lawsuits
In 2022, photojournalist Benjamin Hendren photographed some police officers arresting a group of protesters. Even though Hendren didn't interfere with police activity—he even offered to let the officers speak with his editor—the officers arrested him. What's more, they even encouraged employees at the construction site being protested to fabricate statements about Hendren. Hendren has now filed a lawsuit against the officers who arrested him, arguing he was punished for exercising his First Amendment rights. On July 29, 2022, Hendren heard over a police radio that police had arrived at the sce...
Reason
A federal appeals court ruled that three Honolulu police officers are not immune from a lawsuit filed on behalf of a 10-year-old girl who was handcuffed and arrested at school for allegedly drawing an offensive and violent picture of another student. In an unpublished opinion, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled that the officers were not entitled to qualified immunity, a judicial doctrine that shields government officials from civil suits in cases where the rights they allegedly violated were not clearly established by prior case law. The doctrine protects a wide variety of ab...
Reason
Hundreds of foreign students who enrolled at a Michigan university that turned out to be a sting operation run by federal immigration officials can sue the government to recoup their tuition, a federal appeals court ruled last week. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled on June 25 that the U.S. government wasn't immune from a 2020 lawsuit filed by Teja Ravi, a former student at the fake "University of Farmington," on behalf of himself and other students, because it entered into contracts with hundreds of students like Ravi for services that it never delivered. The ruling over...
Reason
Consider the following hypothetical: You are jailed for two years as you await trial for murder. You are facing the death penalty. You have cancer, which relapsed during your incarceration without access to adequate treatment. And it turns out you were charged based on a false witness confession, which the local prosecutor allegedly destroyed evidence to obscure. Now imagine suing that prosecutor and being told you have no recourse, because such government employees are entitled to absolute immunity. This is the backdrop for Justice Sonia Sotomayor's opinion Tuesday arguing that the Supreme Co...
Reason
Last month, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry (R) signed a bill mandating that a copy of the Ten Commandments be displayed in all public school classrooms in Louisiana. The law, House Bill 71, requires that the religious scripture be displayed on a poster or frame sized at least 11 inches by 14 inches and in a "large, easily readable font." Apparently anticipating a First Amendment challenge to the mandatory religious text, lawmakers included several provisions that attempt to strengthen the law against a constitutional challenge. For example, the law prohibits schools from using taxpayer funds to fi...
Reason
The Supreme Court will allow emergency abortions in Idaho, according to an opinion released Thursday, one day after it was accidentally briefly posted to the Court's website. The Court ruled 6–3 to lift a stay it had placed in January on a lower court ruling allowing emergency abortions to go forward in Idaho while a lawsuit over the state's controversial abortion law went forward. Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Neil Gorsuch dissented. After the Supreme Court struck down the national right to abortion in 2022, Idaho enacted one of the nation's strictest abortion bans. Not only doe...
Reason
The Oklahoma Supreme Court determined that direct public funding for a religious school violated the state's prohibition on funding religious institutions. In June 2023, the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board approved a charter for St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual Charter School. The Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa, which submitted the application, would run the school, which would make it the first publicly funded religious charter school in the country. The board approved the application by a 3–2 vote just two months after unanimously reject...
Reason
In 2022, San Francisco fireman Robert Muhammad used a work computer to find fellow firefighter Gabriel Shin's home address. Muhammad had earlier threatened Shin for refusing to reveal who was talking about Muhammad's personal business at work. Muhammad took a hydrant wrench to Shin's house and, finding him outside, began repeatedly swinging the wrench at his head, leaving Shin with broken arms and a concussion. The attack stopped only after a neighbor pulled a handgun and confronted him. Shin has filed a lawsuit against the department, but Muhammad has been allowed to remain on the job, and Sh...
Reason
A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit concerning the software X (formerly Twitter) uses to find illegal porn images. The suit was brought by Mark Martell, who objected to X using Microsoft's PhotoDNA software. Martell argued that PhotoDNA—which is used across the tech industry to detect and report child porn—required the collection of biometric data and that this collection violated Illinois' Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA). A win for Martell could have imperiled the use of PhotoDNA and similar software by all sorts of tech companies, thwarting tools that have proved useful in fighting ...
Reason
On Thursday, the Supreme Court decided that while you're free to sell a T-shirt taking shots at a former president's anatomy, you don't have the right to trademark it, at least while he's alive. In the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, Sen. Marco Rubio (R–Fla.) accused Donald Trump of having small hands for his height, adding, "You know what they say about guys with small hands." Days later, in a debate among the Republican candidates, Trump responded: "He referred to my hands—'if they're small, something else must be small'—I guarantee you, there's no problem." One could be forgiven f...
Reason
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