Free Republic

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — A federal lawsuit challenging North Carolina’s photo voter identification law is set to go to trial Monday, with arguments expected to focus on whether the requirement unlawfully discriminates against Black and Hispanic citizens or serves legitimate state interests to boost public confidence in elections. The non-jury trial in Winston-Salem begins more than five years after the state NAACP and several local chapters sued over the voter ID law enacted by the Republican-dominated General Assembly in late 2018. This litigation, along with similar lawsuits in state courts, delayed implementation of the requirement until last year’s municipal elections....

The ATF can’t go after NRA members over guns with pistol braces on them. That’s the outcome of a preliminary injunction issued by a federal judge on Friday. US District Judge Sam A. Lindsay sided with the gun-rights group and enjoined the federal agency from enforcing its rule reclassifying pistol-brace-equipped guns as short barrel rifles (SBRs) under the 1934 National Firearms Act (NFA). The decision keeps any NRA member who owns a braced gun from facing six-figure fines or imprisonment if they didn’t register their gun by last year’s deadline–something most owners didn’t do. “[C]ompliance with the Final Rule is...

A Florida man accused of facilitating an illegal health care scheme has been spared additional prison time, ending the Justice Department's attempt to reprosecute him after his sentence was commuted by former President Donald Trump. Philip Esformes on Thursday pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud and was sentenced to time served, with prosecutors agreeing to dismiss the remaining five counts. It's a quiet conclusion to a controversial prosecution that saw the federal government resuscitate the criminal case against him not long after he'd spent four and a half years behind bars and was released...

Former Trump advisor Peter Navarro was on Thursday sentenced to four months in prison for refusing to comply with a congressional investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Navarro was convicted in September on two counts of contempt of Congress — one for failing to produce documents related to the probe and another for skipping his deposition. Prosecutors argued Thursday that Navarro showed “utter disregard” for the House committee’s probe and “utter contempt for the rule of law.” They asked the judge to impose a six-month prison term.

Remember Seth Rich, the DNC staffer who perished under highly questionable circumstances several years ago, whom many have speculated may have been the Wikileaks source for the DNC email hack of 2016? Hillary Clinton and the DNC sure would prefer that we don’t.Via Newsweek, Nov. 29, 2023 (emphasis added):A judge has ordered the FBI to turn over the laptop of murdered Democrat staffer Seth Rich.Texas Judge Amos L. Mazzant ordered "a timeline for the disclosure of information on Seth Rich's personal laptop, Seth Rich's work laptop, the DVD and tape drive within 14 days following issuance of this Memorandum of...

United States District Judge for the District of Idaho, B. Lynn Winmill, has granted a motion for preliminary injunction to block the January 1, 2024 implementation of House Bill 71, which was signed into law following the 2023 Idaho Legislative session. HB71, also called the Vulnerable Child Protection Act, was written by the Idaho Family Policy Center and sponsored by Representative Bruce Skaug. The legislation was written to stop hormone changing drugs, puberty blocking drugs, and sex-change surgeries from being prescribed for minor children in Idaho for the reasons of ‘gender dysphoria’ and transitioning children from their birth sex to...

An Idaho law passed this year that bans gender-affirming care for minors will not go into effect on Jan. 1, as planned. A federal judge on Tuesday granted a preliminary injunction on the lawsuit against the ban. House Bill 71, "The Vulnerable Child Protective Act" was signed into Idaho law in April. It outlaws gender-affirming care for transgender minors; including puberty blockers, hormones and surgeries. The law finds any doctor that provides gender-transition care guilty of a felony, punishable by up to 10 years of prison time. After the law was signed, a lawsuit was filed against the state on...

A right-wing group specializing in hidden-camera investigations will not be able to use the First Amendment to stop the federal government from accessing documents and communications related to the group’s apparent acquisition of a stolen diary belonging to President Joe Biden’s daughter.As Law&Crime previously reported, the FBI executed a search warrant in 2021 at the property of Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe, as well as from Project Veritas staffers Spencer Meads and Eric Cochran. The search warrants were granted in connection with the theft and sale of the personal journal belonging to Ashley Biden, the president’s daughter. Two people, Aimee...

A self-proclaimed “Christmas Lawyer” faces losing his legal license after he criticized a judge who banned his festive home display, which featured a live camel and 700,000 bulbs, allegedly calling the justice “corrupt” and a “hateful anti-Christian bigot.” Jeremy Morris was informed the Idaho State Bar has “probable cause to proceed with formal charges” against him for accusing federal Judge B. Lynn Winmill of corruption following an ongoing legal battle with the West Hayden Estates Homeowners Association. “The Idaho State Bar has made it clear they’re going to protect their friends, in this case, a federal judge,” Morris told Fox...

A federal appeals court on Thursday ruled against Nirvana and revived a child pornography lawsuit filed by the man who appeared as a nude baby on the cover of the band’s 1991 album Nevermind.Spencer Elden, now in his 30s, claimed the photo – one of the most iconic album covers in rock history – violated federal child pornography laws by displaying a sexualized image of a minor. But a lower ruled last year that he had waited far too long to bring his lawsuit. In a decision overturning that ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled...

