A judge for the US District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan on Wednesday dismissed the state of Michigan and Governor Rick Snyder from a class action lawsuit concerning injuries resulting from the Flint water crisis, saying the government officials are given sovereign immunity. Under the Eleventh Amendment, state governments and officials, acting in their [...]
The US Circuit Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on Wednesday struck down President Donald Trump’s executive order to end federal grant funding to sanctuary cities. Executive Order 13,768, “Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States,” directed the Attorney General and the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security to withhold [...]
A federal judge in Seattle issued a temporary restraining order Tuesday blocking a Texas man from releasing downloadable blueprints for plastic 3D-printed firearms. Judge Robert Lasnik of the US District Court for the Western District of Washington issued the ruling a day after the Washington Attorney General, along with several other states, filed a lawsuit challenging the [...]
The trial of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort began on Tuesday. The indictment alleges that Manafort and Richard Gates, a former deputy chair of the Trump campaign and liaison to the Republican National Committee who has already plead guilty to the charges, acted as unregistered agents of Ukraine and Victor Yanukovyk, the President of [...]
The US Supreme Court rejected a petition from the US Solicitor General requesting an administrative stay of an environmental lawsuit regarding climate change. The lawsuit, filed in the US District Court District of Oregon by a group of individuals between the ages of eight and 19, alleges that US policies over the past 50 years [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit on Wednesday allowed a major class action settlement involving Remington firearms to proceed. The class action lawsuit against Remington Arms Company alleged that “certain Remington rifles were susceptible to unintentional firing without a trigger pull.” The class members “sought to require Remington to repair or replace [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled Wednesday that Chino Valley school board meetings, which are open to the public and include student attendees, may not include prayers or other religious exercises. The Chino Valley school board argued that its prayer policy fell under the legislative-prayer tradition and would therefore not violate [...]
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 [...]
