Free Republic

A federal appeals court has set a mid-January deadline for the Louisiana state legislature to draw up a new congressional map, which comes in a long-running legal dispute that included a lower court ruling that found the current map likely unfairly diluted the power of black voters. A three-judge panel in the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals issued its order on Nov. 10, requiring the state legislature to pass a new map by Jan. 15, 2024. The appeals court's order notes that, if the state legislature fails to adopt a new map by the deadline, then the lower court should...

<p>LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — A federal judge on Tuesday threw out multimillion-dollar defamation lawsuits against five media companies brought by a Kentucky student involved in a 2019 widely viewed encounter with a Native American man at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington.</p>

A Montgomery federal judge on Friday lifted the injunction preventing Alabama’s 2019 abortion ban from going into effect after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, meaning abortions are now illegal in Alabama except in cases where the life of the mother is in danger. U.S. District Court Judge Myron Thompson’s order in Montgomery federal court said that the legal underpinning for the injunction “no longer exists” after the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturning Roe. Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, the defendant in the legal challenge to the Alabama law, was granted his...

The first Black federal judge in Alabama spoke out against one of President Biden's potential Supreme Court picks in a letter addressed to the commander in chief that was obtained by NBC News. U.W. Clemon, a former chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama, urged the president not to consider Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson for the vacancy. The retired judge said that there are "several exceptionally well-qualified black female aspirants for the Supreme Court" but that he "strongly" believes Jackson should not be considered. Clemon referenced the case Ross v. Lockhead as reasoning for...

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer is retiring, NBC News reported Wednesday, giving President Joe Biden a crucial opportunity to replace the liberal justice.

PHOENIX (AP) — A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that Arizona doesn’t have to give voters who forget to sign their mail ballot time after the election to resolve the issue, rejecting a lawsuit filed by Democrats. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 decision, overturned a lower-court ruling that found it’s unconstitutional for Arizona to give voters time after an election to resolve mismatched signatures but not missing signatures. The appellate judges said Arizona’s interest in reducing the burden on busy poll workers justifies the disparity. The overwhelming majority of Arizona voters cast mail ballots, which...

DENVER (AP) — A federal judge issued a restraining order against a suburban Denver county’s policy allowing parents to opt their children out of a mask mandate at school, finding the rule violates the rights of students with disabilities who are vulnerable to COVID-19. U.S. District Judge John L. Kane on Tuesday called the Douglas County Board of Health order that allowed parents to opt their children out of mask-wearing a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which guarantees equal access to education for all. Kane’s order came after the Douglas County School District filed a federal lawsuit challenging...

What does it take to hold federal police accountable for using excessive force? That question is once again being raised with cases being appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. And it’s coming to the Justices in the form of a petition from Kevin Byrd, a Texas mechanic who was almost shot to death by a federal officer in a dispute over a purely personal matter. Kevin is not fighting alone. The Institute for Justice (IJ) represents him in his U.S. Supreme Court appeal.

The U.S. government can’t be held liable for the death of Kate Steinle on a San Francisco pier based on a federal ranger’s negligent storage of a gun that was stolen and used to shoot her, a Ninth Circuit panel ruled Tuesday.Steinle was killed by a bullet that ricocheted off a concrete walkway and struck her in the back on Pier 14 in San Francisco on July 1, 2015. . . . In arguments before a three-judge Ninth Circuit panel last month, a lawyer for Steinle’s parents argued U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) ranger John Woychowski had a duty...

A federal judge in Kentucky on Thursday temporarily blocked a statewide school mask mandate put in place amid increased transmission of the highly contagious delta variant of the coronavirus. The ruling comes a little over a week after Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) signed an executive order requiring all teachers, staff, students and visitors in Kentucky schools to wear face coverings while indoors. In an eight-page ruling, U.S. District Judge William Bertelsman, a Carter appointee, said Beshear’s order appeared to lack validity after the state legislature earlier this year overrode Beshear's veto to pass a measure limiting his public health...

"Progressives have called for Breyer to step down so Biden could nominate his successor."

