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A federal judge’s ruling has temporarily halted the Tennessee Department of Health’s decision to rescind funding for Planned Parenthood’s HIV and syphilis testing program. Today, U.S. Dist. Judge William Haynes granted a preliminary injunction filed by Planned Parenthood, which is suing the state over $150,000 in dropped grants. A portion of the grant money supported HIV testing at Planned Parenthood affiliates including the Memphis Gay and Lesbian Community Center.

In a direct challenge to the Obama administration, a federal appeals court temporarily halted the deportation of seven immigrants until federal authorities explain whether they should be deported. "It has caused quite a stir," said San Jose immigration lawyer Bernadette Connolly, whose client David Aranda Rodriguez is one of the seven who won the unexpected reprieve Monday. A panel of the San-Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 to give the Obama administration until March 19 to explain if Aranda Rodriguez and the other immigrants deserve a break under a new enforcement policy known as prosecutorial discretion. The...

CalPERS refuses to sell its long-term care insurance to the same-sex partners of state workers, on the grounds that federal law doesn't allow it. Now a judge in Oakland seems ready to overturn that federal ban. Last week, U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken refused to dismiss a class-action lawsuit against CalPERS and the U.S. government over the California pension fund's long-term care program. In her ruling, she suggested the ban could be unconstitutional. While the California Public Employees' Retirement System extends most benefits to same-sex couples, it has denied long-term care coverage to the same-sex spouses or domestic partners of...

A Sacramento federal judge has struck down as unconstitutional the part of California's so-called Victims' Bill of Rights that governs parole revocation. The law, enacted by voter approval of a 2008 ballot initiative known as Proposition 9, was a sweeping amendment to the state constitution, conferring a long list of entitlements on crime victims. The sections dealing with parole revocation were made part of the state's Penal Code. U.S. District Judge Lawrence K. Karlton ruled Tuesday that those sections fall short of providing the minimum due process guaranteed by the Constitution and two U.S. Supreme Court decisions, Morrissey v. Brewer...

Mayor Jean Quan vowed Wednesday to quickly reform the scandal-plagued Oakland Police Department after a frustrated judge threatened a federal takeover if it fails to quickly make good on changes agreed to nine years ago. U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson said he "remains in disbelief" that the department has failed to adopt the reforms. Henderson's frustration with the pace of improvements was evident throughout a scathing five-page ruling issued Tuesday. "This department finds itself woefully behind its peers around the state and nation," he wrote. In his ruling, Henderson increased the oversight authority of a court-appointed monitor. Oakland Police Chief...

The state's fiscal crisis does not outweigh access to health care, a federal judge said in temporarily blocking state Medi-Cal cuts that rural hospitals say would have endangered skilled nursing care for their elderly and long-term patients.The ruling by U.S. District Judge Christina Snyder in Los Angeles federal court Dec. 28 puts the brakes on Medi-Cal cuts that were intended to save California up to $623 million by trimming reimbursement rates to care providers by as much as 10 percent. An earlier round of cuts, also temporarily blocked by the courts, would double the reductions. Medi-Cal, the state's federal Medicaid...

A federal judge has blocked a California state budget cut that would have affected rural patients, the latest indication that courts will have the last word on Medi-Cal reductions. Gov. Jerry Brown and lawmakers cut reimbursement rates to a variety of Medi-Cal providers by 10 percent to save $623 million in their June budget. Physicians, pharmacists and hospitals, among others, have argued that the cut to California's already low payment rates would discourage providers from accepting Medi-Cal patients and reduce access. U.S. District Court Judge Christina Snyder issued a preliminary injunction Wednesday blocking the specific rate cut to nursing units...

Even as the definition of family in America expands and shifts, California courts are trying to keep pace by redefining whom the law regards as parents.Judges have moved beyond traditional notions of biology and adoption and have assigned parental rights to adults with no genetic or legal ties to kids.In a recent Sacramento case, an appeals court said a woman who never adopted her ex-girlfriend's children was nevertheless their parent because she acted like one – providing for them financially, cleaning up after them when they got sick, and volunteering at their school. "We're redefining what constitutes a family," said...

A federal judge has apparently granted at least a temporary reprieve to 372,000 elderly and disabled Californians who faced a 20 percent cut in their in-home care on Jan. 1. U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken of Oakland issued a temporary restraining order Thursday that prohibits the state from taking any immediate steps to carry out the reductions — in particular, from mailing out notices to all recipients, starting next week. Wilken said a lawsuit by disability-rights groups and other advocates raised “serious questions” about whether the cuts would violate federal health and disability laws by forcing recipients into nursing homes....

