Free Republic

A federal appeals court late Tuesday night put Texas’ controversial immigration law back on hold, hours after the Supreme Court had cleared the way for the state to begin enforcing the measure. In a brief order, a three-judge panel at the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals voted 2-1 to wipe away a previous ruling from a different panel that had temporarily put the law, which would allow state officials to arrest and detain people they suspect of entering the country illegally, into effect. The panel of judges that issued Tuesday night’s order is already set to hear arguments Wednesday...

We've got a courtroom curveball coming your way. A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., just made a ruling that might have ripple effects on over a hundred January 6 cases related to the Capitol attack in 2021. The three-judge panel took a close look at a lower court's decision to enhance a defendant's sentence due to "substantial interference with the administration of justice" during the Capitol attack. The catch? The appeals court deemed that the term "administration of justice" doesn't cover Congress's role in the electoral certification process. Translation: the enhanced sentences might not be on solid legal ground....

A New York appeals court upheld a prior ruling that struck down a New York City law giving local voting rights to nearly a million foreign nationals. As Breitbart News chronicled, Democrats on the 51-member New York City Council approved a plan in January 2022 that gave more than 800,000 foreign nationals with green cards, visas, and work permits the opportunity to vote in citywide elections so long as they have resided in the city for at least 30 consecutive days. Black New Yorkers, along with naturalized American citizens, the New York State Republican Party, the Republican National Committee (RNC),...

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A federal appeals court must decide if Pennsylvania voters need to put accurate handwritten dates on the outside envelopes of their mail-in ballots for the votes to count, a dispute with implications for this year’s presidential contest. The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held oral arguments in Philadelphia Tuesday over a district judge’s ruling in November that even without the proper dates, mail-in ballots should be counted if they are received in time. Ari Savitzky, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union representing several voter groups, told the court that more than 10,000 ballots in...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Washington’s federal appeals court on Tuesday rejected Donald Trump’s request to reconsider a gag order restricting the former president’s speech in the case charging him with plotting to overturn the 2020 election. Lawyers for the Republican presidential primary front-runner had asked the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to examine the gag order after a three-judge panel upheld but narrowed the restrictions on his speech. Trump can now appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. The gag order was imposed by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan in October in response to concerns from special counsel...

Second Amendment advocates won a big victory on Monday as the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Colorado’s law forbidding gun sales to adults under the age of 21 cannot be enforced while the measure is being challenged in court, rejecting an appeal by Gov. Jared Polis, who was seeking to enforce the prohibition. Back on August 7th, just a day before the new law was set to take effect, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction requested by Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, but Polis quickly appealed that decision. In their brief two-page order, appellate judges Carolyn McHugh and...

A federal appeals court on Friday ordered a new sentence for a North Carolina man who pleaded guilty to a petty offense in the Capitol riot — a ruling that could impact dozens of low-level cases in the massive Jan. 6, 2021 prosecution. The appeals court in Washington said James Little was wrongly sentenced for his conviction on a misdemeanor offense to both prison time and probation, which is court-ordered monitoring of defendants who are not behind bars. Little, who entered the Capitol but didn't join in any destruction or violence, pleaded guilty in 2021 to a charge that carries...

The Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Cincinnati on Thursday affirmed a lower court’s ruling that the vaccine mandate for federal contract workers is unconstitutional. The majority opinion stated that a broad interpretation of the mandate could provide the president “nearly unlimited authority to introduce requirements into federal contracts.” The court said Biden wanted it “to ratify an exercise of proprietary authority that would permit him to unilaterally impose a healthcare decision on one-fifth of all employees in the United States. We decline to do so.” Judge Kurt Engelhardt, writing for the majority, demonstrated the fallacy of the government’s...

The 8th Circuit US Appeals Court blocked Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program on Friday afternoon. The court granted an emergency stay barring the discharge of any student debt until the court decides on a request for a longer-term injunction. Reuters reported: A U.S. appeals court on Friday temporarily blocked President Joe Biden’s plan to cancel billions of dollars in college student debt, one day after a judge dismissed a Republican-led lawsuit by six states challenging the loan-forgiveness program. The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted an emergency stay barring the discharge of any student debt under the program...

The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta just dealt former President Donald Trump and his legal team a serious setback as they authorized the DOJ to continue combing through classified records seized after FBI agents raided his Palm Beach, Florida home, Mar-a-Lago, in early August. The ruling reverses an earlier decision by Judge Aileen M. Cannon, who ruled in favor of Trump last week by allowing an independent arbiter known as a special master to review the documents before the DOJ could look at them.This new decision dramatically scales back the power of the special master and allows the...

