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A federal judge in Florida struck down the state’s law banning children from undergoing sex changes, including puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones, if a parent consents to treatment. Senior Judge Robert Hinkle said the law was discriminating against minorities and women. According to Hinkle, Florida went a step too far by banning transgender minors from being sex change hormones and puberty blockers if they obtain parental consent.

A federal judge on Tuesday struck down a 2023 Florida law that blocked gender-affirming care for transgender minors and severely restricted such treatment for adults... “In time, discrimination against transgender individuals will diminish, just as racism and misogyny have diminished,” he continued. "To paraphrase a civil-rights advocate from an earlier time, the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office blasted Hinkle’s ruling, issuing a statement calling it “erroneous,” and vowing to appeal.

Florida's blanket restrictions on medical care for transgender children were ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge on Tuesday, striking down a key pillar of Gov. Ron DeSantis' platform. In his ruling from Tallahassee, U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle invalidated a Florida health code rule and a new state law that prohibited Medicaid payments for puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. He found these bans violated federal laws, including the Affordable Care Act's prohibition on sex discrimination in healthcare. "Florida has adopted a statute and rules that ban gender-affirming care for minors even when medically appropriate," Judge Hinkle wrote in his 105-page...

Former and potentially future President Donald Trump was found "guilty" last Thursday on 34 felony counts in a hush money "trial." It's not just Trump they're going after, though with a weaponized and politicized justice system. As we've been covering, President Joe Biden's Department of Justice (DOJ) has been quite eager to prosecute prayerful pro-life activists using the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, including an elderly grandfather. Since then, more grandparents have been sentenced, including grandmothers in poor health. Late last month, 59-year-old Heather Idoni was sentenced to 24 years in prison. She's already been incarcerated for...

Today a unanimous panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit granted the U.S. Department of Justice's petition for a writ of mandamus seeking dismissal of Juliana v. United States, the so-called "Kids Climate Case." The brief order was short and direct. It noted that the Ninth Circuit had previously concluded that the plaintiffs lacked standing and ordered the case dismissed. Contrary to the plaintiffs' claims, no intervening decisions changed that fact, and that there was no basis for the district court to allow the plaintiffs to amend the complaint. This decision should not have been a...

A federal court dismissed a case Tuesday against Republican Iowa Gov. Kimberly Reynolds’ prohibition of mask mandate in school districts across the state, official documents showed. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit found “persuasive” the argument that “the general risks associated with COVID-19, even though COVID-19 remains an ever-present concern in society, are not enough to show ‘imminent and substantial’ harm,” court papers showed in part. The court also decided that “because Plaintiffs have only alleged the potential risk of severe illness should they contract COVID-19 at school, the risk of harm is too speculative to satisfy...

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — A federal judge on Wednesday affirmed a $5 million arbitration award against MyPillow chief executive Mike Lindell in favor of a software engineer who challenged data that Lindell said proves China interfered in the 2020 U.S. presidential election and tipped the outcome to Joe Biden. Lindell said he plans to appeal. Asked if he can afford to pay, he pointed out that the breach-of-contract lawsuit was against one of his companies, Lindell Management LLC, and not against him personally. “Of course we’re going to appeal it. This guy doesn’t have a dime coming,” Lindell said.

A federal judge in California on Jan. 3 dismissed a lawsuit that sought to keep former President Donald Trump off the 2024 Republican primary ballot in that state. District Judge David Carter granted a motion to dismiss the lawsuit “with prejudice,” which means that it can’t be submitted to the same court again, according to court papers. A plaintiff attempted to argue that they suffered “emotional injury” as a result of the breach of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, while watching the events unfold on television, on the radio, and in various publications. They then argued that the...

United States District Judge for the District of Idaho, B. Lynn Winmill, has granted a motion for preliminary injunction to block the January 1, 2024 implementation of House Bill 71, which was signed into law following the 2023 Idaho Legislative session. HB71, also called the Vulnerable Child Protection Act, was written by the Idaho Family Policy Center and sponsored by Representative Bruce Skaug. The legislation was written to stop hormone changing drugs, puberty blocking drugs, and sex-change surgeries from being prescribed for minor children in Idaho for the reasons of ‘gender dysphoria’ and transitioning children from their birth sex to...

An Idaho law passed this year that bans gender-affirming care for minors will not go into effect on Jan. 1, as planned. A federal judge on Tuesday granted a preliminary injunction on the lawsuit against the ban. House Bill 71, "The Vulnerable Child Protective Act" was signed into Idaho law in April. It outlaws gender-affirming care for transgender minors; including puberty blockers, hormones and surgeries. The law finds any doctor that provides gender-transition care guilty of a felony, punishable by up to 10 years of prison time. After the law was signed, a lawsuit was filed against the state on...

