Free Republic

A federal appeals court Friday threw out the 22-year sentence imposed on Algerian Ahmed Ressam for plotting to bomb Los Angeles International Airport on the eve of the millennium. The three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals sent the case back to U.S. District Court in Seattle to recalculate a sentence for his conviction on nine felony counts. It was the second time the appellate court has scrapped Ressam's sentence. The San Francisco-based panel noted that the U.S. Supreme Court reversal of its first decision to vacate the term failed to take into consideration recent federal sentencing guidelines...

An appeals court ruling has trashed the right of Oregon residents to vote on issues in their state by affirming the state's refusal to count referendum signatures even when they were verified in person by the voter. "In America, every citizen's vote should count. The court has tossed aside one of the most important rights we have as Americans," Austin R. Nimocks, a senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, said. "Oregon voters deserve to be heard on this referendum. More than enough Oregonians signed the petitions for it. The people didn't thwart this effort; government bureaucracy did. That...

Lynn Moses, a Driggs, Idaho man, will enter the federal prison in Sheridan, Oregon today at 2 p.m. in an unfolding story of government tyranny. Mr. Moses lost his wife to an unexpected heart attack 1 ½ years ago, and suspects that the stress created by this abuse of federal power is responsible. And yesterday he was forced to leave his 17-year-old daughter Whitney at home in tears, who will now have to experience her senior in high school without the companionship of either of her parents, both of them taken from her by the repressive power of the central...

SAN FRANCISCO -- California's effort to limit vehicle emissions of gases that contribute to global warming hit a snag Friday when a federal appeals court ruled that the state and environmental groups acted too early when they sued the Bush administration in January for blocking the law. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco dismissed a lawsuit filed by California, 15 other states and five environmental groups over the Environmental Protection Agency's refusal to let the state enforce its limits on greenhouse gas fumes from new cars and trucks. The court said the Jan. 2 suit was...

A federal appeals court upheld a $15 million jury verdict for three Los Angeles police officers who alleged they were falsely arrested and prosecuted as part of the Rampart corruption scandal. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said there was evidence to support the jury's verdict that the city and the Los Angeles Police Department violated the officers' constitutional rights by arresting and charging the men without an adequate investigation. The jury had awarded $5 million each to LAPD Officer Paul Harper, Sgt. Edward Ortiz and former Sgt. Brian Liddy. With interest and attorney fees, the city is now liable...

Top federal judges ruled this week that their own court has gone too far in holding up logging projects, saying western judges from now on must show more deference to the agencies planning the cutting. The ruling involving an Idaho timber sale is a blow to environmental groups that have increasingly relied on federal courts to block projects they see as unsound. The decision is especially striking because it comes from the federal appeals court that encompasses most national forest land in the West and is known for its liberal bent and for often siding with environmental interests. The...

With no sign of a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit on a lawsuit over Shell’s U.S. Beaufort Sea exploration plans, the company has decided to call it quits on its planned Beaufort Sea drilling program during the 2008 open water season. The company had hoped to do some top-hole drilling at its Sivulliq prospect on the west side of Camden Bay, as well as conducting some geotechnical boring in the seafloor. “Shell believes this is the responsible decision given the continuing uncertainty and need for our workers and contractors to pursue other opportunities,” Shell...

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court will settle a fight that pits Southern California dolphins against the U.S. military. In a closely watched case involving national security and the natural environment, the court agreed to review restrictions on the Navy's use of sonar off the California coast. The Bush administration contends that the sonar rules, meant to protect marine mammals, hinder military preparedness. "The chief of naval operations determined ... that those restrictions unacceptably risk naval training, the timely deployment of (naval) strike groups and national security," Acting Solicitor General Gregory Garre said in a legal filing. The California Coastal Commission...

SAN FRANCISCO -- An employer has no right to read an employee's text messages without the worker's knowledge and consent, and federal law bars service providers from turning over the contents of the messages to the employer who pays for the service, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled today. The court's unanimous ruling by a three-judge panel stemmed from a lawsuit by Ontario Police Sgt. Jeff Quon and three others against the city's service provider and the city and Police Department for violating his constitutional right to be free of unreasonable searches. Although the city had informed employees...

A federal appeals court has overturned for the third time the death sentence for a man convicted of bludgeoning a young woman to death with an iron bar during a 1981 burglary in San Joaquin County. A three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals voted 2-1 that lapses by Fernando Belmontes' defense lawyer kept the jury in the dark about information that could have led to a less severe sentence. That information included details about Belmontes' violent home life as a child and how that might have contributed to his criminal behavior. The murder occurred in Victor,...

