Free Republic

A federal judge ruled on Saturday that part of a Texas law that enacted new voting restrictions violated the U.S. Constitution by being too vague and restricting free speech. The ruling, made by U.S. District Judge Xavier Rodriguez, immediately halted the state’s ability to investigate alleged cases of vote harvesting, such as the investigation into the League of United Latin American Citizens by Attorney General Ken Paxton. Before today’s ruling, a person who knowingly provided or offered vote harvesting services in exchange for compensation was committing a third-degree felony. This meant that organizers of voter outreach organizations and even volunteers...

Since SCOTUS ruled this afternoon, and as an edit to this article, Texas’ new immigration law is blocked againHours after the U.S. Supreme Court had allowed Senate Bill 4 to go into effect, a federal appeals court let an earlier injunction stand. SB4 lets Texas police arrest people suspected of illegally crossing the Texas-Mexico border.Texas’ new immigration law is blocked againSo, here below is the article I was preparing to post. Suddenly, the story changed with an edit stating that the SCOTUS decision has been.....overturned???? A new Texas law allowing police to arrest people suspected of illegally crossing the southern...

When cops stopped Antonio Sing-Ledezma's car following a shooting outside El Paso, Texas, in March and asked him if he had anything illegal on him, he didn't mention the handgun with the scratched-off serial number hidden in the vehicle. Sing-Ledezma, who did admit to having some marijuana and a glass pipe in his jacket pocket, told the officers that he had just been shot. When they asked him who pulled the trigger, however, he became uncooperative. A subsequent search of his vehicle turned up the weapon. A Mexican citizen wanted for murder in his home country who'd previously been deported...

Less than a week after a Del Rio-based federal judge ruled against Texas in the ongoing fight over the state’s razor wire, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals paused that decision while it reviews the case. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday temporarily halted a lower court order that gave Border Patrol agents legal cover to continue cutting concertina wire that Texas has installed on the banks of the Rio Grande. U.S. District Judge Alia Moses of Del Rio on Wednesday ruled against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office, which wanted the judge to order Border Patrol...

A federal judge in the Western District of Texas reversed her Temporary Restraining Order that stopped the Department of Homeland Security from cutting border barriers put in place by the State of Texas. The new order issued Wednesday night reverses that position after the judge heard additional evidence. The case will now proceed to a trial on the merits. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and the Texas Public Policy Foundation filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the U.S. Border Patrol, and multiple Biden administration appointees to stop the federal government’s interference...

A federal judge issued an extraordinary temporary restraining order Monday barring the Biden administration from destroying or tampering with a temporary concertina wire fence installed by Texas to protect its border with Mexico. Chief U.S. District Judge Alia Moses, in Del Rio, ruled Texas had a likelihood of prevailing it its lawsuit and would suffer significant harm if federal officials were allowed to keep dismantling the fence. The decision dealt a stinging rebuke to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and a win for states seeking to enforce border security on their own in the absence of help from the federal...

A federal judge ruled Thursday that a Texas law requiring pornography sites to institute age-verification measures — and add prominent warning labels about the alleged dangers of porn — violates the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment prohibition against free-speech restrictions. A lawsuit seeking to overturn the Texas legislation was filed Aug. 4 by the Free Speech Coalition, a group that included Pornhub’s parent company, adult industry advocacy groups and an adult performer (referred to in filings as “Jane Doe”). Under the Texas law, which was set to go into effect Sept. 1, 2023, porn sites would have been required to use...

A federal judge in Texas recently agreed with a federal judge in Oklahoma that the national ban on gun possession by cannabis consumers violates the Second Amendment. Kathleen Cardone, a judge on the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, also concluded that the federal ban on transferring firearms to an "unlawful user" of a "controlled substance," first imposed by the Gun Control Act of 1968, is unconstitutional. The case involves Paola Connelly, who was charged with illegal possession of firearms under 18 USC 922(g)(3) after El Paso police found marijuana and guns in her home while responding...

The U.S. Supreme Court declined Monday to consider an appeal by the city of Waco and McLennan County in lawsuits filed by bikers arrested in the 2015 Twin Peaks shootout that left nine bikers dead and 20 injured. Attorneys for the defendants asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review an April decision by a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that reinstated the lawsuits of about 90 bikers whose civil rights cases were dismissed last year by U.S. District Judge Alan Albright of Waco. The federal appeals court panel reversed an Albright ruling that held a...

