Free Republic

Wearing a MAGA hat represents a person exercising his or her right to free speech, a U.S. appeals court has ruled. A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a federal judge and ruled in favor of a Washington middle school teacher who claimed that a principal violated his free-speech rights by threatening discipline if he continued to wear a "Make America Great Again" hat to training sessions. "That some may not like the political message being conveyed is par for the course and cannot itself be a basis for finding disruption of a kind that...

TACOMA, Wash. (AP) - A federal judge has ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement to test detainees for COVID-19 before they are transferred to the immigrant detention center in Tacoma. The ruling grants a temporary restraining order requested by lawyers representing vulnerable detainees in a class-action suit. . . . . .The number of COVID-19 cases at the facility has climbed to more than 240 since June. ICE has flown over 1,000 detainees to Washington state since April.

When Seattle’s City Council voted unanimously to cut millions of dollars from its police budget amid the uproar over the murder of George Floyd, it ran into an unlikely roadblock: the federal government. U.S. District Judge James Robart ruled that the city couldn’t defund its own police department without his permission.The judge was acting under the mandate granted him by a 2012 consent decree put in place after John T. Williams, a native American woodcarver, was shot four times by a Seattle police officer in 2010. The killing was ruled unjustified. The consent decree — a sort of civil plea...

Protesters in Seattle threw rocks, fireworks and explosives at police officers during violent confrontations on Saturday, police officials said. In updates on Twitter, the Seattle Police Department said the chaotic scene near its East Precinct station was a “riot,” with some demonstrators breaking windows and setting fire to property in the area. In June, Mayor Jenny Durkan had ordered police to abandon the East Precinct station, which had been the site of almost daily confrontations between officers and people protesting the killing of George Floyd. At least 16 people were arrested on Saturday for either assaulting an officer, obstruction or...

Mayor Jenny Durkan has asked a federal judge to prevent a new City Council ordinance banning Seattle police from using most “crowd-control weapons” from taking effect later this month, saying it likely conflicts with the consent decree the city entered into with the Department of Justice (DOJ) nearly eight years ago. Documents filed Friday in U.S. District Court by the city say that the Department of Justice and the court-appointed monitor overseeing implementation of the consent decree have said the new law can’t take effect without the approval of U.S. District Judge James Robart. Durkan and police Chief Carmen Best...

Two attorneys--Robert Barnes, a California trial attorney and Alan Dershowitz, a famed, highly-esteemed Harvard law professor and member of the legal profession--have come to the same conclusion: President Trump will prevail sooner or later with his immigration Executive Order. The opinion of attorney Barnes appeared in his February 4th article, prior to the 9th district decision to uphold the anti-Trump ruling of Seattle federal judge James Robart. It is apparent from his article that Mr. Barnes believed the 9th District would side with President Trump and do the right and legal thing by adhering to precedent set by the 9th...

When a Seattle Federal Judge, James Robart, imposed a nation wide injunction on portions of President Tump’s executive order, most of the media hastened to noted that he had been appointed by Bush 43. True, but misleading, as noted by Jerome Wohrle at Liberty Unyielding: Judge Robart’s Friday order against Trump sheds little light on his thinking. But at an earlier hearing on Washington State’s motion for a temporary restraining order, he asked what rational basis the government had for restricting entry from the seven countries covered by Trump’s order: Iraq, Iran, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Libya and Yemen. As NPR...

And once declared from the bench "black lives matter". Oh by the way, Judge James Robart, who issued the ruling halting the immigration order on a nationwide basis, is also a Bush appointee, which just goes to show that you can’t tell everything you need to know about a judge by who appointed him. Maybe the pickings were slim in Seattle. By August 2016, it was already well understood by anyone paying attention that “black lives matter” didn’t just mean black lives matter - which of course they do - but rather it was a rallying cry for violent anti-police...

James Robart, the U.S. district judge in Washington State, offered little explanation for his decision to stop President Trump's executive order temporarily suspending non-American entry from seven terror-plagued countries. Robart simply declared his belief that Washington State, which in its lawsuit against Trump argued that the order is both illegal and unconstitutional, would likely win the case when it is tried. Beginning with the big picture, the Justice Department argued that Robart's restraining order violates the separation of powers, encroaches on the president's constitutional and legal authority in the areas of foreign affairs, national security, and immigration, and "second-guesses the...

On Saturday morning, President Donald Trump may have unleashed his most bone-chilling tweet -- at least to those who believe the United States should not become a Trump-led dictatorship. And I don't make that comment simply to be provocative or without giving it a great deal of thought. Our democracy is far more fragile than some might grasp and Trump is engaging in a concerned effort to undermine the workings of it. Here is Trump's truly jaw-dropping tweet from Saturday morning: "The opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law-enforcement away from our country, is ridiculous and will be...

Remember Amherst College student "John Doe," who was expelled for sexual misconduct, even though he had good reason to believe that his accuser had actually assaulted him? A judge recently blocked Doe's attempt to subpoena his female accuser's text messages on grounds that re-litigating the matter "would impose emotional and psychological trauma" on her. Consider the implications of this decision. According to Seattle District Judge James Robart, a student who believes Amherst violated his due process rights, wrongfully expelled him, and ignored subsequent evidence that his accuser, "Sandra Jones," was the actual violator of the college's sexual misconduct policies, does...

Seattle, Washington – U.S. District Judge James Robart on Monday expressed a strong anti-police bias when dealing with a case involving Seattle police union’s contract negotiations. Judge Robart went on a rant about deadly force statistics against black people and proclaimed, “Black Lives Matter.” Judge Robart is presiding over a 2012 consent decree requiring the city to adopt reforms to address Department of Justice allegations of biased policing and excessive force. The proposed changes will have a major effect on all union members, including discipline being investigated and determined by non-law enforcement investigators. The changes make it faster and easier...

Judge James Robart, appointed by President George Bush in 2003, ruled the ban would be halted temporarily nationwide, effective immediately. The move presents a fresh legal challenge for the Trump administration, which is expected to appeal against the decision promptly.