Free Republic

Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit has died, a court spokesperson confirmed. He was 87. A liberal champion, Reinhardt was appointed to the bench by President Carter in 1980. He authored key liberal court opinions on hot-button topics ranging from abortion and marriage equality to assisted suicide and immigration. At the same time, the opinions made him a target of criticism from conservative corners — and of regular reversal from the Supreme Court.

President Barack Obama respond this afternoon to promises by Senate Republicans to not allow a vote o his nominee to replace recently-deceased pro-life Justice Antonin Scalia. Obama doesn't care about the fact that he filibustered Justice Samuel Alito's nomination in an attempt to prevent the Senate from voting to confirm him, he demanded that Republicans allow a vote on his nominee. After Scalia's death, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the Senate will not take up a vote on a replacement for deceased pro-life Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia until after the presidential election. Such a promise prevents pro-abortion President...

In a 5-2 opinion, the Florida Supreme Court Wednesday approved a map for the 27 congressional districts submitted not by the Florida Legislature, but by the Florida League of Women Voters and other members of a liberal coalition and approved by Circuit Judge Terry Lewis in October. See the high court's decison here. The resulting map approved Wednesday is basically the work of Democratic operatives. Justice Ricky Polston, one of the dissenters, criticized the decision because Judge Lewis relied on a map drawn by a redistricting consultant with ties to Democrats and was designed to intentionally pack Republicans into districts. That...

Here’s Ted Cruz, speaking Friday: One more liberal justice and our right to keep and bear arms is taken away from us by an activist court. What is he talking about? This — from a piece I wrote earlier this month: [I]f the Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges teaches us anything, it’s that the age of judicial supremacy means that five justices can amend the Constitution far more efficiently than Congress and the state legislatures. And right now there are clearly four Supreme Court justices who are committed to the absurd view that the operative clause of the...

At any other time, this statement would be wholly unremarkable. In the thick of a GOP presidential primary, though? Right after the the hottest hot-button social issue of ‘em all has gone nuclear? When Mike Huckabee’s vowing some sort of second American revolution in defiance of the Court’s ruling? Kinda newsy. “I believe that marriage, as the key to strong family life, is the most important institution in our society and should be between one man and one woman. People who disagree with the traditional definition of marriage have the right to change their state laws. That is the right...

(snip) “The Court has long held the right to marry is protected by the Constitution,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the opinion. “For example, Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1, 12, invalidated bans on interracial unions, and Turner v. Safley, 482 U. S. 78, 95, held that prisoners could not be denied the right to marry.” Kennedy wrote that four principles “demonstrate that the reasons marriage is fundamental under the Constitution apply with equal force to same-sex couples.” “The first premise of this Court’s relevant precedents is that the right to personal choice regarding marriage is inherent in the concept...

Holding: Fourteenth Amendment requires a state to license a marriage between two people of the same sex. 5-4 decision

A Kentucky judge blamed two parents for their young girl's "constant fear of black men" after an armed robbery she witnessed, local reports said. The parents argued for a tougher sentence for the man convicted of busting into their Louisville home at gunpoint while their daughter watched "Spongebob Square Pants," according to the Courier-Journal. Judge Olu Stevens blasted Jordan and Tommy Gray's victim impact statement at a court hearing in February and again recently in a Facebook post he later deleted.

The first time the Affordable Care Act came before the Supreme Court, its constitutional foundation under attack, John G. Roberts Jr. was its unlikely savior. In a spectacular display of spot-welding, the chief justice joined fellow conservatives on some points and brought liberals on board for others. Roberts was the only member of the court to endorse the entire jerry-rigged thing, and even he made sure to distance himself from the substance of the law. (“It is,” he wrote, “not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.”) Still, his efforts rescued President Obama’s signature...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-12/ginsburg-says-u-s-ready-to-accept-ruling-approving-gay-marriage-i61z6gq2

Associate Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor flatly rejected on Monday the view that any U.S. Supreme Court justices practice judicial activism. Speaking Monday to a standing-room only event at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Fla., the 60-year-old justice was asked to give her reaction to those who complain about judicial activism on the one hand, yet want the Court to declare laws unconstitutional on the other. "I think most judges have a definition of judicial activism," Sotomayor said. "It’s a ruling you don’t like."Sotomayor’s assertion that no judicial activism exists — an article of faith...

