Tag: lawsuits

Citizen Sues Virginia Military Institute And Its Board, Alleging Secret “Group Text” Meetings, Withheld And Altered Public Records

A new lawsuit accuses the governing board of the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) — one of the nation’s last state military colleges and a primary commissioning source for the armed forces — of conducting the public’s business in the shadows.

The verified petition, filed June 1, 2026 in York County Circuit Court (Morris v. Virginia Military Institute, No. CL26005973-00), alleges that some members of VMI’s Board of Visitors held unnoticed “meetings” by reply-all email and other means about official board business — including the day after their own FOIA officer warned them in writing that doing so was illegal, and despite repeated formal training telling them not to “Reply All.”

It further alleges that VMI withheld, redacted, and even altered public records to obscure how a prominent donor and board member was pushed off the board and the board president was forced to step down.

The specifics are striking. According to the petition, board member Donald Hall publicly admitted he was “the principal negotiator” working with the Virginia General Assembly and said former Governor Ralph Northam “was more involved than anyone in this room knows other than me.”

Yet the suit alleges VMI produced no records at all from Hall, none from the former governor, withheld voicemails and call logs, and redacted the identities of email correspondents.

The petition also alleges that VMI’s FOIA officer altered an online records-portal entry to erase his own name —replacing it with the anonymous label “Staff” — and that a process server hired to deliver public comments on important issues intended for the Board to be informed on was turned away from public open committee meetings.

The filing seeks a ruling that the secret meetings and other actions were unlawful, an order forcing board business onto official accounts and devices, and personal civil penalties of $500–$5,000 per violation against the FOIA officer, a board administrator, and six sitting board members — penalties payable to Virginia’s State Literary Fund, not to the petitioner.

The case carries a question of national resonance: how much should politicians control the governance — and the independence — of public universities, and how much of that maneuvering happens off the public record?

What are the implications of these actions on commissioning sources and military readiness?

It also invites an uncomfortable comparison. In the same period, Gov. Abigail Spanberger removed John Rocovich as rector of Virginia Tech’s Board of Visitors — a move he has publicly contested — while the VMI BOV and FOIA staff accused of operating in secret remain in place and operating.

Were the standards applied consistently, and who is really steering Virginia’s military college?

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Biden-Appointed Judge Dismisses Kennedy Center Lawsuit Against Jazz Musician Who Canceled Christmas Eve Show in Hatred for Trump Name – Orders Center to Pay All Legal Fees

District of Columbia Superior Court Judge Tanya Jones Bosier, a Biden appointee, on Friday tossed out a breach-of-contract lawsuit filed by the Kennedy Center against jazz musician Chuck Redd.

The judge ordered the Kennedy Center to pay all of Redd’s legal fees and court costs after ruling there was no signed contract and that the case qualified as a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP) under D.C. law.

As The Gateway Pundit previously reported in December 2025, Redd abruptly canceled his long-running free Christmas Eve Jazz Jam after the Kennedy Center Board of Trustees voted unanimously to rename the facility the Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.

The board acted to honor President Donald Trump’s transformative work in saving and revitalizing the once-troubled national performing arts center.

Former Kennedy Center President Ric Grenell called the cancellation exactly what it was: a “political stunt.” He sent Redd a letter giving “official notice that we will seek $1 million in damages from you for this political stunt” that harmed the nonprofit and the families who counted on the free Millennium Stage holiday tradition.

Now Judge Bosier has ruled the lawsuit itself was improper political retribution.

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Ohio State University Reaches $100 Million Settlement With Nearly 300 Sex Abuse Survivors

Ohio State University has reached a $100 million settlement with nearly 300 former students who had accused the school’s campus doctor of sexually assaulting them decades ago, the school and a lawyer for the victims said on Wednesday.

The settlement with 279 of the 280 former students was ratified by the university’s board on Wednesday. It followed years of litigation over accusations of decades of abuse by Richard Strauss.

The abuse occurred from 1978 to 1998, the year he retired from the faculty.

“The mediation and its confidentiality are continuing as the parties work to finalize the details of the settlements, and additional information will be shared as appropriate,” the school and a lawyer for the victims said in a joint statement.

