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The 9th Circuit determined that forcibly mashing a suspect's thumb into his phone to unlock it was akin to fingerprinting him at the police station. JOE LANCASTER | 4.19.2024 12:50 PM As we keep more and more personal data on our phones, iPhone and Android devices now have some of the most advanced encryption technology in existence to keep that information safe from prying eyes. The easiest way around that, of course, is for someone to gain access to your phone. This week, a federal court decided that police officers can make you unlock your phone, even by physically forcing...

Volokh: The order came down today; it noted that no judge called for a vote on the en banc rehearing petition. Here's my post on the panel decision, from September. From Junior Sports Magazines, Inc. v. Bonta, decided today [Sept, 13, 2023] by Ninth Circuit Judge Kenneth Lee, joined by Judges Randy Smith and Lawrence VanDyke: "This case is not about whether children can buy firearms. (They cannot under California law.) Nor is this case about whether minors can legally use firearms. (California allows minors under adult supervision to possess and use firearms for hunting, target practice, and other activities.)...

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...

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...

On September 28, an en banc panel from the Ninth Circuit grabbed control of the Duncan v. Bonta. The magazine ban case in a stunning departure from the usual order of the court. It may or may not have violated the rules of the court. Several of the judges on the panel were not happy. Four judges of the eleven-judge panel dissented. Of particular interest was the dissent of Judge VanDyke.The honorable Judge VanDyke revealed a history of internal shenanigans when the en banc panel first took the case. Judge VanDyke aired some of the Ninth Circuit’s dirty laundry. The...

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 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...

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...

The U.S. Supreme Court in a 5–4 decision reined in the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) effort to impose extensive federal land use regulation through its broad interpretation of the Clean Water Act (CWA). The decision in the case of Sackett v. EPA turns on the question of the proper definition of the term "the waters of the United States" (WOTUS). Interestingly, all the justices concurred in the judgment that plaintiffs Michael and Chantell Sackett's property and actions were not covered by the CWA. In the case, the Sacketts had purchased property near Priest Lake, Idaho, and began backfilling the lot...

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,...

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...

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — U.S. officials improperly downplayed the climate change effects from burning coal when they approved a large expansion of an underground Montana coal mine that would release an estimated 190 million tons of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, a court ruled. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in a 2-1 ruling that Interior Department officials “hid the ball” during the Trump administration, by failing to fully account for emissions from burning the fuel in a 2018 environmental analysis. A judge previously ruled against the disputed expansion of Signal Peak Energy’s Bull Mountain mine in 2017,...

"The lawsuit was a purely political stunt that never should have been started, or allowed to happen," Trump said.Former President Donald Trump on Monday announced the court ruled in his favor in Stormy Daniels' libel lawsuit against him and she will have to pay him nearly $300,000 as a result.Trump announced the win on Twitter through his spokeswoman Liz Harrington. "The 9th Circuit just issued a final ruling in the Stephanie Clifford (aka Stormy Daniels) frivolous lawsuit case against me brought by her disgraced lawyer, Michael Avenatti, upholding the lower court ruling that she owes me nearly $300,000 in attorney...

U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)- The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed the three-judge panel decision in Duncan v. Becerra, the ban on magazines that hold over 10 rounds. The opinion was released on November 30, 2021.Update: The case nomenclature has changed from Duncan v. Becerra to Duncan v. Bonta, because of the change in the California Attorney General.At the end of March, in 2019, Judge Roger T. Benitez wrote a well-reasoned opinion that found the California ban on magazines of over 10 rounds to be an unconstitutional infringement on the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. The case was...

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned two lower court judges and upheld California’s ban on high-capacity magazines Tuesday in a split decision that may be headed for the U.S. Supreme Court. “The statute outlaws no weapon, but only limits the size of the magazine that may be used with firearms,” the judges ruled in the 7-4 decision. The majority reasoned that “the record demonstrates that the limitation interferes only minimally with the core right of self-defense, as there is no evidence that anyone ever has been unable to defend his or her home and family due to the...

The U.S. government can’t be held liable for the death of Kate Steinle on a San Francisco pier based on a federal ranger’s negligent storage of a gun that was stolen and used to shoot her, a Ninth Circuit panel ruled Tuesday.Steinle was killed by a bullet that ricocheted off a concrete walkway and struck her in the back on Pier 14 in San Francisco on July 1, 2015. . . . In arguments before a three-judge Ninth Circuit panel last month, a lawyer for Steinle’s parents argued U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) ranger John Woychowski had a duty...

The Supreme Court struck down a California regulation granting union organizers access to farmworkers on agricultural fields, ruling Wednesday that the 1975 measure violated growers’ private-property rights. The decision, by a 6-3 vote along the court’s conservative-liberal divide, erases a major victory that Cesar Chavez’s farmworker movement achieved in the 1970s, when they argued the nature of agricultural labor made it too difficult to reach workers outside the fields.