Free Republic

In a ruling that surprised some observers, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the right of a pro-life group to display photos showing the bodies of babies dismembered during abortions. The conservative Thomas More Law Center in Ann Arbor, Mich., had brought suit on behalf of the Center for Bioethical Reform (CBR), a California pro-life group. The case involved police detention for 75 minutes of two CBR pro-life activists who in March circled Rancho Palos Verdes Middle School in Los Angeles, driving a large truck displaying on three sides photos of aborted babies. School...

LOS ANGELES, March 5, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Thousands of homeschoolers in California are left in legal limbo by an appeals court ruling that homeschooling is not a legal option in the state and that a family who has homeschooled all their children for years must enrol their two youngest in state or private schools. Justice H. Walter Croskey in a written opinion said, "California courts have held that under provisions in the Education Code, parents do not have a constitutional right to homeschool their children."The sweeping February 29th ruling says that California law requires "persons between the ages of...

A three-judge panel of the California Court of Appeal has determined parents in that state have no legal right to home school. A Christian attorney in Sacramento says unless the ruling is reversed, literally thousands of students in the Golden State will be subject to criminal sanctions. (click here for special webcast starting at 2 p.m. CST) California Justice H. Walter Croskey has stated in an opinion that "parents who fail to [comply with school enrollment laws] may be subject to a criminal complaint against them, found guilty of an infraction, and subject to imposition of fines or an order...

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...

US court has ruled that websites set up to allow people to swop their votes are legal and protected by the Constitution. Back in the heady days of 2000, prior to the election of George W Bush, a couple of websites were set up to allow supporters of independent candidate Ralph Nader and of Democrat candidate Al Gore to trade their votes in order to maximise the anti-Republican vote. The websites were quickly closed before the election on grounds that they were trading, or buying, votes. But the 9th US Court of Appeals said the decision to shut the sites,...

SAN FRANCISCO (UPI) -- A court in San Francisco ruled that a roommate-matching Web site may be held accountable for what users say about their preferences. A three-judge panel of the federal appeals court ruled in favor of two California fair housing groups that brought the complaint against Roommate.com, saying the Web site violates the Fair Housing Act by allowing users to specify roommate preferences based on sex, race, religion and sexual orientation, The New York Times reported Wednesday. The ruling took away the main argument of the defense: that a 1996 ruling granting immunity to Internet service providers that...

Federal agents were entitled to search a San Francisco man's home computer after learning that he had been sent e-mails by a child pornography trafficker, without needing evidence that he had solicited or read the messages, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday

Issues & Insights TEACHING JOHNNY ABOUT ISLAM Investors Business Daily Posted 5/19/2006 Education: In our brave new schools, Johnny can't say the pledge, but he can recite the Quran. Yup, the same court that found the phrase "under God" unconstitutional now endorses Islamic catechism in public school. In a recent federal decision that got surprisingly little press, even from conservative talk radio, California's 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled it's OK to put public-school kids through Muslim role-playing exercises, including: Reciting aloud Muslim prayers that begin with "In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful . . ....

The Supreme Court yesterday ruled in favor of police who obtained a search warrant for a man's home in anticipation that he would accept mail delivery of child pornography he ordered as part of a sting operation. The unanimous ruling in the case United States v. Grubbs, said such "anticipatory" warrants obtained by police do not violate the Fourth Amendment rights protecting individuals from unlawful searches and seizures. Writing for the court, Justice Antonin Scalia said police can obtain such a warrant prior to the actual commission of a crime as long as they have probable cause to believe an...

REPUBLICAN forces are devising a peculiar legal exile for California: The GOP wants to take a Western-states federal appellate court, whose decisions infuriate conservatives, and chop it down by yanking California out of the grouping. The change is masked as legal efficiency for the country's largest appeals circuit, but it is purely political meddling in court affairs. The plan to split the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was rushed through the GOP-controlled House. It's headed to the Senate, where foes are mobilizing. The break-up plan, which has failed in Congress before, should be discarded once and for all. Busting...

A Contra Costa County school was educating seventh-graders about Islam, not indoctrinating them, in role-playing sessions in which students used Muslim names and recited language from prayers, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a lawsuit by two Christian students and their parents, who accused the Byron Union School District of unconstitutionally endorsing a religious practice. "The Islam program activities were not overt religious exercises that raise Establishment Clause concerns,'' the three-judge panel said, referring to the First Amendment ban on government sanctioning a religion. During the history course at Excelsior School in...

