Authorities from the US and other countries have been diligent in hunting down al Qaeda members internationally. Earlier this month, France arrested [JURIST report] a man in Toulon suspected of providing supplies and financial assistance to the terrorist group. Last month a New York citizen pleaded guilty [JURIST report] to providing material support to al Qaeda from the US. In February, Egyptian officials also arrested [JURIST report] a member of the group for whom the US was offering a $5 million reward at an airport in Cairo.

Voting laws have been a controversial issue throughout the US recently. Last month, the US District Court for the District of Columbia heard another challenge [JURIST report] to the DOJ's use of Section 5 in Texas to block implementation of a voter identification law. A federal judge last month also refused the DOJ's request to issue a temporary injunction against Florida's continued practice of purging its voter rolls. The DOJ also blocked a South Carolina voter identification law in December which would have required citizens to present a government-issued ID before voting. In 2009, the Supreme Court upheld [JURIST report] the 1965 Voting Rights Act against challenges to Section 5's bail-out provision, but avoided the issue of whether or not the 2006 extension of Section 5 is constitutional.

The changes to federal regulations come in the wake of a 2010 memo [text, PDF] sent to the heads of federal departments and agencies instructing them to extend benefits to same-sex domestic partners of their employees. Additionally, there have been a bevy of challenges to DOMA in recent weeks. Last week an elderly woman challenged DOMA [JURIST report] in New York. Earlier in the month, a lesbian couple filed a lawsuit in the US District Court for the Central District of California [official website] in a DOMA challenge that seeks to achieve for gay and lesbian couples the same federal immigration rights afforded to heterosexual couples [JURIST report] under the Immigration and Nationality Act [materials]. Also this month 132 members of the US House of Representatives [official website] filed an amicus brief [JURIST report] arguing that statutory classifications based on sexual orientation should be subject to heightened judicial scrutiny, and that DOMA should be overturned as unconstitutional under any level of judicial scrutiny. The brief was filed in the appeal of Karen Golinski v. Office of Personnel Management, the landmark case in which the US District Court for the Northern District of California [official website] ruled that DOMA is unconstitutional [JURIST report]. Last month 10 US senators filed their own amicus brief in the case, arguing in the opposite [JURIST report] that the federal government had a legitimate interest in creating a uniform federal definition of marriage to "[avoid] massive legal uncertainty."