Tag Archives: federal appeals court

Federal Appeals Court rules against seventh grader who wore ‘Only Two Genders’ T-Shirt

Students-board-school-bus

Important Takeaways:

  • The incident first occurred on March 5 when Liam Morrison was pulled from gym class and asked to remove his shirt because other students were allegedly complaining and did not feel safe
  • The seventh grader was told by a staff member that his shirt was “targeting a protected class.”  Morrison said he would not change his shirt, and the school called his father to pick him up.
  • During a Middleborough Public Schools board meeting on April 13, Morrison shared his experience with the intention that the school district should show more support for students’ First Amendment rights.
  • Morrison’s parents filed a lawsuit, arguing that the school violated his First Amendment rights. Earlier this year, a district court ruled against the parents, which the appeals court affirmed this week
  • “This case isn’t about T-shirts; it’s about a public school telling a middle-schooler that he isn’t allowed to express a view that differs from their own,” David Cortman, Alliance Defending Freedom senior counsel and vice president of U.S. Litigation, said in a statement following the federal court’s decision
  • Cortman said the legal system is “built on the truth that the government cannot silence any speaker just because it disapproves of what they say.”

Read the original article by clicking here.

Appeals court ruled abortion pill remains available but limits access

Mifepristone-abortion-pill

Important Takeaways:

  • There will likely be a showdown at the Supreme Court over a widely used abortion pill.
  • A federal appeals court ruled yesterday that mifepristone can remain on the market, but the judges would reimpose prior restrictions that could limit access to the medication.
  • This includes preventing the drug from being mailed directly to patients and changing the approved use of the pill from up to 10 weeks into pregnancy back down to seven weeks.
  • This all comes as the legal battle over medication abortion has escalated over the past few months with the outcome having the potential to once again reshape the country’s abortion landscape.
  • The Biden administration has already said it’s planning to fight the ruling
  • Erin Hawley, an attorney for the group filing the lawsuit, said she was pleased with the court’s decision despite arguing the pill shouldn’t have been approved in the first place. Hawley, who is married to Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), said her team hasn’t decided whether to appeal the portion of the ruling that went against them.

Read the original article by clicking here.

Court revives U.S. COVID-19 vaccine mandate for healthcare in 26 states

By Tom Hals

(Reuters) -A U.S. federal appeals court on Wednesday revived in 26 states a Biden administration COVID-19 mandate requiring millions of U.S. healthcare workers to get vaccinated if they work in federally funded facilities.

In a rare win for President Joe Biden’s pandemic strategy, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled that a lower court only had the authority to block the mandate in the 14 states that had sued. The appeals court ruled that the lower court was wrong to impose a nationwide injunction.

Biden’s mandate requires that healthcare facilities get staff vaccinated against the coronavirus or lose funding from Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

The rule initially required more than 2 million unvaccinated healthcare workers be vaccinated by Dec. 6. It was blocked before the deadline and remains temporarily blocked in 24 states — the 14 states involved in the case reviewed by the New Orleans appeals court and 10 states where the mandate was blocked by a Nov. 29 ruling from a federal judge in St. Louis.

The 14 states that sued are: Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah and West Virginia.

The appeals court said the Biden administration had not made a strong showing that it was likely to prove during the litigation that it had the authority to impose the rule. The decision was rendered by Judges Leslie Southwick, appointed by President George W. Bush, and James Graves and Gregg Costa, both appointed by President Barack Obama.

The government argued that the mandate will potentially save thousands of lives every month as COVID-19 infections and deaths are expected to spike with the onset of winter and arrival of the Omicron variant, which carries a higher risk of infection.

The rule is one of three far-reaching Biden administration requirements aimed at boosting vaccination rates above the current 61% in the United States, where infections are rising and deaths remain above 1,000 per day.

Republican state attorneys general and conservative organizations and businesses have challenged the rules.

Two other COVID-19 requirements have also been blocked in courts.

In November, the same New Orleans federal appeals court blocked the administration’s workplace vaccine-or-testing mandate for businesses with at least 100 employees.

That mandate is currently being reviewed by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati. On Wednesday, the court sided with the Biden administration, agreeing to hear the case initially before a three-judge panel rather than all 16 active judges on the court.

The final mandate requiring government contractors get their employees vaccinated was blocked by a federal judge in Georgia earlier this month.

(Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware; Editing by David Gregorio)

U.S. appeals court rejects novel opioid settlement framework

By Nate Raymond

(Reuters) – A federal appeals court on Thursday overturned a judge’s approval of a novel plan by lawyers representing cities and counties suing drug companies over the U.S. opioid crisis that would bring every community nationally into their settlement talks.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals by a 2-1 vote declined to approve an unprecedented “negotiation class” of 33,000 cities, towns and counties who could have a vote on whether to accept any settlements proposed with drug manufacturers and distributors.

