#9th Circuit Ruling

[fedkite]

Federal Appeals Courts Rebuke Government for Breaching Plea Agreements

The 9th and 1st Circuit Courts recently ruled against government tactics that undermined plea agreements, signaling a critical stance on prosecutorial conduct. In Joe Farrago-Contrarias’ case, the government recommended a low-end sentence of 151 months for meth distribution but included inflammatory remarks in its memo, leading to a 188-month sentence. The 9th Circuit criticized this approach,…

[reasonsforhope]

"Arizona’s ban on transgender athletes has been blocked by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which called the 2022 law “the essence of discrimination.”

Supporters of the so-called Save Women’s Sports Act claimed that the law protected girls and women in schools and colleges from “unfair competition.” However, the federal court found that pre-pubescent trans girls and trans girls on puberty blockers have no significant physical advantages over cis girls their own age, The San Francisco Chronicle reported.

“[The law] to ensure competitive fairness and equal athletic opportunities for cisgender female athletes cannot be squared with the fact that the Act bars students from female athletics based entirely on transgender status,” Judge Morgan Christen wrote in the court’s 3-0 decision.

“[The law] permits all students other than transgender women and girls to play on teams consistent with their gender identities,” Christen continued, “transgender women and girls alone are barred from doing so. This is the essence of discrimination.”

Two trans girls, an 11-year-old soccer player and a 15-year-old swimmer and volleyball player on puberty blockers, sued to overturn the law; 18 states signed court arguments in favor of the law, and 17 states signed arguments against it.

A lower federal court also ruled against the law, and the two court rulings against it can now be cited as a legal precedent to help other trans girls play sports. However, Arizona could also appeal the decision to be heard by an 11-judge panel on the appeals court or ask the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on the matter.

“A student’s transgender status is not an accurate proxy for athletic ability and competitive advantage,” said Rachel Berg, a lawyer with the National Center for Lesbian Rights who represented the two girls in court. “Our clients are thrilled to be able to continue to play on girls’ sports teams with their friends while this case proceeds to trial.”"

-via LGBTQ Nation, September 10, 2024

[constantly-deactivated]

The 9th Circuit Court Rules mRNA COVID-19 Shots Not Vaccines.

Alex Jones: "The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the COVID-19 mRNA jabs do not qualify as vaccines, a decision that could expose pharmaceutical companies who manufactured them to future liability lawsuits..." 🤔

[1americanconservative]

@BehizyTweets

BREAKING: The 9th Circuit Court has just ruled against Democrats and in favor of a new state law that requires election officials to REJECT voter registrations that don't come with proof of citizenship The lower courts froze the law but the appeals court just reinstated it, "The district court’s May 2, 2024 judgment is therefore stayed to the extent that it bars enforcement of A.R.S. § 16-121.01(C)." This is a MASSIVE decision for election integrity. I believe people like

@elonmusk

have brought many eyeballs to this big issue and the courts are responding appropriately

[odinsblog]

When most people talk about expanding the Supreme Court, they're talking about adding a few Justices, two or four to the bench. But I am not most people. I do not think we should add a few Justices to get into an endless tit for tat with Mitch McConnell and his Federalist Society forces. I think we should blow the lid clear off this incrementally institutionalized motherfucker, and add 20 Justices.

I'd like to tell you about my Court expansion plan and explain why adding many Justices instead of fewer Justices is actually a better reform, fixes more underlying problems with the Court, and works out to be less partisan or political than some of the more incremental plans out there.

Let's start with the basics.

Expanding the number of Justices on the Supreme Court can be done with a simple act of Congress, passed by the Senate and signed by the President. Court expansion does not become easier or harder based on the number of Justices you seek to add to the Court. From a civics perspective, the process to add two Justices to the Court is just the same as the process to add 20.

Arguably, the rationale is the same too.

The current plan, supported by some Democrats, is to add four Justices to the Supreme Court. Their arguments are that the Court has gotten woefully out of step with the American people and the elected branches of government, which is true.

They argue that the country is a lot bigger now than it was in 1869, when Congress set the number of Supreme Court Justices at nine, which is also true. Basically, all of these arguments flow together into the catchphrase, “we have 13 Circuit Courts of Appeal, and so we should have 13 Justices.”

