Tag Archives: Court

Trump travel ban fight heads toward Supreme Court showdown

A picture of the travel advisory page of Qatar Airways advising passengers bound for the United States from seven newly banned majority Muslim countries that they need to have either a U.S. green card or diplomatic visa, January 28, 2017 in London, Britain. Picture taken January 28, 2017. REUTERS/Russell Boyce

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The fate of President Donald Trump’s order to ban travelers from six predominantly Muslim nations, blocked by federal courts, may soon be in the hands of the conservative-majority Supreme Court, where his appointee Neil Gorsuch could help settle the matter.

After the Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined on Thursday to lift a Maryland federal judge’s injunction halting the temporary ban ordered by Trump on March 6, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the administration would appeal to the Supreme Court.

A second regional federal appeals court heard arguments on May 15 in Seattle in the administration’s appeal of a decision by a federal judge in Hawaii also to block the ban. A ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is pending.

The Justice Department has not made clear when the administration would make its formal appeal or whether it would wait for the 9th Circuit ruling before appealing.

If they take it up, the justices would be called upon to decide whether courts should always defer to the president over allowing certain people to enter the country, especially when national security is the stated reason for an action as in this case. They also would have to decide if Trump’s order violated the U.S. Constitution’s bar against the government favoring one religion over another, as the ban’s challengers assert.

Gorsuch’s April confirmation by the Republican-led Senate over Democratic opposition restored the court’s 5-4 majority, which means that if all the conservative justices side with the administration the ban would be restored regardless of how the four liberal justices vote.

During his Senate confirmation hearing, Gorsuch was questioned about Trump’s criticism of judges who ruled against the ban. Gorsuch avoided commenting on the legal issue, saying only that he would not be “rubber stamp” for any president.

While the justices could decide in the coming weeks whether to hear the case, they likely would not hold oral arguments until late in the year, with a ruling sometime after that. A final resolution may not come until perhaps a year after Trump issued the executive order.

The justices are not required to hear any case, but this one meets important criteria cited by experts, including that it would be the federal government filing the appeal and that it involves a nationwide injunction.

The administration could file an emergency application seeking to put the order into effect while the litigation on its legality continues. At least five justices must agree for any such request to be granted.

While the court could split 5-4 along ideological lines, it also is possible some conservative justices could join the liberals in overturning the travel ban, libertarian law professor Ilya Somin of George Mason University said.

“Conservatives in other contexts often take a hard line against any kind of government discrimination (based) on race or religion or the like, even if the motivation may be benign. Also conservatives have concerns about government infringements on religion,” Somin said.

The 4th Circuit said the ban’s challengers, including refugee groups, in the case argued by the American Civil Liberties Union were likely to succeed on their claim that the order violated the Constitution’s prohibition on the government favoring or disfavoring any religion. In the 10-3 ruling, three Republican-appointed judges dissented.

The Republican president’s March 6 order, replacing an earlier Jan. 27 one also blocked by the courts, called for barring people from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days while the government implements stricter visa screening. It also called for suspending all refugee admissions for 120 days.

KENNEDY’S REASONING

The travel ban’s challengers may take some comfort from the appeals court ruling’s reliance on a concurring opinion in a 2015 Supreme Court immigration case by Justice Anthony Kennedy, a conservative who sometimes sides with the court’s liberals in big cases.

In the 2015 case, Kennedy wrote that in the immigration context, the government’s actions can be questioned if there is evidence of bad faith.

“As with any opinion by Justice Kennedy, I think the million-dollar question is just what he meant in his concurrence, and this may be a perfect case to find out,” University of Texas School of Law professor Stephen Vladeck said.

In Thursday’s ruling, 4th Circuit Chief Judge Roger Gregory wrote that the plaintiffs had shown there was “ample evidence” of bad faith, which gave the green light to probe whether there were reasons for the order other than the administration’s stated national security rationale.

