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Pacific Justice Institute has filed its opening brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, located in San Francisco, in a case that challenges the constitutionality of taxpayer-funded charter schools that are based on occult teachings. "This case is truly stranger than fiction," noted Brad Dacus, president of Pacific Justice Institute. "It is incredible that we as taxpayers are still supporting schools founded on a belief system that incorporates elements of Hinduism, European occultism, and a heretical form of Christianity. We cannot have a constitutional double standard where mainstream Judeo-Christian beliefs are excluded from public schools while...

"Even if "shoot the ni-" or "he will have a 50 cal in the head soon" could reasonably have been perceived by objective observers as threats within the factual context, this alone would not have been enough to convict Bagdasarian.....The government must also show that he made the statements intending that they be taken as a threat. A statement that the speaker does not intend as a threat is afforded constitutional protection and cannot be held criminal." page 17

The White House announced Wednesday evening that President Barack Obama is nominating Alaska Supreme Court Justice Morgan Christen to the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. "I am proud to nominate this outstanding candidate to serve on the United States Court of Appeals," Obama said in a statement. "I am confident Justice Morgan Christen will serve the American people with integrity and distinction."

Republican opposition is steadily growing against controversial University of California-Berkley law professor Goodwin Liu, President Obama's nominee for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, potentially imperiling a judicial appointment for the first time in his presidency. Senior Republicans launched an all-out push to quash the nomination, urging their conference colleagues to support a GOP-led filibuster. "(Liu's) record reflects a carefully honed and calculated philosophy that he developed and advanced over the course of his brief career in the ivory towers of academia and which threatens the American tradition of limited constitutional government," Sens. Charles Grassley of Iowa, top Republican on...

This excerpt summarizes the showdown that will occur tomorrow when Senate Democrats force a cloture vote on Ninth Circuit nominee Goodwin Liu, President Obama’s most radical judicial nominee and the man whom Obama would dearly like to make the first Asian-American Supreme Court justice. Liu’s left-wing agenda and outrageously activist view of the law makes this showdown a classic test of the bipartisan “extraordinary circumstances” standard for when judicial nominees can be filibustered. The standard originated in the 2005 Gang of 14 agreement. Liu is a 40 year old Berkeley law professor whose vocal and unabashed championing of judicial activism...

Uncharted Waters—Ramona Attorney Back in Court Over Obama CitizenshipUncharted legal waters. That's how Ramona attorney Gary Kreep summed up the judicial dilemma surrounding the question of whether President Barack Obama is eligible for his office and how Americans should generally deal with an eligibility issue once a president takes office. On Monday, Kreep and lawyer Orly Taitz of Rancho Santa Margarita once again asked the courts to allow them to present their cases and bring evidence in their fight to show that Obama isn't a U.S. citizen. It's not a simple request. At this stage, the court isn't hearing details...

When he steps into the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Pasadena on Monday, he'll ask a panel of three judges for a chance to show evidence that the president of the United States isn't eligible for the job. He'll argue that Barack Obama wasn't born in this country and that the plaintiffs in his case—members of the American Independent Party—didn't get a fair shake in the 2008 presidential election.

California’s liberal Ninth Circuit rejects a specious civil-rights lawsuit.This February, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals—widely seen as one of the more liberal federal courts in the nation—issued its ruling in Darensburg v. Metropolitan Transit Commission, a lawsuit brought by poor, largely minority riders of public buses in the San Francisco Bay Area. The plaintiffs had alleged that, since a large majority of the city’s bus riders were nonwhite, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s preference for rail-expansion projects over bus-expansion projects was racially biased and a violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The court ruled against the plaintiffs and...

SAN FRANCISCO -- A federal appeals court refused today to let same-sex marriages resume in California while it considers the constitutionality of a 2008 ballot measure that defined marriage as the union of a man and a woman. Gay and lesbian couples and the city of San Francisco had asked the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last month to lift its suspension of a federal judge's August 2010 ruling that declared Proposition 8 unconstitutional. The couples and the city, plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging Prop. 8, cited the appeals court's decision to put the case on hold while the...

The U.S. Supreme Court reinstated a Sacramento man's conviction and life sentence Monday for the rape of a 72-year-old woman in her apartment, dismissing an appellate court's decision that the prosecutor may have had racial reasons for removing two African Americans from the jury. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco had granted a new trial to Steven Frank Jackson in July. The court said the prosecutor at Jackson's 2004 trial had used pretexts to justify his challenges to the two African American jurors, because the reasons he gave could have applied to jurors he left on...