See, back in the day, each Supreme Court Justice was responsible for one lower Circuit Court of Appeal. Procedurally, appeals from the lower circuits are heard first by the Justice responsible for that circuit. But now we have 13 lower Circuit Courts of Appeal, meaning some Justices have to oversee more than one. If we expanded the Court to 13 Justices, we'd get back to a one to one ratio for Supreme Court Justice per Circuit Court of Appeal.

But it doesn't actually matter how many circuits each Justice presides over, because all the Justices do is move an appeal from the lower court to the Supreme Court for the full Court to consider whether to hear the appeal.

Their function is purely clerical.

It doesn't matter.

One justice could oversee all 13 circuits while the other eight went fishing, kind of like hazing a rookie on a team. And it wouldn't make a damn bit of difference in terms of the number of cases the Supreme Court hears. It's just a question of who has to work on Saturdays.

Indeed, I'm not even sure that I want the Court to hear more cases. These people are unelected, and these people already have too much power. More cases just gives them more opportunities to screw things up. I don't need the Court to make more decisions. I need the Court to make fewer shitty decisions. And for that, I need to reform how the Court makes those decisions. And for that, I need more people. And I need those people to make their decisions in panels.

Those lower courts, those 13 Circuit Courts of Appeal, almost all of them operate with more than nine judges. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has — wait for it — 29 judges!

All the lower courts use what's called a panel system. When they catch a case, three judges are chosen at random from all the judges on the circuit to hear the case. Those three judges then issue a ruling. If the majority of the circuit disagrees, they can vote to rehear the case as a full circuit.

The legal jargon here is called “en banc” when the full circuit hears the case.

But most of the time, that three judge panel ruling is the final ruling on the issue, with the circuit going en banc only when they believe the three judge panel got it clearly wrong.

Think about how different it would be if our Supreme Court operated on a panel system instead of showing up to Court knowing that six conservative Justices were against you, or the one or two conservative Justices that you invited onto your super yacht are guaranteed to hear your case.

You literally wouldn't know which Justices you'd get on your panel.

Even on a six-three conservative court, you might draw a panel that was two-to-one liberals, or you might draw Roberts, Kavanaugh, and Barrett instead of Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch, which could make a huge difference. Either way, you wouldn't know which Justices you'd get.

Not only does that make a big difference in terms of the appearance of fairness, especially in this time when some Justices are openly corrupt, it also makes a big difference in terms of what kinds of cases and arguments people would bring to the Court. Without knowing which Justices they'd get, litigants and red state attorney generals would have to tailor their arguments to a more center mass, mainstream temperament, instead of merely shooting their shot and hoping their arch conservatives can bully a moderate or two to vote with them.

Now, you can do panels with nine or 13 Justices, but you pretty much have to do panels with 29 Justices. Overloading the Court with Justices would essentially force them to adopt the random assignment process used by every other Court.

That would be good.

Sure, litigants could always hope for en banc review, where the full partisan makeup of the Court could be brought to bear. BUT, getting a majority of 29 Justices to overrule a panel decision requires 15 votes. Consider that right now you only need four votes, a minority of the nine member Court, to get the full Court to hear a case.

I'm no mathlete, but I'm pretty sure that 15 is just a higher bar.

That brings me to my next big point about expanding the Court to 29: Moderation.

Most people say that they do not want the Court to be too extreme to either side. Generally, I think that argument is bollocks. I, in fact, do want the Court to be extreme in its defense of voting rights, women's rights, and human rights. But maybe I'm weird.

If you want the Supreme Court to be a more moderate institution, then you should want as many Justices on the Supreme Court as possible. Why? Because cobbling together a 15-14 majority on a 29 member Court will often yield a more moderate decision than a five-four majority on a nine member Court.

Not going to lie. The law is complicated, and judges are quirky. If you invited five judges off the street over for a barbecue, they wouldn't be able to agree on whether hot dogs and hamburgers count as sandwiches.

It's simply easier to get five people to do something extreme than it is to get 15 people to do something extreme.

Think about your own life.

If you wanted to hike up a damn mountain, that is an activity for you and a couple of your closest friends. You're not taking 15 people to climb a mountain. That's not even a hike. That's an expedition, and you're expecting one or two of them to be eaten by bears on the way to the top. But if you're organizing an outdoor activity for 15 people, you're going to go to the park, and your friends will be expected to bring their own beer.

Most likely, adding 20 Justices would moderate the conservative majority just by putting enough people and personalities in the mix that it would be harder for them to do their most destructive work.