Less than a week after a Del Rio-based federal judge ruled against Texas in the ongoing fight over the state’s razor wire, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals paused that decision while it reviews the case. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday temporarily halted a lower court order that gave Border Patrol agents legal cover to continue cutting concertina wire that Texas has installed on the banks of the Rio Grande. U.S. District Judge Alia Moses of Del Rio on Wednesday ruled against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office, which wanted the judge to order Border Patrol...

A federal narcotics agent accused of blowing through a stop sign and hitting and killing a bicyclist while on a surveillance mission in Salem has successfully moved the criminal case from state to federal court. In federal court, he can assert immunity from prosecution on the criminal charge of negligent homicide, a defense not available to him in state court. Lawyers for the state objected to removing the case from Marion County Circuit Court. They argued that the agent’s alleged “grossly negligent actions” were not a necessary part of his federal law enforcement work. U.S. District Judge Michael J. McShane...

A federal judge in the Western District of Texas reversed her Temporary Restraining Order that stopped the Department of Homeland Security from cutting border barriers put in place by the State of Texas. The new order issued Wednesday night reverses that position after the judge heard additional evidence. The case will now proceed to a trial on the merits. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and the Texas Public Policy Foundation filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the U.S. Border Patrol, and multiple Biden administration appointees to stop the federal government’s interference...

A federal judge has ordered the government and law enforcement to disclose to the court information about suspected DNC leaker Seth Rich’s murder. The release is to include Rich’s laptops, DVD, and the tape drive associated with the case. Te𝕏asLindsay™ @TexasLindsay_ Breaking: FBI ordered to turn over evidence regarding former DNC employee Seth Rich who was allegedly linked to leaking disparaging DNC emails to WikiLeaks prior to his untimely and controversial demise. Before this order, information that has been provided about the case through Freedom of Information Act requests has been heavily redacted and offered little with which independent investigators...

A federal appeals court has set a mid-January deadline for the Louisiana state legislature to draw up a new congressional map, which comes in a long-running legal dispute that included a lower court ruling that found the current map likely unfairly diluted the power of black voters. A three-judge panel in the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals issued its order on Nov. 10, requiring the state legislature to pass a new map by Jan. 15, 2024. The appeals court's order notes that, if the state legislature fails to adopt a new map by the deadline, then the lower court should...

A federal judge issued an extraordinary temporary restraining order Monday barring the Biden administration from destroying or tampering with a temporary concertina wire fence installed by Texas to protect its border with Mexico. Chief U.S. District Judge Alia Moses, in Del Rio, ruled Texas had a likelihood of prevailing it its lawsuit and would suffer significant harm if federal officials were allowed to keep dismantling the fence. The decision dealt a stinging rebuke to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and a win for states seeking to enforce border security on their own in the absence of help from the federal...

CV NEWS FEED // A federal judge Wednesday dismissed a challenge to Indiana’s pro-life law which was filed by The Satanic Temple (TST). As reported by WISH-TV, TST “sued to force the state to allow it to provide mail-order drugs for its members in Indiana to have an abortion.” The satanist group “claimed Indiana’s new abortion law, passed in 2022, violated the state’s religious freedom law as well as the Fifth, Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.” TST is based in Massachusetts and operates a virtual “health clinic” that prescribes abortion-inducing drugs. The organization has named its “telehealth”...

On August 3, 2023, Judge Janet Bond Arterton of the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut ruled on whether the recent Connecticut law banning the possession of common semi-automatic rifles and pistols under the appellation of “assault weapons” and of standard capacity magazines which hold more than ten rounds. Judge Arterton ruled the law is not prohibited by the Second Amendment. She does not see it as an infringement because, she claims, “assault weapons” and magazines over ten rounds are not arms protected by the Second Amendment. Magazines that hold more than ten rounds are referred to...

On August 8, 2023, In the United States District Court for the District of Hawaii, Judge Leslie E. Kobayashi issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) in the case of Wolford v. Lopez.The case was filed on June 23, 2023, and has been written about previously on AmmoLand. The plaintiffs asked for a TRO for five of fifteen so-called “sensitive places” in the new Hawaii law. Judge Kobayashi issued the TRO for most of the places asked for by the plaintiffs, with some exceptions. Whether the other places which are labeled as “sensitive places” in the law will be upheld by...

Last month, U.S. District Judge Janet Bond Arterton tossed out a lawsuit challenging Connecticut’s ban on concealed carry in state parks, ruling that the plaintiff in the litigation didn’t have standing to sue because there was no credible threat of him being arrested or prosecuted for violating the ban. That was an exceedingly odd decision, but it kept the ban in place (at least for now), which counts as a win as far as anti-gunners are concerned. Now Arterton has followed up with another legal doozy, rejecting a preliminary injunction against the state’s newly-expanded ban on so-called assault weapons and...