Free Republic

A court awarded an atheist group approximately $456,000 after they won a years-long lawsuit against a South Carolina school district for holding graduation ceremonies with prayer and hymns. Last year, the American Humanist Association won a lawsuit against Greenville County School District for their practice of holding graduation ceremonies with sectarian religious elements. The U.S. District Court for South Carolina awarded AHA $446,466 in attorney fees and $9,776 in other expenses on Tuesday, which was below the previous requested amount of $584,026. Greenville County Schools told local media outlet Fox Carolina that they are probably going to appeal both the...

After making a brief comeback on school lunch menus, white bread and other refined grains may be vanishing again when schools reopen after a federal court threw out the Trump administration’s rollback of school nutrition standards. The U.S. district court in Maryland this week said the administration did not give adequate public notice of the change, which had gone into effect for this past school year. The ruling was in response to a lawsuit brought by the Center for Science in the Public Interest and Healthy School Food Maryland. The U.S. Department of Agriculture said it does not comment on...

Many suffered collateral damage in the Deep State’s scheme to take down Donald Trump, but few will find justice. On Thursday, federal Judge Leonie Brinkema tossed Svetlana Lokhova’s defamation lawsuit against Stefan Halper and a slew of legacy media outlets. Brinkema’s 41-page opinion detailing why the Russian-born U.K. citizen had no recourse for the damage inflicted on her by the SpyGate plotters and their partners in the press exposed the sad reality of this wide-ranging scandal: many suffered collateral damage in the Deep State’s scheme to take down Trump, but few will find justice.Lokhova, an historian and former Ph.D. student...

A federal judge in Maryland has blocked the Trump administration's executive order allowing state and local governments to turn away refugees from resettling in their communities. In September, President Trump announced that groups that help refugees find places to live must first get written consent from local and state jurisdictions before resettling them. Immigration advocates challenged the executive order in federal court, calling it cruel and shortsighted. U.S. District Judge Peter Messitte said the executive order "does not appear to serve the overall public interest." In his 31-page opinion issued Wednesday, he wrote that the order gives states and local...

A federal judge has rejected President Trump’s push to dismiss a lawsuit against him for allegedly violating the emoluments clause of the Constitution. U.S. District Judge Peter Messitte in Maryland shut down the Justice Department’s arguments to dismiss the lawsuit filed by the attorney generals in D.C and Maryland, according to court documents. Trump is accused of violating the clause, which prevents elected officials from receiving gifts or benefits from foreign governments without Congress’s approval. --This breaking news report will be updated.

Last year, a court ruled that 11 VA House districts were unconstitutional, finding that lawmakers improperly prioritized race to draw African-American voters into majority-minority districts. The court gave the General Assembly a chance to redraw the map last fall, but it became clear the Republican House and Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam could not agree on a plan. A federal court ruled last year that Dr. Bernard Grofman could re-draw the Virginia legislative districts however he liked. Grofman is a professor at the University of California-Irvine, whose degrees in Mathematics (1966) and his MA (1968) and PhD (1972) in Political Science...

A second appeals court has lifted an injunction blocking the Trump administration from implementing its immigration rule relating to “public charges,” mirroring an order in the Ninth Circuit Court several days before. “Public charge” refers to an individual who is likely to become primarily dependent on the government for subsistence, by receiving assistance such as food stamps or Medicaid. The cases stem from a new rule the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) adopted in August that expanded the definition of “public charges” in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). The rule provides clarification about what factors would be considered when...

The Trump administration is heading to court this week in two lawsuits charging that the president is violating the Constitution by profiting off of his hotels and other businesses while in office. The cases revolve around the Constitution’s once-obscure emoluments clauses, which critics say President Trump has flouted, giving foreign diplomats an opening to curry favor with him by patronizing his businesses. On Monday, a panel of judges on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear oral arguments over whether members of Congress can sue the president for alleged emoluments violations, and on Thursday, the full 4th Circuit Court...

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to take the case of a public school teacher who required her students to recite the Islamic "conversion prayer" or receive a failing grade. The Thomas More Law Center is defending Caleigh Wood, a Christian student in 11th grade at La Plata High School in La Plata, Maryland. Wood refused to deny her faith "by making a written profession of the Muslim conversion prayer known as the shahada – 'There is no god by allah and Muhammad is the messenger of allah,'" Thomas More said. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled...

