Tag: lawsuits

Pro-Gun Organization Wins Lawsuit Against ATF’s Trigger Prohibition

On July 23, 2024, The National Association for Gun Rights was victorious in a summary judgment from the Federal District Court, Northern District of Texas, which overturned the ATF’s prohibition on forced reset triggers.

The ruling was issued by Judge Reed O’Connor, which vacated the ATF’s prohibition on forced reset triggers, declaring resoundingly that the ATF went beyond the scope of its statutory powers by redefining forced reset triggers as machine guns. The ruling was partly based on the Supreme Court’s recent Cargill decision overturning the ATF’s bump stock prohibition regulation.

Hannah Hill, Executive Director of the National Foundation for Gun Rights (the legal arm of NARG) declared, “We are absolutely thrilled that the court has dealt such a decisive blow to the ATF’s unconstitutional agency overreach. The ATF under the Biden/Harris regime has utterly trampled the Constitution and the rule of law in their eagerness to destroy the Second Amendment. The ATF may appeal this ruling, but precedent and momentum are both on our side, and we fully anticipate the absolute end of the ATF’s unlawful, unconstitutional ban on forced reset triggers.”

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Man Who Was Arrested for Flipping Off Cop Settles for $175,000

A man who was arrested and charged for flipping off a Vermont State Police (VSP) officer settled his case last month for $175,000.

“Far too often, police abuse their authority to retaliate against and suppress speech they personally find offensive or insulting,” Lia Ernst, the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Vermont, tells Reason about the case. “This settlement demonstrates that violating these rights does not come without a cost.”

Through the settlement, Gregory Bombard will receive $100,000 in damages. The ACLU of Vermont and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), which both represented Bombard in his suit, will receive the remaining $75,000.

All told, Bombard spent “about a year fighting the criminal charges and more than three years seeking declaratory relief,” a spokesperson for FIRE tells Reason.

Jay Riggen, the officer who arrested Bombard, “retired from VSP effective May 31, 2024,” a spokesperson for the Vermont State Police tells Reason. “We have no additional comment on this case.”

In February 2018, Bombard was stopped by Vermont State Trooper Riggen, who believed Bombard had given him the finger while driving—an allegation Bombard denies. However, after Riggen walked away from the car, Bombard flipped Riggen off and swore at the officer in frustration for having been pulled over.

In response, Riggen pulled Bombard over again and arrested him for disorderly conduct. “The first one may have been an error,” said Riggen during the arrest, referring to the reason for the initial stop, but “the second one certainly was not.”

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Watchdog sues Treasury Dept. for records on foreign purchases of US farmland

A Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit has been filed by the watchdog Judicial Watch against the Department of Treasury for records of communication between the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) and the Department of Agriculture (USDA) regarding the purchase of US farmland by foreign entities.

Judicial Watch filed the lawsuit after the Treasury Department failed to respond to an April 10, 2024, FOIA request for:

  • Any and all records of communications between the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture concerning, regarding, or relating to the purchase of U.S. agricultural real estate by foreign entities.  

On January 19, 2024, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report which found significant gaps in information collection and timely information sharing between the Committee on Foreign Investment and other government agencies, including the USDA, concerning foreign investment in U.S. agricultural land.

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Rachel Maddow and Her Co-Stars Made ‘Verifiably False’ Statements About a Doctor They Called the ‘Uterus Collector.’ Now His $30 Million Lawsuit Is Headed For Trial.

NBCUniversal is headed for trial after a judge ruled in favor of a Georgia doctor who MSNBC’s biggest stars accused of performing “mass hysterectomies” on women at a Trump-era immigration facility in Georgia. The judge ruled that Rachel Maddow, Nicolle Wallace, and Chris Hayes made “verifiably false” statements about the doctor, who is suing NBC for $30 million.

The discovery process in the lawsuit, which has received little attention, has drawn back the curtain on the inner workings of MSNBC, revealing how the liberal cable network works hand in hand with NBC News, which seeks to portray itself as nonpartisan. NBCUniversal’s standards department reviewed and approved the reporting on the Georgia doctor, before it was published on NBCNews.com and then broadcast on MSNBC programs. The NBC News correspondents, Jacob Soboroff and Julia Ainsley, worked closely with a standards executive during their reporting. Soboroff is also an MSNBC correspondent.

Furthermore, Maddow—who was deposed for the lawsuit—and Hayes were personally involved in the off-camera vetting and editorial conversations around the segment to an extent that can be unusual for on-camera hosts.

