Free Republic

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) released a 28-page report Friday arguing most of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s governing agenda is unconstitutional, and promises to keep a running tally of all Trump’s policy goals that run afoul of the Constitution. Titled “The Trump Memos,” the analysis encompasses the New York billionaire’s proposals on immigration, torture, libel, abortion, and government surveillance. It effectively serves as a blueprint for the legal arguments the ACLU would marshall when challenging Trump’s initiatives if elected president. “Donald Trump’s proposed policies, if carried out, would trigger a constitutional crisis,” ACLU Executive Director Anthony...

U.S. officials have wrongly allowed the Navy to use sonar at levels that could harm whales and other marine mammals in the world’s oceans, a federal appeals court in San Francisco has ruled. The decision Friday by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals would scale back the Navy’s use of low-frequency sonar in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans and the Mediterranean Sea under authority that was granted in 2012.

Fourteen people who attended a Donald Trump rally in San Jose last month filed a class-action lawsuit Thursday against the city, mayor and police chief claiming city leaders failed to protect them from assaults by protesters as they left the event and violated their rights to free speech and peaceful assembly.

A Virginia school board filed an emergency appeal Wednesday to the U.S. Supreme Court, asking for a stay of a lower-court ruling forcing it to regulate school bathrooms on the basis of gender identity.

Federal Court Sides With Grassroots Activists: RNC Delegates Are Bound to Follow Election Results Delegates Remain Committed to Donald J. Trump; Anti-Trump Effort Dealt Crippling Blow (New York) July 11, 2016 – Senior United States District Judge Robert E. Payne today ruled in favor of Trump campaign delegates who had argued – in line with overwhelming public opinion – that RNC delegates must follow election results and that delegates cannot be stolen at the national convention. Delegate Beau Correll, Jr., had brought the suit against the Commonwealth of Virginia hoping to reject the will of the voters, but was soundly...

Facebook is being hit with a $1 billion lawsuit after allegedly allowing the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas use its platform to plot attacks in Israel and the West Bank that killed and wounded Americans. According to Bloomberg News: "Plaintiffs include the families of Yaakov Naftali Fraenkel, a 16-year-old abducted and murdered in June 2014 after hitching a ride in the West Bank, and 3-year-old Chaya Braun, whose stroller was struck intentionally by a Palestinian driver in October 2014 at a train station in Jerusalem." “Facebook has knowingly provided material support and resources to Hamas in the form of Facebook’s online...

"For the foregoing reasons, judgment will be entered in Correll'sfavor on Counts I and II and the Commonwealth will be permanently enjoined from enforcing Va.Code§ 24.2-545(0)." Federal Court just UNBOUND the delegates for Virgina. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3174287/Correll.pdf

Fox News anchor and author Gretchen Carlson is filing a sexual harassment lawsuit against CEO Roger Ailes.

Business owners in White Marsh are suing Baltimore County and the state over highway improvements and environmental projects that they say have caused chronic flooding on their properties. The Maryland Transportation Authority spent $1.08 billion widening Interstate 95, adding express toll lanes and reconfiguring exit ramps between Interstate 895 and White Marsh Boulevard. Baltimore County has spent $15.5 million on White Marsh Run over the past two years. The work was intended to improve the flow of highway traffic through the area and reduce runoff into local waterways. County officials say the stream restoration was designed so that it could...

....On Wednesday morning, former Fox News host Gretchen Carlson filed a bombshell sexual harassment lawsuit against Fox News chairman and CEO Roger Ailes, alleging that he demoted her, reduced her pay and ultimately fired her in retaliation for turning down his sexual advances and complaining about sexual harassment in the workplace. In the eight-page civil complaint, filed in the Superior Court of New Jersey, Carlson’s attorneys detail the treatment she claims to have been subjected to during the course of her employment with Fox News, which spanned from 2005 to June of 2016. Here are some of the claims made...

Fox News anchor and author Gretchen Carlson is filing a sexual harassment lawsuit against CEO Roger Ailes.

Microsoft has been forced to pay £7,500 ($10,000) in compensation to a woman after its new Windows 10 operating system automatically installed on her computer. Teri Goldstein’s computer – which previously ran on Windows 7 - became unusable after the software tried to download without her approval. Relying on her device to run her travel agency in Sausalito, California, she went to the Microsoft's support team seeking answers, The Seattle Times reports.But after having no success and her computer still being unresponsive, she sued the company for the price of a new computer and the loss of earnings. the report...

A few days after Microsoft released Windows 10 to the public last year, Teri Goldstein's computer started trying to download and install the new operating system. The update, which she says she didn't authorize, failed. Instead, the computer she uses to run her Sausalito, California, travel-agency business slowed to a crawl. It would crash, she says, and be unusable for days at a time. "I had never heard of Windows 10," Goldstein said. "Nobody ever asked me if I wanted to update." When outreach to Microsoft's customer support didn't fix the issue, Goldstein took the software giant to court, seeking...

The U.S. Supreme Court vacated former Gov. Bob McDonnell's conviction on corruption charges Monday morning. The decision was unanimous, according to SCOTUSblog, which is tracking opinion releases this morning in Washington, D.C. The court overturned a decsion that rose out of the U.S. District Court in Richmond, then was affirmed by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. The nut of the government's case against McDonnell, and his wife Maureen, was this: In taking some $177,000 in gifts and loans from businessman Jonnie Williams, and then setting meetings Williams sought to gain legitimacy for a controversial dietary supplement, the McDonnells engaged...

The Supreme Court struck down Texas abortion restrictions that had caused more than half of the state’s abortion clinics to close.

AUSTIN, Texas— In response to a notice of intent to sue filed by the Center for Biological Diversity and Save Our Springs Alliance in May, the Texas Department of Transportation changed course on a major highway project in Austin, withdrawing its finding that the highway would have no impact on three federally protected species (two salamanders and a bird). The state’s transportation agency said in a letter that it has initiated consultation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on the three species.The construction of the MoPac Intersections Project across the environmentally sensitive Barton Springs Edwards Aquifer Recharge Zone, in...

A federal appeals court in Richmond has ruled that a transgender high school student who was born as a female can sue his school board on discrimination grounds because it banned him from the boys’ bathroom. In backing high school junior Gavin Grimm, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit deferred to the U.S. Education Department’s position that transgender students should have access to the bathrooms that match their gender identities rather than being forced to use bathrooms that match their biological sex. The department has said that requiring transgender students to use a bathroom that corresponds with...

A Virginia school board must allow a transgender teen to use the boys restroom while the court considers the legal issues of his case, a federal district judge ruled Thursday. U.S. District Court Judge Robert G. Doumar’s order directs the Gloucester County School board to let Gavin Grimm use the bathroom that corresponds to his gender identity when he returns for his senior year of high school this fall. […] The order comes after the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in April that the school board’s policy barring Grimm from using the boys restroom violated Title IX, the...

Breaking news by Stu Varney. Supreme Court was tied 4 to 4, so the lower court decision stands against Obama's Immigration plan.

BALTIMORE — The Baltimore police officer who drove the van in which Freddie Gray sustained a fatal spinal injury was acquitted on Thursday of second-degree murder and six lesser charges, leaving prosecutors still without a conviction after three high-profile trials in a case that has shaken this city. In his ruling, Judge Barry G. Williams rejected the prosecution’s claim that the officer, Caesar R. Goodson Jr., had given Mr. Gray a “rough ride” in the van, intentionally putting him at risk for an injury by taking a wide turn while Mr. Gray was not secured with a seatbelt. “The court...