The US Senate Judiciary Committee heard testimony Thursday from outside witnesses on the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett. The final day started with a battle between parties. Senate Republicans pushed to have Barrett’s vote for nomination next week, on October 22 at 1 PM while the Democrats argued this violated committee rules. [...]

US District Judge Robert Pitman ruled against an order by Texas Governor Greg Abbott limiting each county to only one mail-in ballot-return center. Abbott issued this order on October 1, and argued that reducing the number of locations to return mail-in ballots would also reduce the risk of voter fraud. This order resulted in the [...]

California Governor Gavin Newsom announced on Wednesday that California will no longer permit new gasoline-powered cars and passenger trucks to be sold in the state beginning in 2035.  This announcement coincides with California’s zero-emission goal, which gasoline-powered transportation currently contradicts. According to the announcement, gasoline vehicle emissions account for more than 50 percent of the [...]

Johns Hopkins University filed a lawsuit Friday against the Trump administration’s July 6 announcement from the office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that international students enrolled only in online classes this fall will be removed. The lawsuit highlights that this directive singles out universities that are deciding not to host a “hybrid model—a mixture [...]

Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) filed suit this morning after ICE announced that they were rescinding the COVID-19 exemption for international students who are currently attending US universities. The complaint emphasizes that this is a direct contradiction to the earlier stance taken by the administration. The federal government is retracting their stance [...]

A judge for the US District Court for the District of Maryland ordered Friday that non-citizens held in immigrant detention centers must be provided fair hearings and the government must prove if an immigrant is a flight risk. Consistent with the Trump administration’s orders, immigrants, even asylum seekers, were being held without bond, despite never having [...]

Thirty-seven current prosecutors and 12 current and retired police chiefs and sheriffs filed an amicus curiae brief Thursday in support medically vulnerable plaintiffs seeking immediate release or transfer from Elkton Federal Correctional Institution (FCI-Elkton) in Ohio. Plaintiffs filed a class action lawsuit last month after at least nine individuals in custody died of COVID-19, and [...]

Judge Cathy Bissoon of the US District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania entered a consent order Wednesday declaring that the Allegheny County jail must put medically vulnerable people within their own cells and keep newly admitted inmates within isolation for two weeks, consistent with Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) orders. Additionally, the [...]

Virginia after Governor Ralph Northam signed numerous landmark bills into law Sunday, including multiple criminal justice reform bills. House Bill 972 decriminalizes simple possession of marijuana and creates a $25 civil penalty but removes the current criminal offense classification as a misdemeanor. This will take effect July 1 if the General Assembly agrees to technical amendments [...]

Federal District Judge of the Southern District of Ohio Eastern Division, Michael H. Watson dismissed a complaint that was filed on Monday by voting rights groups declaring that the states’ new primary vote plan violates the National Voter Registration Act and the First and 14th Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. The lawsuit stemmed from the Ohio [...]