A federal judge said Monday he would not order that Vermont's only nuclear plant be allowed to remain open while a lawsuit to determine its long-term future plays out. The state is moving to close the Vermont Yankee plant, with both the governor and the state Senate on record as wanting it to close when its initial 40-year license expires next March. The plant's owner, New Orleans-based Entergy Corp., got a 20-year license extension for Vermont Yankee from the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission and filed a lawsuit arguing that the federal action pre-empts the state's effort to close the plant....

California will go yet another year without an execution on the largest death row in the nation. The ongoing legal challenge to the state's lethal injection procedures will not be completed this year, resulting in further delays in the ability of state officials to carry out executions at San Quentin state prison. Lawyers for the state and for death row inmates revealed during a conference with a federal judge last week that they will not be ready for a hearing in the case until at least December, according to a transcript of the proceeding released Monday. The primary holdup in...

The now-retired federal judge who struck down California's ban on same-sex marriage shared his reflections with reporters for the first time Wednesday, saying that the trial should have been televised and that he never considered stepping aside because he is gay."If you thought a judge's sexuality, ethnicity, national origin (or) gender would prevent the judge from handling a case, that's a very slippery slope," former Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker told reporters in a conference room at the San Francisco courthouse where he served for 21 years."I don't think it's relevant," he said.Independent thinker Walker, 67, who retired from...

Madison -- Dane County Circuit Judge Maryann Sumi issued a temporary restraining order Friday, barring the publication of a controversial new law that would sharply curtail collective bargaining for public employees.Sumi’s order will prevent Secretary of State Doug La Follette from publishing the law until she can rule on the merits of the case. Dane County Ismael Ozanne is seeking to block the law because he says a legislative committee violated the state’s open meetings law.Sumi said Ozanne was likely to succeed on the merits.

A recent Wall Street Journal article on how states are reducing their prison costs was illustrated with a photo of inmates being housed cheek-by-jowl in a California prison gymnasium. The article was also illustrated with a chart detailing how 31 states were reducing their prison spending. But California was not on the list for a very simple reason: It is not reducing prison spending, even though the number of its inmates is slowly declining. Gov. Jerry Brown's 2011-12 budget makes sharp reductions in spending on health and welfare services and higher education – permanent ones, he says – but would...

SAN FRANCISCO -- A federal appeals court has upheld $78,000 in damages to illegal immigrants who were held at gunpoint by a rancher in the southern Arizona desert, a case that prompted death threats against a federal judge who was fatally shot last month in Tucson. U.S. District Judge John Roll was one of six people slain Jan. 8 when a gunman opened fire outside a supermarket at a crowd of constituents meeting with Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., who was critically wounded. Jared Lee Loughner, 22, is being held in the slayings. Roll, 63, was killed nearly three years after...

OAKLAND -- In a victory for gay-rights advocates, a federal judge has ruled that state employees in California can sue for discrimination over the federal government's exclusion of their same-sex spouses from a long-term health care program. U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken of Oakland denied an Obama administration request to dismiss the suit Tuesday and signaled that she is likely to overturn provisions of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which denies federal benefits to same-sex couples. A federal judge in Massachusetts declared the law unconstitutional in July, a ruling the administration is appealing. President Obama has criticized the law,...

Here, for reasons that I shall provide in a memorandum to be filed in due course, I am certain that “a reasonable person with knowledge of all the facts would [not] conclude that [my] impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” United States v. Nelson, 718 F.2d 315, 321 (9th Cir. 1983); see also Sao Paulo State of the Federated Republic of Brazil v. Am. Tobacco Co., 535 U.S. 229, 233 (2002) (per curiam). I will be able to rule impartially on this appeal, and I will do so. The motion is therefore DENIED.

From the Courthouse News Service, a federal district judge has rejected a motion to dismiss the suit brought by the Obama Justice Department against the state of Arizona: PHOENIX (CN) – A federal judge rejected motions in which Gov. Jan Brewer, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu sought dismissal of a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Arizona’s new immigration law. The complaint filed by civil rights groups, including Friendly House and the American Civil Liberties Union, contains sufficient allegations that S.B. 1070 perceptibly impairs the ability of the organizational plaintiffs to provide the services that...