Same-Sex Marriage Advocates Have Sights Set On US Supreme Court In 2015 Highest court to decide this week if it will take up marriage appeals 36 states now recognize same-sex marriages after landmark year Amanda Holpuch 6 January 2015 Last year saw same-sex marriage bans fall at a pace nearly unheard of for any social movement in American history, but advocates on all sides of the issue are hoping 2015 will bring a definitive legal decision from the US supreme court on whether same-sex marriage should be the uncontested law of the land. On Monday, Florida became the 36th US...

A Texas court ruled Thursday to overturn the conviction of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas), who was found guilty of money laundering in 2010. According to KHOU 11 and the Associated Press, the Third Court of Appeals in Austin said the case's evidence was "legally insufficient to sustain DeLay's convictions," formally acquitting the former congressman on charges of money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

The US Supreme Court is chickening out and taking a step back from the entire NSA scandal. Rather than making a final decision on whether the bulk telephone metadata surveillance program is constitutional, the Supreme Court has decided to decline the case. Instead, the Court has now left lower courts to contradict each other over the legality of this particular NSA surveillance program. One court, for instance, has described the metadata program as an “almost-Orwellian” effort. In fact, this particular petition brought to the Supreme Court concerns precisely a decision given out by US District Judge Richard Leon, who also...

Link only: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/04/07/supreme-court-gay-lesbian-marriage-photographer/7304157/

A U.S. appeals court ordered YouTube on Wednesday to take down an anti-Muslim film that sparked violence in many parts of the Middle East, prompting widespread riots and influential clerics calling for the death of an American actress who sued for the removal of the clip from the site. The decision by a divided three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco reinstated a lawsuit filed against YouTube by an actress who appeared briefly in the 2012 video that led to rioting and deaths because of its negative portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad.

When U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia handed down a scathing dissent in United States v. Windsor — the case in which the high court deemed the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional — he warned of the domino effect it would have on state bans on gay marriage. His prediction came true on Friday, when U.S. District Judge Robert Shelby ruled that Utah's 2004 ban on gay marriage was unconstitutional. And Shelby even made note of Scalia's dissent at points in his ruling, citing it as part of his reasoning in striking down the Utah law. Scalia warned that...

US prosecutors handling the case of two black teenagers accused of shooting dead a white Australian baseball player said Friday there was no evidence to suggest the killing was racially-motivated. The murder of Chris Lane, 22, in the small Oklahoma town of Duncan has triggered a race debate in America after it emerged that one of the victim's alleged killers had posted racist comments on Twitter earlier this year. Several commentators have questioned why authorities had not pressed to have hate crime charges added to the indictment of James Edwards, 15, and Chancey Luna, 16, who are both charged with...

Dissenting from this morning's opinion on the Defense of Marriage Act, Justice Antonin Scalia – as expected – holds nothing back. In a ripping dissent, Scalia says that Justice Anthony Kennedy and his colleagues in the majority have resorted to calling opponents of gay marriage "enemies of the human race."

The U.S. Supreme Court today paved the way for same-sex couples to marry soon in California, effectively leaving intact a lower-court ruling that struck down the state's voter-approved ban on gay marriage. In a ruling that assures further legal battles, the high court found that backers of Proposition 8 did not have the legal right to defend the voter-approved gay marriage ban in place of the governor and attorney general, who have refused to press appeals of a federal judge's 2010 ruling finding the law unconstitutional. The Supreme Court ruling, which found it had no legal authority to decide the...