Free Republic

A panel of three federal judges in South Carolina ruled Friday the state’s 1st District was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander and ordered state lawmakers to redraw the congressional map before any more elections can be held. The decision gave lawmakers until March to draw new lines for the district, which runs along the state’s southern coast and is currently represented by Republican Nancy Mace. The ruling is the latest in suits over this decade’s congressional redistricting based on the 2020 census results, including in states such as Florida and Texas. An individual voter and the state’s NAACP filed the lawsuit...

The Biden Administration signed off on Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, regulations to protect small streams, wetlands and waterways as part of the Clean Water Act, just before the end of 2022.President Biden’s signing of the regulations ultimately repealed Trump-era regulations that made many waterways susceptible to pollution and were thrown out by federal courts.The EPA signed off on the revised definition of "Waters of the United States," on Dec. 29, while the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers signed off on the revised definitions on Dec. 28.The revised rules define what types of water bodies are protected under the Clean...

The U.S. Justice Department has asked a federal judge to hold Donald Trump's office in contempt of court for failing to fully comply with a subpoena to return all classified documents in the former president's possession, the Washington Post reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell has not yet held a hearing or ruled on the request, the newspaper reported. One of the key areas of disagreement centers on the Trump legal team's repeated refusal to designate a custodian of records to sign a document attesting that all classified materials have been...

Democrat attorneys general seek to force Catholic schools to hire homosexual teachersThe lawyers' amicus brief argues that Catholic high schools do not have a right to hire and fire people in accordance with Church teaching.CHARLOTTE, North Carolina (LifeSiteNews) — Eighteen Democrat attorneys general have joined in an amicus brief against a Catholic high school who fired a substitute teacher in a homosexual “marriage.” The brief, filed last week, argued that the Catholic high school does not have a right to not hire individuals that live a lifestyle incongruent with Catholicism. A federal court ruled in September 2021 against the high...

A judge in Arizona on Thursday ordered the governing board of a ruby-red county in the southeastern corner of the state to certify the results of the Nov. 8 election, finding that its members had no authority to shirk a duty required under state law...The denouement in Cochise County played out as a federal judge, also on Thursday, sanctioned lawyers for Kari Lake and Mark Finchem, the unsuccessful GOP candidates for governor and secretary of state, respectively. Taken together, the orders show how judges are scorning efforts to politicize ministerial roles and undermine election administration.The federal judge, John Tuchi of...

Obama Judge John Tuchi in Arizona ruled on Wednesday afternoon, November 23, 2022, the day before Thanksgiving, that Maricopa County was justified in discriminating against TGP reporter Jordan Conradson and preventing him access to the County’s press room after another corrupt election disaster in the county. Judge Tuchi who was appointed by Barack Obama to the District Court in Arizona waited until Wednesday afternoon, the day before Thanksgiving, to announce his ruling on the case between The Gateway Pundit and Maricopa County in Arizona.

Democrats are waging lawfare to try and slow down Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Now these leftists scored a huge win. And Ron DeSantis was defeated when a judge’s ruling dealt him this major setback. Democrats are utilizing the same strategy to thwart Governor DeSantis’ agenda that they did with Donald Trump. Judge-shop until you find a friendly left-wing judge who will issue preliminary injunctions blocking key agenda items. Even if you lose on appeal, it generates headlines in the press that allows leftists to claim DeSantis is some kind of rogue executive. That’s exactly what happened when U.S. District Court...

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — A federal judge in Florida on Thursday blocked a law pushed by Gov. Ron DeSantis that restricts certain race-based conversations and analysis in colleges. Tallahassee U.S. District Judge Mark Walker issued a temporary injunction against the so-called “Stop Woke” act in a ruling that called the legislation “positively dystopian.” The law prohibits teaching or business practices that contend members of one ethnic group are inherently racist and should feel guilt for past actions committed by others. It also bars the notion that a person’s status as privileged or oppressed is necessarily determined by their race or...

Federal judges are not historians, but they are increasingly obligated to play them on the bench. In his Bruen decision last June, Justice Clarence Thomas ordered courts to assess the constitutionality of modern-day gun restrictions by searching for “historical analogues” from 1791, when the Second Amendment was ratified. Ever since, judges have struggled mightily with this task—in part because most have no training in real historical analysis, but also because the record is often spotty and contradictory. In light of Bruen’s maximalist language, they have erred on the side of gun owners, finding a constitutional right to buy a gun...

WASHINGTON — A Jan. 6 rioter who dragged former D.C. Police Officer Michael Fanone into the crowd on the steps of the U.S. Capitol was sentenced to 7.5 years in federal prison on Thursday. Albuquerque Head, a 43-year-old from Tennessee, was sentenced to 90 months in federal prison, a bit shy of the 96 months that prosecutors had requested, but still one of the longest sentences to date in the Capitol riot cases. Head will get credit for the roughly 18 months he's spent locked up already. Fanone urged Judge Amy Berman Jackson to sentence Head to the maximum, saying...