Federal judge issues nationwide injunction stopping enforcement

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has expressed a willingness to ban protesters from burning the Koran as the modern day equivalent of shouting fire in a crowded theater.The Supreme Court has ruled burning the American flag in protest is protected speech under the First Amendment of the Constitution.Breyer spoke to George Stephanopoulos on ABC's Good Morning America today:But Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer told me on "GMA" that he's not prepared to conclude that -- in the internet age -- the First Amendment condones Koran burning.“Holmes said it doesn’t mean you can shout 'fire' in a crowded theater,” Breyer...

Another federal judge has decided to impose her personal views on the nation's laws so that they will favor homosexual conduct. On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Virginia A. Phillips declared unconstitutional the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" law that prohibits homosexuals from serving openly in the military. Not that it is any of her business. Judge Phillips' finding arose from a suit filed by the Log Cabin Republicans against the Clinton-era law. This Clinton-era judge invoked a "heightened scrutiny" test, which allowed her not only to analyze the direct effects of the law on homosexuals in uniform, but also to expostulate...

California State University at Stanislaus and its private foundation violated public records laws and will have to release the speakers contract with Sarah Palin they had tried to keep secret, a judge has ruled. The details of Palin's contract to speak at a June 25 fundraiser for the foundation became national news last spring after foundation officials refused to tell state Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, how much Palin would be paid. Yee has been trying to change a state law that shields campus foundations from public scrutiny. The Palin story grew more bizarre in April after students found discarded...

When 52 percent of California voters passed Proposition 8 in November 2008, Attorney General Jerry Brown said he would defend the measure during the inevitable appeals. Then, as is his fashion, Brown changed his mind. Ditto Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who twice vetoed same-sex marriage bills passed by the Legislature in deference to California voters who passed an earlier same-sex marriage statute in 2000. But after Prop. 8 passed, both refused to defend the measure. This month, after U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker ruled that Prop. 8 is unconstitutional, both Brown and Schwarzenegger urged Walker to lift a stay on his...

When a federal judge last week struck down California's Proposition 8 as unconstitutional, proponents of same-sex marriage cheered the decision at rallies in West Hollywood and San Francisco. Public displays of displeasure at U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn R. Walker's ruling were far and few between. But Walker's decision struck an angry chord with many who voted for Proposition 8 in 2008. On Thursday, he extended a temporary hold on his order until Wednesday to give sponsors of the measure time to appeal the ruling. What was once a moral argument has morphed into a debate over the democratic process...

A San Francisco appellate court let stand Thursday a judge's order blocking furloughs for state workers. The decision by the First District Court of Appeal means that workers will not be furloughed -- at least temporarily.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Lesbian and gay couples were lining up this morning at the San Francisco clerk's office, hours before a judge is expected to rule on whether same-sex marriages can resume while his landmark decision in the case is appealed. Rod Wood, 56, and his boyfriend of seven years, Roger Hunt, 52, were the first in line at San Francisco City Hall. The San Francisco couple said they wanted to be there in case the window of opportunity to wed was small. Wood proposed to Hunt two days ago, and the couple got rings Wednesday night at the Stonestown...

SAN FRANCISCO – The federal judge who overturned California's same-sex marriage ban is set to rule Thursday on whether gay marriages should resume immediately in the state or await an appeals court's input. Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker announced late Wednesday that he would issue his decision by noon on requests to impose a stay that would keep Proposition 8 in effect while its sponsors appeal his decision.

The judge who threw out California's ban on gay marriage said Wednesday he is prepared to decide whether to stay his ruling pending appeal. U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker, chief of the court in San Francisco, ruled last week that Proposition 8, adopted by California voters in 2008, is unconstitutional. The court said he plans to issue his decision on a stay Thursday morning. Walker issued a temporary stay last week. If he decides to keep his ruling from taking effect pending appeal, same-sex couples might be barred from marriage in California for several years, the Los Angeles Times said....

An Alameda Superior Court judge Monday temporarily barred Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger from imposing new furloughs on state workers beginning Friday. Judge Steven A. Brick ruled that there are "serious questions" about the legality of the furloughs and that permitting them before a scheduled Sept. 13 court hearing could cause irreparable harm. "The court finds, on the limited record before it, that the balance of hardships tips in favor of petitioners," states Brick's ruling, which is intended to preserve the status quo until both sides have had ample opportunity to press their case. Schwarzenegger, through a spokesman, vowed an immediate appeal...

