Free Republic

California gun owners didn’t get to enjoy a full week of freedom as they did when Judge Roger Benitez enjoined the state’s ban on “large capacity” magazines a few years ago, but as attorney Kostas Moros wrote on X, the Ninth Circuit’s delayed stay in Rhode v. Bonta allowed them to experience what purchasing ammunition is like in the rest of the country for a short period of time. [embedded court ruling] Unfortunately, that brief taste of freedom came to an end, at least temporarily, on Monday evening as a three-judge panel on the Ninth Circuit granted Attorney General Rob...

On December 20, 2023, US District Judge Cormac J. Carney issued an order granting a preliminary injunction against the defendants (the State of California government). The injunction stopped the state from enforcing the blatantly unconstitutional SB-2 law declaring most of California as “sensitive places” where even licensed concealed carriers were forbidden to carry arms in public. The state asked for an order to stop the injunction from going into effect on December 22, 2023. The stay was granted on December 30, 2023, by an administrative three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit. The stay was appealed to the Ninth Circuit three-judge...

The FBI cannot seem to stop trampling American citizens' constitutional rights. But some victims of government abuse have fought back. And their tenacity has left the bureau scrambling to save face. According to Rob Johnson, senior attorney at the nonprofit Institute for Justice, a landmark Fourth Amendment case pending in California might soon result in severe chastisement for the tyrannical FBI. In 2021, the bureau raided U.S. Private Vaults, a safety storage company based in Beverly Hills, California, on suspicion of money laundering -- a charge to which the company later pleaded guilty. While conducting their raid, however, FBI agents...

A federal appeals court on Thursday ruled against Nirvana and revived a child pornography lawsuit filed by the man who appeared as a nude baby on the cover of the band’s 1991 album Nevermind.Spencer Elden, now in his 30s, claimed the photo – one of the most iconic album covers in rock history – violated federal child pornography laws by displaying a sexualized image of a minor. But a lower ruled last year that he had waited far too long to bring his lawsuit. In a decision overturning that ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled...

The panel affirmed the district court’s dismissal for lack of standing of an action, brought before the 2022 general election by former Republican nominees for Governor and Secretary of State of Arizona, alleging that Arizona’s use of electronic tabulation systems violated the federal Constitution. The gravamen of Plaintiffs’ operative complaint is that notwithstanding safeguards, electronic tabulation systems are particularly susceptible to hacking by non-governmental actors who intend to influence election results. On appeal, Plaintiffs conceded that their arguments were limited to potential future hacking, and not based on any past harm. The panel held that because Plaintiffs are no longer...

In a completely unsurprising ruling today, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has placed a stay on the lower court ruling on the constitutionality of California's outright ban on "high" capacity magazines. Last month, a lower federal court judge overturned that ban as unconstitutional. On Tuesday, the larger “en banc” panel stayed that decision — stopping it from taking effect — pending an appeal by the state. The decision divided the judges along ideological lines. The court’s liberal majority found that the state of California had made “strong arguments” for why the ban on ammunition magazines with more than 10...

The nation's largest federal appeals court has put public schools across the western U.S. on notice that they cannot penalize student groups for their religious beliefs while granting secular clubs exemptions to nondiscrimination policies. The sweeping ruling Wednesday prompted multiple partial and full concurrences, dissents and alliances, particularly on legal standing, among 11 judges of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. They heard the case en banc after California's San Jose Unified School District appealed a three-judge panel's ruling in favor of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. The 9-2 majority made no legal distinction between clubs that require leaders...

The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) just filed a reply brief in support of its petition for writ of certiorari with the United States Supreme Court. The petition was filed to correct the unjust result in a major abortion case involving Planned Parenthood. The newly filed brief responds to Planned Parenthood’s opposition to that petition. Since early 2016, the ACLJ has been representing Troy Newman, a former board member of the Center for Medical Progress (CMP), in a federal lawsuit filed by Planned Parenthood. The abortion giant sued Newman and his co-defendants after CMP released videos from its...

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...

In 1999, Hawaii enacted a categorical ban on possessing, carrying, and using butterfly knives or “balisongs.” The knives had been legal to possess before that time. In 2020, the ban on butterfly knives was challenged in court. The District Court upheld the ban. The ban was appealed to the Ninth Circuit. On August 7, 2023, the three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the District Court, ruling the Hawaii ban was unconstitutional under the Second Amendment. The Supreme Court Bruen decision (June of 2022) was cited in the ruling. Of particular interest is the logic used by...