A federal appeals court judge today recused himself from a closely-watched obscenity trial in Los Angeles, three days after acknowledging that he had posted sexually explicit material on a publicly accessible personal website. "In light of the public controversy surrounding my involvement in this case, I have concluded that there is a manifest necessity to declare a mistrial," said Alex Kozinski, chief judge for the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. "I will recuse myself from further participation in the case and will ask the chief judge of the district court to reassign it to another judge." The obscenity trial in...

An apology from the 9th Circuit judge for his computer collection of porn isn't necessary. He just needs to say, 'So what?' ...Judge Alex Kozinski's statements about the stash of sexually explicit images he collected and that the public (until this week) could view on his website have been varied, although not necessarily inconsistent: He thought the site was for private storage and offered no public access (although he shared some of the material on the site with friends). People have been sending him this stuff for years (implying that it just accumulates, like junk mail). He might accidentally have...

LOS ANGELES - The criminal prosecution of a hard-core pornographer turned into a personal trial for the presiding judge, who called for an investigation Thursday into his own conduct over lewd photos and videos stored on his family's publicly accessible Web site. Alex Kozinski, chief judge of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, asked an ethics panel of the court to initiate proceedings after the disclosure about his trove of sexually explicit material. "I will cooperate fully in any investigation," Kozinski said in a statement. snip The Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday that Kozinski had posted sexual material on...

In a saga with all the elements of a Hollywood thriller, an appeals court judge who is one of America's leading legal intellectuals stands accused of maintaining a public stash of online fetish pornography just as he has begun overseeing a criminal trial involving the distribution of sexually explicit scatological videos. Judge Alex Kozinski of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and Chief Judge Mary Schroeder during oral arguments in San Francisco in 2003. Kozinski is accused of maintaining a public stash of online fetish pornography. Opening arguments were getting under way in the obscenity case in federal court...

(AP) Judge Alex Kozinski, of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, gestures as Chief Judge Mary... SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Alex Kozinski is more accustomed to appearing on lists to fill U.S. Supreme Court vacancies than headlines involving pornographic scandals. But on Wednesday, the chief judge of the country's largest federal appeals court was forced to suspend an obscenity trial he was presiding over after sexually explicit images posted to his personal Web site became public. The Los Angeles Times reported on its Web site that Kozinski had posted sexual material on his personal Web site and then blocked...

A federal judge suspended the obscenity trial of a Los Angeles porn distributor Wednesday following a newspaper report that the judge had sexually explicit material on his own Web site. Judge Alex Kozinski on Wednesday granted a joint motion to suspend the trial after the prosecution said it needed time to look into the issue of the judge's Web site. The judge told the jury to return on Monday. The panel spent hours at the Pasadena offices of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals watching videos depicting bestiality and extreme fetishes. Kozinski is chief justice of the 9th Circuit...

"PASADENA, Calif. (AP) - A federal judge has suspended the obscenity trial of a Los Angeles porn distributor following a newspaper report that the judge had sexually explicit material on his own Web site. ... Kozinski is chief justice of the 9th Circuit but is serving as a trial judge in the obscenity case."

Alex Kozinski, who is presiding over an obscenity trial in L.A., admits he posted sexually explicit photos and videos. He says he didn't think the public could see the site, which is now blocked. One of the highest-ranking federal judges in the United States, who is currently presiding over an obscenity trial in Los Angeles, has maintained his own publicly accessible website featuring sexually explicit photos and videos. Alex Kozinski, chief judge of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, acknowledged in an interview with The Times that he had posted the materials, which included a photo of naked women...

One of the highest-ranking federal judges in the United States, who is currently presiding over an obscenity trial in Los Angeles, has maintained a publicly accessible website featuring sexually explicit photos and videos. Alex Kozinski, chief judge of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, acknowledged in an interview with The Times that he had posted the materials, which included a photo of naked women on all fours painted to look like cows and a video of a half-dressed man cavorting with a sexually aroused farm animal. Some of the material was inappropriate, he conceded, although he defended other sexually...

SEATTLE (AP) — The military cannot automatically discharge people because they're gay, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday in the case of a decorated flight nurse who sued the Air Force over her dismissal. The three judges from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals did not strike down the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy. But they reinstated Maj. Margaret Witt's lawsuit, saying the Air Force must prove that her dismissal furthered the military's goals of troop readiness and unit cohesion. The "don't ask, don't tell, don't pursue, don't harass" policy prohibits the military from asking about the sexual...

