The US Department of Justice (DOJ) settled claims on Tuesday against a Texas city that refused to approve plans for an Islamic cemetery. The US filed its complaint against the City of Farmersville earlier on Tuesday under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 (RLUIPA). The complaint alleged that the city unduly burdened the [...]
US Senator Chris Coons (D-DE) and Representative Judy Chu (D-CA) introduced a Senate bill and a House bill to repeal President Trump’s travel ban on Wednesday. The bicameral legislation, known as the National Origin-Based Antidiscrimination for Nonimmigrants Act (NO BAN Act), imposes limits on executive power to curtail immigration and repeals Trump’s three executive orders limiting immigration based [...]
Sudan’s defense minister, Awad Mohamed Ahmed Ibn Auf announced on state television Thursday that President Omar al-Bashir has been detained and a military council will lead the country for two years. Further, the Constitution has been suspended, the National Assembly dissolved, and a state of emergency declared. Protesters are demanding the power be placed in [...]
The European Court of Human Rights ruled Tuesday that Russia violated the rights of opposition leader Alexei Navalny by placing him under house arrest in 2014. Navalny, a prominent critic of President Vladimir Putin, spent 10 months under house arrest in 2014 while Russian authorities investigated him for embezzlement charges. The court found that Navalny’s confinement violated [...]
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice announced Wednesday that it will no longer allow prison chaplains of any faith to accompany inmates into execution chambers. The policy change closely follows the Supreme Court’s stay of execution for Patrick Murphy, a Texas inmate whose request that a Buddhist spiritual adviser be present in his execution chamber was denied by the [...]
The US Supreme Court ruled Tuesday in Nielsen v. Preap that immigrants who have committed certain crimes are not entitled to a bond hearing and once detained can be held in federal custody until their removal proceedings are resolved. In an opinion by Justice Samuel Alito, the Supreme Court overturned two Ninth Circuit decisions (Preap v. [...]
The High Court struck down the UK’s “right to rent” policy on Friday as incompatible with human rights law. The “right to rent” policy required private landlords to verify the immigration status of prospective renters. Under this policy, landlords who rented to undocumented tenants could face unlimited fines or prison time. This policy was a key [...]
An Appeals Court in Turkey on Tuesday upheld the convictions of 14 employees of Cumhuriyet, a Turkish news outlet that has been critical of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The defendants—including journalists, a cartoonist, executives and accountants—were sentenced in April to prison terms between four and eight years “on charges of acting on behalf of a terrorist group [...]
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) brought a lawsuit on Thursday against US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) on behalf of two women who were detained in Montana after a Border Patrol officer heard them speaking Spanish. Ana Suda and Martha Hernandez, both US citizens, were in line to buy groceries at a convenience store [...]
The lower house of the Australian Parliament passed amendments Tuesday that would give doctors more power to bring over asylum seekers stranded in the country’s offshore camps for treatment. Australia has held thousands of asylum seekers in camps on the island nation of Nauru and Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island since 2013, with about 1,000 [...]