Supreme Court unanimous reversals of the Ninth Circuit are becoming so common as to be almost yawn inducing. Today comes the latest reversal of a Ninth Circuit ruling in favor of a sex offender who attacked a 72-year-old woman. In short, the big bench once again was forced to remind the S.F.-based court that it is supposed to defer to local court decisions.

Victor Nunez is an illegal alien from Mexico. Two years after arriving in the United States, he was convicted of petty theft for shoplifting. Then, he was convicted of a much more serious crime: He exposed himself in public. But even that wasn’t enough to have him removed from the country.   After a decade of his illegal presence, the Department of Homeland Security finally brought immigration charges to remove him from the United States. Crimes of “moral turpitude,” like exposing your genitals to children, are supposed to result in certain deportation.     The Immigration Judge denied his application, and the Board of...

Jan Brewer is asking a federal court to disallow foreign governments from joining the federal lawsuit. | AP Photo Close By SCOTT WONG | 10/6/10 9:57 AM EDT Updated: 10/6/10 7:21 PM EDT In a new twist in the fight over Arizona’s immigration law, Republican Gov. Jan Brewer on Tuesday asked a federal court to disallow foreign governments from joining the U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit to overturn the law. The move comes in response to a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling issued Monday, allowing nearly a dozen Latin American countries — Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Costa Rica, Ecuador,...

SAN FRANCISCO – A federal appeals court put same-sex weddings in California on hold indefinitely Monday while it considers the constitutionality of the state's gay marriage ban. The decision, issued by a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, trumps a lower court judge's order that would have allowed county clerks to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples on Wednesday. Lawyers for the two gay couples that challenged the ban said Monday they would not appeal the panel's decision on the stay to the Supreme Court.

BReaking Hot!!! 9th Circus flips lid, says hold the marriages off 'til the case finishes appeals..

The Ninth Circuit has stayed Judge Vaughn Walker's ruling in the high-profile Constitutional challenge to California's same-sex marriage ban. The case is scheduled to be heard in early December. So hold the wedding bells. There is some good news, though, for the same-sex plaintiffs: The court warned in its order that it's considering dismissing the appeal on the grounds that the appelants -- who don't include the Governor or Attorney General -- lack standing. "In addition to any issues appellants wish to raise on appeal, appellants are directed to include in their opening brief a discussion of why this appeal...

It’s been thirty years, and I still miss the classroom. I taught American Political Theory to mostly seniors, Pre-Law or Political Science majors, that long ago. If any of them had submitted a paper as ill-thought-out as Judge Susan Bolton’s decision on the Arizona immigration law, I’d have given them an F, and made them rewrite it from scratch. Here’s why: The largest point is that this US District Judge ignored the very case that was presented to her for decision. The federal complaint attacked the Arizona law for only one general flaw. It claimed that the state law preempted...

A top Senate Republican hammered liberal law professor Goodwin Liu’s writings as “vicious, emotionally and racially charged” at his confirmation hearing Friday – igniting the first real test of whether Republicans will be able to block the most controversial of President Barack Obama’s lower court judicial nominees. Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) slammed Liu’s testimony against Samuel Alito during his confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court. “Judge Alito’s record envisions an America where police may shoot and kill an unarmed boy to stop him from running away with a stolen purse … where a black man may be sentenced to death...

WASHINGTON -- A federal appeals court ruling allowing a school district to veto an orchestral religious piece at high school graduation survived Supreme Court review Monday over a dissent by a conservative justice, who said the decision would stifle freedom of expression. The justices denied a 12th-grade musician's appeal of a ruling in September by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The appeals court said school officials' decision to keep the graduation program secular was a reasonable effort to avoid a constitutional controversy and did not violate students' rights. The ruling, in a case from Washington...

I'm not sure who is more unpopular with FReepers, the SIEU or the IRS, but they went head-to-head today before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and IRS came out ahead, to the tune of $52,000 and change. it's hard to post a link directly to the court's decision, but the link above is to a blog post which in turn links to the decision.

Speaking of law professors at the University of California at Berkeley, the Los Angeles Times reported this morning that ... Obama will nominate Professor Goodwin Liu to a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit today.