The administration has argued the temporary travel ban was needed to guard against terrorist attacks. Gregory wrote that the order uses “vague words of national security, but in context drips with religious intolerance, animus, and discrimination.” Trump during the presidential campaign called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Additional reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)

Driver indicted in deadly Times Square attack, crash

FILE PHOTO: A vehicle that struck pedestrians and later crashed is seen on the sidewalk in Times Square in New York City, U.S., May 18, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Segar

By Gina Cherelus

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A grand jury has indicted the driver charged with killing a young woman and injuring 22 people when he careened through three blocks in New York City’s crowded Times Square, prosecutors said on Wednesday.

Richard Rojas, 26, is scheduled to be arraigned on the indictment on July 13.

Authorities say Rojas drove his Honda sedan down Seventh Avenue on May 18, made a U-turn and mowed down pedestrians on the packed sidewalk for three city blocks before crashing. Alyssa Elsman, an 18-year-old woman from Michigan, was killed.

The driver was subdued by onlookers and police as he tried to flee on foot.

The charges in the indictment were not immediately made public. Rojas, who did not appear at the Wednesday hearing, was previously charged with second-degree murder, vehicular homicide and multiple counts of attempted murder.

His defense lawyer, Enrico Demarco, declined to comment after the brief hearing.

Rojas, who served in the Navy, told the New York Post in a tearful jailhouse interview last week that he had unsuccessfully sought psychiatric care, and said he had no recollection of the incident.

He was believed to be under the influence of some intoxicating substance, a police source has told Reuters, while law enforcement officials told ABC News he was apparently high on synthetic marijuana.

Rojas has had numerous run-ins with the law over the past decade, according to Navy and public court records. He has had at least four prior arrests, two for drunken driving, and one earlier this month for allegedly threatening another man with a knife outside his apartment in New York City’s Bronx borough.

While serving in the Navy in 2013, he spent two months in a military jail in South Carolina, though records do not indicate why.

Of the 13 attack victims Bellevue Hospital received, nine have been released, the health provider said in a statement on Wednesday. One of the remaining patients is in critical condition, another is in serious condition and the other two are in fair or good shape, it said.

The last of six victims sent to Mount Sinai West and Mount Sinai St. Luke’s hospitals was released on Tuesday, a spokeswoman said.

(Additional reporting by Laila Kearney; editing by Jonathan Oatis and David Gregorio)

In travel ban case, U.S. judges focus on discrimination, Trump’s powers

People protest U.S. President Donald Trump's travel ban outside of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Seattle, Washington, U.S. May 15, 2017. REUTERS/David Ryder

By Tom James

SEATTLE (Reuters) – U.S. appeals court judges on Monday questioned the lawyer defending President Donald Trump’s temporary travel ban about whether it discriminates against Muslims and pressed challengers to explain why the court should not defer to Trump’s presidential powers to set the policy.

The three-judge 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel was the second court in a week to review Trump’s directive banning people entering the United States from six Muslim-majority countries.

Opponents – including the state of Hawaii and civil rights groups – say that both Trump’s first ban and later revised ban discriminate against Muslims. The government argues that the text of the order does not mention any specific religion and is needed to protect the country against attacks.

In addressing the Justice Department at the hearing in Seattle, 9th Circuit Judge Richard Paez pointed out that many of Trump’s statements about Muslims came “during the midst of a highly contentious (election) campaign.” He asked if that should be taken into account when deciding how much weight they should be given in reviewing the travel ban’s constitutionality.

Neal Katyal, an attorney for Hawaii which is opposing the ban, said the evidence goes beyond Trump’s campaign statements.

“The government has not engaged in mass, dragnet exclusions in the past 50 years,” Katyal said. “This is something new and unusual in which you’re saying this whole class of people, some of whom are dangerous, we can ban them all.”

The Justice Department argues Trump issued his order solely to protect national security.

Outside the Seattle courtroom a group of protesters gathered carrying signs with slogans including, “The ban is still racist” and “No ban, no wall.”