U.S. District Judge Dan Polster in Cleveland, who oversees 2,900 opioid lawsuits, approved the framework last year to promote a global settlement.

It would allow cities and counties that have not sued to participate in settlement talks. Any settlement would need to win support of at least 75% of class members to be approved.

While companies do not have to use the negotiation class to settle cases, many including the drug distributors McKesson Corp, Cardinal Health Inc and AmerisourceBergen Corp objected.

Many state attorneys general, who have cases against the companies not before Polster, also objected, arguing the ruling could complicate their own settlement talks and interfere with states’ rights over their political subdivisions.

U.S. Circuit Judge Eric Clay said the federal rule that allows for class actions to jointly litigate cases does not authorize what Polster approved.

“However well-intentioned the district court’s actions might be, the fact of the matter is that the court, when it certified the negotiation class, exercised power it did not have,” he wrote.

The plaintiffs’ lawyers and companies did not immediately comment.

Some companies have proposed deals that do not use the framework including the three distributors and drugmakers Johnson & Johnson and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd, who in October 2019 proposed deals worth a collective $48 billion.

Negotiations are ongoing and dollar amounts have been shifting.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Bill Berkrot)

Appeals court finds Florida can require felons to pay fines before right to vote is restored

By Jarrett Renshaw

(Reuters) – A federal appeals court ruled on Friday that Florida can require felons to pay all fines, restitution and legal fees they face before they can regain their right to vote, reversing a lower court ruling that held the measure unconstitutional.

The ruling, by the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, could influence the election outcome in November.

Florida is considered a must-win in President Donald’s Trump’s bid for re-election and disenfranchised felons account for a significant voting bloc in a state with a history of tight elections.

The dispute, which could ultimately head to U.S. Supreme Court, centers on whether the law is a way around a voter-approved 2018 measure that aimed to end the state’s lifetime prohibition on voting by ex-felons.

The Republican-controlled Florida legislature passed the law the following year, requiring all former felons to pay off outstanding court debts and legal fees to be eligible to vote.

Voting and civil rights groups sued the state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, and state election officials over that requirement.

U.S. District Court Judge Robert Hinkle in May struck down most of the law as unconstitutional, describing it as a “pay to vote” scheme.

The appeals court, dominated by judges appointed by Trump, delayed the decision while it considered on appeal.

On Friday, a majority of the 11-judge panel found the defendants in the case failed to prove the measure violated the constitution, noting the country has a long history of placing restrictions on voting.

The decision was met with frustration by voting rights groups.

“Florida’s voters spoke loud and clear when nearly two-thirds of them supported rights restoration at the ballot box in 2018,” said Paul Smith, vice president at Campaign Legal Center. “Nobody should ever be denied their constitutional rights because they can’t afford to pay fines and fees.”

(Reporting By Jarrett Renshaw; Editing by Scott Malone and Steve Orlofsky)

U.S. appeals court blocks Trump policy forcing migrants to wait in Mexico

By Mica Rosenberg

(Reuters) – A U.S. federal appeals court in San Francisco on Friday blocked a Trump administration policy that has forced tens of thousands of migrants to wait in Mexico for months for hearings in U.S. immigration courts.

A 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel found the plaintiffs were likely to succeed in their argument that the program violated U.S. immigration law and international treaty obligations on the treatment of asylum seekers.

The program, which began a year ago and is called the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), is one of the most dramatic immigration policy changes enacted by the Trump administration.

U.S. President Donald Trump, who has made cracking down on immigration a central theme of his more than three years in the White House, has sought through a series of new policies and rule changes to reduce asylum claims filed mostly by Central Americans arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border.

The U.S. Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment but the administration is likely to quickly appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court as it has done with other rulings.

Some 59,000 people have been sent back to Mexico under the program, which started in San Diego before being expanded to other ports of entry all across the U.S-Mexico border. [L2N25W1G1] It was not immediately clear what would happen to people already in the program.

Migrants, many of them children, have faced violence and homelessness as they wait for their court dates in dangerous border cities. At least 1,000 people returned under the program were violently attacked or threatened in Mexico, according to a Feb 28 Human Rights Watch report that documented kidnappings, rapes and assaults.

The Trump administration argued the program did not violate a principle in international law known as non-refoulement, which says asylum seekers should not be returned to places where they face danger. The administration has said migrants could tell officials at any point in the process they had a fear of returning to Mexico.

