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A cop pulls you over for a minor traffic violation. After giving you a warning or a ticket, he says, "Drive safe!" and starts walking away. But he immediately turns around and walks toward your car again, saying, "Hey, can I ask you something?"That maneuver, known as the "Kansas Two-Step," is aimed at evading the Fourth Amendment's constraints on searches and seizures. Police are not supposed to continue detaining you after the ostensible purpose of the stop has been accomplished unless they reasonably suspect you are involved in criminal activity. The two-step is designed to extend the encounter by making...

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A lawsuit that Louisiana and other Republican-leaning states filed challenging figures the Biden administration uses to calculate damages from greenhouse gasses was dismissed Wednesday by a federal appeals court. The unanimous decision by three judges on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans was the latest defeat for states challenging the Biden “cost of carbon” policy. It leaves the administration to continue using a damage cost estimate of about $51 per ton of carbon dioxide emissions as it develops environmental regulations. That estimate is under review by the administration and could increase. The...

NEW ORLEANS — President Joe Biden’s order that federal employees get vaccinated against COVID-19 was blocked Thursday by a federal appeals court. The 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans rejected arguments that Biden, as the nation’s chief executive, has the same authority as the CEO of a private corporation to require that employees be vaccinated. The ruling from the full appeals court, 16 full-time judges at the time the case was argued, reversed an earlier ruling by a three-judge 5th Circuit panel that had upheld the vaccination requirement. Judge Andrew Oldham, nominated to the court by then-President...

The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals has struck down Tampa, Florida's ban against talk therapy for minors seeking freedom from unwanted same-sex attraction. The city had tried to block licensed therapists from providing voluntary counseling to those minors. The federal appeals court ruled on Thursday that the ban is unconstitutional under the First Amendment.... The latest ruling is based on Liberty Counsel's previous victory in Otto v. City of Boca Raton in which the Eleventh Circuit had ruled that similar attempts to muzzle counselors from helping their clients in Palm Beach County and the City of Boca Raton were unconstitutional...

The Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Cincinnati on Thursday affirmed a lower court’s ruling that the vaccine mandate for federal contract workers is unconstitutional. The majority opinion stated that a broad interpretation of the mandate could provide the president “nearly unlimited authority to introduce requirements into federal contracts.” The court said Biden wanted it “to ratify an exercise of proprietary authority that would permit him to unilaterally impose a healthcare decision on one-fifth of all employees in the United States. We decline to do so.” Judge Kurt Engelhardt, writing for the majority, demonstrated the fallacy of the government’s...

The brand's packaging and website both disclose that many of its products are made in the U.S.A.Everyone knows Barilla pasta's blue box. The company refers to its "Classic Blue Box" on its website, and it has even become such a pasta aisle icon that one designer even based a limited-edition handbag on it. But some of the design elements on that box have gotten Barilla into a bit of a legal jam and, earlier this week, a federal judge in California ruled that a class-action lawsuit against the company could move forward. Two plaintiffs, Matthew Sinatro and Jessica Prost, took...

On Thursday, a federal appeals court ruled that Arkansas cannot enforce a ban on “transgender” children receiving “gender-affirming” care. “Gender-affirming” care encompasses hormone therapy, puberty blockers and sex reassignment surgery. The 8th U.S. The Circuit Court of Appeals sided with a judge’s ruling temporarily blocking the state from enforcing the law, which prohibits doctors in the state from providing this type of care to anyone under 18 years old or referring them to other providers to receive treatment. The ACLU challenged the 2021 law on behalf of four families of transgender children and two doctors who provide “gender affirming” treatments.

Feeling irrationally angry after an argument with his wife in 2015, the police were called on firearm owner Edward Caniglia to perform a welfare check. He agreed to undergo a psychiatric evaluation at the hospital to determine suicidality on the condition that police not confiscate his guns. Upon returning to his home, however, Caniglia found that the police had unconstitutionally searched his house and seized his firearms. For the first time in 13 years, the Court upheld both privacy and gun rights, this time unanimously. Caniglia v. Strom’s 9-0 decision has the potential to create lasting effects and set precedent...

Former President Carter is taking the rare step of weighing in on judicial proceedings, saying that an appeals court is misinterpreting a conservation law he signed. On Monday, Carter filed a briefing chastising a ruling that upheld a Trump-era decision to build a road through a national wildlife refuge in order to enable medical evacuations nearby.

L. Michael Luttig, a retired federal judge and leading conservative who advised Vice President Mike Pence ahead of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, told CBS News on Tuesday that he is willing to publicly testify about that experience and his alarm over Republican attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. "If invited by the Congress, I would of course be glad to testify," Luttig said in a statement. Luttig played a pivotal role in helping Pence and his chief counsel in the vice president's office, Greg Jacob, and outside lawyer Richard Cullen, to forge a legal and...