SAN FRANCISCO -- A divided federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld a school district's refusal to let a band play a religious piece at a high school graduation, saying the superintendent had reasonably decided to avoid a constitutional controversy by ordering a secular program. The district's veto of an instrumental version of "Ave Maria" by German composer Franz Biebl at the 2006 graduation ceremony in Everett, Wash., did not violate students' freedom of speech or religion, said the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

Ashcroft liable for detentions, court finds By Tony Romm - 09/04/09 04:18 PM ET Former Attorney General John Ashcroft may be sued and held liable for wrongly detaining witnesses after the Sept. 11 attacks, a federal appeals court ruled on Friday. In its decision, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that Abdullah Al-Kidd, a U.S. citizen detained as a material witness for two weeks, may sue the former attorney general for breaching his constitutional rights. Al-Kidd claimed during the case that his brief imprisonment caused him to lose a scholarship and crippled his chances of finding employment, according...

In a ruling with broad implications for computer privacy, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled that federal investigators went too far when they seized the digital records of a drug testing company and kept the results of confidential drug tests performed on all Major League baseball players during the 2002 season. According to published reports, 104 players tested positive for performance enhancing drugs. The names of four of them — Alex Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez, David Ortiz, and (now retired) Sammy Sosa — were leaked to the press by an anonymous source or sources. The court...

The federal appeals court ruling against the government Wednesday in the long running Major League Baseball drug-testing case has several far-reaching ramifications. The decision means that leaking the names of steroid-tainted players to Sports Illustrated and The New York Times likely constituted crimes, and that an investigation could be launched to identify the leakers. It also means that the blockbuster revelations about steroid cheating by Alex Rodriguez(notes), Sammy Sosa(notes), Manny Ramirez(notes) and David Ortiz(notes) were based on evidence gathered in an illegal search by lead BALCO investigating agent Jeff Novitzky. Unless the Ninth Circuit decision is successfully appealed to the...

(IStockPhoto) A federal appeals court on September 24 will hear a high-profile gun rights case that's a leading candidate to end up before the U.S. Supreme Court. The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is likely to decide whether the Second Amendment's guarantee of a right to "keep and bear arms" restricts only the federal government -- the current state of affairs -- or whether it can be used to strike down intrusive state and local laws too. A three-judge panel ruled that the Second Amendment does apply to the states. But now a larger Ninth Circuit panel will rehear...

<p>SAN FRANCISCO -- A Northern California family whose daughter underwent forced circumcision in Indonesia is entitled to seek political asylum in the United States, a federal appeals court said Monday.</p> <p>The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco criticized immigration officials who, in ordering the family deported, decided that the girl had suffered no serious harm when her genitals were mutilated as a newborn.</p>

A panel of judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco today overturned a lower court ruling that put a halt to a controversial lawsuit concerning extraordinary rendition, the practice of flying suspected terrorists to their home (or other) countries. Click here for the story, from the San Jose Mercury News; here for the AP story. The lawsuit was filed by the ACLU on behalf of five men who say they were subjected to the government’s extraordinary rendition program — that they were kidnapped and sent to overseas prisons where they were tortured. The...

It may seem utterly impossible, but a fairly decent ruling regarding the Second Amendment came from a California court this week. The San Francisco-based Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals actually ruled that private citizens can challenge state and local gun laws under the Second Amendment. Jokingly referred to as the Ninth “Circus” Court of Appeals for its historically horrendous opinions (it’s one of the most overturned appeals court in the nation), it is stunning to read the majority opinions in the case, Nordyke v. King. The majority opinions read more like a historical chronology of gun rights produced by...

WASHINGTON — The last time a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress banned civilian sales of military-style assault weapons, it took American voters just seven weeks to rebel. They handed Republicans control of the House and the Senate for the first time in 40 years. One of the casualties in the backlash was Rep. Jack Brooks, D-Beaumont, who sponsored the ban and then promptly lost his seat in Congress in 1994 after 42 years of service. The lesson wasn’t lost on President Obama when Mexican President Felipe Calderon suggested reviving the defunct weapons’ ban to help combat drug cartel violence...

Believe it or not, the Ninth Circuit Court ruled today that the second amendment restricts the right powers of state and local governments to interfere with the individual right to gun ownership. The decison even observes that the right to bear arms is “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.” Notes Cato Institute's Ilya Shapiro, "I rarely get a chance to say this, but the Ninth Circuit gets it exactly right." On a related matter, I just got around to Brian Doherty's Gun Control on Trial: Inside the Supreme Court Battle Over the Second Amendment. It's a terrific accounting...

