Texas attorney general Ken Paxton suffered a defeat yesterday in his lawsuit against the City of Austin’s mask mandate after a Travis County judge ordered the mandate to stay in effect. Texas governor Greg Abbott issued executive order GA-34 on March 2, which lifted all mandatory COVID restrictions, including mandates to wear masks and impose [...]

The US Supreme Court granted injunctive relief in an order Friday to a group of churches in Santa Clara County, California, who sought to continue holding indoor worship services in spite of COVID-19 bans. Under the Santa Clara County guidelines, “ worship service is categorized by the County as a ‘gathering,’ and gatherings are prohibited. [...]

A judge for the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas on Thursday struck down the CDC-issued moratorium on residential evictions, stating that the federal government does not have the authority to implement the ban. Judge John Campell Barker wrote the 21-page opinion, rejecting the argument that the CDC order is within the [...]

Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Health on Thursday revised a controversial mandatory cremation order for persons who have died from COVID-19. The government had issued the cremation order at the beginning of the global pandemic last year, over concerns that burying bodies of COVID-19 victims could potentially contaminate ground water. World Health Organization guidance from the same [...]

The Dutch House of Representatives on Thursday both drafted and approved several amendments to the country’s COVID-19 curfew legislation in an attempt to reinstate it after a trial judge granted a preliminary injunction invalidating the law earlier this week. The trial judge held that the law was impermissible, arguing that there is no “acute emergency” [...]

Four conservative lobbyists filed suit in federal court on Wednesday seeking to block Nevada Governor Stephen Sisolak’s COVID-19 emergency orders. The lawsuit calls the shelter-in-place order a “draconian” restriction on Nevadans’ rights, alleging violations of plaintiffs’ due process rights under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments and plaintiffs’ right to petition under the First Amendment to [...]

A trial court in The Hague granted a preliminary injunction Monday against the Dutch government’s curfew, which was instituted to stop the spread of the coronavirus. The curfew lasted from 9 PM to 4:30 AM and was enacted under the government’s emergency powers, which enabled the executive branch to bypass the Senate and House of [...]

Homeless advocacy groups filed a lawsuit against the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) on Friday, challenging a rule that “target the manner in which homeless persons use the subway system.” New York advocacy organizations Urban Justice Center (Safety Net Project) and Picture the Homeless seek to block a rule that bans the use of large wheeled [...]

Amazon has filed a lawsuit against the Office of the New York Attorney General (OAG) for allegedly unlawfully attempting to subject it to state oversight of activities concerning its COVID-19 response and the termination of its activist employee Christian Smalls. In March, Amazon fired Smalls for repeatedly violating “social distancing requirements and an order to [...]

The US Supreme Court on Monday lifted an order that would have required Michigan prosecutors to retry a 2007 murder case by May 2021 or release the defendant after state officials cited COVID-19-prompted trial delays. Michigan state prosecutors filed for a stay in December, pending the outcome of a petition for a writ of certiorari. [...]