A federal appeals court has barred logging in the Sierra Nevada forest. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals says the federal government failed to explore other ways to raise money to fight forest fires when it approved a plan to award timber contracts to cut down trees on three sites. The Forest Service says the logging of commercially valuable trees is needed to help pay for thinning of less desirable smaller trees and brush. Environmental groups say the logging plan fails to protect scarce species such as the California spotted owl, martin and Pacific fisher. Attorney General Jerry Brown...

A federal appeals court injunction issued Wednesday says Northwest states can trap, but not kill, the animalsThe on-again, off-again permission for Oregon and Washington officials to kill salmon-gobbling sea lions below Bonneville Dam is off again, courtesy of a federal appeals court injunction issued Wednesday. However, the appeals court said state officials could still capture sea lions and ship them to zoos. Oregon officials said they will begin trapping up to eight of the Bonneville animals today. The sea lions gather at Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River to feast on salmon, including imperiled species, gathering to climb the dam's...

Saying the Communications Decency Act wasn’t “meant to create a lawless no-man’s land” online, a federal appeals court ruled yesterday that Roommates.com can be sued under fair-housing laws. The full 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied immunity under the CDA to Roommates.com, a site that allows individuals to state frank preferences for roommates based on race, sex and other criteria. One of the most pressing legal questions in the online age concerns the extent of immunity granted by federal law to Internet service providers for online content generated by third parties. Many courts have granted immunity based on Section...

A nearly 50-year-old monument inscribed with the Ten Commandments does not violate the Constitution just because it sits nearly alone on public grounds in a Washington city, a federal appeals court ruled on Wednesday. The division between church and state is a core principle of American democracy, but courts have long struggled to find exactly where the dividing line falls. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals cited precedent rulings in this latest case, which involves a 6-foot-tall (1.8-meter-tall) granite monument near the Old City Hall in Everett, Washington, about 25 miles north of Seattle. The court found that the...

A federal appeals court refused Thursday to bar prosecutors from enforcing Arizona's new employer-sanctions law while they hear arguments on its legality. The judges of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco rejected arguments by lawyers for business groups and their allies that they should not let prosecutors investigate, and potentially bring charges against, companies accused of knowingly hiring undocumented workers. In an unsigned order, the judges said they considered challengers' arguments they would suffer irreparable harm, and the likelihood the foes ultimately will succeed in convincing the court to overturn U.S. District Judge Neil Wake's ruling...

A federal appeals court considered Tuesday whether the Bush administration can go ahead with a pilot program that allows a small number of Mexican trucks to travel freely on U.S. highways, despite a new law by Congress against it. Members of the Teamsters Union and their supporters packed a courtroom at 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where an apparently divided three-judge panel heard arguments in the case, which may boil down to the meaning of "establish." Several tractor trailers also were parked outside the courthouse and union members and their supporters carried signs opposing the program, which allows participating...

A federal judge blocked the government from conducting background checks of low-risk employees at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory after an appeals court said the investigations threatened the constitutional rights of workers. U.S. District Judge Otis Wright issued the injunction Friday after the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed his earlier ruling and issued a sharp rebuke to the judge. The higher court said the 28 scientists and engineers who refused to submit to the background checks faced "a stark choice -- either violation of their constitutional rights or loss of their jobs." The workers sued the federal government, claiming...

LAS VEGAS — The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has dismissed a complaint against a federal judge who awarded more than $4.8 million in judgments and fees to people with whom he had long-standing political and business ties. U.S. District Judge James C. Mahan of Las Vegas, who was featured in a 2006 Los Angeles Times investigation into the Nevada judiciary, was cleared of allegations that he had personal connections with those involved in cases he heard. Many of those relationships "were not of the nature or extent alleged" and didn't affect the judge's impartiality, the 9th Circuit Judicial...

WASHINGTON, (AP) -- The Supreme Court agreed Friday to consider reinstating part of the conviction of the man who planned to bomb Los Angeles International Airport, case the government says will greatly affect terrorism prosecutions. Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian national, was sentenced to 22 years in prison in 2005 after being convicted on nine counts for plotting to bomb the airport around Jan. 1, 2000. Customs agents in Port Angeles caught him with explosives in the trunk of his rental car when he drove off a ferry from British Columbia in December 1999. The ensuing scare prompted the cancellation of...

A federal appeals court has ruled the U.S. Forest Service violated federal law when it allowed logging projects without analyzing their effects on the environment. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with environmentalists who challenged a Bush administration rule that exempted certain timber sales and prescribed forest burns from environmental analysis. The Wednesday decision by the San Francisco-based court overturns a lower court ruling that favored the administration. The Sierra Club and Sierra Forest Legacy sued in 2004 challenging the Forest Service rule, which has been a key component of the Bush administration's "Healthy Forests Initiative."