Last Thursday, that wacky band of judicial jokesters known as the United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit issued a decision that apparently makes it okay to lie in an official report concerning the alleged misconduct of a police officer.The decision invalidated a California statute passed after the Rodney King incident in 1991. The California law made it a criminal offense to give a false statement when making a report of the misconduct of a police officer. A Beverly Hills man, Darren Chaker, had complained that a police officer from El Cajon had used unnecessary force while arresting...

Parents' rights were not violated when a Southern California elementary school conducted a psychological survey of their children and asked them about sexual feelings and masturbation, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in SF pointedly refrained from commenting on what the judges termed "the wisdom of ... some of the particular questions" that were asked of children in grades one, three and five in the Palmdale School District in Los Angeles County. But the court said parents, while entitled to make basic decisions about a child's upbringing, have no constitutional right to control...

9th Circuit: Parents Have No 'Fundamental Rights' in Their Children's Sex Ed"We ... hold that there is no fundamental right of parents to be the exclusive provider of information regarding sexual matters to their children ...."Judge Stephen Reinhardt, Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of AppealsBy Allie Martin and Jody BrownNovember 3, 2005(AgapePress) - A Christian constitutional attorney says Wednesday's ruling in a case dealing with a survey administered to elementary-age children essentially undermines parental rights in determining when, where, and how children are exposed to sexual topics in public schools. The case involves the Palmdale School District in California, which notified...

28 October 2005 MADRID — Spain's National Court upheld warrants for the arrest on murder charges of two US Army officers and a sergeant in the killing of a Spanish journalist in Baghdad in 2003. A state attorney had challenged the warrants, saying the Spanish tribunal did not have jurisidiction in the matter of the killing television cameraman Jose Couso in April 2003. He also cited what he said were procedural flaws in the issue of the warrants. Couso, who worked for Spain's Telecinco network, was killed while filming from a balcony of the Palestine Hotel in the Iraqi capital....

Screaming and yelling by men at work may now be sex-based discrimination if women at work find the behavior more intimidating than men do. On September 2, 2005, in E.E.O.C. v. National Education Association, (No. 04-35029), the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the “reasonable woman” standard applies to workplace abusive conduct, even if there is no sexual content to the behavior. This decision significantly expands the types of behaviors that may furnish a basis for a claim of discrimination. Three women working for a labor union, the National Education Association, sued for gender discrimination claiming that the NEA...

WASHINGTON-For many conservatives, the words "(th Circuit" mean more than just a federal appeals court in California. The words emody everything they think is wrong with liberal activisim, West Coast politics and the judges who tried to take God out of the Pledge of Allegiance.Those same conservatives think their new clout following President Bush's re-election may help put some weight behind a movement to split up the (th Circuit Court of Appeals, leaving the 9th in California, creating a new 12th Circuit for neighboring Idaho, Arizona, Montana, and Nevada, and a new 13th Circuit for Washington, Alaska, and Oregon.

Hey, the poll on World NEt Daily to liberal for you? Well, check out how it should have been done, click and vote . Make sure you read all the questions, esspecially the misspelled last one.

The Ninth Circuit has issued an en banc denial for a rehearing in Silveira v. Lockyer. This was a challenge to the CA Assault Weapons ban. That the most liberal circuit court in the land would deny a hearing is no surprise. What is surprising is that 4 of the court's judges, including Judge Pregerson, whom Eugene Volokh calls "one of the most liberal judges on the Ninth Circuit -- and perhaps in the whole country", would issue such stinging dissents. The most thorough of the dissents is by Judge Kleinfeld. Kleinfeld writes... About twenty percent of the American population,...

A controversial Web site that allowed people to switch their votes in the 2000 presidential election was completely legal, according to a U.S. appeals court ruling Thursday. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco overruled a lower court's decision that banned Web site www.votexchange2000.com from letting voters exchange votes between Vice President Al Gore and third-party candidate Ralph Nader in an attempt to defeat then Texas governor George W. Bush. Another lower court will now reconsider the case. In the weeks preceding the closely contested presidential elections of 2000, a number of Internet Web sites were created that...

No charges for judge who cut trees Prosecutor's decision angers park authorities By SAM SKOLNIK SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER It was wrong for a federal judge who wanted a better view of Lake Washington to allow his gardener to cut down 120 trees in a public park. But the judge committed an error, not a felony, King County prosecutors decided yesterday. Jerome Farris, a senior judge with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, mistakenly believed he had permission from the city to cut down the trees in Colman Park next to his gated home, King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng said...