Maryland’s House of Delegates passed a bill on Wednesday banning the controversial practice of conversion therapy on LGBTQ youth. The Senate first considered the Youth Mental Health Protection Act in February and passed it last week with a 34-12 vote. The bill then underwent several amendments before the House passed it with a 95-27 vote [...]

Exiled Venezuelan supreme court justices met in Bogota, Colombia, Tuesday to conduct a preliminary hearing on corruption allegations against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro brought by the country’s former top prosecutor, Attorney General Luisa Ortega. The self-proclaimed judicial body met in the main chambers of the Colombian Congress. Like the judges of the court, Ortega is [...]

Federal judge Orlando Garcia in the US District Court for the Western District of Texas in San Antonio has granted summary judgment to a group of voters who argued that the voter registration measures of Texas’ online driver’s license registration system are unconstitutional under “motor voter” provisions of the 1993 National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) [...]

The Missouri House of Representatives approved a bill on Tuesday that would ban abortions occurring 20 weeks after fertilization. House Bill 1266, known as the “Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act,” was sponsored by Republican House Member Donna Lichtenegger . The legislation includes language defining the pain capable gestational age as 22 weeks following a [...]

New Zealand’s parliament on Tuesday approved legislation to allow people who were previously convicted of homosexual offenses to have their criminal records wiped. The bill “seeks to reduce prejudice, stigma, and all other negative effects” that would come from a prior conviction for a homosexual offense. Homosexual conduct between consenting males over the age of [...]

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit in the Superior Court of California – Orange County Wednesday seeking declaratory and injunctive relief against the Orange County District Attorney (OCDA) and Orange County Sheriff (OCSD) for operating secret jailhouse informant programs allegedly in violation of the US Constitution, California Constitution and California state laws. [...]

UN human rights experts on Wednesday urged France to provide adequate emergency shelter, access to drinking water and sanitation facilities, to thousands of migrants living in camps on the northern French coast. “Migrants, regardless of their status,” the experts stated, “are entitled to human rights without discrimination, including access to adequate housing, education, healthcare, water [...]

At the conclusion of a 10-day visit to Thailand, the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights issued a statement Wednesday saluting progress by the Thai government but urging improvements in some areas. The group’s goal is to help implement the UN’s Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights . During the visit in [...]

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is leading a group of 17 states and seven cities in a lawsuit filed on Tuesday against the Census Beureau and Commerce Department in an attempt to remove citizenship questions that have been added to the 2020 Census questionnaire. The last time the US Census contained questions regarding citizenship [...]

In the first sentencing in the investigation by Special Counsel Robert Muller into Russian meddling, 33-year-old Dutch attorney Alex van der Zwaan was sentenced Tuesday to 30 days in prison and a $200,000 fine, followed by two months of supervised release. Van der Zwaan pleaded guilty in February after being indicted on charges of lying [...]