Paez asked if an executive order detaining Japanese-Americans during the World War Two would pass muster under the government’s current logic.

Acting U.S. Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall, arguing on behalf of the Trump administration, said that the order from the 1940s, which is now viewed as a low point in U.S. civil rights history, would not be constitutional.

If Trump’s executive order was the same as the one involving Japanese-Americans, Wall said: “I wouldn’t be standing here, and the U.S. would not be defending it.”

Judge Michael Daly Hawkins asked challengers to Trump’s ban about the wide latitude held by U.S. presidents to decide who can enter the country.

“Why shouldn’t we be deferential to what the president says?” Hawkins said.

“That is the million dollar question,” said Katyal. A reasonable person would see Trump’s statements as evidence of discriminatory intent, Katyal said.

In Washington, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said at a news briefing that the executive order is “fully lawful and will be upheld. We believe that.”

The panel, made up entirely of judges appointed by Democratic former President Bill Clinton, reviewed a Hawaii judge’s ruling that blocked parts of the Republican president’s revised travel order.

LIKELY TO GO TO SUPREME COURT

The March order was Trump’s second effort to craft travel restrictions. The first, issued on Jan. 27, led to chaos and protests at airports before it was blocked by courts. The second order was intended to overcome the legal problems posed by the original ban, but it was also suspended by judges before it could take effect on March 16.

U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson in Hawaii blocked 90-day entry restrictions on people from Libya, Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen, as well as part of the order that suspended entry of refugee applicants for 120 days.

As part of that ruling, Watson cited Trump’s campaign statements on Muslims as evidence that his executive order was discriminatory. The 9th Circuit previously blocked Trump’s first executive order.

Last week the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Virginia reviewed a Maryland judge’s ruling that blocked the 90-day entry restrictions. That court is largely made up of Democrats, and the judges’ questioning appeared to break along partisan lines. A ruling has not yet been released.

Trump’s attempt to limit travel was one of his first major acts in office. The fate of the ban is one indication of whether the Republican can carry out his promises to be tough on immigration and national security.

The U.S. Supreme Court is likely to be the ultimate decider, but the high court is not expected to take up the issue for several months.

(Additional reporting by Roberta Rampton in Washington)

Engineer in deadly 2015 Amtrak crash charged with manslaughter

Emergency responders search for passengers following an Amtrak train derailment in the Frankfort section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in this file photo dated May 12, 2015. REUTERS/Bryan Woolston

By Laila Kearney

(Reuters) – The engineer in a deadly 2015 Amtrak train crash in Philadelphia has been charged with involuntary manslaughter, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro said in a statement on Friday, even though local prosecutors had cleared the engineer of criminal wrongdoing earlier in the week.

In addition to eight counts of involuntary manslaughter, former Amtrak engineer Brandon Bostian was charged with one count of causing or risking a catastrophe and numerous counts of reckless endangerment, according to Shapiro’s statement.

The attorney’s general office did not say when Bostian will be arraigned. He is expected to surrender to make a court appearance but that will not likely happen Friday night, officials said.

The Philadelphia district attorney’s office on Tuesday said it did not have enough evidence to charge Bostian and closed the case.

But a Philadelphia municipal court judge on Thursday ordered the charges of involuntary manslaughter and reckless endangerment against Bostian to be revived.

The district attorney’s office had said evidence indicated the derailment was caused by the engineer operating the train far in excess of the speed limit, but it found no evidence that he acted with criminal intent.

To avoid a conflict of interest, prosecutors referred the case against Bostian to Shapiro’s office.

Under state law, Friday marks the two-year deadline to charge Bostian in the May 12, 2015, crash, which killed eight people and injured more than 180.

In May 2016, the National Transportation Safety Board said in a report that Bostian was probably distracted by radio traffic when the crash occurred.

A federal judge in October approved a record $265 million settlement for the accident victims. A lawyer for Bostian did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Friday.

