Legal News

The American Bar Association (ABA) issued a resolution Tuesday encouraging state licensing officials to grant recent law school graduates emergency authorization to practice law in their states. “The American Bar Association strongly urges the highest court or bar admission authority of each jurisdiction to immediately adopt emergency rules that would authorize 2019 and 2020 law [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit overruled a decision by the District Court for the Western District of Texas on Tuesday, instead allowing executive order GA-09 by Texas Governor Greg Abbott banning most abortions to preserve medical supplies during the COVID-19 pandemic. Abbott released this executive order on March 22 ordering that [...]

During a Coronavirus Taskforce press briefing on Tuesday, US President Donald Trump announced that the US could withhold funding to the World Health Organization (WHO). Trump first criticized the organization for “disagree with travel ban.” He then suggested that WHO “could have called months earlier … and should have known .” Then the president suggested [...]

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a class action lawsuit on Monday against the director of the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) and the warden of Oakdale Federal Detention Centers in Louisiana seeking “the release of people who are incarcerated and at high risk for serious illness or death in the event of COVID-19 [...]

UN Secretary-General António Guterres called Sunday for a “ceasefire” in domestic violence, after a recent surge following global COVID-19 lockdowns. “Peace is not just the absence of war. Many women under lockdown for COVID-19 face violence where they should be safest: in their own homes,” Guterres tweeted. “I urge all governments to put women’s safety [...]

A federal judge in California ruled Monday against numerous Los Angeles-area gun stores and the National Rifle Association in their case challenging local and statewide orders to close shop during the COVID-19 pandemic. The plaintiffs, citing the Second Amendment, sought to enjoin the enforcement of various business closure orders in Los Angeles that Mayor Eric [...]

The Judicial Council, the policymaking body of the California courts, approved 11 temporary emergency rules on Monday to ensure California courts can meet the state’s health directives while also providing the public with due process and access to justice. The rules that were adopted include “setting bail statewide at $0 for misdemeanors and lower-level felonies to [...]

A judge for the US District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma issued a temporary restraining order Monday against the state’s ban on abortion during the COVID-19 pandemic. The request for a temporary restraining order was brought to the court by abortion rights advocates against Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt after he issued an executive [...]

The US Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Office of General Counsel and Media Bureau on Monday rejected a petition by Free Press, an advocacy group, demanding a government investigation into broadcasters that aired statements by President Donald Trump during White House Coronavirus Task Force briefings and related commentary regarding the COVID-19 pandemic by other on-air personalities. [...]

On Monday night, the Wisconsin Supreme Court blocked Governor Tony Evers’s emergency executive order to postpone the state’s Tuesday, April 7, primary election— mere hours after Evers signed it. Shortly after, the US Supreme Court denied an extension of absentee ballot submission deadlines. The election will go forward as planned. In the initial order, Evers [...]