Free Republic

Last week the US Supreme Court allowed Texas to enforce its immigration law that allows police to arrest illegal aliens. The Supreme Court’s conservative majority rejected an emergency application by the Biden Regime requesting the high court block Texas’ immigration law. The high court temporarily rejected the Biden Regime’s request as litigation made its way through the courts. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals last week temporarily suspended the immigration law after the Supreme Court rejected the emergency application. A three-judge panel for the Fifth Circuit in a 2-1 ruling Tuesday night rejected ‘invasion’ claims and issued a new block...

Oh, where to begin in the latest episode of “America’s Judicial Rollercoaster” featuring the audacious blockade by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals against Texas's gallant effort to enforce its own borders? Yes, you heard that right. In a move that could only be concocted in the wildest dreams of a liberal screenplay writer, the appellate court decided to thumb its nose at the U.S. Supreme Court. Why? Simply to prevent Texas from using Senate Bill 4 to do the unfathomable: arrest and deport illegal immigrants. Gasp! The horror of a state taking steps to protect its citizens and...

A three-judge panel in New Orleans ruled that a Texas law requiring minors to obtain parental consent to obtain birth control does not conflict with the goals of the federally-funded Title X program, which has given teens birth control confidentially. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a Texas law requiring parental consent to obtain contraception for minors. The decision from a three-judge panel of the federal appeals court in New Orleans largely affirms a 2022 ruling from U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Amarillo, that ended one of the only avenues for Texas teens to confidentially obtain birth control,...

More good new out of the courts! The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals granted a temporary stay of a federal judge’s decision to put a Texas law allowing police to arrest illegals on hold for a week. The appeals court ruling will stay in place unless the Supreme Court intervenes by March 9. US District Judge David Ezra, a Reagan appointee last Thursday issued a temporary injunction that blocked a Texas law that gave local police power to arrest illegal aliens. “The preliminary injunction granted by U.S. District Judge David Ezra pauses a law that was set to take effect...

Priscilla Villarreal, also known as "Lagordiloca," has sparked a debate about free speech and who, exactly, is a journalist.A journalist asked the police a few questions and was arrested by that same agency for publishing the answers. That this happened not in China or Russia but in the U.S. may raise some eyebrows. Yet that's the conduct a federal court greenlit last week when it ruled that law enforcement in Laredo, Texas, did not obviously violate the Constitution when officers allegedly misled a magistrate judge and arrested Priscilla Villarreal for doing basic reporting, adding another twist to a case that...

A federal appeals court on Wednesday reversed an order requiring Texas to move a floating barrier on the Rio Grande that drew backlash from Mexico — the latest development in legal battles between the Biden administration and Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott over control of migration at the border. In December, a divided panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had sided with a federal district judge in Texas who said the buoys must be moved. On Wednesday, the court vacated the panel's 2-1 ruling after a majority of its 17 active judges voted to rehear the case....

President Joe Biden’s climate change-obsessed Department of Energy (DOE) was wrong when it reversed Trump-era rules making dishwashers and laundry machines more efficient for Americans, a federal appeals court ruled on Monday. A three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled that the agency acted in an “arbitrary and capricious” manner when it repealed laundry machine and dishwasher rules designed to cut down on wash times. The order, penned by Judge Andrew Oldham, also notes that “it is unclear that the DOE has any statutory authority to regulate water use in dishwashers and clothes washers.”

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...

(The Epoch Times)—Restrictions imposed by President Joe Biden’s administration on so-called ghost guns are illegal, a federal appeals court ruled on Nov. 9. The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), an Executive Branch agency that promulgated the rule containing the restrictions in 2022 with President Biden’s support, overstepped its authority, according to a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit. “The agency rule at issue here flouts clear statutory text and exceeds the legislatively-imposed limits on agency authority in the name of public policy,” U.S. Circuit Judge Kurt Engelhardt wrote in the ruling....

John Banzhaf says he plans to file a bar complaint against the students who disrupted Fifth Circuit judge Kyle Duncan.

Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge James Ho doubled down on his refusal to hire clerks from certain elite law schools, saying the cancel culture he's witnessed on campuses is "antithetical to America." In an interview with the Washington Examiner, Ho said his hiring boycott against Yale University and Stanford University has already made waves and garnered support among students who see discourse on their campuses improving. "The real problem with the academy is not disruption but discrimination," he said. "Rampant discrimination against mainstream views held by millions of Americans but disfavored by the cultural elites who control the...