But the panel concluded that plaintiffs in the case, which included 11 individual asylum seekers and several immigration advocacy groups, “had shown a likelihood of success on their claim that the MPP does not comply with the United States’ treaty-based non-refoulement obligations.”

The Trump administration has said most asylum petitions are ultimately denied by immigration courts and releasing migrants into the United States to wait for hearings encourages people to disappear into the country. Officials say forcing migrants to wait in Mexico is a way to cut down on fraudulent asylum claims.

In a separate ruling on Friday, the 9th Circuit left in place a lower court’s block on a Trump administration regulation that barred migrants who cross the U.S.-Mexico border between ports of entry from seeking asylum.

A three-judge panel in that case found the regulation – issued in November 2018 and swiftly enjoined by a federal judge in the Northern District of California – conflicted with federal immigration statutes that govern asylum and amounted to “a categorical ban” on certain asylum seekers.

(Reporting by Mica Rosenberg in New York; Additional reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York, Ted Hesson in Washington and Kristina Cooke in Los Angeles; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Howard Goller)

Boston Marathon bomber seeks to avoid death penalty

Boston Marathon bomber seeks to avoid death penalty
By Tim McLaughlin

BOSTON (Reuters) – Lawyers for Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on Thursday will try to persuade a federal appeals court that the death sentence he faces is unfair because it was handed down by a tainted jury.

Tsarnaev’s defense team, in briefs filed with the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston, have argued that the publicity and manhunt leading to his capture in April 2013 biased the pool of potential jurors, including one actual juror who joined the unanimous vote for the death penalty.

The then-19-year-old Tsarnaev and his 26-year-old brother Tamerlan sparked five days of panic in Boston when they detonated a pair of homemade pressure cooker bombs at the marathon’s finish line, killing three people and injuring more than 200.

The pair eluded capture for days, punctuated by a gunbattle with police in Watertown, Massachusetts, in which Tamerlan was killed. Boston and most of its suburbs were locked down for a day as armed officers and troops conducted a house-to-house search for Dzhokhar.

Tsarnaev, now 26, was sentenced to death in 2015 after a jury found him guilty of killing three people in the April 15, 2013 bombing – Martin Richard, 8; Chinese exchange student Lingzi Lu, 26, and restaurant manager Krystle Campbell – and murdering Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer Sean Collier, 26, three days later as the brothers attempted to flee.

Tsarnaev is not expected to be present during two hours of oral arguments at the same federal courthouse in Boston where he was convicted. His lawyers are asking the appeals court to reverse his death sentence.

“Tsarnaev was tried in a community still suffering from his crimes,” his defense team argued in court papers. “Two of the jurors who voted to sentence him to death lied during (jury selection), including the foreperson, who falsely denied calling Tsarnaev a ‘piece of garbage’ on Twitter, and, as the government concedes, failed to disclose that she and her family had sheltered in place in their Dorchester home during the manhunt.”

U.S. Justice Department lawyers say Tsarnaev received a fair trial and the jury was picked from a population mostly opposed to the death penalty. During his trial, a poll by the Boston Globe showed that about two-thirds of Massachusetts residents favored a life sentence for Tsarnaev.

During the trial, the family of the youngest victim, Richard, also asked prosecutors to consider taking the death penalty off the table.

(Reporting By Tim McLaughlin; Editing by Scott Malone and Grant McCool)

Charleston mass shooting victims can sue U.S. over gun purchase: court

FILE PHOTO: Dylann Roof sits in the court room at the Charleston County Judicial Center to enter his guilty plea on murder charges in state court for the 2015 shooting massacre at a historic black church, in Charleston, South Carolina, U.S., April 10, 2017. REUTERS/Grace Beahm/Pool/File Photo

By Jonathan Stempel

(Reuters) – Survivors of a 2015 mass shooting at a South Carolina church can sue the U.S. government over its alleged negligence in allowing Dylann Roof to buy the gun he used to kill nine African-Americans, a federal appeals court said on Friday.

The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the government was not immune from liability under either the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) or the Brady Act to prevent handgun violence.

Friday’s decision by a three-judge panel revived 16 lawsuits that challenged lapses in how the government vetted prospective gun purchasers, including the FBI’s management of the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS).

The U.S. Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

William Wilkins, a former chief judge of the 4th Circuit representing the victims, said Congress had charged the FBI with adopting procedures “to stop people like Roof who could obtain assassins’ weapons” from doing so.

“The government has to do what the law requires,” Wilkins said in an interview. “It failed to do that in this case.”

Roof, a white supremacist, had been admitted to a Bible study session at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston on June 17, 2015, where he then used his .45-caliber Glock semiautomatic pistol in the shooting.

