Free Republic

A federal judge has thrown out a lawsuit brought by Democrats that challenged Wisconsin’s witness requirements for absentee voting, a ruling that keeps the law in place with the presidential election six months away. The rules for voting in Wisconsin are of heightened interest given its place as one of a handful of battleground presidential states. Four of the past six presidential elections in Wisconsin have been decided by less than a percentage point, including the past two. U.S. District Court Judge James Peterson tossed the lawsuit Thursday, saying the fact that the law has stood unchallenged in one form...

On Thursday a three-judge panel from the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit decided that Steven Duarte, a felon, has a “right to possess a firearm for self-defense.” Courthouse News Service noted Duarte has five felony convictions and was a member of a street gang in Los Angeles. The decision upholding Duarte’s gun rights was split, with George W. Bush appointee Carlos Bea and Donald Trump appointee Lawrence VanDyke deciding in the majority. Bea wrote the majority opinion, noted the panel tested the prohibition against felons possessing guns in light of Bruen (2022) and found the government...

A DEA agent accused of killing a cyclist in Salem while on duty had his case presented before a federal appeals court today in Seattle. At the center of today’s hearing was whether the agent could claim immunity from state prosecution because he was an on-duty federal agent. On March 28, 2023, Marganne Allen was riding her bike home from work in southeast Salem. Video from that day shows a black pickup truck running a stop sign moments before striking and killing the cyclist.

Officials tried to use a novel interpretation of tax law to expand the reach of Title IX regulations. This ruling put a stop to that. . A federal court of appeals ruling last month protects nonprofits (including private schools and homeschools) from federal overreach in the context of Title IX regulations. Schools that receive government money have to abide by Title IX, but the court found that having 501(c)(3) status is not enough to put a private school into that category. The ruling means private schools cannot be subject to Title IX solely because of their status with the IRS....

A Catholic school in North Carolina was within its legal rights to dismiss a substitute teacher because he was in a same-sex marriage, a federal appeals court ruled.A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Wednesday that Charlotte Catholic High School could fire Lonnie Billard for marrying a man.Circuit Judge Pamela Harris, an Obama appointee, authored the majority opinion, concluding that the Catholic school was protected by the "ministerial exception," noting that Billard's employment involved an inherently religious element."We conclude that the school entrusted Billard with 'vital religious duties,' making him a 'messenger' of its...

A judge last week overturned a portion of a North Carolina law regulating abortion pill distribution in the state. U.S. District Judge Catherine Eagles gave a partial victory to Dr. Amy Brant, the abortionist who had sued the state, and who argued that its regulations go above and beyond the guidance of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In her ruling, Eagles overturned the portion of the law mandating that mifepristone be prescribed only by doctors and only in person, as well as a requirement that patients have an in-person follow-up appointment. Eagles allowed other portions of the law to...

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — A federal lawsuit challenging North Carolina’s photo voter identification law is set to go to trial Monday, with arguments expected to focus on whether the requirement unlawfully discriminates against Black and Hispanic citizens or serves legitimate state interests to boost public confidence in elections. The non-jury trial in Winston-Salem begins more than five years after the state NAACP and several local chapters sued over the voter ID law enacted by the Republican-dominated General Assembly in late 2018. This litigation, along with similar lawsuits in state courts, delayed implementation of the requirement until last year’s municipal elections....

A judge in Arizona has denied a motion that would have lifted the suspension of twenty students arrested last week amid anti-Israel protests. The U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona denied the Arizona State University students' motion to have their college suspensions lifted on Friday, according to local outlet ABC 15. The defendants filed the lawsuit against the Arizona Board of Regents on Tuesday, alleging that their suspension from ASU is causing "irreparable harm" due to their inability to enroll in classes. [snip] Judge John Tuchi ruled that the students did not provide sufficient evidence that their First...

On Tuesday a 2-1 Democrat majority of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit invalidated a good West Virginia law protecting girls’ sports against invasion by male-bodied transgender students. The Richmond-based tribunal held that West Virginia’s Save Women’s Sports Act violates the federal Title IX law, which was enacted to protect girls’ sports, and also that West Virginia’s protection of girls’ sports may further violate the Constitution. The Biden-appointed judge who wrote this absurd decision repeatedly used the propaganda term “sex assigned at birth,” as if sex were arbitrary and merely “assigned” to a newborn. On the contrary,...

A federal appeals court on Tuesday overturned the West Virginia law banning transgender girls from playing on girls' sports teams, finding that it violates Title IX, the federal civil rights law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in schools. The ruling comes amid a wave of anti-trans legislation cropping up across the country, as well as efforts to fight back against it. The ban in West Virginia was originally signed into law by Gov. Jim Justice in 2021, and introduced as the "Save Women's Sports Act." It required that any official or unofficial school-sanctioned event involving athletics determine each athlete's participation in...