Just think about how the five worst senators you know, or the five worst congresspeople you can think of, often don't get their way because they can't even convince other members of their party to go along with their nihilist conservative ride.

Note, I said Conservative majority.

The astute reader will notice that I have not said that I want to add 20 fire-breathing liberal comrades who will stick it to Das Kapital for the rest of their lives. No, I believe the benefits of this kind of court expansion are so great — panels and the moderation from having more justices trying to cobble together en banc majority opinions — that I'd be willing to split the new justices ten and ten with conservative choices.

A 16-13 conservative leaning court would just be better than a six-three conservative court, even if my guys are still in the minority. The only litmus test I'd have for this plan is that all 20 have to be objectively pro-Democratic, self-government. All 20 have to think the Supreme Court has too much power. You give me 20 people who think the court should not be rulers in robes, and I'll take my chances.

However, there's no objective reason for elected Democrats to be as nice and friendly as I am when adding 20 Justices. Off the top, seats should be split eleven to nine, because Mitch McConnell and the Republicans must be made to pay for their shenanigans with the Merrick Garland nomination under Barack Obama. Republicans stole a seat. Democrats should take it back, full stop. I will take no further questions about this.

From there, this is where Democrats could, I don't know, engage in political hardball instead of being SAPS like always.

You see, right now, Republicans are dead set against court expansion because they are winning with the Court as it is. I can make all of the pro-reform, good government arguments under the sun, and the Republicans will ignore them because, again, they're winning right now.

But if you put forward a bill to add 20 seats, the Republican incentives possibly change: obstruct, and the Democrats push through court expansion on their own, and add 20 Justices of their own choosing, and you end up with people like, well, like me on the court. Or Mitch McConnell could release Senators to vote for the plan, and Republicans can share in the bounty.

It puts a different kind of question to McConnell: Join, get nine conservative Justices and keep a 15-14 conservative majority on the court, or Obstruct, and create a 23 to six liberal majority on the court, and trust that Republicans will take over the House, Senate, and White House so they can add 20 of their own Justices in the future.

Note that McConnell will have to run that whole table while overcoming a super liberal Supreme Court that restores the Voting Rights Act and strikes down Republican gerrymanders. Good luck, Mitch.

My plan wins either way.

Either we get a 29 person court that is more moderate, we get a 29 person court that is uber liberal, or McConnell does run the table and we end up with a 49 person court or a 69 person court. And while Republicans are in control of that bloated body, everybody understands that the Court is just a political branch there to rubber-stamp the acts of the President who appointed them.

Perhaps then, voters would start voting based on who they want to be in control of that court, instead of who they want to have a beer with.

The court is either fixed, or neutered.

It's a win-win.

I know 20 is a big number. I know we've all been institutionalized to believe that incremental change is the only change possible. And I know it sounds fanciful to ask for 20 when the starting offer from the establishment of the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, and President Joe Biden, is zero.

But like a doctor with poor bedside manner, I'm less interested in people's feelings and more interested in fixing the problem.

If you give me two Justices or four Justices, I can reverse a number of conservative policies that they've shoved through a Supreme Court that has already been illegitimately packed with Republican appointees. If you give me a few Justices, I can reestablish a center-left, pro-democracy majority… at least until those new Justices die at the wrong time, under the wrong president.

But if you give me 20 Justices, I can fix the whole fucking thing.

—ELIE MYSTAL, In Contempt of Court

[justinspoliticalcorner]

AP. via Daily Kos:

The Supreme Court decided on Friday that cities can enforce bans on homeless people sleeping outdoors in West Coast areas where shelter space is lacking. The case is the most significant to come before the high court in decades on the issue and comes as a rising number of people in the U.S. are without a permanent place to live. In a 6-3 decision along ideological lines, the high court reversed a ruling by a San Francisco-based appeals court that found outdoor sleeping bans amount to cruel and unusual punishment. The majority found that the 8th Amendment prohibition does not extend to bans on outdoor sleeping bans.

“Homelessness is complex. Its causes are many. So may be the public policy responses required to address it,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the majority. “A handful of federal judges cannot begin to ‘match’ the collective wisdom the American people possess in deciding ‘how best to handle’ a pressing social question like homelessness.” A bipartisan group of leaders had argued the ruling against the bans made it harder to manage outdoor encampments encroaching on sidewalks and other public spaces in nine Western states. That includes California, which is home to one-third of the country’s homeless population. “Cities across the West report that the 9th Circuit’s involuntary test has crated intolerable uncertainty for them,” Gorsuch wrote. Homeless advocates, on the other hand, said that allowing cities to punish people who need a place to sleep would criminalize homelessness and ultimately make the crisis worse. Cities had been allowed to regulate encampments but couldn’t bar people from sleeping outdoors.

