A group of American citizens from Texas' Rio Grande Valley filed suit against the US Department of State (DOS) Tuesday, alleging they had been denied passports because they are of Mexican descent and were delivered by midwives. According to a complaint filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of Texas , the [...]

US government secrecy continued to increase in 2007, according to the Secrecy Report Card 2008 released Tuesday by OpenTheGovernment.org . The report chastized the Bush administration for its refusal "to be held accountable to the public through the oversight responsibilities of Congress," and took note of extensive quantitative findings: The government spent $195 maintaining the [...]

A Fulton County Superior Court judge on Monday granted summary judgment for the state of Georgia in a suit alleging that the state's electronic voting system is unconstitutional and illegally vulnerable to fraud. The challenge, filed in 2006 by a coalition of Georgia voters called Voter GA , alleged that the system's lack of paper [...]

Carl Eric Olsen v. Michael Mukasey, et al., US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, September 8, 2008 . Read the full text of the opinion . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a report Wednesday calling on Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Pakistan, and Yemen to join in a global moratorium on the death penalty for juveniles. The report states that the five countries are the last in the world known to engage in the practice, with a combined 32 executions of juvenile [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit on Monday reversed a district court's grant of summary judgment and dismissal to Michigan's Region VII Area Agency on Aging (Region VII) , instead ruling that an unlawful termination suit filed by former employee Denise Hughes can continue. Hughes argues that the agency fired her because [...]

United States of America v. James Ford Seale, US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, September 9, 2008 . Read the full text of the opinion . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

The US District Court for Connecticut has blocked enforcement of a new provision of the US Bankruptcy Code against attorneys seeking to advise clients about taking on additional debt. District Judge Christopher Droney issued a preliminary injunction Tuesday, ruling that the statute was so broad as to unconstitutionally restrict attorneys' First Amendment rights. The provision [...]

A three-judge panel of the US Circuit Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reinstated a class-action lawsuit Tuesday against drug maker Merck & Co. over claims relating to its prescription painkiller Vioxx . The lawsuit had been dismissed by the US District Court of New Jersey in April 2007. In its ruling, the three-judge [...]

A three-judge panel for the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on Tuesday vacated the conviction of former Ku Klux Klan (KKK) member James Ford Seale for his involvement in the 1964 deaths of two 19-year-old black teens. Seale was sentenced to three life terms in August 2007, two months after his conviction [...]