Free Republic

A federal judge ordered Fresno city officials Wednesday to stop seizing homeless people's property without warning as a civil rights lawsuit proceeds against the city. The suit — filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights on behalf of six people — claims police and sanitation workers violated the rights of the city's homeless in the last three years by defining their property as trash and bulldozing their encampments. Homeless advocates said the preliminary injunction by U.S. District Court Judge Oliver W. Wanger would help cement homeless people's property rights. "This is very significant...

MIAMI, Dec 12, 2005 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Roy Black, Rush Limbaugh's attorney, issued the following statement regarding Judge David F. Crow's decision today prohibiting prosecutors from asking the talk show host's doctors about his medical treatment and condition or information he shared with his doctors during his care and treatment. Judge Crow's ruling upholds our argument that the State cannot breach doctor-patient confidentiality just because it has obtained some medical records, and thus the state cannot ask the doctors its questions posed to the court during the hearing. Judge Crow's decision prohibits the State from questioning Mr. Limbaugh's physicians...

INDIANAPOLIS — A Wiccan activist and his ex-wife are challenging a court order that they must protect their 9-year-old son from what the divorce decree terms their "non-mainstream religious beliefs and rituals." Thomas E. Jones and Tammy Bristol of Indianapolis are fighting a Marion Superior Court stipulation that they shelter the boy from their religion. The Indiana Civil Liberties Union has taken on the case, appealing the December decree to the Indiana Court of Appeals. Jones, a Wiccan activist who has coordinated Pagan Pride Day in Indianapolis for the past six years, said he and his ex-wife were stunned when...