Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards on Thursday signed into law an amended hate crime bill including police, EMS personnel and firefighters in the category of those protected. Proponents of this bill have stated that the addition was necessary to protect against “deliberate campaign to terrorize” police officers. In particular, the recent anti-police sentiment following the [...]

The Supreme Court of India ruled Thursday that Salvatore Girone, the Italian marine under investigation for the killing of two fisherman, is free to go home while India and Italy await the decision of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague. The decision comes within a month of a statement by India’s Ministry of [...]

Amnesty International (AI) published a policy statement on Wednesday calling for the decriminalization of sex workers . Stating that, “ex workers are at heightened risk of a whole host of human rights abuses including rape, violence, extortion and discrimination,” AI called for governments to “do more to protect people who do sex work from violations [...]

South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley signed a bill on Wednesday banning abortions at the 20-week mark, making it the seventeenth state to pass such a ban. The bill, passed includes exceptions only for protecting the mother’s health and a fetal anomaly, meaning “in reasonable medical judgment, the unborn child has a profound and irremediable congenital [...]

Officials in 11 states filed a lawsuit on Wednesday in the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas challenging the Obama administration’s recent guidance letter on transgender students. The states—Texas, Alabama, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Utah, and Georgia—as well as the Arizona Department of Education and the governor of Maine assert [...]

A spokesperson for the UN human rights office urged Gaza authorities to end the use of the death penalty on Wednesday. Rupert Colville, spokesperson for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, said the office is “deeply concerned about recent statements made by the authorities in Gaza, including the Attorney General, of their [...]

The Stockholm District Court upheld the arrest warrant for Julian Assange on Wednesday, finding he was not illegally detained in absentia. Assange has been held on allegations of rape dating back to 2010. The court found there was probable cause to support the accusation. Assange has been at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London for over [...]

JURIST Guest Columnist Christina Alam of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law discusses the negative effect corporate mergers have on preserving American jobs… While some public figures paint horror stories of how immigrants steal American jobs, subtler, but yet powerful forces leave thousands of American employees jobless. These forces are corporate restructuring and downsizing. [...]

Amnesty International (AI) on Tuesday urged EU officials to adhere to a 2013 suspension on arms transfers with Egypt in order to prevent human rights violations. According to AI, the suspension was put in place “after hundreds of protesters were killed in a show of grossly excessive force by security forces in August 2013,” but [...]

A judge for the US District Court for the Southern District of Ohio on Tuesday ruled that the 2014 elimination of the state’s early in-person (EIP) voting was unconstitutional and in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) . While the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) reached a settlement agreement in April [...]