A court has rejected a lawsuit seeking to force the public disclosure of federal records about a 2018 episode in which a gun belonging to President Joe Biden’s son Hunter was allegedly thrown in a trash can. In a ruling Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras found that the public interest in the handling of any investigation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives into the episode was “significant,” but that the importance of Hunter Biden’s privacy as a private citizen outweighed the value of releasing any such records to the public. “The privacy interest here is...

CHICAGO (AP) — A federal judge has approved a $9.25 million settlement by the Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Teachers Union in two long-running lawsuits stemming from the layoffs of hundreds of Black educators at underperforming schools, officials said Wednesday. Those eligible to receive payments under the settlement have until Friday to submit claims, attorneys for the teachers union said. Eligible to receive payments are all Black persons employed as teachers or para-professionals in any school or attendance center subjected to a “turnaround” policy that targeted schools that had been put on probation due to substandard test scores and...

Ex-NYPD officer sentenced to record 10 years for Jan. 6 riot Retired New York Police Department officer Thomas Webster leaves the federal courthouse in Washington, Thursday, Sept. 1, 2022. Webster was sentenced on Thursday to 10 years in prison for attacking the U.S. Capitol and using a metal flagpole to assault one of the police officers trying to hold off a mob of Donald Trump supporters. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana) 1 of 7 Retired New York Police Department officer Thomas Webster leaves the federal courthouse in Washington, Thursday, Sept. 1, 2022. Webster was sentenced on Thursday to 10 years in...

A federal appeals court ​on Sunday halted Sen. Lindsey Graham’s testimony before the grand jury investigating possible illegal efforts by allies of former President Donald Trump’s to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, acting on a request by the South Carolina Republican, temporarily blocked a decision by a federal judge in Atlanta that rejected Graham’s claim of congressional immunity and ordered him to appear before the special grand jury on Tuesday. ​ The three-panel appeals court returned the matter to ​US District Judge Leigh Martin May​ ​to decide whether the subpoena...

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — A federal judge has reinstated a moratorium on coal leasing from federal lands that was imposed under former President Barack Obama and then scuttled under former President Donald Trump. Friday’s ruling from U.S. District Judge Brian Morris requires government officials to complete a new environmental review before they can resume coal sales from federal lands. Among President Joe Biden’s first actions in his first week in office was to suspend oil and gas lease sales — a move later blocked by a federal judge — and he faced pressure from environmental groups to take similar action...

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — A federal judge has ordered Indianapolis Public Schools to allow a 10-year-old transgender girl to rejoin her school’s all-girls softball team while a lawsuit continues against a state law that bans transgender females from competing in girls school sports. U.S. District Judge Jane Magnus-Stinson in Indianapolis issued a preliminary injunction Tuesday on behalf of the girl, finding that she “has established that she has a strong likelihood of succeeding on the merits” of her claim. “She has also established that she would suffer irreparable harm for which there is no adequate legal remedy,” Magnus-Stinson wrote in her...

A man who attacked police officers with poles during the riot at the U.S. Capitol was sentenced on Tuesday to more than five years in prison, matching the longest term of imprisonment so far among hundreds of Capitol riot prosecutions. Mark Ponder, a 56-year-old resident of Washington, D.C., said he “got caught up” in the chaos that erupted on Jan. 6, 2021, and “didn’t mean for any of this to happen.” “I wasn’t thinking that day,” Ponder told U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, asking her for mercy before she sentenced him to five years and three months in prison. That...

Feeling irrationally angry after an argument with his wife in 2015, the police were called on firearm owner Edward Caniglia to perform a welfare check. He agreed to undergo a psychiatric evaluation at the hospital to determine suicidality on the condition that police not confiscate his guns. Upon returning to his home, however, Caniglia found that the police had unconstitutionally searched his house and seized his firearms. For the first time in 13 years, the Court upheld both privacy and gun rights, this time unanimously. Caniglia v. Strom’s 9-0 decision has the potential to create lasting effects and set precedent...

Dr. Simone Gold, a Beverly Hills woman known for spreading debunked claims about Covid-19 was sentenced on Thursday to 60 days in prison for illegally entering and remaining in the US Capitol during the January 6 insurrection. Gold, founder of the group America’s Frontline Doctors, was also ordered to pay a $9,500 fine – the largest fine imposed to date among the almost 200 rioters who have been sentenced. “Your organization is leaving people with the misimpression that this is a political prosecution or that it’s about free speech,” district Judge Christopher Cooper said as he imposed the sentence, slamming...

Georgia taxpayers will fund the costly “gender-affirming” surgery of a law enforcement officer because an Obama-appointed federal judge ruled that a county in the state’s central region violated the Civil Rights Act when its insurance company denied the operation. The chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgie, Marc Treadwell, writes in his opinion that the exclusion for the surgery, which is complicated and can cost tens of thousands of dollars, “plainly discriminates because of transgender status.” Enacted in 1964, the Civil Rights Act prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national...