A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that apprehended migrants do not have the right to be held in the same state as their children while in detention, thrusting the issue of migrant family separations back into the spotlight. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit affirmed a district court’s ruling that migrants do not have a “due process right to family unity.”

The Senate voted Tuesday to confirm Allison Jones Rushing, 37, to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, making her the youngest federal judge in the country. The Senate voted 53-44 to put Rushing into the lifetime court seat. Every Republican present voted for her. Every Democrat present opposed her.

President Trump’s revised executive order, commonly referred to as the travel ban, will be reviewed by a federal appeals court on Monday afternoon. The case, International Refugee Assistance v Trump, is centered on a battle between presidential authority and the rights of foreigners to travel to the United States. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Virginia will decide if the travel order violates the First or Fourteenth amendments to the Constitution or the anti-discrimination section of the Immigration and Nationality Act. The Constitution does not usually apply to non-U.S. citizens on foreign soil. But a professor of immigration law...

It looks like Neil Gorsuch is going to have his plate full when he finally takes his seat on the Supreme Court. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has been busy uprooting the Second Amendment this week, delivering a stunning opinion which essentially overturns the Heller decision without so much as a by your leave to SCOTUS. It involves a case out of Maryland where the state’s Democrats decided to ban “assault rifles” and high-capacity magazines. Apparently the idea of precedent is not something they care to have any truck with, as Charles C.W. Cook explains at National Review....

In the past, businesses have been happy to put new factories in states like South Carolina and Virginia, due to their right-to-work laws and relatively reasonable employment laws. But they should think twice about doing so in the future, thanks to some recent, very unreasonable court rulings against employers in those states by the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. Those decisions illustrate a contempt for binding Supreme Court precedent, and basic rules of logic, evidence, civil procedure, and appellate procedure A classic example is the Fourth Circuit’s 2-to-1 decision on May 11 in Brown v. Nucor Corp., which violated...

Richmond, Va. — The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday declared as unconstitutional a North Carolina law requiring abortion providers to show a woman an ultrasound and describe the images in detail four hours before she can have an abortion. The decision upholds a lower-court ruling from January and could send the issue to the Supreme Court. "This compelled speech, even though it is a regulation of the medical profession, is ideological in intent and in kind," the 4th Circuit judges wrote in their 37-page opinion. "The means used by North Carolina extend well beyond those states have...

A North Carolina law requiring abortion providers to not only conduct an ultrasound but describe its content in detail to women seeking an abortion — whether or not they have asked for or want to receive an ultrasound — was blocked on Monday, December 22, by the Fourth Circuit court of appeals. The law was preliminarily blocked in October 2011 and also deemed unconstitutional by a federal court in January 2014. In its ruling, the Fourth Circuit determined that the law prohibits a physician’s right to free speech by mandating what conversations doctors are required to have with their patients,...

Well, this is awkward.Unlike the D.C. Circuit, which split 2-1, the majority here was 3-0. Even so, the most noteworthy thing about the opinion is how tormented the court seems in trying to determine what Congress intended when it said that subsidies should be available only on “an exchange established by the State.” From page 20:Page 24:Page 28:If they can’t decide what the key phrase was designed to do, why don’t they follow the D.C. Circuit’s lead and stick with the plain text? In the first excerpt above, the court frankly admits that the language of the law seems...

A third federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that President Obama violated the Constitution last year when he made recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board, adding more weight to the case as it goes before the Supreme Court in the justices’ next session. The Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 decision, said that the president can only make recess appointments after Congress has adjourned “sine die,” which in modern times has meant when it breaks at the end of each year.

After six years of litigation, I am pleased to report that I have finally won the right to present my case against UNC-Wilmington to a jury of my peers here in North Carolina. My case began in September of 2006 when I was denied promotion to full professor. At the time, I had multiple teaching awards and outstanding reviews from students for my teaching. I had published more peer-reviewed articles than the vast majority of my colleagues. In fact, my department had never denied promotion to full professor to anyone with as many peer reviewed publications as I had accumulated....

Does Open Carry, in an Open Carry state, give police a reasonable articulable suspicion that a crime is occurring? Cops can’t just stop you, frisk you, or demand identification from you. Terry v. Ohio decided that a police officer must have “reasonable suspicion that the person has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime and has a reasonable belief that the person “may be armed and presently dangerous” before he can detain you. But does that change if you’re hanging out with a person who openly carries a firearm?