On November 15, 2022, the United States Attorney in the Western District of Texas, Ashley C. Hoff, filed a Notice of Appeal to the United States District Court fro the Western District of Texas, Pecos Division in the case of USA v. Perez-Gallan. Previously, on November 10, 2022, Judge David Counts had issued a Memorandum Opinion dismissing the indictment to Litsson Antonio Perez-Gallan as invalid because it was unconstitutional under the United States Supreme Court decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association (NYSR&PA) v. Bruen decision, which restored the Second Amendment as a full-fledged member of the Bill...

Federal District Judge David Counts in the Western District of Texas has ruled the controversial federal law banning gun possession by a person who has been served with a restraining order for domestic violence is unconstitutional under the Second Amendment. The statute in question is 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8). This statute makes it a crime to possess a firearm if the person is subject to a court issued restraining order about domestic violence. The maximum term of imprisonment for violation of the statue is up to 10 years in prison. The actual wording of 18 U.S.C. §922(g)(8) is this:(g) It...

A federal law prohibiting people under felony indictment from buying firearms is unconstitutional, a federal judge in Texas has concluded, citing a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that significantly expanded gun rights.

Days after a mass shooting at a Texas elementary school that left 19 children and two teachers dead, the Biden Administration is fighting a court-ordered $230 million verdict for the victims of a different Texas mass shooting. The Justice Department filed an appeal in an attempt to not pay the multi-million dollar verdict to the families and victims of the 2017 Sutherland Springs church shooting by former Air Force airman Devin Kelley, said Texas attorney Thomas J. Henry. “That federal judge found that the United States government was at fault for allowing the gunman to acquire a gun because the...

A federal judge on Monday ruled that the Air Force must pay more than $230 million to survivors and victims' families of the 2017 shooting in Sutherland Springs, Texas. Driving the news: U.S. District Judge Xavier Rodriguez in July ruled that the Air Force holds 60% of the responsibility for the shooting in the Texas church because it failed to enter the shooter's criminal history into a federal background check database used for gun purchases. More than 25 people were killed in the shooting.Rodriguez on Monday ordered the Air Force to pay millions, which will compensate more than 80 family...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has formally returned a lawsuit over Texas’ six-week abortion ban to a federal appeals court that has twice allowed the law to stay in effect, rather than to a district judge who sought to block it. Justice Neil Gorsuch on Thursday signed the court’s order that granted the request of abortion clinics for the court to act speedily. But the clinics wanted the case sent directly to U.S. Judge Robert Pitman, who had previously though briefly blocked enforcement of the Texas abortion ban known as S.B. 8. When Pitman ordered the law blocked in...

A federal judge in Austin Wednesday blocked Texas' social media censorship law, which prohibits large social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter from censoring users "based on their political viewpoints." The law, known as House Bill 20, was signed by Gov. Greg Abbott on Sept. 9 and set to take effect Thursday. However, U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman wrote in his ruling that the measure interferes with platforms' First Amendment right to moderate content disseminated on their platforms. Pitman called content moderation "the very tool that social media platforms employ to make their platforms safe, useful, and enjoyable for users."

A federal judge ruled Wednesday that Gov. Greg Abbott’s executive order prohibiting mask mandates in schools violates the Americans with Disabilities Act — freeing local officials to again create their own rules. The order comes after a months long legal dispute between parents, a disability rights organization and Texas officials over whether the state was violating the 1990 law, known as the ADA, by not allowing school districts to require masks. U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel barred Attorney General Ken Paxton from enforcing Abbott’s order. “The spread of COVID-19 poses an even greater risk for children with special health needs,”...

The first Capitol riot defendant to plead guilty to assaulting an officer has been sentenced to 41 months in prison, the harshest sentence yet imposed for the attack. Judge Royce Lamberth sentenced ex-MMA fighter Scott Fairlamb to approximately three and a half years in prison and three years probation for assaulting an officer while he was part of the violent mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6 in support of former President Trump.

The nation’s most restrictive abortion law remains in place for now, after a federal appeals court on Thursday sided with the state of Texas. In a brief 2-1 order, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit refused the Justice Department’s request to reinstate an earlier court ruling that had blocked enforcement of the Texas law, which bars the procedure as early as six weeks into pregnancy and makes no exceptions for rape or incest. The brief order, which is expected to be appealed the Supreme Court, was backed by Judges James C. Ho, a nominee of Donald Trump,...

A federal appeals court reinstated Texas’ controversial "fetal heart beat" abortion ban on Friday night, days after a lower court suspended the Republican-backed law. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a temporary stay, effectively pausing U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman’s decision to grant a temporary restraining order against the abortion ban earlier this week. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, had appealed the lower court’s decision. "Great news tonight, The Fifth Circuit has granted an administrative stay on #SB8. I will fight federal overreach at every turn," Paxton wrote on Twitter after the decision. The appeals court...