America, Liberty has won the day today! Our Civil Rights, as stated in the Bill of Rights in the Constitution have been upheld. Today, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the Second Amendment, the right to keep and bear arms, and incorporated that decision onto the states through the 14th Amendment. In a victory for constitutionalists and Gun Rights advocates, Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain’s Opinion in the case Nordyke vs. King states in part the following:

(04-20) 19:10 PDT San Francisco -- A federal appeals court ruled Monday that private citizens can challenge state and local gun laws by invoking the constitutional right to bear arms - the first such ruling in the nation - but upheld a ban on firearms at gun shows at the Alameda County Fairgrounds in Pleasanton. The ruling by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco followed last year's landmark Supreme Court decision that the Constitution's Second Amendment protects an individual's right to possess guns for self-defense. The high court struck down a handgun prohibition in Washington, D.C.,...

Alice Marie Beard: The Ninth Circuit has apparently held, in the Nordyke case, that the Second Amendment is incorporated against the states via the Fourteenth Amendment; opinion to come shortly. I will certainly blog more when I can read the opinion. Please note the possibility of error in all such breaking news stories, posted before the opinion is read; I will certainly correct any such error as soon as possible if it turns out the initial account is indeed mistaken.

·11250 Waples Mill Road ·   Fairfax, Virginia 22030    ·800-392-8683 Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Holds that the Second Amendment Applies to the States Tuesday, April 21, 2009 Fairfax, Va. – Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit marked a milestone in Second Amendment history by ruling that the Second Amendment limits state and local government infringements on our right to keep and bear arms through the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. NRA has been involved in, and supportive of, this case for the past ten years and has filed several amicus briefs...

Last June, the Supreme Court ruled in District of Columbia v. Heller that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to keep and bear arms, at least in the home for self-defense.  Here’s our own Bob Levy, who masterminded the Heller litigation, talking about that decision: While the Court’s ruling was a watershed in constitutional interpretation, it technically applied only to D.C., striking down the District’s draconian gun ban but not having a direct effect in the rest of the country.Well, today the Ninth Circuit (the federal appellate court covering most Western states) ruled that the Second Amendment restricts the power of state...

We therefore conclude that the right to keep and bear arms is “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.” Colonial revolutionaries, the Founders, and a host of commentators and lawmakers living during the first one hundred years of the Republic all insisted on the fundamental nature of the right. It has long been regarded as the “true palladium of liberty.” Colonists relied on it to assert and to win their independence, and the victorious Union sought to prevent a recalcitrant South from abridging it less than a century later. The crucial role this deeply rooted right has played in...

BELLEVUE, Wash.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Second Amendment Foundation today applauded the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco for ruling that the Second Amendment is incorporated against the states and local governments. The majority opinion was written by Judge Diarmuid F. O'Scannlain, with a concurring opinion from Judge Ronald M. Gould, who wrote, “The right to bear arms is a bulwark against external invasion…That we have a lawfully armed populace adds a measure of security for all of us and makes it less likely that a band of terrorists could make headway in an attack on any community before more...

....Birthed in Gold Rush calamity and come of age on the lawless frontier, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has been resolving disputes for 150 years in a region once prone to settling differences with pistols at high noon. If one looks closely at the bench in the main courtroom, there is a nick left by a bullet fired during the 1917 Hindu German Conspiracy Trial. Conservatives have been gaining sway over a court that for many years was widely perceived as one of the country's last bastions of judicial liberalism. Now, President Obama is about to start putting...

A federal appeals court on Thursday blocked Royal Dutch Shell from drilling oil wells off Alaska’s North Slope after finding that the Interior Department had failed to conduct an environmental study before issuing the company’s drilling permit. In a long-awaited ruling, the court said that the Minerals Management Service, the federal agency in charge of offshore leasing, had violated the 1970 National Environmental Policy Act by failing to take a “hard look” at the impact that offshore drilling would have on bowhead whales in the Beaufort Sea as well as indigenous communities on the North Slope. The decision canceled Shell’s...

Schools may not strip-search students for drugs based on an unverified tip, a federal appeals court ruled Friday. Overturning two other rulings, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said an assistant principal at an Arizona middle school violated the constitutional rights of a 13-year-old by ordering her to be strip-searched. He thought the honor student had prescription-strength ibuprofen; she did not. The 6-5 ruling by the San Francisco-based court reinstated a lawsuit that a divided three-judge circuit panel threw out last year. The lawsuit was brought by the parents of Savana Redding, who was an eighth-grader at Safford Middle...