(Reporting by Laila Kearney; Additional reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn and Leslie Adler)

Brazil on edge as ex-president Lula squares off with judge Moro

Members of Workers Party (PT) attend a march before former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's testimony to federal judge Sergio Moro, in Curitiba, Brazil, May 9, 2017. REUTERS/Rodolfo Buhrer

By Brad Haynes

SAO PAULO (Reuters) – When Brazil’s former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Judge Sergio Moro meet for the first time in a courtroom on Wednesday, the contrasts – and the stakes – could hardly be greater.

One is the country’s most popular president ever and the front-runner in next year’s election – a former union leader who still whips up crowds with his fiery and folksy oratory. The other, a soft-spoken law professor who represents Lula’s main obstacle to power.

The legacy and political future of Brazil’s first working-class president are on the line as Lula faces one of the five criminal cases against him, part of the biggest corruption probe in the country’s history.

While denying any wrongdoing, Lula and his lawyers have turned his defense into an attack on Moro himself, arguing the judge’s track record in overseeing the graft probe has undermined his impartiality. Lula’s supporters are traveling from across Brazil to the southern city of Curitiba to protest outside the court.

Local media has fed expectations of a confrontation with a breathless buildup to Wednesday’s hearing. One news magazine’s cover painted the two as masked wrestlers going head to head. On another, they are boxers “Settling Scores.”

Pollster Datafolha found Moro was one of the few public figures who could beat Lula in the 2018 presidential race – though Moro denies he will enter politics.

The 44-year-old judge has avoided addressing the electoral impact of his decisions and discouraged portrayals of him as David to Lula’s political Goliath.

Lula’s testimony is just one more step in a three-year-old operation, insists Moro, who has kept lecturing public university students on criminal law as he runs the probe.

“I’m a little concerned by this climate of confrontation, these heightened expectations about something that may be totally banal,” the judge said at a public event on Monday, regarding this week’s hearing.

Moro has already sentenced dozens of businessmen and money launderers for a bribery scheme paying billions of dollars to politicians in return for public contracts, political favors and deals with state firms such as oil giant Petrobras <PETR4.SA>.

Office holders in Brasilia must be tried by the Supreme Court, so prosecution has moved more slowly against alleged beneficiaries in the ruling Brazilian Democratic Movement Party and the Workers Party, which ran the country under Lula and his successor Dilma Rousseff from 2003 to 2016.

“CLIMATE OF CONFRONTATION”

Prosecutors say Lula masterminded the scheme during his eight years in office, but Wednesday’s hearing focuses on whether he traded influence for the refurbishing of a beach condo.

On Monday, Moro began hearing testimony in a second trial against Lula, regarding 12 million reais ($4 million) of land bought by a construction firm to be used for his institute.

A conviction in either case, if upheld in an appeals court before elections in October next year, would bar him from seeking office.

While Lula’s allies are calling for tens of thousands of partisans to convene in Curitiba, Moro posted a Facebook video discouraging a rival march by supporters of the investigation.

Yet even that call for restraint stirred controversy.

“Judge Moro, who ought to be impartial, is speaking directly to his supporters. That is not normal in a democratic system. In a democracy, politicians have supporters and adversaries – not judges,” said Lula attorney Cristiano Zanin in a video response.

The exchange underscored that while both Lula and Moro face public scrutiny, the judge may have more to lose if the interrogation devolves into a contentious exchange.

A courtroom spat would stoke complaints from Lula supporters who call the investigation a political witch hunt and bolster his lawyers’ demands that another judge try the case.

Attempts at such a legal maneuver are not uncommon, said Oscar Vilhena Vieira, dean of the law school at the Getulio Vargas Foundation. In Brazil, the same judge is usually responsible for overseeing an investigation and then ruling on a case.

Yet relations between Moro and Lula’s team are especially tense amid their campaign to discredit him, which included the lawyers’ complaint to the United Nations that the judge violated Lula’s human rights during the corruption investigation.