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - An injured woman who slipped in an Alaskan parking lot can sue the federal government for failing to remove snow and ice, a U.S. Court of Appeals ruled Monday. Carol Bolt has been permanently disabled since April 1999, when she broke her ankle outside her U.S. Army apartment in Fort Wainwright, Alaska, where winter temperatures fall to as low as -65 F degrees (-54 C). Attorneys representing the government argued that it was not liable because the U.S. Army base has the same status as Alaskan municipalities, which cannot be sued for injuries caused by ice...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court said Tuesday it will decide whether the District of Columbia can ban handguns, a case that could produce the most in-depth examination of the constitutional right to "keep and bear arms" in nearly 70 years. The justices' decision to hear the case could make the divisive debate over guns an issue in the 2008 presidential and congressional elections. The government of Washington, D.C., is asking the court to uphold its 31-year ban on handgun ownership in the face of a federal appeals court ruling that struck down the ban as incompatible with the Second...

Courts: The often-loopy 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is now giving orders to the White House. A three-judge panel ruled Thursday that federal fuel-economy standards for light trucks and SUVs must be tougher.The unanimous decision was made in favor of the 11 states, the cities of New York and Washington, and various environmental groups that sued the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration over fuel-mileage standards issued last year. Using the save-the-planet argument, the plaintiffs claimed corporate average fuel economy requirements should be higher. They dislike the federally mandated 1.5-miles-per-gallon increase to 24 miles per gallon for 2008 through 2011...

A federal appeals court in San Francisco today handed a major victory to the Bush administration, ruling that a lawsuit challenging the government's warrantless wiretapping program could not go forward because of the "state secrets" privilege. In a 3-0 decision, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the government, which had argued that allowing an Islamic charity's claims that it was illegally spied upon to go forward would threaten national security. In the opinion, Judge M. Margaret McKeown flatly rejected the government's argument that "the very subject matter of the litigation is a state secret." However, after reviewing...

In this opinion just released this morning, three Judges of the Ninth Circuit, including one of the most liberal anti-government judges in the Country, Harry Pregerson, sided with the Administration on its asserting of the “State Secrets” privilege in a lawsuit brought by Islamic groups and others against both the government. and the telecommunication companies that helped put in place the terrorist surveillance program that involved the use of warrantless wiretaps. The court first ruled that the existence of the program was no longer a state secret because the Admin. confirmed its existence and some of its details following the...

A California man who sued in federal court seeking to have a congressional decision nullified and a veterans’ memorial cross on Mt. Soledad removed has lost on both counts, giving hope to memorial defenders the 18-year legal odyssey for the site soon will be over. “We are very pleased with the court’s decision and are hopeful that this epic legal battle will soon be resolved,” said Pete Lepiscopo, of San Diego, an affiliate attorney for The Pacific Justice Institute, which has worked on amicus briefs in the case. “There is a reason the U.S. Supreme Court, Congress, and the president...

San Francisco (AP) -- A federal appeals court on Tuesday ordered the U.S. Navy to lessen the harm its high-power sonar does to whales and other marine life during exercises off the Southern California coast. The 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals sent the matter to a trial judge in Los Angeles to figure out exactly how to fix the problem it says is apparent with the sonar. The three-judge panel said the sonars need to be fixed before the Navy's next planned exercise in January. The action was taken because the court said it's likely the Natural Resources Defense...

An immigrant who is in the United States legally does not have to be deported if convicted of having sex with a minor, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday. In a 2-1 decision, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said the crime that Alberto Quintero-Salazar admitted in 1998, illegal intercourse between an adult over 21 and a youth under 16, was not the type of "vile, base or depraved" conduct that subjects a lawful U.S. resident to deportation. Quintero entered the United States from Mexico in 1990, became a legal permanent resident in 1994, and runs...

<p>A federal appeals court panel has refused to reinstate a lawsuit brought against Caterpillar Inc. by the family of a 23-year-old peace activist crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer.</p>

WARDLAW, Circuit Judge: Plaintiffs Cynthia and Craig Corrie, Mahmoud Al Sho’bi, Fathiya Muhammad Sulayman Fayed, Fayez Ali Mohammed Abu Hussein, Majeda Radwan Abu Hussein, and Eida Ibrahim Suleiman Khalafallah filed this action after their family members were killed or injured when the Israeli Defense Forces (“IDF”) demolished homes in the Palestinian Territories using bulldozers manufactured by Caterpillar, Inc., a United States corporation. The IDF ordered the bulldozers directly from Caterpillar, but the United States government paid for them. The district court dismissed the action under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), finding it lacked jurisdiction because, inter alia, the political...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration can proceed with a plan to open the U.S. border to long haul Mexican trucks as early as next week after an appeals court rejected a bid by labor, consumer and environmental interests to block the initiative. ADVERTISEMENT The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco late on Friday denied an emergency petition sought by the Teamsters union, the Sierra Club and consumer group Public Citizen to halt the start of a one-year pilot program that was approved by Congress after years of legal and political wrangling. The Transportation Department welcomed the decision...

