The Minnesota Supreme Court  remanded  a 2015 class action lawsuit concerning racial and socio-economic segregation in Minneapolis and St. Paul public schools to the district court on Wednesday. The court of appeals had thrown the case out last year. The appellants, who are parents of Minnesota schoolchildren, alleged that the state violated the Education, Equal Protection and [...]

The US District Court for the Northern District of Florida  ruled  Tuesday that Florida’s near ban on early voting on college campuses violates the First, Fourteenth and Twenty-Sixth Amendments. The lawsuit was brought by six University of Florida and Florida State University students, the League of Women Voters of Florida and the Adam Goodman Foundation. The [...]

Iowa Judge Karen Romano  of the Polk County District Court  granted a temporary injunction  blocking portions of Iowa’s new voter identification law relating to absentee ballots. Romano filed the injunction Tuesday, which was made public Wednesday. The injunction halts the parts of House File 516 , which change the amount of time to cast an absentee ballot from 40 to 29 [...]

The European Court of Justice  ruled  Wednesday that genome editing, a process when DNA in a living thing is altered, is a form of genetic engineering. A French agricultural union and eight environmental groups challenged a French policy that did not regard genome editing as a form of genetic engineering and sought to compel the French [...]

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein  expressed concern Wednesday over human rights violations in English-speaking regions of Cameroon. The government of Cameroon has denied the human rights office access to these regions. According to the commissioner’s statement, what started as protests in 2016 have devolved into armed elements against government forces, [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Tuesday in a lawsuit filed by Intel’s subsidiary Altera Corporation, reversing a decision by the US Tax Court . The court considered whether the IRS exceeded the authority given to them by the Administrative Procedure Act  by compelling Altera and [...]

A federal judge on Wednesday rejected US President Donald Trump’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit alleging that Trump is violating the Constitution by doing business with foreign governments. This lawsuit was brought forward in June 2017, when the attorneys general of Maryland and the District of Columbia accused Trump of violating the foreign and domestic [...]

UN Special Rapporteurs Maria Grazia Giammarinaro and Urmila Boola expressed concern Monday over an anti-trafficking bill known as the Trafficking of Persons Prevention, Protection and Rehabilitation Bill presented by the Indian government in Parliament last week. The experts’ primary concern is that the bill is not human rights oriented and may increase the risks faced [...]

Amnesty International on Monday condemned the first two years of Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte’s administration as a “human rights calamity.” Amnesty said that although Duterte claimed to improve the rule of law throughout the Philippines, his policies have led to an increase in violence and had a disproportionate impact on impoverished Filipinos. More specifically, Amnesty [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit  ruled  2-1 Tuesday that the Second Amendment  includes the right to carry a firearm in public for self-defense purposes. The Ninth Circuit said that Hawaii’s license to carry statute  unconstitutionally restricted the plaintiff’s Second Amendment rights because it limited open carry privileges to anyone who “is [...]