The federal judge who overturned California's same-sex marriage ban this week is a Republican who once came under fire for his membership to a powerful all-male club that had only recently allowed blacks to join. But after Chief U.S. Judge Vaughn Walker struck down the voter-approved ban known as Proposition 8, he became something else in the minds of some: a gay activist. Rumors have circulated for months that Walker is gay, fueled by the blogosphere and a San Francisco Chronicle column that stated his sexual orientation was an "open secret" in legal and gay activism circles. Walker himself hasn't...

It has been clear since before the beginning of the year that Judge Vaughn Walker of the U.S. District Court in San Francisco was on a mission to establish a federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage and thereby to overturn California’s Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment passed by the people of the state in 2008. From his decision to have a “trial” of the “facts” in the case rather than proceed straightaway to legal arguments about the constitutional issues (a choice that surprised even the plaintiffs’ attorneys) to his attempt to stage a nationally televised extravaganza (brought to a halt...

"Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license," federal Judge Vaughn Walker wrote. So one judge overturned a measure approved by 52 percent of California voters in 2008 and upheld by the California Supreme Court in a 6-1 ruling. . . . Walker summed up support for Prop. 8 as emanating from "a fear or unarticulated dislike of same-sex couples." Wrong. Voters have reason to be afraid lest legalizing same-sex marriage result in unintended consequences - such as the legalization of polygamy, as recommended by a Canadian...

A balanced budget for Sacramento County? Not so fast. A Sacramento Superior Court judge on Thursday blocked the county's scheduled cuts to medical programs for the poor, ordering that clinics slated for closure remain open. The cuts were set to take effect this weekend – the start of the new fiscal year. Cuts to primary care, including the clinics, were projected to save $7.8 million. It was part of a spending plan the Board of Supervisors approved last month that included layoffs for nearly 700 workers. The board had to balance a $1.9 billion general fund budget. Included in the...

Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan is telling senators she'll do her best to consider cases impartially and with judicial humility, as she begins Judiciary Committee hearings facing Republicans charges that she'd let her political views color her decisions as a justice. "I will do my best to consider every case impartially, modestly, with commitment to principle, and in accordance with law," Kagan plans to tell senators as she heads into a marathon week of high-pressure vetting before the Judiciary panel, pressing to portray herself as a mainstream addition to the court.

...District Judge John Dietz, declaring the money used to collect signatures "an unauthorized, illegal contribution," granted the Democratic Party a temporary restraining order to block Green Party candidates from being certified for the November ballot. Democrats contended that a petition drive to put Green candidates on the ballot was actually an effort to help Perry, a Republican, by diverting votes from his Democratic challenger Bill White... It had struggled earlier to get the required 43,991 petition signatures for its candidates to make the ballot. At a hearing Thursday, Green Party member Garrett Mize testified that Perry's former chief of staff,...

SAN FRANCISCO - Charles Cooper, the attorney defending a federal challenge to Proposition 8, came to San Francisco to deliver his closing argument on same-sex marriage Wednesday. But Chief Judge Vaughn Walker made it feel much more like a cross-examination. Walker closely questioned Cooper about his trial presentation, including why his side called only one witness to testify about the institution of marriage. Where Cooper's counterpart Theodore Olson of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher was able to deploy lofty rhetoric with less interruption, Cooper was stuck parrying Walker for about two hours. At one point, Walker asked Cooper to recount the...

Victoria Kolakowski, who's running for Alameda Count Superior Court judge in a November runoff election, declares on her campaign Web site that she hopes to make history."If I am elected, I would be the first openly LGBT superior court judge elected in Alameda County, the first openly LGBT person elected countywide, and the first transgender trial court judge in the United States," it states. The question is how much it should matter. Kolakowski, 48, transitioned from male to female in 1989 during her last year in law school and had sex reassignment surgery in 1991. She has 21 years of...

Ohio's highest court has ruled that a person may be convicted of speeding purely if it looked to a police officer that the motorist was going too fast. The Ohio Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that an officer's visual estimation of speed is enough to support a conviction if the officer is trained, certified by a training academy, and experienced in watching for speeders. The court's 5-1 decision says independent verification of a driver's speed is not necessary. The court upheld a lower court's ruling against a driver who challenged a speeding conviction that had been based on testimony from police...

Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan’s undergraduate thesis at Princeton University in 1981 was mostly a clinical analysis of the socialist movement in the United States, but in her conclusion she expressed disappointment that “labor radicalism” had failed to gain political prominence. Kagan, in her 130-page thesis, titled “To the Final Conflict: Socialism in New York City, 1900-1933,” sought to explain “why the growing and confident American socialist movement of the Progressive Era suddenly fell apart.” Kagan’s thesis, in the end, was that infighting ultimately did in the movement. “Through its own internal feuding, then, the [Socialist Party] exhausted itself forever...