I read this on a "Spring Valley" vitamin bottle at Walmart the other day... Sobriety Check Update lets play the song... Does that song make you angry or did it make you angry when you first heard it... Getting back to "DEI" I didn't say it wasn't a problem or isn't a problem I would be denying my own experience. I worked in television news and right before I was drummed out as a drunk in 1990 I could see corporate efforts to bring in "Minority" hires. Marxist-Leninist thinking was in the heart of one of those hires she did...

A judge in Texas struck down a Biden administration rule on March 28 that required states to measure and report the greenhouse gas emissions from any vehicles using the national highway system. The rule was issued by the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT)’s Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) in 2023 as part of President Biden’s efforts to slash carbon emissions in half by 2030. Specifically, it required state transportation departments and metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) to both measure their transportation-related emissions on the U.S. highway system and set their own emission reduction targets. Additionally, the measure required state DOTs and MPOs...

A federal judge on Thursday dismissed a lawsuit challenging a District of Columbia law allowing “noncitizen residents” to vote in local elections. Judge Amy Berman Jackson, an appointee of President Barack Obama, found that a group of seven citizen plaintiffs lacked standing to challenge the legislation. Their lawsuit against the D.C. Board of Elections, filed on March 14, aimed to block the 2022 law passed by the Council of the District of Columbia. They argued that “noncitizens” do not have a fundamental right to vote in the United States and that allowing them to cast ballots and hold office in...

On March 8, 2024, U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman decided against a federal ban on gun ownership for illegal immigrant Heriberto Carbajal-Flores. The case at hand centered on Carbajal-Flores, who was “charged with possession of a firearm while illegally or unlawfully in the United States.” He had a handgun in his possession “in the Little Village neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois,” on June 1, 2020. He was charged for being a non-citizen in possession for a firearm. Coleman ultimately concluded, “The noncitizen possession statute, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(5), violates the Second Amendment as applied to Carbajal-Flores. Thus, the Court grants...

BILLINGS, Mont.—A Montana rancher illegally used tissue and testicles from wild sheep killed by hunters in central Asia and the United States to breed “giant” hybrid sheep for sale to private hunting preserves in Texas, according to court documents and federal prosecutors. Arthur “Jack” Schubarth, 80, of Vaughn, Montana pleaded guilty to felony charges of wildlife trafficking and conspiracy to traffic wildlife during an appearance Tuesday before a federal judge in Great Falls. Each count carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Court documents describe a yearslong conspiracy, beginning in 2013, in which Mr....

UPDATED: A federal judge has found Catherine Herridge in civil contempt of his order that she reveal the source of stories she wrote when she worked for Fox News. U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper set a fine of $800 per day, but he stayed the ruling to give her time to appeal. The judge had ordered Herridge to reveal her sources for 2017 stories that reported on a federal investigation of Yanping Chen, a naturalized U.S. citizen who founded the University of Management and Technology in Virginia. The stories had to do with Chen’s affiliations with the Chinese military. The...

A Lubbock, Texas federal judge ruled Tuesday that lawmakers unconstitutionally passed the $1.7 trillion government funding bill in 2022 when they did so under a pandemic-era rule allowing members of the U.S. House of Representatives to vote on the matter by proxy instead of in person. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, requested the courts to block a provision of the funding bill that gave pregnant workers stronger legal protections. U.S. District Judge Wesley Hendrix reviewed the request and gave a "limited" ruling on one of two provisions Paxton sought to have blocked. Hendrix, who was appointed by former...

A Florida man accused of facilitating an illegal health care scheme has been spared additional prison time, ending the Justice Department's attempt to reprosecute him after his sentence was commuted by former President Donald Trump. Philip Esformes on Thursday pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud and was sentenced to time served, with prosecutors agreeing to dismiss the remaining five counts. It's a quiet conclusion to a controversial prosecution that saw the federal government resuscitate the criminal case against him not long after he'd spent four and a half years behind bars and was released...

A federal court ruled Thursday that Louisiana’s state House and Senate district maps dilute black voting strength in violation of the Voting Rights Act, and has ordered the maps to be redrawn. The ruling by U.S. District Chief Judge Shelly Dick came just weeks after Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry signed on Jan. 22 a bill creating a new congressional map that establishes a second majority-black district. The new map reshapes Louisiana’s 6th District, that of Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.), giving it a black population of around 56 percent and making it the state’s second majority-black district. In her ruling on...

On January 31, 2024, US District Court Judge Susan P. Watters published an opinion on the motion to dismiss the Gun Free School Zone case in Billings, Montana. She found the Gun Free School Zone Act (GFSZA) to be constitutional. The case has been covered extensively here on AmmoLand. The person charged, Gabriel Metcalf, had reason to carry a firearm for his own defense and that of others outside his home in Billings, Montana. His home is across the street from an elementary school. The school was not in session while he was carrying outside his home.Gabriel Metcalf’s primary defense...