In a 6-3 decision on ideological lines in the Grants Pass v. Johnson case, the right-wing majority on SCOTUS ruled in favor of cruelty towards the unhoused.

[decolonize-the-everything]

The Willow Project is legitimately evil. It's a huge, disastrous oil project that ConocoPhillips wants to do in Alaska. Biden approved it despite huge backlash against it and consistent protests against things similar such as cop city forest, DAPL, & Line 3.

As a democrat who wants to pretend he's for climate change and gives a shit about BIPOC and the health of humans or the planet he has a weird way of showing it.

To support natives and a greener planet reblog this to spread awareness, ally yourself against the willow project on social media, boycott Conoco, sign petitions, & call/write your reps telling them to withdraw support of ConocoPhillips oil in your state due to the hazardous Willow Project or you'll flip the next election. You didn't elect someone who'd harm the whole planet for greed did you? No. So say that.

Anyway, let's get to it, here are some graphics and articles with more info.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday issued a one-page ruling rejecting requests from an Alaska Native organization and several environmental groups to delay ConocoPhillips’ construction work.

The appeals ruling came in a pair of lawsuits challenging the Biden administration’s March 13 approval of the Willow project. The project, which promises to be the biggest Alaska oil development in decades, would be the westernmost producing oil field on the North Slope. It is located within the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, and it would tap into reserves estimated at about 600 million barrels, producing a peak of 180,000 barrels per day.

x

[darkeagleruins]

BREAKING: The 9th Circuit Court just ruled against Democrats by overruling the lower court judge who blocked an Arizona election integrity law that made it a felony to forward mail-in ballots to people who live elsewhere. It's now REINSTATED!

"In sum, the district court ABUSED its discretion in concluding that the plaintiffs would likely prevail in their challenge of the Felony Provision and granting their motion for preliminary injunction. Because we hold that the Felony Provision is not unconstitutionally vague, the plaintiffs have not met their burden of showing a likelihood of success on the merits."

- Judge Kenneth Lee, writing for the majority The law also includes a provision requiring local election officials to cancel a voter's registration if they find out the voter is registered to vote in another county and has a provision to remove them from the permanent vote-by-mail list.

It's very telling that Democrats argued that the law explicitly harms them. Are they trying to tell us that if we make it harder to cheat, they'll never win?

[coquelicoq]

A Grants Pass city ordinance requires homeless residents living in vehicles to move every 72 hours, and police require anyone living in parks to move as often as is allowed by state law, which is also every 72 hours. City code bars anyone from sleeping in public spaces or using sleeping materials for the purpose of maintaining a temporary place to live under threat of criminal and civil penalty.

[...]

The Supreme Court’s decision in the case out of southern Oregon, expected in June, will broadly impact how local governments write homelessness policy in the United States.

Since the Supreme Court took up the case in January, Democrat and Republican governments, district attorneys and business associations submitted amicus briefs arguing a 2022 Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals injunction removes necessary tools for enforcing laws against homeless residents sleeping on public property.

A host of organizations submitted amicus briefs in support of counsel representing homeless residents, saying laws punishing individuals for being homeless are cruel and unusual. The briefs also argued the laws do nothing to solve the homelessness crisis and will likely exacerbate the issue.

[...]

Referring to the state law, Jackson asked about “constitutional avoidance,” a legal doctrine that would allow the Supreme Court to decline to render a decision on the constitutionality of the Grants Pass ordinance. Roberts appeared to also question the court’s responsibility, asking why “these nine people are the best people to judge and weigh those policy judgements.”

The lower court’s decision will stand if the court decides not to issue a ruling as a matter of constitutional avoidance. Kelsi Corkran, Georgetown Law Supreme Court director and counsel for the class of homeless residents, told the court she would have no issues with that outcome.

If the court determined the ordinance does not violate the Eighth Amendment because Oregon has a necessity defense, the burden of proof would fall on each homeless individual to show a court they were sleeping outside for a reason, each time they received a citation.

[...]

“Ending homelessness requires collaboration and buy-in,” Rabinowitz said. “That cannot happen when the government is focused on throwing away people's stuff and throwing folks in jail.”