Maddow is reportedly paid about $30 million a year by NBCUniversal to host her show one evening a week and work on longer-range projects. 

In her ruling last month, the judge, Lisa Godbey Wood of the Southern District of Georgia,  found that Maddow, Hayes, and Wallace made 39 “verifiably false” allegations about Mahendra Amin, a gynecologist who treated detainees at a Georgia Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility. 

A nurse at the facility had made a whistleblower complaint alleging that Amin was performing “mass hysterectomies,” many of which were medically unnecessary, and that he was known as “the uterus collector.” The nurse’s claims, which she admitted were based on hearsay, were later found to be false.

“In the end, we are left with this: NBC investigated the whistleblower letter’s accusations; that investigation did not corroborate the accusations and even undermined some; NBC republished the letter’s accusations anyway,” Wood wrote in a scathing 108-page ruling on June 26. She ordered a jury trial to determine if MSNBC engaged in “actual malice,” the standard to determine defamation. 

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COVID panel recommends ending Chinese immunity against U.S. lawsuits, but invokes strange statistics

Republican and Democratic heavy-hitters from the intelligence and political worlds are calling for legislative changes to hold China accountable for the economic harm caused by its ongoing lack of transparency on COVID-19, which they estimate to have cost $18 trillion in the U.S. alone.

Convened by the conservative Heritage Foundation, the nine-member Nonpartisan Commission on China and COVID-19 is dominated by former Trump administration officials but also includes a former Clinton administration National Security Council director and ex-Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota.

Their report Monday calls for Congress to create and fund a “bipartisan U.S. National COVID-19 Commission” and a “Reparations/Compensation Task Force,” and revise the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act to allow civil claims against China in U.S. courts, paid with “a deduction on interests or debts owed to China or through deductions from foreign aid funds to China.”

Lawmakers should establish an audit of U.S.-funded biomedical and related research in China, with a “rebuttable presumption” that funding should be cut unless sponsors can show the research projects are “overwhelmingly in the public interest and entail extremely low risk of harm.” Another federal commission would oversee the review. 

House Speaker Mike Johnson mentioned one of their recommendations, passing the Biosecure Act to decouple supply chains from Chinese state-backed companies, at a Hudson Institute speech Monday.

“China poses the greatest threat to global peace” and “Congress must keep our focus on countering China with every tool in our code,” the Louisiana Repubican said. “Our goal is to have a significant package of China-related legislation signed into law by the end of this year.”

The commission recommends the president demand, as a “diplomatic priority,” that China allow a “comprehensive, unfettered scientific and forensic investigation” into COVID origins, economic sanctions on officials and entities involved with the “cover-up,” and recognizing the pandemic as “similar to the dawning of the nuclear age,” with corresponding changes to law and commerce.

The report makes curious choices with its statistics, however, possibly to inflate the amount of damages for which China could be held liable.

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Court: Doctors Threatened For Questioning The Covid Regime Can Sue Tyrannical Credentialing Boards

In a landmark case, an appellate court judge has ruled that physicians threatened by credentialing boards for speaking out against Covid policies and abortion have sufficient standing in court.

A year after the case was dismissed by a district court, the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) Educational Foundation filed an appeal for the right to sue the American Board of Internal Medicine, the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology, the American Board of Family Medicine, and the secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for “coordinated” attempts to “censor and chill the speech of physicians,” especially those “who spoke critically of positions taken by Dr. Anthony Fauci, lockdowns, mask mandates, Covid vaccination, and abortion.”

A district court judge had ruled AAPS lacked standing and denied AAPS’s attempt to amend the claim. But in a decision filed June 3, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit reversed the dismissal, and the case has now been remanded to a lower court for discovery and potentially a full trial.

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Florida stripper sues state over law raising age requirement

A 19-year-old is suing over a Florida law that raises the age requirements to work in adult entertainment establishments, saying it violated her constitutional rights and made her lose her job as a stripper.

In a lawsuit filed Monday, Serenity Michelle Bushey said she and at least eight other performers were fired from Café Risque, a strip club near Gainesville, because of the state law that increased the minimum age to 21.

The lawsuit, which also includes Café Risque and two adult businesses in Jacksonville as plaintiffs, seeks a permanent injunction stopping enforcement of the law.

“As with similar performers around the state, Bushey earned her living through her art while providing entertainment for the benefit and enjoyment of her audience,” the complaint said. “Plaintiffs have a clear legal right to engage in protected speech of this nature.”

The complaint, which was first reported by the Tallahassee Democrat, names Florida’s attorney general and two local prosecutors as defendants. It was filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida.