A panel of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Oct. 18 struck down lawsuits challenging a Nasdaq stock market rule requiring companies listed on the exchange to have "diverse" directors on their boards or explain why they don't. In a lengthy opinion, the appeals court rejected lawsuits seeking to block the rule by the National Center for Public Policy Research and the Alliance for Fair Board Recruitment, a group formed by conservative legal activist Edward Blum. The rule at the center of the lawsuit was approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in August 2021.

We have been waiting for almost a month for the decision from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in this groundbreaking government censorship case. Its implications touch every single American citizen, and enormous precedent was set with this ruling. The following is a detailed analysis of the decision, and I hope that you will spend the time to read it. First, a brief review. The case, Missouri v. Biden, was filed last May by the states of Missouri and Louisiana, along with private plaintiffs, against numerous agencies in the federal government. Plaintiffs alleged that the government (including the FBI, White...

The Biden administration’s effort to regulate pistol braces was dealt a blow Tuesday after a ruling by a federal appeals court cast doubt on its constitutionality. The Biden admin rule required gun owners to register pistol braces, which are accessories that can be attached to the rear of a gun to make it easier to aim and fire with one hand. Second Amendment proponents argued that the braces make handguns safer and more accurate. But gun control advocates argued the braces could be used to lengthen a concealable handgun, making it more dangerous. Two Texas gun owners, a gun rights...

On July 24th, 2023, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit refused the government’s attempt to stay the district court’s decision in the case of VanDerStok v. Garland, which vacated the ATF’s “frame or receiver” rule. The preliminary injunction against enforcement of the frame and receiver portions of the Final Rule was issued by Judge O’Conner on August 17, 2022. The Memorandum Opinion by Judge Reed O’Conner, published on June 30, 2023, vacated (ruled them to be unlawful) the ATF’s Final Rule. Judge O’Conner, told the ATF (the Biden Administration) it did not...

This has been one of the busiest weeks in recent memory in terms of court hearings on Second Amendment issues. Not only did we have the Seventh Circuit’s oral arguments on a possible injunction against Illinois’ ban on so-called assault weapons and “large capacity” magazines and the Ninth Circuit’s hearing on California’s AB 2571, but another Ninth Circuit panel heard oral arguments in a challenge to the state’s ban on open carry on Thursday, and a three-judge panel on the Fifth Circuit also heard from both sides in a Thursday hearing to determine whether a temporary injunction halting enforcement of...

An election software company based in Michigan sued an election integrity watchdog group and its leaders last year for defamation over claims it had conspired with the Chinese Communist Party and subverted American elections. After months of denial and litigation, the company has withdrawn it suit. Konnech is an election software company based in Michigan. It licenses election software utilized by various municipalities and counties across America. TheBlaze previously reported that Eugene Yu, the founder and CEO of Konnech, was arrested on Oct. 4 and charged on suspicion of data theft, having allegedly stored "critical information that [U.S. election] workers...

The 5th Circuit noted that such orders can be issued without any credible evidence of a threat to others.The Biden administration is asking the Supreme Court to reverse a recent decision in which an appeals court concluded that the federal ban on gun possession by people subject to domestic-violence restraining orders violates the Second Amendment. In a petition filed this month, Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar portrays that law as a commonsensical precaution that is "consistent with the Nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation"—the constitutional test that the Court established last year in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v....

In the Fifth Circuit, the entire Court has ruled, en banc, that mere civil restraining orders may not infringe rights protected by the Second Amendment. The unconstitutional infringement was placed into law by the infamous Lautenberg Amendment in 1996. Hundreds of thousands of lives have been turned upside down and ruined by this infamous and unjust law. In the opinion published by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, Circuit Judge James C. Ho writes a particularly well-argued and presented concurrence. The concurrence is worth reading. It is quoted below, without the footnotes:James C. Ho, Circuit Judge, concurring:The right to keep...

NEW ORLEANS — President Joe Biden’s order that federal employees get vaccinated against COVID-19 was blocked Thursday by a federal appeals court. The 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans rejected arguments that Biden, as the nation’s chief executive, has the same authority as the CEO of a private corporation to require that employees be vaccinated. The ruling from the full appeals court, 16 full-time judges at the time the case was argued, reversed an earlier ruling by a three-judge 5th Circuit panel that had upheld the vaccination requirement. Judge Andrew Oldham, nominated to the court by then-President...