Free Republic

It’s been an interesting week for the Ninth-Circus. First they slapped down a former Supreme Court Justice’s brother’s attempt to take control of the California National Guard away from the President of the United states. Today, in another 3-0 panel opinion, the court has ruled that limiting Californians to purchasing only one gun a month is a violation of their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.The case, Nguyen v.Bonta, was brought by the Firearms Policy Coalition, the Second Amendment Foundation and others. In the court’s opinion: Affirming the district court’s summary judgment in favor of plaintiffs, the panel...

Americans don’t have time for Barrett to spend years figuring out what kind of justice she wants to be. What kind of Supreme Court justice is Amy Coney Barrett going to be?That appeared to be the question a new expose by New York Times hack Jodi Kantor attempted to answer. Published Sunday, the lengthy article features analysis of the Trump appointee’s SCOTUS record thus far, as well as comments from former associates and Court watchers on her jurisprudence and how she approaches legal questions. The goal, as it seems, is to decipher whether the Catholic mother of seven will follow...

A federal appeals court is allowing the Trump White House to ban the Associated Press from the Oval Office and other restricted spaces for now in a ruling that blocked a lower court's ruling that claimed the ban was unconstitutional. In a 2-1 order, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia granted in part a stay of the lower court's April 8 ruling that declared the content-based ban unconstitutional. Both of the judges who ruled in the administration's favor were nominated by President Trump in his first term.

A judge in California on Monday blocked the Trump administration from using the wartime Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelan migrants in the Los Angeles area, ruling that the government hasn't promised adequate due process. The ruling by U.S. District Judge John Holcomb — who was nominated by President Trump in 2019 — is the latest to limit the administration's controversial practice of rapidly deporting people accused of being members of the gang Tren de Aragua under the 1798 law, which allows removals during an "invasion" or "predatory incursion" of the United States. Courts in three other states have also...

Here's your daily update from the Pacific Northwest 👇 Caleb "Haven" Wilvich is a man who likes to wear dresses. Imagine this guy strutting naked around women with the blessing of America's courts: Two years later, a U.S. federal court of appeals has upheld the lower court's ruling that the spa must allow this man to be naked around naked women on their premises. In his dissent, Trump-appointed Judge Kenneth Lee said this: Now, under edict from the state, women — and even girls as young as 13 years old — must be nude alongside patrons with exposed male genitalia...

A federal court has determined that President Donald Trump does not have the authority to unilaterally impose tariffs, dealing a sweeping blow to the president's main weapon in his ongoing global trade war. A panel of judges on the U.S. Court of International Trade found the tariffs were unlawful and permanently vacated them.

U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman issued the stay. A federal judge on Tuesday blocked the Trump administration from withholding funds to New York City over its opposition to a congestion traffic pricing program that Washington says is more about raising money than addressing congestion.U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman issued the stay, Reuters reported. The program has seen the city charge most vehicles a $9 toll to enter the Big Apple during periods of high traffic.Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, however, has said the program appears "driven primarily by the need to raise revenue for the Metropolitan Transit Authority system as opposed...

A federal judge on Tuesday temporarily thwarted the Trump administration’s bid to kill Manhattan’s congestion pricing — ensuring the controversial program will stay in place until at least next month. US District Judge Lewis Liman issued a restraining order that prevents the US Transportation Department from fining or punishing the Metropolitan Transportation Authority as the court battle over the toll rages on. The ruling came down just one day before Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy had threatened that the government could start withholding federal funding and approvals for New York projects if the toll wasn’t nixed. We’ve won — again,” Gov....

A U.S. district judge has ruled that the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) exceeded its authority when it inserted abortion accommodations into the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA) — and must now remove them. KEY TAKEAWAYS: A U.S. District judge said changes made to the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act by the Biden administration were ‘unlawful’ and must be removed. The lawsuit was brought by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), which had originally supported the Act as written and passed in 2023. The USCCB argued that if Congress had intended to include abortion in the PWFA in 2023,...

SNIPState officials have praised Butler Snow for its experience in defending prison cases – and specifically William Lunsford, head of the constitutional and civil rights litigation practice group at the firm. But now the firm is facing sanctions by the federal judge overseeing Johnson’s case after an attorney at the firm, working with Lunsford, cited cases generated by artificial intelligence – which turned out not to exist.It is one of a growing number of instances in which attorneys around the country have faced consequences for including false, AI-generated information in official legal filings. A database attempting to track the prevalence...