Howard Kaloogian is a lawyer and a former member of the California State Assembly. GITMO AND GUNS are getting all the press. But energy mavens are talking about another recent far-reaching — but little noted — U.S. Supreme Court decision on the California energy crisis: It took them seven years but they finally figured it out. The revisionist part of the story is well known: Big bad oil traders like Enron gamed the market and drove up energy costs fifteen-fold. The blackouts, insolvent utilities and economic chaos are remembered as the worst energy crisis in American history. But the Supreme...

A federal appeals court gave an anti-abortion group the go-ahead Wednesday to drive trucks with enlarged photos of aborted fetuses past California schools, saying the Constitution protects the display of disturbing messages.  Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies interfered with free speech by ordering the driver of one such truck to move away from a middle school, said the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The deputies had cited a state law barring disruptive activities near public school grounds.  "The government cannot silence messages simply because they cause discomfort, fear or even anger," said a panel of three...

Top federal judges ruled this week that their own court has gone too far in holding up logging projects, saying western judges from now on must show more deference to the agencies planning the cutting. The ruling involving an Idaho timber sale is a blow to environmental groups that have increasingly relied on federal courts to block projects they see as unsound. The decision is especially striking because it comes from the federal appeals court that encompasses most national forest land in the West and is known for its liberal bent and for often siding with environmental interests. The...

9th Circuit Court of Appeals Hands First Amendment Victory to Center for Bio-Ethical Reform COLUMBUS, OH– July 3, 2008 – A federal appellate panel ruled Wednesday that the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department violated the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform's (CBR) free speech rights when two CBR associates were forced to move a mobile billboard display of enlarged photos of early-term aborted fetuses away from a Rancho Palos Verdes middle school campus.   The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform (CBR), a non-profit pro-life educational foundation, sued the LA County Sheriff's Department and an assistant principal at Dodson Middle School, claiming civil rights...

Ninth Circuit Rules Against Military's 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' By Pete Winn CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer May 21, 2008 (CNSNews.com) - The future of the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy was cast into doubt on Wednesday. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, Calif., ruled that it is no longer enough for the military to state the policy -- which says that "homosexuality is incompatible with military service" -- when it discharges members of the armed services it discovers to be homosexuals. In a split decision, a three-judge panel ruled that the U.S. Air Force will have...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A roommate-finding site cannot require users to disclose their sexual orientation, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Thursday, in the latest skirmish over whether anti-discrimination rules apply to the Web. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said Roommates.com, which obliges users to list their sexual orientation, was different than Internet sites where people can volunteer or withhold personal information. To inquire electronically about sexual orientation would not be different from asking people in person or by telephone if they were black or Jewish before conducting business, the panel said in an 8-3 ruling that partly...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger praised a Sunday decision by a U.S. Supreme Court justice to keep a convicted killer behind bars. Justice Anthony Kennedy put a hold on a federal court's decision ordering the release on parole of Fred McCullough, who was convicted of second-degree murder in Los Angeles in 1983. McCullough is serving a term of 15 years to life. "The governor's top priority is public safety," said spokeswoman Lisa Page, who said Schwarzenegger will continue to seek to deny McCullough parole. The state parole board twice before recommended McCullough for parole, citing his good behavior. In 2002, then- governor...

Some columns write themselves. Some are a struggle and leave me confused, conflicted and a little angry. This is one of those. It started out as a tongue-in-cheek look at the recent action by the city council in Berkeley, Calif., to oust the U.S. Marine Corps recruiting office and brand the Marines “uninvited and unwelcome intruders.” I planned to compare the situation in that strange city with our fairly-liberal-but-not-ridiculously-so approach here in Corvallis. Then I started doing research. I learned that an anti-military organization has access to our high school students equal to that of the U.S. Armed Forces. The...

Services will be Friday for Joseph Sneed of San Francisco, a conservative judge on a liberal federal appeals court for more than three decades and a member of the judicial panel that appointed Kenneth Starr to look into President Bill Clinton's financial dealings. Judge Sneed, a senior judge on the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, died Saturday at his home. He was 87. Among his survivors is daughter Carly Fiorina, who was chief executive of Hewlett-Packard Co. from 1999 to 2005.