A right-wing group specializing in hidden-camera investigations will not be able to use the First Amendment to stop the federal government from accessing documents and communications related to the group’s apparent acquisition of a stolen diary belonging to President Joe Biden’s daughter.As Law&Crime previously reported, the FBI executed a search warrant in 2021 at the property of Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe, as well as from Project Veritas staffers Spencer Meads and Eric Cochran. The search warrants were granted in connection with the theft and sale of the personal journal belonging to Ashley Biden, the president’s daughter. Two people, Aimee...

A federal judge hearing a challenge to a transgender health care ban for minors and restrictions for adults noted Thursday that Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis repeatedly spread false information about doctors mutilating children's genitals even though there's been no such documented cases. The law was sold as defending children from mutilation when it is actually about preventing trans children from getting health care Hinkle said he will rule sometime in the new year on whether the Legislature, the Department of Health and presidential candidate DeSantis deliberately targeted transgender people through the new law. He raised some skepticism about the...

A Finnish cabinet minister saying all indications are that a Chinese ship deliberately damaged... South Korea proclaiming the launch of its first spy satellite... The Israeli Air Force extending its bombing campaign into the southern portions of Gaza... A Pro-Palestinian protester torching herself in front of the Israeli consulate in Atlanta... A federal judge ruling that President Trump has no immunity... The Turkish military striking 16 targets in northern Iraq. The targets linked to Kurdish groups... A former federal prison guard sentenced to more than five years in prison for sexually abusing inmates... A US base in northeastern Syria attacked......

In the Progressive utopia championed by Woodrow Wilson and his successors, government will iron out the imperfections in human affairs through the use of regulatory agencies run by non-political experts. Such people, being experts and completely non-political, would pose no reason for concern about abuse of power, because of course they would never seek go outside their proper regulatory portfolio to use their authority to stamp out the freedoms and speech of their political opponents on important topics of the day. In the real world government regulators since the creation of their agencies have inevitably used their powers to disadvantage...

On the face of it, Friday’s decision by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn an injunction against enforcement of Illinois’ recently enacted ban on “assault weapons” and “large capacity” magazines doesn’t change circumstances on the ground. The three-judge panel that issued today’s decision had previously stayed U.S. District Judge Stephen McGlynn’s injunction while the state appealed, so the law has been in effect throughout litigation. Still, the 2-1 decision does matter, both because it provides an opportunity for some or all of the plaintiffs to appeal on an emergency basis to the Supreme Court and because it will...

“Long live rescue!” That was the rallying cry of pro-lifers amid tears in response to Tuesday’s verdict against five rescuers. As Live Action News reported, five defendants – Lauren Handy, Herb Geraghty, Heather Idoni, Will Goodman, and John Hinshaw – were found guilty of conspiring to violate civil rights and blocking access to notorious abortionist Cesare Santangelo’s clinic in October of 2020. The case seemed to reflect an attempt by the administration of President Biden, who claims to be a practicing Catholic, to protect abortion after the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs. Each defendant faces up to 11 years in...

On August 3, 2023, Judge Janet Bond Arterton of the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut ruled on whether the recent Connecticut law banning the possession of common semi-automatic rifles and pistols under the appellation of “assault weapons” and of standard capacity magazines which hold more than ten rounds. Judge Arterton ruled the law is not prohibited by the Second Amendment. She does not see it as an infringement because, she claims, “assault weapons” and magazines over ten rounds are not arms protected by the Second Amendment. Magazines that hold more than ten rounds are referred to...

The measure barred trans women and girls of all ages from participating in female sports teams at public schools in the state, from primary school through college. A federal appeals court on Thursday refused to allow Idaho to enforce a first-in-the-nation ban on transgender women and girls from participating in female sports leagues, saying the measure likely was unconstitutional. A 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel delivered a victory to LGBTQ rights advocates by upholding an injunction blocking Idaho’s Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, the first of many such laws to be enacted by Republican-led states. “This is an...

Last month, U.S. District Judge Janet Bond Arterton tossed out a lawsuit challenging Connecticut’s ban on concealed carry in state parks, ruling that the plaintiff in the litigation didn’t have standing to sue because there was no credible threat of him being arrested or prosecuted for violating the ban. That was an exceedingly odd decision, but it kept the ban in place (at least for now), which counts as a win as far as anti-gunners are concerned. Now Arterton has followed up with another legal doozy, rejecting a preliminary injunction against the state’s newly-expanded ban on so-called assault weapons and...

U.S. Judge Lewis A. Kaplan says that former President Donald J. Trump may be said to have “raped” E. Jean Carroll, even though a jury specifically declined to find that he had done so in his recent civil trial in New York. Aaron Blake of the Washington Post reported the judge’s finding — approvingly, calling it a “clarification”: [Kaplan] says that what the jury found Trump did was in fact rape, as commonly understood. The filing from Judge Lewis A. Kaplan came as Trump’s attorneys have sought a new trial and have argued that the jury’s $5 million verdict against...