US President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of 2,500 non-violent drug offenders on Friday, marking the highest number of pardons and commutations issued by a president in US history. Biden said he commuted the sentences because he saw them as disproportionately long for the sentences the offenders would have received today given the passage of [...]
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputy, Joseph Benza III, pleaded guilty to a federal civil rights charge on Friday. He assaulted a transgender man, Emmett Brock, who exercised his First Amendment rights by making an obscene hand gesture while driving. The incident occurred on February 10, 2023. Benza, stationed in the municipality Norwalk, was [...]
US President Joe Biden opined Friday without legal effect that the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which ensures equal rights on the basis of sex, has been added to the Constitution as the 28th Amendment. In the statement, Biden said: It is long past time to recognize the will of the American people. In keeping with [...]
The US Supreme Court upheld the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act” on Friday. This confirms that the application TikTok will be banned on Sunday. The act makes it unlawful for any entity to distribute a “foreign adversary controlled application” in the US. It explicitly singles out ByteDance Ltd, the parent company of TikTok. [...]
The US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned the leader of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) on Thursday, emphasizing its commitment to end the current military conflict in Sudan. OFAC sanctioned SAF commander Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, stating that the leader is “choosing war over good-faith negotiation and de-escalation.” OFAC also [...]
Oral arguments began in federal court on Wednesday in a case between a coalition of news organizations led by The New York Times and OpenAI, the creator of the artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT, which alleges copyright infringement by OpenAI’s use of copyrighted material for machine learning. The case centers on allegations that OpenAI unlawfully utilized [...]
The Supreme Court of the United States heard oral arguments on Wednesday in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, a case concerning a Texas law restricting access to websites with “sexual material harmful to minors.” Derek Shaffer, counsel for the law’s challengers, argued that the application of rational basis defies the precedent set in Ashcroft v. [...]
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against Fayette County, Tennessee, alleging its Board of County Commissioners violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The board’s adoption of a county commission redistricting plan did not give black voters “an equal opportunity to participate in the political process and to elect [...]
The US District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana ruled on Tuesday that the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) can end its longstanding federal oversight, thus approving the sustainment plan. The decision comes in response to a request from the city and the Justice Department to reduce monitoring. Judge Susie Morgan in her ruling ordered [...]
The Third Circuit Court of Appeals upheld its previous decision on Tuesday which found Pennsylvania statutes preventing “18-to-20-year-olds from carrying firearms outside their homes during a state of emergency” to be unconstitutional. Pennsylvania statutes 6106, 6107, and 6109 have the combined effect of “preventing most 18-to-20-year-old adult Pennsylvanians from carrying firearms.” The appellants, Madison Lara, [...]