In February, the university reached eight additional settlements, bringing the total to 304 survivors and more than $60 million.

Strauss, who killed himself in 2005, was employed by Ohio State’s athletic department and medical staff for nearly two decades.

A 2019 report detailing the investigative findings said that Strauss had sexually abused at least 177 men, nearly all of whom were students, and that university staff who knew of the abuse failed to act. The abuse included groping and fondling of the students’ genitals and other acts under the guise of a medical examination.

News of the investigation and its findings prompted more than 500 plaintiffs to sue Ohio State, alleging they had been sexually abused by Strauss and that the school had shown deliberate indifference.

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Taxpayers let off the hook as Newfoundland and Labrador drops equalization lawsuit

The province made the announcement that it was dropping the lawsuit last week after previously seeking additional funding from the federal government through the court challenge.

Terrazzano commented on the implications of the province rescinding its lawsuit, noting the benefit for Canadian taxpayers. “The Newfoundland and Labrador government was suing the federal government, essentially launching this court challenge trying to get the courts to force the federal government to increase the equalization handouts to the province,” he said.

“Newfoundland and Labrador eventually dropped that court case, so it’s a big win for taxpayers … we were intervening in this, because we were arguing like hold on a second right, the constitution was never designed to let provinces sue Ottawa to get bigger handouts from taxpayers,” Terrazzano continued.

“It’s good that Newfoundland and Labrador came to its senses and dropped this court case, because if they were successful, the bill for equalization could have ballooned by billions of dollars and really taxpayers, especially in Alberta, British Columbia, and Saskatchewan, would be on the hook for all this,” he added.

Newfoundland and Labrador’s decision to drop its equalization lawsuit spares Canadian taxpayers from a potential multi-billion-dollar increase in federal transfers. The province’s premier, Tony Wakeham, stated that although he believes the equalization system is flawed, the lawsuit will not be moving forward.

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Secret Trial of Pfizer RSV Vaccine Killed Two Infants in the 1960s — Their Families Just Sued the U.S. Government

The families of two Black infants who died during a 1960s experimental RSV vaccine trial have filed a federal lawsuit against the U.S., alleging government researchers enrolled the babies in a dangerous medical experiment without their parents’ knowledge or consent, The New York Times reported.

The lawsuit, filed May 22 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, alleges the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other researchers, in 1965 and 1966, subjected dozens of infants — most or all of them from low-income Black families — to testing of Pfizer’s Lot 100 experimental vaccine for respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV.

Two infants, Victor Marcellus King and Ross Otto Hambrick, later died after developing vaccine-associated enhanced respiratory disease (VAERD), a severe respiratory illness caused by the vaccine.

VAERD occurs when a vaccinated child who never had RSV is exposed to the virus and develops a more severe case of RSV than they would have if they hadn’t received the vaccine.

The suit was filed by Sharlette Hambrick and Darius King, acting as representatives of the estates of their deceased brothers. They allege federal researchers failed to obtain informed consent from the children’s parents, withheld critical information about prior vaccine failures, and continued the study despite mounting evidence that the vaccine was causing severe reactions in participants.

The complaint also alleges that the tissue samples from the babies who died were later used to develop the RSV vaccines and monoclonal antibody shots that have been approved in the last several years — providing a financial boon for drugmakers.

“Medical research in the United States has a long, troubled racial history,” the complaint states, comparing the alleged conduct to other notorious examples of unethical experimentation involving Black Americans, including the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and the exploitation of Henrietta Lacks.

The infants’ families were unaware the babies had been subjected to the experiment until a reporter from Undark magazine contacted them while investigating the story in 2023.

The reporter found the babies’ names in a doctor’s government-issued laboratory notebook and other paperwork from the clinical trial, the Times reported.

Parents not told infants were being enrolled in trial for experimental vaccine

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Obama Judge Launches Investigation Into Trump Settlement with IRS

A federal judge on Friday launched an investigation into the Trump Administration’s settlement with the IRS that led to the $1.77 billion anti-weaponization fund.

Earlier this month, President Trump dropped his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS over the leak of his tax returns in exchange for a deal.