Tickets can impact credit scores, making it more difficult for people to be accepted into housing, and a criminal history also creates significant barriers.

“All of these things break connections and displace people from their chosen communities,” Rabinowitz said. “They all make homelessness worse.”

There is a broad range for what the Supreme Court could ultimately decide, Rabinowitz said. It could uphold the 9th Circuit’s decision saying civil and criminal punishments against homeless residents for being homeless are cruel and unusual. It could say people can be fined but not arrested, or it could overturn Martin v. Boise. While there appeared to be little appetite for it in the courtroom, the court could go so far as to say it has wrongly interpreted the Eighth Amendment in cases like 1962’s Robinson v. California. That could make way for laws criminalizing other involuntary statuses.

Rabinowitz said in the best-case scenario, the Supreme Court will set a bar — albeit a low bar — saying homelessness cannot be criminalized. People still need a place to go, regardless of the court’s decision. Until the support systems are in place to keep people from becoming homeless, the crisis will continue, according to Rabinowitz.

“Homelessness is a choice made by our elected officials every day when they fail to fund housing,” he said.

8 May 2024

[beardedmrbean]

The FBI violated private citizens’ constitutional rights when it seized contents from hundreds of safe deposit boxes during a 2021 raid on a Beverly Hills business suspected of money laundering, a federal appeals court ruled last week.

"This was a resounding victory, not just for our clients, but for the hundreds of people who've been stuck in a nightmare for years because of what the FBI did," Institute for Justice Senior Attorney Rob Frommer, who represented several plaintiffs in the case, told Fox News.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals found the bureau violated U.S. Private Vaults box holders’ Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures by opening and cataloging the contents of 1,400 safe deposit boxes without individual criminal warrants for each.

The Jan. 23 ruling reversed a 2022 lower court decision siding with the FBI and requires federal officials to destroy any inventory records of the hundreds of box holders not charged with a crime.

Agents took about $86 million in cash from the boxes in the March 2021 raid, as well as a trove of jewelry, gold bars and coins, silver and other valuables. In May of that year, the FBI "commenced administrative forfeiture proceedings" against an unspecified number of the boxes, according to court documents filed by the government.

Civil asset forfeiture is the process through which the government seizes money or other property believed to be linked to a crime, even if the owner isn't charged with a crime.

The FBI's raid on U.S. Private Vaults was part of its investigation on the company, which ultimately shut down and pleaded guilty to conspiracy to launder drug money. The government argued before the 9th Circuit that its warrant authorized the FBI to seize the deposit boxes and inventory their contents in accordance with standardized policy.

'LEGAL THEFT': TEXAS POLICE SEIZED MAN'S LIFE SAVINGS. NOW THE STATE IS PUTTING HIS CASH ON TRIAL

But unsealed court documents showed neither the FBI nor the U.S. Attorney's Office told the judge in their warrant request that agents planned to confiscate the contents of every box containing at least $5,000 in cash or belongings.

The warrant only authorized authorities to seize business computers, money counters and surveillance equipment. The judge also allowed them to seize safety deposit boxes and keys, but specifically wrote that agents should only "inspect the contents of the boxes in an effort to identify their owners … so that they can claim their property," and that the warrant "does not authorize a criminal search or seizure of the contents of the safety deposit boxes."

In its decision, the 9th Circuit panel wrote that the government had gone beyond the scope of its warrant and violated its own rules by taking inventory of property that wasn’t the subject of a warrant.

Circuit Judge Milan D. Smith Jr. wrote that it was "particularly troubling" that the government couldn’t explain the limitations to these types of inventory searches and questioned how they differed from the "limitless searches of an individual’s personal belongings" like those seen in colonial America.

"It was those very abuses of power, after all, that led to adoption of the Fourth Amendment in the first place," Smith wrote. 

THE FBI TOOK HER LIFE SAVINGS. NOW SHE’S FIGHTING TO HELP OTHERS GET THEIRS BACK.

Jeni Pearsons, one of the plaintiffs in the class-action lawsuit said the win was "incredibly gratifying."

"Hearing these judges just knock them down a peg and talk through the situation, this extraordinary overreach and an actual breaking of civil rights … it was just really, really gratifying," she told Fox News. 

Pearsons and her husband Michael Storc had $20,000 in silver and $2,000 in cash seized from their rented security deposit box during the raid. She teamed up with the Institute for Justice to fight for her property and ultimately prevailed, but said she found the FBI had lost the $2,000 when she went to reclaim it.