Victims said a proper background check would have shown that Roof had recently admitted to drug possession, which would have disqualified him from buying the gun from a federally licensed dealer two months earlier.

Chief Judge Roger Gregory wrote for the Richmond, Virginia-based appeals court that no one disputed that a proper check would have stopped Roof.

But he said U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel in Charleston was wrong to dismiss the lawsuits on immunity grounds in June 2018, even as Gergel faulted the government’s “abysmally poor policy choices” in managing the background check system.

Gregory said the case turned on the NICS examiner’s alleged negligence in disregarding mandatory procedures. “The government can claim no immunity in these circumstances,” he wrote.

Circuit Judge G. Steven Agee partially dissented, saying the government was not immune from Brady Act claims, but that Gergel properly dismissed the FTCA case.

Roof, now 25, was sentenced to death in January 2017 after being convicted on 33 federal counts related to the shooting, including hate crimes. He pleaded guilty three months later to state murder charges, and was sentenced to nine consecutive life terms without parole.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Leslie Adler and Alistair Bell)

Lawsuit over U.S. airport screener abuses is revived

FILE PHOTO: TSA agents check passengers at a security checkpoint at LaGuardia Airport in New York City, New York, U.S., January 31, 2019. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri/File Photo

(Reuters) – A federal appeals court on Friday handed a victory to fliers who object to invasive screenings at U.S. airport security checkpoints, saying screeners are not absolutely immune from lawsuits accusing them of abusive conduct.

In a 9-4 decision, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia said Transportation Security Agency (TSA) screeners qualified as “officers of the United States” for purposes of searching passengers “for violations of federal law,” waiving the government’s immunity from some lawsuits.

The decision reversed a July 2018 ruling by a three-judge panel of the same court.

It is a victory for Nadine Pellegrino, a business consultant from Boca Raton, Florida, who with her husband sued for false arrest, false imprisonment and malicious prosecution over a July 2006 altercation at Philadelphia International Airport.

Circuit Judge Thomas Ambro, who wrote the majority opinion, said the decision was unlikely to spur a flood of litigation, given how “the overwhelming majority” of screeners do their jobs professionally “despite far more grumbling than appreciation.”

Writing for the dissenters, Circuit Judge Cheryl Krause accused the majority of subjecting the government to potential “vast liability” despite a lack of congressional intent.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

U.S. court to reconsider shielding airport screeners from abuse claims

FILE PHOTO: A Transportation Security Administration (TSA) official wears a TSA badge at Terminal 4 of JFK airport in New York City, U.S., May 17, 2017. REUTERS/Joe Penney/File Photo

By Jonathan Stempel

(Reuters) – A federal appeals court decided to revisit its recent decision that made it difficult for travelers to sue U.S. airport screeners over claims of abuse at security checkpoints.

In a brief order on Wednesday, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia said a 13-judge panel will reconsider the 2-1 decision at a Feb. 20 hearing, in a rare review by the full court known as “en banc.”

The court had held on July 11 that U.S. Transportation Security Administration screeners were administrative employees of the federal government, and did not qualify as “investigative or law enforcement officers” who could be liable for civil claims under the Federal Tort Claims Act.

While the decision did not address criminal liability, Circuit Judge Thomas Ambro said in a dissent at the time that it would prevent many passengers from obtaining “any meaningful remedy” for assaults, wrongful detentions and made-up criminal charges, something he said Congress did not intend.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Justice, which represented the screeners, declined to comment.

The case had been brought by Nadine Pellegrino, a business consultant from Boca Raton, Florida, following a July 2006 screening at Philadelphia International Airport.

Pellegrino objected to the invasiveness of the screening, and was eventually jailed for about 18 hours and criminally charged with assault, making terroristic threats and other crimes, which she denied. She was acquitted at a trial.

Her case drew support from such groups as the Cato Institute and the American Civil Liberties Union.

“It’s vitally important for government officers to be held accountable for intentional misconduct,” ACLU lawyer Hugh Handeyside said in an interview. “Without that possibility, we might see more abuses.”

Ambro said the July 11 decision could provide immunity even in extreme cases, citing a 2015 incident where screeners allegedly manipulated a Denver International Airport checkpoint so a male screener could grope “attractive” male passengers.

Pellegrino, now 69, said an in interview the support she has received has been “astonishing,” adding: “We feel elated today that we’ll have an opportunity to have this reconsidered.”

The 3rd Circuit hears appeals from Delaware, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, but other courts can cite its decisions as precedent.

The case is Pellegrino et al v U.S. Transportation Security Administration et al, 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 15-3047.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Frances Kerry)