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Seattle, Wash. (CBS SEATTLE) – A U.S. Navy sailor from Washington State is currently serving on a submarine thousands of miles away in the Pacific Ocean, but a judge has ordered him into an impossible custody scenario: Appear in a Michigan courtroom Monday or risk losing custody of his 6-year-old daughter. Navy submariner Matthew Hindes was given permanent custody of his daughter Kaylee in 2010, after she was reportedly removed from the home of his ex-wife, Angela, by child protective services. But now a judge has ordered him to appear in court Monday, or risk losing his daughter to his...

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.

A United States District Court judge has ruled that Wisconsin's gay marriage ban is unconstitutional. Judge Barbara Crabb issued a motion of summary judgment for the paintiffs, stating that Article XIII of the Wisconsin Constitution "violates planitiffs' fundamental right to marry and their right to equal protection of laws under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution."

Same-sex marriage is still illegal in Colorado but the state's civil rights commission ruled Friday that Jack Phillips has to bake a cake for a same-sex marriage ceremony. The Daily Caller reports:In 2012, Jack Phillips, who owns Masterpiece Cakes in Lakewood, refused to sell cakes to Dave Mullins and Charlie Craig, a same-sex couple. Mullin and Craig were to be married in Massachusetts but wanted a cake for a reception at their home in a Denver suburb. As he had done with other same-sex couples in the past Phillips refused to sell the goods, saying that he is a devout...

With a federal judge declaring a Pennsylvania ban on gay marriage unconstitutional on Tuesday afternoon, every state in the Northeastern corner of the country—Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and now Pennsylvania—has legalized same-sex marriage. Judge John Jones invoked the 14th Amendment to invalidate a 1996 Pennsylvania law that defined marriage as between a man and a woman. Like many of the other judicial decisions bringing down state marriage bans, this one framed the issue as a matter of civil rights. Jones wrote: In future generations the label same-sex marriage will be abandoned,...

A federal judge Tuesday declared Pennsylvania's ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional, the fourth such ruling on a state ban in the past three weeks. Judge John Jones III ruled in favor of 23 Pennsylvania residents who challenged the law.\ "The issue we resolve today is a divisive one. Some of our citizens are made deeply uncomfortable by the notion of same-sex marriage. However, that same sex marriage causes discomfort in some does not make its prohibition constitutional," he said. The state's Democratic attorney general, Kathleen Kane, announced last July that she would not defend it, saying she could not ethically...

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — A federal judge threw out Oregon's same-sex marriage ban Monday, marking the 13th legal victory for gay marriage advocates since the U.S. Supreme Court last year overturned part of a federal ban.

he ACLU says it expects a federal judge will issue his decision Tuesday in its challenge to Pennsylvania’s ban on same-sex marriage, The civil liberties group, which is representing plaintiffs in the closely-watched case, said in a press release that it plans to hold rallies in major cities across the state, including Philadelphia, regardless of the outcome. The ACLU sued Gov. Corbett and his administration last July on behalf of 23 plaintiffs over the state's 1996 ban, which prohibits same-sex marriage in Pennsylvania and does not recognize such marriages performed elsewhere.

A federal judge on Thursday ruled that a D.C. law requiring guns to be registered, mandating safety training and limiting the number of pistol purchases per month do not violate Second Amendment protections of the right to bear arms. U.S. District Court Judge James E. Boasberg dismissed with prejudice a sweeping challenge to the District’s handgun laws brought by a group of plaintiffs led by Dick Anthony Heller in a ruling that opens with a recounting of some of the city’s most notorious recent shootings. “The District of Columbia knows gun violence. Notorious for a time as the ‘murder capital’...

<p>Like those who stood against civil rights for African-Americans, gay-marriage foes are fighting a battle they can't win.</p> <p>LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – Nine slender statues stand beneath a window to the Arkansas governor's office – bronzed, life-sized images of the black children who integrated Little Rock Central High School on Sept. 25, 1957 and helped ignite the Civil Rights era. "They defied prejudice," says Gregory Donaldson, an African-American Baptist minister from St. Louis visiting the display with his wife Nanette. "They defied bigotry."</p>

Pastors, legislators and the civil rights attorney who represented Trayvon Martin's family against George Zimmerman last year vowed Monday to get justice for Robbie Tolan, the former minor league baseball player who was shot by a Bellaire police sergeant in 2008. "The Supreme Court said that this should go to a jury," lawyer Benjamin Crump told a crowd of more than 100 people at a press conference announcing he had been hired by Tolan and his parents. "If this could happen to a model family, like this, it could happen to anyone here." Tolan and his family, who are black,...