"I do think that the FBI is watching this case," Pearsons said. "And I hope that if they do continue with civil forfeiture processes, that they put structure in place so that it's transparent and that it's not just a free-for-all all, which is what this seems to be."

"It's a free-for-all all within a ridiculous defense," Pearsons added.

But Frommer said while this ruling helped "expose the government's attempt to steal innocent people's things," he doesn’t think it will end civil forfeiture abuse.

"I think this ruling on its own is important, but it won't stop the FBI's grasping hand," he told Fox News. "Yeah, they got their hand slapped just now. But unless there's real consequences, they'll just view this as a dry run for the next time."

The FBI declined to comment on the ruling. Thom Mrozek, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles declined to comment on the ruling but said the prosecutor's office was "prepared to destroy records of the inventory search, which is the relief sought by the plaintiffs in the case." ____________

4A= Illegal search and seizure, aka come back with a warrant.

[darkmaga-retard]

https://www.globalresearch.ca/9th-circuit-feds-free-censor-anti-vaccine-misinformation/5865023

9th Circuit: Feds Free to Censor ‘Anti-Vaccine’ ‘Misinformation’ Via Pressure on Social Media Companies

By Ben Bartee

Global Research, August 12, 2024

What a wild coincidence: one branch of government (judiciary) doesn’t mind another branch of government (executive) doing whatever it likes extraconstitutionally.

That’s called Democracy™, boys and girls, and it’s sacred. 

Via Reuters (emphasis added):

“Meta Platforms defeated an appeal by Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine group founded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., challenging its censorship of Facebook posts that spread misinformation about vaccines’ efficacy and safety.

In a decision on Friday, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Pasadena, California, said the nonprofit did not show that Meta worked with or was coerced by federal officials to suppress views challenging “government orthodoxy” on vaccines.

Children’s Health Defense sued in 2020, saying that Meta had violated its constitutional rights by flagging “vaccine misinformation” as false, and taking away its right to advertise on Facebook.”

Not being a legal scholar, I’m sure there’s a good answer to this, but I’m not clear: why would CHD sue Meta and not the government for violating its First Amendment rights, when it was at the government’s behest that Meta acted?

Via Children’s Health Defense (emphasis added):

“CHD’s suit accused the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other federal agencies of “privatizing” the First Amendment by teaming up with Facebook to censor speech which, “under the Bill of Rights, the Government cannot censor.”

According to the lawsuit, filed in August 2020 — and amended in December 2020 — the CDC and the World Health Organization “collaborated closely with Facebook to suppress vaccine safety speech by using a ‘warning label’ and other similar types of notices which, while purporting to flag misinformation, in reality censor valid and truthful speech, including content posted by plaintiff on its Facebook page regarding vaccines.”

This collaboration amounted to “state action” and was in violation of the First Amendment, CHD said…

The court… ruled that CHD failed to allege any facts that would suggest an agreement between the government and Meta that “required Meta to take a particular action in response to misinformation about vaccines or that the government coerced Meta into implementing a specific policy.””

I must have skipped the day in Constitution Law at Valdosta State University when we learned that the Constitution carves out special powers for the government to interfere in a private company’s affairs in order to cajole them into suppressing speech it finds distasteful. My mistaken impression was that the First Amendment covered that whole issue pretty decisively.

Maybe it’s the ambiguous  “promoting the general welfare” clause, which has been invoked in all manner of absurd government social engineering over the years.

These are not two people “talking to each other.” This is one entity — the government — with immense power to regulate, tax, and even shut down the other entity — Meta — if it doesn’t go with the program a la TikTok.

And Meta is massively exposed in multiple ways: it turns over private user data to shady third parties for cash; it breaches anti-trust laws; it colludes with hostile foreign governments, to name a few. Were the government so inclined, it could flush Meta down the memory hole into oblivion in a heartbeat.

[mariacallous]

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Friday allowed Idaho to enforce its strict abortion ban, even in medical emergencies, while a legal fight continues.

The justices said they would hear arguments in April and put on hold a lower court ruling that had blocked the Idaho law in hospital emergencies, based on a lawsuit filed by the Biden administration.

Hospitals that receive Medicare funds are required by a federal law to provide emergency care, potentially including abortion, no matter if there’s a state law banning abortion, the administration argued.