Trump dropped his blockbuster lawsuit against the agency in exchange for a $1.7 billion taxpayer-funded fund to pay people who were unfairly targeted by the Biden Regime.

In January, President Trump, Eric Trump, Don Jr., and the Trump Org filed a lawsuit against the IRS for leaking their tax returns.

They sought $10 billion in damages.

After Trump agreed to drop his lawsuit in exchange for the anti-weaponization fund, a group of former judges asked a federal judge to launch an inquiry to determine whether the Trump Administration defrauded the court.

On Friday, Miami-based US District Judge Kathleen Williams, an Obama appointee, launched the inquiry.

Politico reported:

A federal judge is demanding answers to allegations that President Donald Trump defrauded her court by filing a lawsuit against the IRS as a pretext to reach a settlement that resulted in a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund to make payouts to his political allies.

U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams launched the inquiry Friday, after closing the lawsuit on her docket last week. The Miami-based Obama appointee cited a request by 35 former federal judges who urged her to reopen the case to determine whether Trump’s effort amounted to “serious misconduct” and an abuse of the court system.

In September 2023, federal prosecutors charged a former IRS contractor who worked for the agency from 2018 to 2020 with unlawfully obtaining and disseminating the tax details of a high-ranking public official and numerous affluent Americans to media outlets.

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Everything About E. Jean Carroll’s Half-Baked Hit Job Against Trump Was A Mess

he Department of Justice purportedly launched a criminal investigation into E. Jean Carroll, according to a CNN exclusive published Wednesday, and corporate media rushed to decry the supposed “weaponization” of justice against the writer who accused President Donald Trump of sexual assault. Though the exact nature of the investigation remains uncertain, it’s well worth revisiting the facts that undermine Carroll’s half-baked anti-Trump hit job.

CNN reported that the investigation is centered on whether Carroll committed perjury. Prosecutors, CNN said, are focusing on a deposition Carroll provided in 2022 in which she said she received no outside funding for her lawsuit. Despite her testimony, it turns out billionaire Democrat donor Reid Hoffman paid some of her legal fees and expenses.

U.S. Attorney Andrew Boutros said in a statement that the Northern District of Illinois “has not opened — and has never opened — a criminal investigation into E. Jean Carroll,” though CNN said its “sources reaffirmed the investigation to CNN.” A source told Axios that the DOJ is actually investigating the Hoffman nonprofit organization that paid some of Carroll’s legal fees, and that Carroll “is not the subject of the investigation.”

Whether this reported investigation goes anywhere remains to be seen. But it does remind Americans just how deeply flawed and politically charged the entire case was from the very beginning.

Carroll accused Trump of raping her in a Bergdorf Goodman and then sued him for defamation when he denied it in 2019. Carroll notably declined to press criminal charges against Trump because, according to her, she “would find it disrespectful to the women who are down on the border who are being raped around the clock.” Carroll then filed a second lawsuit in 2022 after the state of New York temporarily changed a statute of limitations law.

That was only one of many suspect aspects of the crusade against Trump.

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Maryland Sheriffs Sue State to Stop Amnesty State Law

Seventeen Maryland county sheriffs have joined together to sue the state over a new law that gives sanctuary to illegals that the law officers say will make Maryland a more dangerous place to live.

Sheriff Jeffrey R. Gahler, of Harford County, Maryland, and sixteen other Maryland sheriffs, have joined with the  in a lawsuit filed in a federal court to block the state’s newly passed “Community Trust Act” (SB0791).

“It is an intentional state-mandated obstruction of public safety,” Sheriff Gahler said about the new law. “This law deliberately ties the hands of our dedicated local deputies, police officers and correctional officers. It forbids us from sharing information with federal authorities.”

“This issue, ladies and gentlemen, is not about politics. It’s about public safety. And, we believe this law directly hampers our ability to effectively safeguard the boundaries of our respective counties,” Worcester County Sheriff Matt Crisafulli added.

The new law passed in the House of Delegates 92-37 and in the state Senate 32-15 this week and became law without Democrat Gov. Wes Moore’s signature.

The Community Trust Act bans local cooperation with federal immigration officials and maintains that a felony conviction or a judicial warrant must be presented by immigration officers before local law enforcement can communicate with ICE about a suspect’s immigration status.