Moro often cites the value of public support for the task force he oversees, pointing to the lessons of Italy’s “Mani Pulite” graft probe in the 1990s to show the importance of popular opinion to sustain a major corruption investigation.

“From a political perspective, there is a greater risk for Judge Moro,” said Vieira. “His rhetorical options are far more limited. He has to take great care not to fall into the traps set by Lula’s lawyers.”

(Reporting by Brad Haynes; Editing by Brad Brooks, Daniel Flynn and Andrew Hay)

Mexican drug lord ‘El Chapo’ gets April 2018 U.S. trial date

Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman (R) and his attorneys Michael Schneider (L) and Michelle Gelernt are shown in a sketch of a court appearance at the Brooklyn Federal Courthouse in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, New York, U.S., May 5, 2017. REUTERS/Jane Rosenberg

By Brendan Pierson

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A U.S. judge has scheduled the trial of Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman — for years his country’s most wanted man — on drug trafficking and conspiracy charges for April 16, 2018.

U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan in Brooklyn federal court acknowledged at a hearing Friday that the date was “somewhat aspirational” and could be delayed, given the complexity of the case and the amount of evidence that lawyers must review ahead of trial.

The hearing came the day after Cogan refused to order Guzman released from solitary confinement in a New York City federal prison, where his court-appointed lawyers have said he faces needlessly harsh and restrictive conditions that make it difficult for him to mount his defense.

The judge did, however, rule that Guzman could send pre-screened letters to his wife, Emma Coronel, who was present at Friday’s hearing. She has not been allowed to visit him.

Michelle Gelernt, one of Guzman’s lawyers, again brought up the conditions of Guzman’s imprisonment at Friday’s hearing, saying it was difficult to review evidence because lawyers were only allowed to speak to Guzman through a plexiglass barrier.

Cogan said he would send a magistrate judge to look at the room where Guzman meets with his lawyers and make recommendations about how the problem could be overcome, though he said he did not want to “micro-manage” the prison.

Guzman also said at the hearing, through an interpreter, that he understood that four of the witnesses expected to testify against him had previously been represented by the same federal public defender’s office that represents him, though not by the same attorneys, raising the possibility of conflicts of interest.

He said he wished to keep his attorneys nonetheless.

All four of those witnesses, whose names have not been disclosed, are currently serving prison sentences in the U.S., Coogan said.

Guzman, who sold oranges as a child before turning to the drug trade in the 1970s, was extradited from Mexico to the United States to face drug trafficking charges on Jan. 19. He had previously escaped from two Mexican prisons.

In his most recent escape in 2015, Guzman walked out of prison through a mile-long, highly engineered tunnel from his cell, a sign of the huge influence he was able to wield even from behind bars.

(Editing by Alistair Bell)

Families of San Bernardino shooting sue Facebook, Google, Twitter

FILE PHOTO: Weapons confiscated from the attack in San Bernardino, California are shown in this San Bernardino County Sheriff Department handout photo from their Twitter account released to Reuters December 3, 2015. REUTERS/San Bernardino County Sheriffs Department/Handout/File Photo

By Dan Whitcomb

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Family members of three victims of the December 2015 shooting rampage in San Bernardino, California, have sued Facebook, Google and Twitter, claiming that the companies permitted Islamic State to flourish on social media.

The relatives assert that by allowing Islamic State militants to spread propaganda freely on social media, the three companies provided “material support” to the group and enabled attacks such as the one in San Bernardino.

“For years defendants have knowingly and recklessly provided the terrorist group ISIS with accounts to use its social networks as a tool for spreading extremist propaganda, raising funds and attracting new recruits,” family members of Sierra Clayborn, Tin Nguyen and Nicholas Thalasinos charge in the 32-page complaint, which was filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles on Wednesday.

“Without defendants Twitter, Facebook and Google (YouTube), the explosive growth of ISIS over the last few years into the most feared terrorist group in the world would not have been possible,” the complaint said.