The legal fight followed the court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and allow states to severely restrict or ban abortion. The Biden administration issued guidance about the law, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTALA, two weeks after the high court ruling in 2022. The Democratic administration sued Idaho a month later.

U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill in Idaho agreed with the administration. But in a separate case in Texas, a judge sided with the state.

Idaho makes it a crime with a prison term of up to five years for anyone who performs or assists in an abortion.

But the administration argues EMTALA requires health care providers to perform abortions for emergency room patients when needed to treat an emergency medical condition, even if doing so might conflict with a state’s abortion restrictions.

Those conditions include severe bleeding, preeclampsia and certain pregnancy-related infections.

“For certain medical emergencies, abortion care is the necessary stabilizing treatment,” Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote in an administration filing at the Supreme Court.

The state argued that the administration was misusing a law intended to prevent hospitals from dumping patients and imposing “a federal abortion mandate” on states. “EMTALA says nothing about abortion,” Idaho Attorney General Raul Labrador told the court in a brief.

Just Tuesday, the federal appeals court in New Orleans came to the same conclusion as Labrador. A three-judge panel ruled that the administration cannot use EMTALA to require hospitals in Texas to provide abortions for women whose lives are at risk due to pregnancy. Two of the three judges are appointees of President Donald Trump, and the other was appointed by another Republican president, George W. Bush.

The appeals court affirmed a ruling by U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix, also a Trump appointee. Hendrix wrote that adopting the Biden administration’s view would force physicians to place the health of the pregnant person over that of the fetus or embryo even though EMTALA “is silent as to abortion.”

After Winmill, an appointee of Democratic President Bill Clinton, issued his ruling, Idaho lawmakers won an order allowing the law to be fully enforced from an all-Republican, Trump-appointed panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. But a larger contingent of 9th Circuit judges threw out the panel’s ruling and set arguments in the case for late January.

[freetheshit-outofyou]

little nuggets from the Duncan v. Bonta, No. 19-55376 (9th Cir. 2021) ruling. California's magazine ban. Judge Roger T. Benitez (St. Benitez) is dropping truth bombs all over Rob Bonta, Attorney General of the State of California.

“Rather than re-tell the long history of large-capacity magazines in this country, we offer some highlights:

 • The first known firearm capable of firing more than ten rounds without reloading was a 16-shooter invented in 1580.

• The earliest record of a repeating firearm in America noted that it fired more than ten rounds: In 1722, Samuel Niles wrote of Indians being entertained by a firearm that “though loaded but once, . . . was discharged eleven times following, with bullets, in the space of two minutes.” Harold L. Peterson, Arms and Armor in Colonial America 1526–1783, 215 (2000). DUNCAN V. BONTA 133 • At the Founding, the state-of the-art firearm was the Girandoni air rifle with a 22-shot magazine capacity. • In 1777, Joseph Belton demonstrated a 16-shot repeating rifle before the Continental Congress, seeking approval for its manufacture. Robert Held, The Belton Systems, 1758 & 1784–86: America’s First Repeating Firearms 37 (1986).

• By the 1830s, “Pepperbox” pistols had been introduced to the American public and became commercially successful. Depending on the model, the Pepperbox could fire 5, 6, 12, 18, or 24 rounds without reloading. • It took several years for Samuel Colt’s revolvers (also invented in the 1830s) to surpass the Pepperbox pistol in the marketplace.

• From the 1830s to the 1850s, several more rifles were invented with large ammunition capacities, ranging from 12- to 38- shot magazines.

• By 1855, Daniel Wesson (of Smith and Wesson fame) and Oliver Winchester collaborated to introduce the lever action rifle, which contained a 30-round magazine that could be emptied in less than one minute. A later iteration of this rifle, the 16-round Henry lever action rifle, became commercially successful, selling about 14,000 from 1860 to 1866.

• By 1866, the first Winchester rifle, the Model 1866, could hold 17 rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber, all of which could be fired in nine seconds. All told, Winchester made over 170,000 copies of the from 1866 to 1898. See Norm Flayderman, Flayderman’s 134 DUNCAN V. BONTA Guide to Antique Firearms and Their Values 268 (6th ed. 1994).

• A few years later, Winchester produced the M1873, capable of holding 10 to 11 rounds, of which over 720,000 copies were made from 1873 to 1919.