Public college administrators 2,700 miles apart are trying to escape legal responsibility for what some courts are calling potential viewpoint discrimination against campus chapters of the same nationwide conservative group. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals made that harder for California's Clovis Community College Thursday by refusing to moot the First Amendment lawsuit against several officials by former students in its Young Americans for Freedom chapter. The question of mootness was brushed aside by the court, because even though the college being sued rescinded their "Flyer Policy" at issue, the matter was capable of repetition yet avoiding judicial review....

The most powerful federal appeals court in the western United States once again refused to let cities and towns force the homeless off of the streets unless communities provide shelter for them. Cities large and small across the west coast have tried, and failed, to overturn the higher court's ruling for years, the latest of which came from the Oregon city, Grants Pass. "We are having a situation where the police were telling homeless people that they couldn't sleep in public or private, and private property," said Grants Pass Mayor Sara Bristol. "And eventually, that kind of boiled down to...

An Oregon law that forbids recording in public without consent runs afoul of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment, a U.S. court has ruled.James O'Keefe, founder Project Veritas, at the Values Voter Summit in Washington on Oct. 12, 2019. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)Oregon law 165.540, first enacted in 1955 and subsequently broadened to bar secret recording of conversations, is unconstitutional, Judge Sandra Ikuta, a George W. Bush appointee writing for the majority in the 2–1 ruling, said.Exceptions to the prohibition include recording at public meetings, such as city council hearings; while a felony that endangers human life is being committed; and...

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled in favor of a concrete company in Washington state seeking to revive a lawsuit against the International Brotherhood of Teamsters alleging that a strike damaged its product. The 8-1 decision written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett means the company, Glacier Northwest Inc., can pursue a lawsuit against the union in state court over an August 2017 strike in which drivers walked off the job, leaving wet concrete in their trucks. Barrett, one of the court's six conservatives, wrote that a state court was wrong to dismiss the claims at such an early...

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has declined to reconsider its decision to uphold the dismissal of a case over the practice known as “conversion therapy,” teeing up a circuit split that may ultimately land the case before the U.S. Supreme Court. Licensed marriage and family therapist Brian Tingley sued Washington state in 2021, claiming that a 2018 law that prohibited licensed mental health professionals from subjecting minors to conversion therapy violated his First Amendment rights. The Ninth Circuit issued its decision Monday not to rehear the appeal of a Washington state therapist’s challenge to a 2018...

Wednesday’s decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals builds on a 2018 ruling involving the city of Boise, which found a person cannot be punished for sleeping in public if there’s nowhere else for them to go. A federal appeals court Wednesday upheld a ruling that found the city of Grants Pass in southern Oregon violated the constitutional rights of people experiencing homelessness through a series of ordinances designed to prevent sleeping outside on public property.In a 2-1 decision, judges on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals largely upheld a 2020 injunction issued by U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark Clarke,...

On August 19, 2022, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals summarily remanded the Young v. Hawaii case back to the District Court for a re-hearing after the Supreme Court granted cert, vacated the previous Ninth Circuit decision, and remanded the case back to the Ninth Circuit for a rehearing. In 2011, George Young applied twice to obtain a permit to carry a firearm for self-defense outside his home in Hawaii, either openly or concealed. Both his applications were denied by the Chief of Police, Harry Kubojiri, who cited Hawaii law.Young filed a lawsuit claiming his Constitutional right to keep and...

Civil Rights The panel reversed the district court’s denial of a motion for a preliminary injunction sought by a derecognized student club, the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and directed the district court to enter an order reinstating the Fellowship as a student club within the San Jose Unified School District. The Fellowship of Christian Athletes (“FCA”) requires students serving in leadership roles to abide by a Statement of Faith, which includes the belief that sexual relations should be limited within the context of a marriage between a man and a woman. The San Jose Unified School District (the “School District”)...

Biden nominated Roopali Desai to the 9th Circuit Appeals Court.. ... serves on the board of a group that backed calls to defund the police and has called to abolish prisons. ... Desai serves on the board of Just Communities Arizona (JCA), a self-described "abolitionist organization" that envisions "a world in which prisons and jails are unnecessary." ... The organization has taken several radical stances on the criminal justice system, including claiming that "the criminal punishment system isn't really about justice" and mourning Arizona’s execution of Frank Atwood last month. Atwood was convicted in 1987 of raping and murdering 8-year-old...

A Supreme Court decision may force over 70,000 truck owner-operators in California to stop driving, creating another choke point in the already stressed West Coast logistics networks. The AB5 law restricts the use of independent contractors and will soon be enforced against the trucking industry after the court declined to hear their appeal. The California Trucking Association said in a statement that gasoline has been poured on the fire that is the ongoing supply chain crisis, and the decision by the Supreme Court could deny a judicial review of a lower court ruling. In an end-of-term orders list released in...