NEW ORLEANS -- President Joe Biden’s requirement that all federal employees be vaccinated against COVID-19 was upheld Thursday by a federal appeals court. In a 2-1 ruling, a panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower court and ordered dismissal of a lawsuit challenging the mandate. The ruling, a rare win for the administration at the New Orleans-based appellate court, said that the federal judge didn’t have jurisdiction in the case and those challenging the requirement could have pursued administrative remedies under Civil Service law. U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Brown, who was appointed to the District Court...

SANTA CRUZ — During a U.S. Department of Homeland Security search at a Lower Ocean neighborhood home early Wednesday, a Santa Cruz man was taken into custody in a child pornography-related investigation. Court records for the case, filed late last month in the U.S. Northern District Court, were sealed by Magistrate Judge Donna M. Ryu as of this week. However, an online case description cites federal code for alleged crimes relating to material involving the sexual exploitation of minors. According to a copy of the executed search warrant shared with the Sentinel, the raid occurred on the 100 block of...

A federal appeals court upheld a decision to temporarily block the federal government’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for federal contractors in three states.A judge in Louisville, Kentucky, issued a ruling blocking the mandate for Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee in November. And on Wednesday, the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals upheld the injunction in a 2–1 ruling.The Sixth Appeals Court majority wrote in its Wednesday order that the injunction was upheld “because the government has established none of the showings required to obtain a stay.”States are “imminently threatened in their proprietary capacities should they renew those existing contracts (thus triggering the...

This afternoon a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit rejected the Biden Administration's request for a stay of a lower court injunction barring enforcement of a COVID-19 vaccination requirement for employees of federal contractors in Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee. Judge Bush wrote for the court in Commonwealth of Kentucky v. Biden, joined by Judge Suhrenreich. Judge Cole (who recently announced his intent to take senior status upon the confirmation of his successor) dissented.Here is how Judge Bush summarizes his opinion:In 1949, Congress passed a statute called the Federal Property and Administrative Services Act ("Property...

Click here to view the full articleOn the same day a jury convicted disgraced socialite Ghislaine Maxwell on five of six counts of sex trafficking related to her former lover Jeffrey Epstein, another Epstein associate received ominous legal news. According to Reuters, two New York judges ordered Wednesday that the 2009 settlement between Epstein and Virginia Giuffre, one of the financier’s numerous accusers, be made public. Giuffre, who said she was trafficked by Epstein, has accused Britain’s Prince Andrew of sexually abusing her when she was a teenager.

A 2009 settlement agreement between deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and Virginia Giuffre, who alleges she was abused by Epstein and forced to have sex with Prince Andrew when she was under 18 years old, will be made public next week, Reuters reported. U.S. District Judges Lewis Kaplan and Loretta Preska on Wednesday ordered that the agreement be released on or around Jan. 3, saying they found no reason to keep it sealed, per the wire service. Giuffre has brought a lawsuit against Andrew, saying that she was forced to have sexual contact with the Duke of York when she...

On December 13, a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed an order issued by Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, enjoining the Biden administration’s June 1 termination of the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), better known as “Remain in Mexico”. The circuit court’s decision is a doozy, and I trust the Biden administration is chastened by the exercise. History of Remain in Mexico, and the Biden Administration’s Attempts to End It. In a November 4 post, I provided a full run-down of the Remain in Mexico saga...

PHOENIX (AP) — A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that Arizona doesn’t have to give voters who forget to sign their mail ballot time after the election to resolve the issue, rejecting a lawsuit filed by Democrats. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 decision, overturned a lower-court ruling that found it’s unconstitutional for Arizona to give voters time after an election to resolve mismatched signatures but not missing signatures. The appellate judges said Arizona’s interest in reducing the burden on busy poll workers justifies the disparity. The overwhelming majority of Arizona voters cast mail ballots, which...

There is no way to post 35 pages of documents here, but I've linked the PDF file. Long and short, it looks like the lawsuit/temporary restraining order has failed. Check out the PDF, let me know what you think.

The Trump Organization secured a partial victory on Monday as a Washington, D.C., superior court judge dismissed a portion of a lawsuit brought by the D.C. attorney general over actions by former President Donald Trump's 2017 Presidential Inaugural Committee. The judge dismissed a claim by D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine that Trump's inaugural committee "wasted" $1 million in rented ballrooms at Trump's Washington, D.C., hotel, writing that they have not met the standard of proof ... ..The ruling removed the Trump Organization as a named defendant in the case, yet still keeps the former president's Washington hotel as a named...