The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on Tuesday struck down Texas Senate Bill 8, a statute that sought to impose additional burdens on women seeking a common second-trimester abortion procedure, effectively banning it. Further, the bill required that fetal tissue be disposed of only through burial or cremation, prohibiting donation. The bill [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit issued a ruling on Friday that effectively limits ballot drop boxes to one box per county for the upcoming presidential election. This lawsuit was precipitated in mid-August, when Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose issued a directive that limits the number of drop boxes available for [...]

The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday in cases concerning copyright and personal jurisdiction issues. Google v. Oracle, involves a $9 billion copyright suit. The suit originated several years ago when Google created the mobile software Android using part of Oracle’s programming language. While Google argued that allowing the company to copy the language [...]

The US Supreme Court heard arguments Monday morning in the first two cases of the 2020 term. Initially scheduled for March and April, respectively, the arguments were postponed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The justices heard the oral arguments by phone to maintain social distancing protocols. John Carney, the Governor of Delaware and the [...]

Four people filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday attempting to force Facebook to ban posts from militias and hate groups following the shooting of protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Among the plaintiffs was Hannah Gittings, the partner of one of the protesters fatally shot by Kyle Rittenhouse. Rittenhouse was joined to the complaint as a defendant, along [...]

Six months after Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, was shot and killed by police in her home, the city of Louisville, Kentucky, has agreed to pay her family a historic $12 million settlement. Introduced Tuesday, the settlement also contains a promise from the city to adopt police reforms, including mandatory safeguards and an early [...]

US violent crime rates decreased 15 percent in 2019, according to the US Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) latest National Criminal Victimization Survey (NCVS) report on Monday. The decrease in the rate of violent crime from 2018 to 2019 reverses a four-year increase. This represents a drop from 1.4 million victims of violent crimes to [...]

A US Marine convicted of killing a transgender woman in the Philippines was released from prison Monday after President Rodrigo Duterte granted him an absolute pardon. Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. announced the decision on Twitter, stating that the president was “cutting matters short” by releasing Lance Corporal Joseph Pemberton. The pardon, which comes five [...]

The Jehovah’s Witnesses reported Wednesday that two of the religious group’s members have been found guilty of extremism by the Berezovsky City Court (Kemerovo Region) in Russia. The two had been detained since 2018 on criminal charges and were sentenced to four years in prison for being members of an extremist organization. The prosecution in the case had [...]

A judge for the US District Court for the Southern District of New York on Friday allowed Sarah Palin’s defamation claim against the New York Times to proceed, rejecting the paper’s motion for summary judgment. This follows an appeals court ruling in 2019 that allowed the claim to advance to discovery despite an earlier dismissal. [...]