National security is more important than protecting whales or other marine life that could be harmed during exercises scheduled for this month off the coast of San Diego County, a federal appeals court ruled yesterday. The 2-1 decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals lifted an injunction issued Aug. 6 by a lower court. The injunction barred the Navy from conducting sonar training off Southern California until a lawsuit brought by environmentalists is resolved. The appellate ruling is a setback for a coalition of environmentalists led by the Natural Resources Defense Council, which is suing to force the...

SAN FRANCISCO - The Bush administration can go ahead with a pilot program to allow as many as 100 Mexican trucking companies to freely haul their cargo anywhere within the U.S. for the next year, a federal appeals court ruled Friday. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied a request made by the Teamsters union, the Sierra Club and the nonprofit Public Citizen to halt the program. The appeals court ruled the groups have not satisfied the legal requirements to immediately stop what the government is calling a "demonstration project," but can continue to argue their case. The trucking...

Citing concerns about terrorism, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that airline passengers lose their right to object to a search after they go through initial security screenings. The San Francisco-based court, ruling in a case involving a Hawaii man, said airline passengers couldn't refuse searches once they place their belongings on an X-ray tray or walk through a metal detector. It was the appeals court's second decision in the case of Daniel Kuualoha Aukai because it wanted to clarify an earlier decision on the issue of consent. Last year, the court ruled Aukai couldn't back out...

9th U.S. Circuit - Sen. Smith's brother blasts decisions, then faces blowbackWednesday, July 25, 2007 It's a common refrain in Northwest timber country: Misguided federal judges are hastily shutting down logging instead of letting professional foresters do their jobs. Now the refrain is coming from a judge on the top federal court in the West -- who also happens to be the brother of Oregon Republican Sen. Gordon Smith. In an unusually blunt and wide-ranging opinion on a lawsuit over a small Idaho timber sale, Milan D. Smith Jr. blamed his own court for taking the law too far and...

GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) — Bush administration efforts to boost salvage logging after wildfires suffered a loss Tuesday when a federal appeals court upheld a ruling that had stopped harvest of burned trees in an old-growth forest reserve on federal lands in southern Oregon. The 2-1 ruling by a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a ruling by U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken in Eugene that stopped the U.S. Bureau of Land Management from logging 23.4 million board feet of timber from 961 acres burned by the Timbered Rock fire outside Medford in 2002. The...

A U.S. District Court judge has been asked to reconsider his ruling in a 2004 free speech lawsuit filed by a former Poway High School student who was prohibited by school officials from expressing his opposition to a “Day of Silence” sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network. Tyler Harper, then a student at Poway High School, came to school wearing a T-shirt bearing the handwritten messages, “I will not accept what God has condemned” and “Homosexuality is shameful. Romans 1:27." School officials, claiming that Harper’s message could be disruptive, suspended him after he refused to take off...

THAT'S A BIG number, that 86 percent in our headline. It represents the percentage of cases from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that were reversed or vacated by the Supreme Court in the term just ended. The actual number of slapdowns was 18, out of 21 cases that reached the high court from the San Francisco-based appellate court. Those numbers led all the cases heard by the Supreme Court, outpacing those from all of the other 12 appellate circuits. No surprise here. We're been tracking this abysmal record for years, and these results are nothing out of the...

A Christian organization fighting on behalf of religious and speech rights is going to the U.S. Supreme Court to challenge an appellate court decision that found municipal employers could censor words such as "marriage" and "family values" because they are hate speech and could scare workers.  At the same time, those municipal officials for the city of Oakland, Calif., were allowing employees to exchange epithets such as the N-word, the appeal said."To allow the lower court's ruling to stand exposes every public employee to outright censorship by a municipal employer for merely mentioning words such as the 'natural family,' 'marriage,'...

SAN FRANCISCO (UPI) -- A court in San Francisco ruled that a roommate-matching Web site may be held accountable for what users say about their preferences. A three-judge panel of the federal appeals court ruled in favor of two California fair housing groups that brought the complaint against Roommate.com, saying the Web site violates the Fair Housing Act by allowing users to specify roommate preferences based on sex, race, religion and sexual orientation, The New York Times reported Wednesday. The ruling took away the main argument of the defense: that a 1996 ruling granting immunity to Internet service providers that...