From this history, the clear picture emerges that firearms with large-capacity capabilities were widely possessed by law-abiding citizens by the time of the Second Amendment’s incorporation. In that way, today’s large-capacity magazines are “modern-day equivalents” of these historical arms, and are entitled to the Second Amendment’s protection.” Pages 132-134 “Characterizing my car ban analogies as “inapt,” the majority says that California’s magazine ban is more akin to “speed limits.” But in attempting to trade my analogies for a more favorable one, the majority misses the obvious point: that in every context except our distorted Second Amendment jurisprudence, everyone agrees that when you evaluate whether a response to avoid some harm is “rational”—much less a “reasonable fit”—you takes into account both the gravity of the possible harm and the risk of it occurring. The majority here completely ignores the latter. Perhaps if I use the majority’s own analogy it might click: If California chose to impose a state-wide 10 mph speed limit to prevent the very real harm of over 3,700 motor-vehicle deaths each year experienced from driving over 10 mph, no one would think such a response is rational—precisely because, even though the many deaths from such crashes are terrible, they are a comparatively rare occurrence (although much more common than deaths caused by mass shootings).” Page 152 “The majority also relies on the argument that limiting magazine capacity provides “precious down-time” during reloading, giving “victims and law enforcement officers” time to “fight back.” But here again, that same “down-time” applies equally to a mother seeking to protect herself and her children from a gang of criminals breaking into her home, or a law-abiding citizen caught alone by one of the lawless criminal mobs that recently have been terrorizing cities in our circuit. The majority focuses only on ways higher capacity magazines might cause more harm in the very rare mass shooting, while dismissing the life-threatening impact of being forced to reload in a self-defense situation as a mere “inconvenience,” and characterizing as mere “speculat[ion] . . . situations in which a person might want to use a largecapacity magazine for self-defense.”

Ultimately, it is not altogether surprising that federal judges, who have armed security protecting their workplace, home security systems supplied at taxpayer expense, and the ability to call an armed marshal to their upper-middleclass home whenever they feel the whiff of a threat, would have trouble relating to why the average person might want a magazine with over ten rounds to defend herself. But this simply reinforces why those same judges shouldn’t be expected to fairly balance any Second Amendment test asking whether ordinary law-abiding citizens really need some firearm product or usage.” Pages 164 and 165

[1americanconservative]

BREAKING: The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals just ruled against Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook & Meta, forcing them to face a lawsuit for showing scam advertisements from Chinese companies to their users

“To the extent that Meta manifested its intent to be legally obligated to ’take appropriate action' to combat scam advertisements, it became bound by a contractual duty separate from its status as a publisher. We thus hold that Meta’s duty arising from its promise to moderate third-party advertisements is unrelated to Meta’s publisher status, and § 230(c)(1) does not apply to plaintiffs’ contract claims,” - Judge Ryan Nelson

Zuckerberg's team tried to argue that Section 230 immunizes them from liability but the judges rejected that by simply stating that Zuckerberg is legally bound by his own terms of service to remove scam ads. Each user basically signs a contract with Meta when they create their account and it specifically states, "we [Meta] will take appropriate action' to combat scam advertisements"

[xipiti]

Last week, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in California released a ruling that concluded state highway police were acting lawfully when they forcibly unlocked a suspect’s phone using their fingerprint. You probably didn’t hear about it. The case didn’t get a lot of coverage, especially because the courts weren’t giving a blanket green light for every cop to shove your thumb to your screen during an arrest. But it’s another toll of the warning bell that reminds you to not trust biometrics to keep your phone’s sensitive info private. In many cases, especially if you think you might interact with the police (at a protest, for example), you should seriously consider turning off biometrics on your phone entirely.

The ruling in United States v. Jeremy Travis Payne found that highway officers acted lawfully by using Payne’s thumbprint to unlock his phone after a drug bust. The three-judge panel said cops did not violate Payne’s 5th Amendment rights against self-incrimination nor the 4th Amendment’s protections against unlawful search and seizure for the “forced” use of Payne’s thumb (which was more to say unlocking his phone was coerced, rather than physically placed on the screen by a third party). The court panel admitted from the outset “neither the Supreme Court nor any of our sister circuits have addressed whether the compelled use of a biometric to unlock an electronic device is testimonial.”

[bighermie]

US Appeals Court Issues Order Against California Gun Control Law

US Appeals Court Issues Order Against California Gun Control Law https://link.theepochtimes.com/mkt_app/us/us-appeals-court-issues-order-against-california-gun-control-law-5491117?utm_source=andshare