The Trump administration scored a major victory on Monday after a federal judge ruled that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) can share its database with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to help locate and identify alleged illegal migrants. U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich sided with the Trump administration in a lawsuit brought by the immigrant-rights group Centro de Trabajadores Unidos, by declining to issue an injunction to block the two government agencies from partnering on illegal immigration. Friedrich ruled that the partnership, which allows Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials to submit names of illegal migrants to the IRS,...

A federal judge in Pennsylvania on Tuesday became the first to say President Trump can invoke the Alien Enemies Act to deport Tren de Aragua gang members. US District Judge Stephanie Haines, a Trump appointee, said President Trump’s description of the Venezuelan gang’s “incursion” into the US meets the threshold to invoke the Alien Enemies Act. “Having done its job, the Court now leaves it to the Political Branches of the government, and ultimately to the people who elect those individuals, to decide whether the laws and those executing them continue to reflect their will,” the judge wrote. The judge...

Burger King must face a lawsuit claiming it misleads customers with advertisements that make its Whopper sandwich and other products appear larger than they are. In a decision on Monday, U.S. District Judge Roy Altman in Miami found it plausible that "some" reasonable consumers in the proposed class action could be deceived by Burger King's ads. Nineteen customers from 13 states accused Burger King of materially overstating the size of nearly all menu items in its in-store and online ads. They cited its alleged portrayal of burgers that "overflow" the buns, with the Whopper appearing 35% larger than the actual...

The D.C. Circuit just issued a major ruling in favor of the Trump Administration that lifted a stay on the Administration's decision to terminate contracts and positions at Voice of America. The decision severely undercuts the arguments used by other district courts, particularly jurisdictional arguments. This is only the latest appellate decision pushing back on district court injunctions. However, the analysis will reach beyond the confines of this case.

The liberal DC Circuit Court of Appeals handed President Trump a massive win on Saturday after a district court judge ordered him to rehire staff from far-left Voice of America that will have impacts lasting beyond just this one case, according to a legal expert. As The Gateway Pundit reported, a federal judge last month ordered the Trump Administration to rehire Voice of America (VOA) and other affiliate news services staff. The affiliate staff included Radio Free Asia and the Middle East Broadcasting Network. In March, Trump placed employees and contractors for government-funded Voice of America on leave. US District...

The ruling is a blow to Trump’s deportation efforts and permanently bars removals under the Alien Enemies Act in South Texas.A Trump-appointed federal judge ruled Thursday that the president exceeded his authority by invoking the Alien Enemies Act to summarily deport Venezuelan migrants, dealing a blow to the administration’s deportation efforts and permanently barring such removals in South Texas. In a 36-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. in Brownsville, Texas, rejected Trump’s declarations that the United States was being invaded by a Venezuelan gang to justify using the act to deport migrants without a hearing. He said the...

In a follow-up opinion, Rodriguez Jr. declared: "For these reasons, the Court concludes that the President's invocation of the AEA through the Proclamation exceeds the scope of the statute and, as a result, is unlawful. Respondents [the Administration] do not possess the lawful authority under the AEA, and based on the Proclamation, to detain Venezuelan aliens, transfer them within the United States, or remove them from the country." Rodriguez Jr. issued two opinions and orders on Thursday in the U.S. District Court Southern District of Texas, responding to a petition by individuals to allow them to certify as a class...

...A federal judge is raising alarms that the Trump administration deported a two-year-old U.S. citizen to Honduras with “no meaningful process,” even as the child’s father was frantically petitioning the courts to keep her in the country.... ...officials said in court that the mother told ICE officials that she wished to take V.M.L. with her to Honduras. The filing included a handwritten note in Spanish they claimed was written by the mother and confirmed her intent. But the judge said he had hoped to verify that information. “The Government contends that this is all okay because the mother wishes that...

In a scathing rebuke, U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix, a Trump appointee, issued a blistering court order chastising the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) for attempting to engage in an ex parte communication — a serious breach of judicial ethics — in a high-profile case involving illegal aliens detained at the Bluebonnet Detention Center.Ex parte communications are interactions where one party or their representative communicates directly with a judge or decision-maker about a pending case without notifying the other parties.

A federal judge ruled this week that the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) may not force Catholic employers to accommodate abortion and IVF or to abide by Biden-era LGBT “anti-discrimination” rules. The Diocese of Bismarck, North Dakota, and the Catholic Benefits Association (CBA) had sued over the regulations last year, arguing their enforcement under the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act violated the religious freedom rights of Catholic groups.“The US District Court for the District of North Dakota entered judgment Wednesday,” according to Bloomberg Law, “a day after Judge Daniel M. Traynor ruled that EEOC’s regulations under the Pregnant Workers Fairness...