The lawsuit filed by the group of county sheriffs says that the state’s new law violates federal authority to implement legal immigration policy and is a violation of the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution. It also forces state law enforcement to break federal law by harboring illegal migrants.

In its press release on the lawsuit, FAIR says that “Maryland’s sanctuary law thereby makes it impossible to obey both federal law and state law, it presents a textbook case of conflict preemption.”

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Corporations Can Vote in Some Delaware Elections, Judge Says

Corporations, partnerships, trusts, limited liability companies, and other “artificial entities” have the right to vote in Delaware elections under some circumstances, a judge said in a novel ruling Tuesday.

Judge Craig A. Karsnitz rejected an ACLU challenge to a charter permitting voting in local elections by the entities that own most of the property in the Town of Fenwick Island, one of several municipalities in the state with similar provisions. Karsnitz dismissed the lawsuit from Delaware’s Superior Court, citing “the principle of one person/entity/one vote.”

“Visions of faceless large corporations or even HAL controlling a small town are frightening and the stuff of science fiction,” but “trusts, partnerships, limited liability companies, and corporations are expressly recognized as ‘persons’ in the Delaware Code,” the judge said.

The dispute over municipal voting in a tiny coastal community represents an unusual flashpoint in the decades-long fight over the free speech rights of corporations and the dark money flooding the American electoral system. The US Supreme Court held in 2010’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that political spending counts as constitutionally protected speech.

Ever since that ruling effectively ended corporate campaign finance regulation, the prospect of outright voting by business entities has served as fodder for both critics and comedians.

Delaware, home to more corporations than people, is a fitting place for reality to outpace satire. The state constitutional provisions expressly enshrining corporate personhood reflect Delaware’s budgetary reliance on the billions in fees it raises annually from the more than 2 million business entities chartered there.

Karsnitz, writing in a 19-page opinion Tuesday, rejected an array of constitutional arguments advanced by the ACLU, including the claim that entity voting dilutes the political power of living people.

The lawsuit “does not allege discrimination based on race or political partisanship,” show “that entity property owners vote sufficiently as a bloc to usually defeat the preferred candidates of natural persons,” or assert “that Fenwick’s charter distinguishes between natural persons and entity property owners with the discriminatory intent to fence out natural persons,” the judge said.

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Federal Court Strikes Down Landmark Fluoride Ruling on Technicality — ‘Not the Science’

 A federal appeals court has vacated a landmark decision that found fluoridated drinking water poses an “unreasonable risk” to children’s health under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).

The decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals did not challenge the substance of the lower court’s findings — that fluoride is toxic to children and ought to be regulated. Instead, the court based its decision on procedural issues related to the lower court’s handling of the litigation.

The case will now go back to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, where District Judge Edward Chen will be required to exclude all scientific evidence that became available after 2020.

Michael Connett, attorney for the plaintiffs, told The Defender the court “instructed Judge Chen to travel back in time to 2020 and make this ruling based on a stale factual record.”

Connett said the directive to ignore years’ worth of evidence on fluoride’s dangers runs counter to the intent of the TSCA — which is to protect hundreds of millions of Americans from substances that are harmful to human health.

The federal appeals court ruling, handed down late Thursday, stemmed from a lawsuit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) brought by consumer advocacy groups including Food & Water Watch, the Fluoride Action Network (FAN), and Moms Against Fluoridation.

The groups sued after the EPA refused to consider their 2016 citizens’ petition asking the agency to regulate fluoride.

After two bench trials, Chen ruled that fluoride at the federally recommended concentration of 0.7 milligrams/liter (mg/L) posed an “unreasonable risk” to children’s health and ordered the EPA to regulate it accordingly.

However, the 9th Circuit panel said the lower court violated the “party presentation principle” — a legal doctrine requiring courts to act as neutral arbiters rather than taking control of a case’s factual development.

Connett said the decision was “a very expansive and unprecedented application of the party presentation principle.” He said that to date, “this principle has really only been applied to situations where judges raise new legal issues, not where judges use procedural mechanisms to resolve the issues presented.”

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