Biden nominated Roopali Desai to the 9th Circuit Appeals Court.. ... serves on the board of a group that backed calls to defund the police and has called to abolish prisons. ... Desai serves on the board of Just Communities Arizona (JCA), a self-described "abolitionist organization" that envisions "a world in which prisons and jails are unnecessary." ... The organization has taken several radical stances on the criminal justice system, including claiming that "the criminal punishment system isn't really about justice" and mourning Arizona’s execution of Frank Atwood last month. Atwood was convicted in 1987 of raping and murdering 8-year-old...

The vaccine mandate for federal employees will remain blocked at least until a September court hearing.A Texas appeals court is dissolving a previous decision that upheld the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for federal employees.On Monday, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed to request a full court to rehear Feds for Medical Freedom v. Biden (pdf), effectively dissolving the court’s April decision.This means that President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate, which he introduced via Executive Order 14043 in September 2021, will remain blocked as long as the court does not issue a decision otherwise. The court has tentatively calendared the en...

A federal appeals court upheld a decision to temporarily block the federal government’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for federal contractors in three states.A judge in Louisville, Kentucky, issued a ruling blocking the mandate for Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee in November. And on Wednesday, the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals upheld the injunction in a 2–1 ruling.The Sixth Appeals Court majority wrote in its Wednesday order that the injunction was upheld “because the government has established none of the showings required to obtain a stay.”States are “imminently threatened in their proprietary capacities should they renew those existing contracts (thus triggering the...

A federal appeals court overrode a three-judge panel decision Wednesday, restoring an injunction blocking President Joe Biden’s “sanctuary country” orders as legal challenges continue.These “sanctuary country” orders are directions by top officials in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). They require immigration agents to delay the deportation of illegal aliens until they have been convicted of aggravated felonies.In August, Judge Drew Tipton of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas issued a preliminary injunction blocking the sanctuary country orders following a lawsuit from the states of Texas and Louisiana.However, a three-judge...

The streamer is unsuccessful in getting a California appeals court to lift an injunction.Netflix may see fixed-term contracts for entertainment executives as a form of involuntary servitude, but on Thursday, the streamer experienced a tough legal loss when a California appeals court refused to accept that perspective and overturn an injunction that prevented Netflix from poaching executives at Disney’s Fox unit. Fox sued back in September 2016 upon the defection of production executive Tara Flynn and marketing executive Marcos Waltenberg. Netflix responded with a countersuit alleging that the executives’ respective Fox employment contracts were unenforceable as an illegal non-compete. Netflix...

Pastor Artur PawlowskiA prominent Canadian pastor is now free to criticize the government’s lockdowns and restrictions on Christian worship in response to coronavirus after an appellate court suspended the enforcement of a lower court ruling requiring him to state the government’s preferred narrative about the lockdowns every time he made public remarks. Pastor Artur Pawlowski of Street Church and The Cave of Adullam in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, who has become a well-known figure for his outspoken objection to authorities' restrictions on corporate worship and viral videos documenting his tense exchanges with law enforcement officials seeking to enforce the restrictions, will...

U.S. federal appeals court affirms hold on Biden's vaccine mandate, calls it "staggeringly overbroad".https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/1459314051255783430

The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday refused to issue an emergency injunction to stop Maine’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate.The three-judge panel of the Boston-based court issued a one-sentence statement saying the request was denied without an explanation, The Bangor Daily News reported.A final ruling will likely be issued next week, according to Liberty Counsel, an organization representing more than 2,000 health care workers across the state in the lawsuit.“We look forward to a decision from the Court of Appeals. If that decision is not favorable, we will request emergency relief from the Supreme Court,” Liberty Counsel Founder and...

A federal appeals court ruled Monday a COVID vaccine mandate for New York City teachers and other public school workers can go into effect. A three-judge panel lifted a temporary ban on the mandate that was originally set to take effect Monday. “Federal appeals exhausted. Done. The mandate moves forward,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said. The United Federation of Teachers said 3% of teachers (about 3,400) remain unvaccinated. School workers now have until 5 p.m. Friday to get their first dose, or risk losing their jobs, de Blasio said. “If you have not gotten that first dose by Friday 5:00,...

...In a 21-page decision, a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit unanimously ruled that the memo was exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) on the basis of the presidential communications privilege... The Circuit Court upheld the lower court’s ruling, writing that “records of what was said by or directly to the President lie at the heart of the presidential communications privilege.” The Circuit Court also rejected Protect Democracy’s assertion that the court should make a “narrow exception” and require portions of the memo to be segregated and disclosed ...