Gov. Ron DeSantis signed HB 7063in May, saying it would deter human trafficking.

But the companies in the complaint disputed that, saying they’ve longemployed adult entertainers, cooks, waitresses and security guards younger than 21 with no instances of human trafficking.

The clubs said they hire performers under 21 to increase the talent pool and attract young adult audiences. Many young entertainers use the job to support themselves through college, they said.

The plaintiffs, represented by Gainesville attorney Gary Scott Edinger, saidthe law violates their First Amendment right to free speech.

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Americans Are Already Sticking It To The Permanent Bureaucracy Just Days After Landmark Supreme Court Ruling

Just days after the Supreme Court struck down the precedent of automatically deferring to bureaucrats, it is now ordering lower courts to reconsider some cases where federal agencies have interfered with the activities of Americans.

On June 28, the Supreme Court overturned Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, a case that set a precedent requiring courts to defer to reasonable agency interpretations of a given law when the language used in the law was ambiguous. Now, the Supreme Court has ordered lower courts to review Foster v. U.S. Department of Agriculture and KC Transport v. Secretary of Labor, two cases where judges limited the commercial activities of Americans due to the precedent of deference set under Chevron.

“Our clients may now make their case in court without judges putting their thumb on the scale in favor of the government,” said Paige Gilliard, an attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation, the right-of-center legal nonprofit representing the plaintiffs in both cases. “The Supreme Court’s decision to end Chevron deference is a move to restore fairness in federal courts. Our clients Arlen Foster and KC Transport are among the first beneficiaries.”

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Watchdog sues for ATF records about shooting death of Arkansas Airport Official

The watchdog group Judicial Watch has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Department of Justice (DOJ) seeking Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) records regarding the fatal shooting of Little Rock, Arkansas, resident and Executive Director of the Clinton National Airport: Bryan Malinowski.  

Malinowski was shot and wounded by ATF agents in shootout an ATF raid on his home in March. He died of his injuries. When originally asked for pertinent records, ATF produced only heavily redacted search warrant court filings. 

The lawsuit was filed June 10, 2024, after the ATF failed to respond adequately to an April 16 FOIA request for: 

  1. All emails and text messages sent to and from ATF officials regarding Little Rock resident Bryan Malinowski who died in an ATF raid on March 19, 2024.
  2. All records related to the raid on the home of Bryan Malinowski, including but not limited to, re-operational briefing documents, raid plans, investigative reports, memoranda, warrants and audio and video recordings.

On April 22, 2024, Jim Jordan, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, wrote a letter to ATF Director Steven Dettelbach, asking for details about “the deadly pre-dawn raid conducted by ATF in Little Rock, Arkansas, while executing a search warrant on the home of Bryan Malinowski, a local airport executive.”

An affidavit, which was unsealed after Malinowski’s death and produced to Judicial Watch, alleged he unlawfully sold guns without a license.

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Louisiana Parents Sue Over Law Mandating 10 Commandments Displays in Classrooms

Last month, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry (R) signed a bill mandating that a copy of the Ten Commandments be displayed in all public school classrooms in Louisiana. The law, House Bill 71, requires that the religious scripture be displayed on a poster or frame sized at least 11 inches by 14 inches and in a “large, easily readable font.” 

Apparently anticipating a First Amendment challenge to the mandatory religious text, lawmakers included several provisions that attempt to strengthen the law against a constitutional challenge. For example, the law prohibits schools from using taxpayer funds to finance the posters, instead directing them to accept private donations.

The law further directs schools to display a context document that describes “the history of the Ten Commandments in American Public Education.” This requirement attempts to undermine the religious nature of the scripture, instead showing how the “historical role of the Ten Commandments accords with our nation’s history and faithfully reflects the understanding of the founders of our nation with respect to the necessity of civic morality to a functional self-government.”

While the text of the law attempts to dodge accusations that it prescribes public schools to display an openly Christian text in violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, Louisiana lawmakers openly argued that the law would put religion in Louisiana schools.

“I really believe that we are lacking in direction. A lot of people, their children, are not attending churches or whatever,” Rep. Sylvia Taylor (D–Laplace), a co-author and co-sponsor of the bill, said during a debate over the bill. “So what I’m saying is, we need to do something in the schools to bring people back to where they need to be.” Another sponsor state Rep. Dodie Horton (R–Haughton) said that the bill “seeks to have a display of God’s law in the classroom for children to see what He says is right and what He says is wrong.”

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