A federal judge has concluded that California’s ban on vanity license plates considered “offensive to good taste and decency” violated the First Amendment’s freedom of speech. California law requires that the state DMV approves vanity license plates before issuing them. The approval process allowed the DMV to deny vanity plates that might “carry connotations offensive [...]
A three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit Friday denied a request by President Donald Trump’s campaign for leave to amend its lawsuit seeking to exclude thousands of Pennsylvania mail-in ballots, The suit was dismissed in federal court last week. The opinion, written by Judge Stephanos Bibas, a Trump appointee, [...]
The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky granted a Temporary Restraining Order (treated as a preliminary injunction) on Wednesday, preventing Governor of Kentucky Andy Beshear from enforcing his recent executive order against religious private schools in the state. Governor Beshear issued Executive Order 2020-969 on November 18, 2020, which required all private [...]
In a narrow 5-4 decision late Wednesday, the US Supreme Court prevented New York Governor Andrew Cuomo from setting strict limits to numbers of people gathered for worship in churches and synagogues out of concern for the spread of Covid-19. The majority granted an emergency stay of an executive order imposing capacity limitations for accommodations [...]
A judge for the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania issued an injunction Wednesday to prevent the state from taking any further action to certify the results of the November 3 general election. Judge Patricia McCullough issued the injunction in response to a lawsuit filed by Representative Mike Kelly (R-Butler) and state congressional candidate Sean Parnell, among [...]
The legal case against Michael Flynn, US President Trump’s former national security advisor, was definitively Wednesday when Trump issued him a full presidential pardon. Flynn pleaded guilty in December 2017 to falsifying information to the FBI while the FBI was investigating conversations Flynn had with a Russian ambassador as part of the Mueller Investigation. The [...]
The US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) denied a permit for the Pebble Mine in Alaska on Wednesday, a proposed open-pit copper and gold mine that would sit at the headwaters of the Bristol Bay watershed, the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery. The announcement marks the likely conclusion of a decades-long battle between Alaskan Native [...]
A class action lawsuit on behalf of New York City’s houseless families was filed against Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration on Tuesday for their failure to provide stable internet to city shelters. This suit comes within days of the city’s announcement that any in-person education would be suspended amidst a spike in COVID-19 cases. Local [...]
The Arkansas Supreme Court on Tuesday invalidated the state legislature election victory of Democrat Jimmie Wilson over a previous federal misdemeanor conviction. The invalidation deemed Republican David Tollett the default victor of the November 3 Arkansas State House District 12 election. The court invalidated Wilson’s victory despite then-president Bill Clinton pardoning Wilson for in 2001. [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit ruled Tuesday that an adoptive, nonbiological child is not a “legitimated” child under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). Rejecting the plaintiff’s arguments, the court created a per se rule that nonbiological children cannot be “legitimated” under the INA and rejected the plaintiff’s claim of gender [...]