Spokeswomen for Twitter and Google declined to comment on the lawsuit. Representatives for Facebook could not immediately be reached by Reuters on Thursday afternoon.

Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, opened fire on a holiday gathering of Farook’s co-workers at a government building in San Bernardino on Dec. 2, 2015, killing 14 people and wounding 22 others.

Farook, the 28-year-old, U.S.-born son of Pakistani immigrants, and Malik, 29, a Pakistani native, died in a shootout with police four hours after the massacre.

Authorities have said the couple was inspired by Islamist militants. At the time, the assault ranked as the deadliest attack by Islamist extremists on U.S. soil since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. In June 2016, an American-born gunman pledging allegiance to the leader of Islamic State shot 49 people to death at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, before he was killed by police.

In December 2016 the families of three men killed at the nightclub sued Twitter, Google and Facebook in federal court on allegations similar to those in the California lawsuit.

Federal law gives internet companies broad immunity from liability for content posted by their users. A number of lawsuits have been filed in recent years seeking to hold social media companies responsible for terror attacks, but none has advanced beyond the preliminary phases.

(Reporting by Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Additional reporting by David Ingram and Julia Love in San Francisco; Editing by Dan Grebler and Grant McCool)

Greek court blocks last extradition request for Turkish soldiers

FILE PHOTO - Four of the eight Turkish soldiers (C), who fled to Greece in a helicopter and requested political asylum after a failed military coup against the government, line up as they are escorted by police officers at the Supreme Court in Athens, Greece, January 13, 2017. REUTERS/Alkis Konstantinidis/File Photo

ATHENS (Reuters) – A Greek court on Thursday blocked a second extradition request by Turkey for the final two of eight soldiers who fled to Greece in July following a failed coup attempt, court officials said.

The decision is likely to anger Ankara, which alleges the men were involved in efforts to overthrow President Tayyip Erdogan and has repeatedly demanded they be sent back.

Turkey had issued a second extradition request for the men, which it has branded traitors, in January after Greece’s top court ruled against extraditing all eight.

The drawn-out case has highlighted often strained relations between Greece and Turkey, NATO allies which remain at odds over issues from territorial disputes to ethnically-split Cyprus.

Turkey has previously threatened measures including scrapping a bilateral migration deal with Greece if the men are not returned

The three majors, three captains and two sergeant-majors landed a helicopter in Greece on July 16 and sought asylum, saying they feared for their lives in Turkey where authorities have purged large numbers from the military and civil service.

They are to be held in detention until their asylum applications are processed.

Addressing the court on Thursday, the prosecutor acknowledged the ruling “may cause discomfort” in Turkey but said the reasons for rejection had not changed since January.

“Has torture stopped? Persecutions?” he asked. “If it looks itself in the mirror, modern Turkey will understand why one denial comes after another — not only from Greece but also from other countries — for the release of alleged coup plotters.”

(Reporting by Constantinos Georgizas; Writing by Karolina Tagaris; Editing by Jeremy Gaunt and Ralph Boulton)

Anti-abortion activists seek dismissal of California privacy case

Anti-abortion activist David Daleiden, waits outside Superior Court in San Francisco, California, U.S., May 3, 2017. REUTERS/Lisa Fernandez

By Lisa Fernandez

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Lawyers for two anti-abortion activists who secretly filmed a conference of abortion providers while pretending to work for a fetal-tissue procurement company asked a California judge on Wednesday to dismiss eavesdropping charges against the pair.

Defense attorneys asserted in court papers that the criminal complaint brought by California’s attorney general against David Daleiden, 28, and Sandra Merritt, 63, was insufficient because it failed to identify their alleged victims by name.

Daleiden and Merritt are each charged with conspiracy and 14 counts of invasion of privacy for creating false identities to infiltrate the abortion conference, then videotaping various conference participants and others without their consent.

The two are accused of fabricating a sham biomedical research firm, BioMax Procurement Services, to gain access to private meetings of the National Abortion Federation (NAF), Planned Parenthood and others affiliated with reproductive healthcare.