A federal judge has blocked Gov. Paterson’s push for 100,000 state worker furloughs. Senior U.S. District Judge Lawrence E. Kahn issued the temporary restraining order late this afternoon. (Read it here.) The furloughs, which would be the first in state history, were to go into effect on Monday, but now will have to wait. Kahn scheduled a hearing on the matter for May 26. The temporary restraining order also prohibits Paterson from submitting any more emergency extenders that withhold the 4% to &% pay raises for union employees. Paterson included the furloughs in an emergency spending bill to keep government...

It is no more of an empirical question than whether she is Jewish. We know she is Jewish, and it is a fact simply and rightly put in the public square. If she were to hide her Jewishness, it would seem rightly odd, bizarre, anachronistic, even arguably self-critical or self-loathing. And yet we have been told by many that she is gay ... and no one will ask directly if this is true and no one in the administration will tell us definitively. In a word, this is preposterous - a function of liberal cowardice and conservative discomfort. It should...

The White House anticipates that the position Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan took regarding military recruiters at Harvard Law School, during her time as dean there, will be one of the big points of attack from Republicans. The policy banning military recruiters from using Harvard Law School’s Office of Career Services had been in place since 1979 because of the military’s ban on gay and lesbian troops serving openly. University policy requires that any employer who recruits at Harvard Law School and uses the services of office of career services must sign a statement indicating that it does not discriminate...

CHICAGO (AP) - A federal judge in Chicago has refused to issue a subpoena for President Barack Obama to testify at former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich's political corruption trial.

President Barack Obama's nominee to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals evidently doesn't know the difference between a motive and an excuse. Judge Robert Chatigny, a federal court judge based in Connecticut, was picked by the president despite a judicial record which includes trying to bully a convicted serial killer's attorney into delaying his client's execution despite lower court rulings and the client's own instructions, Or perhaps he was picked because of such an attempt at judicial activism.

A controversial nominee for the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals apologized Friday for sending Senate Judiciary Committee members an incomplete portfolio about himself and said he'd do whatever he could to win the committee's trust. Republican senators called into question Goodwin Liu's temperament as a possible judge, blasting the controversial 9th Circuit Court of Appeals nominee during his confirmation hearing Friday over statements he made about Supreme Court Judge Samuel Alito's "vision of America." At the time of Judge Alito's confirmation process Liu was quoted as saying that "in Judge Alito's America, the police may shoot unarmed Americans ... the...

Madison, Wis. (AP) -- A federal judge in Wisconsin says the National Day of Prayer is unconstitutional. U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb issued the ruling Thursday in a lawsuit filed by the Madison-based Freedom From Religion Foundation.

Attorneys representing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger have asked an appellate court to block the order that ended "Furlough Fridays" for tens of thousands of state workers, but leaves others taking off three unpaid days each month. The governor's move came just four days before the government is scheduled to shut down again. The court will probably act quickly, legal experts said, given that informal deadline. But some state workers, who just a week ago were celebrating a furlough lawsuit win that they hoped would return regular schedules and full pay to at least some colleagues, were feeling whipsawed by the governor's...

A three-judge federal appellate panel on Thursday overturned Sacramento federal Judge Lawrence Karlton and reinstated the tough parole revocation procedures adopted by California voters two years ago in Proposition 9. The measure, sponsored by state Sen. George Runner and a coalition of tough-on-crime groups, had been challenged by criminal defense groups, saying it "purports to eliminate nearly all due process rights of parolees and directly conflicts with the protections put in place by the injunction and established constitutional law." Karlton declared that Proposition 9 conflicted with a permanent injunction agreed to by the state as part of a 15-year-old class...

<p>An Alameda County judge has ordered furloughed state employees in nearly 70 departments to return to a regular work schedule next month, but he spared the state from immediately paying hundreds of millions of dollars in back pay while Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appeals the ruling.</p>

Aberdeen, Miss. (AP) -- Mississippi officials who canceled a prom after a lesbian student asked to bring her girlfriend told a federal judge Monday that there were issues with the event even before that. The American Civil Liberties Union is suing in U.S. District Court to force the Itawamba County school district to sponsor the prom and allow Constance McMillen to escort her girlfriend and wear a tuxedo. Schools Superintendent Teresa McNeece and school board Chairman Eddie Hood testified that they had discussed not sponsoring the prom even before McMillen challenged a rule that prohibits same-sex dates. They said they...