesday approved a plan to restructure Puerto Rico's bond debt, which had plunged the U.S. territory into the country's largest municipal bankruptcy in history. Judge Laura Taylor Swain ruled in favor of the Plan of Adjustment that was years in the making, through arduous negotiations between the island's Fiscal Oversight Board, debtors and the government. According to Board officials, the plan will reduce Puerto Rico's debt by 80 percent and save the island more than $50 billion in debt payments. Puerto Rico Gov. Pedro Pierluisi said the approval of the plan "represents a great step for...

The leader of the Oath Keepers and two of the men captured on video urging people to enter or proceed into the U.S. Capitol on January 6 have been subpoenaed by the defense to testify in the government’s case against Kelly Meggs, an Oath Keeper accused of conspiring to storm the Capitol.Stewart Rhodes, Ray Epps, and John Sullivan have been subpoenaed to testify at Meggs’ trial in a move defense attorney Jon Moseley told National File he believes will prove his client’s innocence, and will prove the entire prosecution to be politically motivated.

The defense team for the “radical extremists” who are being accused of participating in a plot to kidnap Michigan’s unpopular Governor Gretchen Whitmer are calling on the judge to throw out the case against their clients. The 20-page motion, filed Christmas night by all five defense lawyers, asks U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker to dismiss the conspiracy charge. The move would effectively dismantle the government’s case and remaining charges, which are intertwined and based on the conspiracy charge, the lawyers wrote. “Essentially, the evidence here demonstrates egregious overreaching by the government’s agents, and by the informants those agents handled,” defense...

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...

A federal judge is questioning whether he has jurisdiction to hear a sprawling lawsuit against Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems that accuses the election technology company of organized crime and intimidating its critics. The named plaintiffs to the class action lawsuit, all of whom are in Michigan, allege Dominion has violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act — typically used to prosecute gangs, cartels and the Mafia — by sending cease and desist letters to those who defamed the company. “Generally, Plaintiffs are everyday Americans. They are fathers, mothers, daughters, and sons. They are the neighbor you say good morning...

One of the more bizarre January 6 cases delved further into the peculiar when an accused Capitol rioter who was arrested while touring in a Broadway production of "Jesus Christ Superstar" earlier this month attended his first court hearing on Monday. James Beeks, an actor who was playing Judas in the musical production, was arrested in Milwaukee last week on charges related to the Capitol riot after investigators attended two performances of the show to find him... ...The actor's antics irritated Chief Judge Beryl Howell of the U.S. District Court in Washington, DC, when he declined to represent himself, saying,...

DENVER - A federal judge has ordered two lawyers who filed a class action lawsuit alleging the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump to pay more than $180,000 in attorney’s fees for defendants Dominion Voting Systems, Facebook and others, saying the lawsuit was intended to manipulate "gullible members of the public" and helped spur the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. The now-dismissed suit relied on baseless conspiracy theories spread by the former president and his supporters. It named elected officials in four swing states, Facebook and Denver-based Dominion, whose election machines were at the center of...

Two lawyers who unsuccessfully sued to overturn the results of the 2020 U.S. election must pay almost $187,000 to cover the legal fees spent by Facebook Inc., Dominion Voting Systems Inc. and others defending the lawsuit. U.S. Magistrate Judge N. Reid Neureiter said the lawyers — Gary Fielder of Denver and Ernest John Walker, of Benton Harbor, Michigan — must take responsibility for their conduct because the defendants in the “pointless and unjustified lawsuit” were defamed in public court filings. “This lawsuit has been used to manipulate gullible members of the public and foment public unrest,” the judge wrote in...

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — A federal judge has blocked the U.S. Treasury from enforcing a provision of the American Rescue Plan Act that prohibited states from using the pandemic relief funds to offset new tax cuts. U.S. District Judge L. Scott Coogler ruled Monday in Alabama that Congress exceeded its power in putting the so-called tax mandate on states. He entered a final judgement in favor of 13 states that had filed a lawsuit and instructed the Treasury Department not to enforce the provision. The judge left the rest of the law in place. The American Rescue Plan steered $195...

A judge playing a central role overseeing the criminal cases stemming from the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol building has forcefully rejected claims from many alleged rioters that they’re being treated more harshly than people who broke the law during the widespread protests that arose last year in response to the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. Speaking during a sentencing hearing for Capitol riot defendant Glenn Croy, Chief Judge Beryl Howell disputed the notion that participants charged in last year’s unrest were treated leniently. She also insisted that the motivations of those involved rendered the Jan. 6...

A Colorado man who in August pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of “parading” inside the Capitol during the January 6 “insurrection” begged a federal judge for leniency, declaring himself “an idiot,” new court filings show, and repeatedly apologized to America for his participation in the day’s events.Colorado Springs resident Glen Wes Lee Croy, 46, wrote in the letter to the federal judge in his case, as reported by WUSA in Denver:I am guilty of being an idiot and walking into that building, and again apologize to America and everyone for my role in participating.Croy apologized in a number of...

Southwest Airlines employees now know the date they must provide proof of COVID-19 vaccination to their employer, or face being placed on unpaid leave. A federal judge denied the Southwest Airlines’ Pilots Association (SWAPA) petition to temporarily strike down the carrier’s December 8, 2021 internal vaccination deadline, along with their entire lawsuit against Southwest alleging violations of the Railway Labor Act. Mandatory Vaccination Will “Improve the Safety of Air Transportation” The pilots union representing roughly 9,000 pilots working for the Dallas-based airline originally sued the carrier in August 2021, claiming the working conditions under the pandemic broke the “status quo”...