The individuals they taped are referred to in charging documents as DOE 1 through 14. Prosecutors filed identifying information in a sealed confidential attachment.

If the judge sides with the defense, finding prosecutors lack justification for keeping the alleged victims anonymous, the state could be forced to amend its complaint and reveal their names in order to proceed.

Defense lawyer Steve Cooley, representing Daleiden, said state Attorney General Xavier Becerra, a Democrat, was conducting a political prosecution.

Daleiden, who runs the California-based nonprofit Center for Medical Progress, and Merritt, a fellow anti-abortion activist and retired teacher, have cast themselves as “citizen journalists” who employed well-worn undercover tactics of the news media to expose wrongdoing.

But prosecutors said Daleiden and Merritt engaged in computer hacking and criminal fraud to create false IDs and a bogus corporate entity – crossing lines that bona fide journalists would avoid.

The case stems from recordings made at an April 2014 NAF conference in San Francisco and several subsequent restaurant meetings in Los Angeles and El Dorado, California.

Distribution of those tapes and others from a 2015 NAF conference in Baltimore were barred under federal court order after NAF sued Daleiden’s group in 2015.

But Daleiden has released other videos targeting Planned Parenthood purporting to show its officials trying to profit from the sale aborted fetal tissue, in violation of federal law.

Planned Parenthood accused Daleiden of using the videos to distort its practices, in which it lawfully seeks only to recover costs associated with fetal tissue donations for scientific research.

Daleiden and Merritt were indicted in January 2016 for using illegal government identifications to secretly film a Planned Parenthood facility in Texas, but that case was dropped. Both are slated for arraignment in the California case on June 8.

Daleiden surrendered to authorities last month under an arrest warrant and was released on $75,000 bond. Merritt was taken into custody at the court on Thursday and was expected to post bond later in the day.

(Additional reporting and writing by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Robert Birsel)

Same-sex couple can seek damages from Kentucky clerk: U.S. appeals court

Rowan County clerk Kim Davis is shown in this booking photo provided by the Carter County Detention Center in Grayson, Kentucky September 3, 2015. REUTERS/Carter County Detention Center/Handout via Reuters

By Jonathan Stempel

(Reuters) – A federal appeals court on Tuesday revived a damages lawsuit against Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who in 2015 refused to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples because it conflicted with her Christian beliefs.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati said a lower court judge erred in finding that damages claims by David Ermold and David Moore became moot, after a new state law last July excused clerks like Davis, from Rowan County, from having to sign marriage license forms.

While the couple eventually did get a license, a three-judge appeals court panel said they could sue over Davis’ initial refusal to grant one, after the U.S. Supreme Court in June 2015 said the Constitution guaranteed a right to same-sex marriage.

“The district court’s characterization of this case as simply contesting the ‘no marriage licenses’ policy is inaccurate because Ermold and Moore did not seek an injunction-they sought only damages,” Circuit Judge Karen Nelson Moore wrote. “The record does not support an argument that (their) damages claims are insubstantial or otherwise foreclosed.”

Ermold’s and Moore’s case was sent back to U.S. District Judge David Bunning in Covington, Kentucky.

“The ruling keeps the case alive for a little while but it is not a victory for the plaintiffs,” Mat Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel, a Christian advocacy group representing Davis, said in a statement. “We are confident we will prevail.”

Michael Gartland, a lawyer for Ermold and Moore, called the decision a “no-brainer,” saying damages claims based on past harm often survive mootness challenges. His clients are seeking compensatory and punitive damages.

“Do I think it’s a million dollar case? Probably not,” Gartland said in an interview. “The next step will be to go to discovery and go to trial, where I am confident we will obtain a judgment against Davis.”

The refusal of Davis to issue licenses made her a national symbol for opposition to Obergefell v Hodges, the Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide.

The case is Ermold et al v. Davis, 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 16-6412.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)