9th CIRCUIT COWBOY is the story of Judge Harry Pregerson who, for almost half a century, served on California’s famously liberal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and was known for placing his personal scruples over what he discounted as abstract legalities. “I looked upon being a judge,” he said, “as a chance to help as many people as I could through the law.” Growing up during the Depression in diverse East Los Angeles, Harry enlisted in the Marines in World War II and served in the Pacific. In the bloody Battle for Okinawa, he received a field commission to lieutenant...

Over a conservative judge’s angry dissent, a federal appeals court refused Thursday to let a group of Republican-led states try to revive a Trump administration rule that denied legal status and work permits to noncitizens who accept public benefits, such as food stamps and Medicaid.

A U.S. federal judge on Thursday rejected Parler’s demand that Amazon.com Inc restore web hosting services for the social media platform, which Amazon had cut off following the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol. U.S. District Judge Barbara Rothstein in Seattle said Parler was unlikely to prove Amazon breached its contract or violated antitrust law by suspending service on Jan. 10, and that it was “not a close call.” She also forcefully rejected the suggestion that the public interest would be served by a preliminary injunction requiring Amazon Web Services to “host the kind of abusive, violent content at...

(CN) — Defamation and harassment claims brought by students at Kentucky’s Covington Catholic High School against CNN, the Washington Post and NBC were dismissed by a federal judge Wednesday after he found that none of the twelve plaintiffs had been defamed or unlawfully threatened. The suit stems from a confrontation at the Lincoln Memorial in January of 2019 during the annual March for Life, and followed on the heels of CNN’s settlement with fellow student Nicholas Sandmann. Sandmann’s tense encounter with Native American activist Nathan Phillips at the march went viral, sparking widespread ire on social media from commenters who...

ICE released more than 250 detainees after a federal judge ordered the population be reduced A number of illegal immigrants who were released from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention in October after a court order due to COVID safety have since been re-arrested for crimes including child sex and drug offenses, according to the agency. ICE released 250 detainees from its facility in Adelanto, Calif., after a federal judge ordered the population be reduced in order to halt the spread of coronavirus infections in response to a lawsuit. ICE complied with the order but objected strenuously to it on...

Please note 2 of the links in the body of this text no longer work. There should still be enough information for you to do additional research to verify or contradict. Following is the original text from my blog post of December, 2, 2012: In the Presidential election of 2012, I experienced the longest lines at early voting that I have ever seen. I read articles from different parts of the country reporting the same phenomenon. On election day there were excessive lines with many polling places required to stay open hours longer than normal to accommodate all of the...

On June 5, 2020, we reported that Appeals Court Orders Molotov Cocktail Lawyers Back to Jail: Two Brooklyn-based lawyers facing federal charges for allegedly throwing Molotov cocktails into a NYPD cruiser during the riots are back in federal custody after an appeals court reversed the bail decision. That initial and temporary appeals court decision now has been reversed, with a panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 decision, ordering the defendants released on bail and home confinement pending trial. ... ridiculous justification from the majority ... Judge Jon Newman wrote in Dissent: On the night of...

On Wednesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that a California church could challenge the state mandate to pay for elective abortion through the church’s health insurance plan. Alliance Defending Freedom, which represented Skyline Wesleyan Church in the San Diego area, reports that the case was returned to the district court after the Ninth Circuit found the case had been improperly dismissed. The opinion issued by the Ninth Circuit states: We hold that Skyline has suffered an injury in fact. Before the Letters were sent, Skyline had insurance that excluded abortion coverage in a way that...

Score one for former Democratic presidential candidates Sen. Bernie Sanders and Andrew Yang. A federal appeals court on Tuesday agreed with a lower federal court judge’s ruling that the Democratic presidential primary contest must be included on the ballot when New York holds its primary on June 23. *snip* Sanders, the populist senator from Vermont, suspended his presidential campaign in April and endorsed presumptive nominee Joe Biden a week later. But Sanders pledged to keep his name on the ballot in all upcoming primaries and caucuses to accumulate as many delegates as possible at this summer’s convention.