Two women were married on a sidewalk outside a county courthouse in Arkansas on Saturday, breaking a barrier that state voters put in place with a constitutional amendment 10 years ago. A day after Pulaski County Circuit Judge Chris Piazza said the ban was “an unconstitutional attempt to narrow the definition of equality,” Kristin Seaton, 27, and Jennifer Rambo, 26, exchanged vows at an impromptu ceremony, officiated by a woman in a rainbow-colored dress.The couple had spent the night in their Ford Focus after traveling to Eureka Springs from their home at Fort Smith, and was the first of about...

The family of a Texas teenager who killed four people in a drunken-driving wreck has agreed to pay more than $2 million to the family of a boy left paralyzed by the accident. Tarrant County court documents show that the liability insurer of Ethan Couch’s parents agreed to pay more than $1 million in cash and the rest in two annuities to a trust established for Sergio Molina. …

State District Judge Jeanine Howard of Dallas has removed herself from a controversial rape case after questioning the victim's innocence and sentencing the admitted rapist to community service at a rape crisis center. Yes, really. Howard voluntary recused herself following an interview with the Dallas Morning News last week, in which she said the girl, 14 at the time, "wasn't the victim she claimed to be," and the attacker, then 18, "is not your typical sex offender." The judge, a Democrat running unopposed for reelection in the fall, cited medical records that showed the girl's past sexual activity and that...

By the time he was arrested for sexually assaulting two siblings, 15-year-old J.B. had been molested by his alcoholic father and subjected to 25 moves among his birth, foster and adoptive families. He had also suffered from untreated attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and depression. Though tried in juvenile court, with its focus on privacy and rehabilitation, he was later required by a 2012 Pennsylvania law to register as a sex offender—branded a long-term danger to society, with no way off the list for at least 25 years. Juvenile law advocates campaigning against such automatic registries argue that they undermine the...

Editor's Note: Column was coauthored by Ken Klukowski. Justice John Paul Stevens doesn’t believe anyone has the right to own a gun, and admits that you would need to rewrite the Constitution to make his preference a legal reality. And that’s exactly what he thinks should happen. Throughout his 35-year tenure on the Supreme Court, Justice Stevens was a lion of the Legal Left. He was an unapologetic advocate of the “Living Constitution”— that judges should continually reinterpret the words of the Constitution in accordance with what they, and other elite members of society, decide is the evolving enlightenment of...

Amidst all the opinions out of the nation's highest court on Tuesday -- majority and minority, concurring in part and dissenting in part, or just too vague to classify -- was there any clear message? Yes. Definitely. But you had to peer through all the legal haze, an admix of angry rhetoric and discreet evasions, in order to divine where the Supreme Court of the United States is headed on the always simmering issue of race-based admissions to the country's colleges and universities. But it's finally headed in the right direction, however many zigs and zags the learned justices may...

RICHMOND — The arrest of a middle school teacher on suspicion of child sexual abuse this week has raised questions about the West Contra Costa Unified School District's hiring practices, because the teacher was hired while police were investigating him. Ron Guinto, 32, of Vallejo, was arrested about 7:45 a.m. Wednesday in the parking lot of Mira Vista Elementary School. The seventh-grade English and science teacher is expected to be charged with 11 counts of lewd acts on a child under 14 years old, two counts of forced oral copulation and one count of assault with intent to commit sodomy,...

John Paul Stevens says he thinks it’s appropriate for Supreme Court justices to factor in political considerations when weighing a decision to retire. Here’s what the former justice tells ABC’s “This Week”: “I think certainly it’s natural and an appropriate thing to think about your successor.” …

A judge has ordered a man convicted of harassing a neighbor and her disabled children to stand on a street corner with a sign that says he is a bully. Municipal Court Judge Gayle Williams-Byers ordered 62-year-old Edmond Aviv to hold the sign for five hours Sunday. The sign reads: “I AM A BULLY! I pick on children that are disabled, and I am intolerant of those that are different from myself. My actions do not reflect an appreciation for the diverse South Euclid community that I live in.” The judge also said the sign’s letters must be large enough...