Tag: lawsuits

Lawsuit Over Sex-Trafficked Teen Could Stop Schools From Hiding Kids’ Dysphoria

The mother of a Virginia teen sex-trafficked twice after her school concealed her newly asserted gender identity has filed a groundbreaking lawsuit against school staff and a Maryland public defender who alleged parental “misgendering” and abuse. The complaint was filed Aug. 22 in the Western District of Virginia court on behalf of Michele Blair by the Child and Parental Rights Campaign (CPRC) with support from the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR).

It alleges that the defendants’ actions—first in withholding vital information about the girl’s gender identification and related assault in the boys’ bathroom, then later by falsely alleging abuse to deprive her mother of custody—resulted in the child’s ordeal at the hands of sexual predators not once, but twice. Blair v. Appomattox et al. will set critical precedents in two areas of roiling national debate: parental notification of gender transition in schools and parental custody relating to gender identity.

Keep reading

FBI Hit With Lawsuits After Allegedly Losing Hundreds of Thousands in Rare Coins During Raid

A pair of Americans, who had their property taken following a raid by the FBI, are now alleging that the organization lost or stole their property.

In March 2021, the FBI raided U.S. Private Vaults, a company based in Beverly Hills, seizing property from at least two people, Don Mellein and Jeni Pearsons.

After they prevailed in court the first time, the FBI agreed to return their property, but both clients discovered that some of their property was missing, and suspected that some of their valuables were either stolen by the FBI or lost in the chaos of the raid. 

This has prompted yet another pair of lawsuits, launched on Friday by the nonprofit law firm Institute for Justice. 

“All we know is that their property was in a box and safe before the FBI broke into the box,” Joe Gay, an attorney with Institute for Justice, told Fox News. “Once the FBI broke into the box, we honestly don’t know exactly what happened.”

Keep reading

Houston Police Arrested an Animal Rights Protester and Detained Him for 16 Hours, Lawsuit Says

Animal rights activists Daraius Dubash and Faraz Harsini were peacefully demonstrating in a Houston, Texas, public park when park employees demanded they leave. When Dubash insisted that the pair had a First Amendment right to protest, officials called the police, who arrested Dubash and charged him with criminal trespass. 

While Dubash’s charge was eventually dismissed, the pair have now filed a First Amendment lawsuit against the city, arguing that city police clearly violated their Constitutional rights.

“No one should be handcuffed and detained for exercising his First Amendment rights,” said JT Morris, an attorney for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a First Amendment nonprofit group. “We’re suing because public parks belong to all Americans and their expressive rights, not the personal views of a few.” 

From April to July 2022, Dubash and Harsini demonstrated several times in Discovery Green, a Houston public park. According to their lawsuit, the pair—keeping in practice with Anonymous for the Voiceless, the animal-rights activist group the two pertained to—wore Guy Fawkes masks while playing clips from Dominion, a documentary showing the gruesome mistreatment of animals in factory farms. 

On three separate occasions, park employees asked the pair to leave the park, claiming that the park was private property. (Discovery Green is public property, though it is managed by a private company.) According to the complaint, the pair complied, fearing retaliation.

On July 23, 2022, Dubash and Harsini were approached again. This time, they refused to leave, and Dubash calmly told park employees that he had a right to demonstrate peacefully. However, a park security guard told Dubash that protests were allowed on a “case by case” basis, adding that his “manager is going to come and come look at it.”

According to the lawsuit, when the manager, Floyd Willis, arrived, Dubash informed him that, while the park was managed by a private conservancy, the park was still public property, meaning that the First Amendment applied.

Keep reading

West Point is SUED by group that ended affirmative action after Biden allowed academy to discriminate against white applications – even though Army has MORE black soldiers than general population

A campaign group which successfully ended affirmative action is now suing New York’s prestigious West Point military academy, claiming it discriminates against white applicants. 

Students for Fair Admissions, founded by Edward Blum, is seeking to erase an exemption in the SCOTUS ruling which is allowing US Army schools to keep using race as a factor in admissions. 

It cited the example of two white high schoolers it believes were perfect candidates for the prestigious upstate New York school, who Students for Fair Admissions believes are banned under current rules ‘from competing for admission on an equal footing’. 

This comes after President Joe Biden pushed for the military to be allowed to continue filtering applications by race – despite the racial makeup of the Army already being more diverse than the general population. 

The Biden administration’s push for so-called positive discrimination to achieve ‘equity’ comes despite the Army having a greater proportion of black soldiers than the general population – and only slightly fewer Hispanic recruits. 

Keep reading

Cops sued for zip tying and arresting 6-year-old girl

The family of a 6-year-old Florida girl who made headlines after she was arrested and had her wrists zip-tied in 2019 has filed a lawsuit, The Sacramento Bee reported.

Video of the incident showed Kaia Rolle sobbing while she was placed in zip ties after hitting and kicking staffers at Lucious and Emma Nixon Academy Charter School.

Her grandmother says the now-10-year-old still has trauma from the incident.

“This is a lifelong mission of recovery for Kaia,” Meralyn Kirkland said. “This should not happen.”

The family is suing over the child’s “cruel, senseless and terrorizing arrest,” which they say was done to “instill fear and humiliation” in her, as well as excessive force, false arrest and malicious prosecution. It’s seeking $50,000 in damages.

In addition to damages, the family is demanding that the minimum arrest age be raised to 14.

Keep reading

Former Yale student cleared to sue accuser over false allegations

A former Yale student who was kicked out of the school in 2019 after being accused and acquitted of rape in 2018 can now sue his accuser for defamation over statements she made during a school hearing on the matter after a Connecticut Supreme Court ruling over the summer.

According to the New York Post, 30-year-old Saifullah Khan has had a $110 million defamation lawsuit pending against the school since 2019, and has been fighting to bring his accuser into the suit.

In June, the state’s supreme court granted Khan’s request, and ruled that the accuser, a fellow student, shouldn’t receive “qualified immunity” from her testimony in a school hearing that Khan raped her after a 2015 Halloween party.

Qualified immunity protects people from being sued over statements they make in judicial cases, but the court ruled that the university hearing wasn’t a stand-in court proceeding, since Khan wasn’t allowed the chance to cross-examine his accuser.

“For absolute immunity to apply under Connecticut law,” the June decision states, “fundamental fairness requires meaningful cross-examination in proceedings like the one at issue.”

Khan’s team listened during the referenced hearing to the woman’s testimony from a separate room, never being able to cross-examine her. The ruling said Khan’s defense attorney was left to act as a “potted plant.”

The court said that Yale’s hearing couldn’t be considered “quasi-judicial” because the woman wasn’t made to testify under oath, and Khan wasn’t provided with a transcript of the testimony.

Keep reading

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer received email in Greek from consultant to shield it from the public: lawsuit

Michigan Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer received a coded email related to her administration’s response to a local water crisis in an apparent attempt to hide the sensitive communication from the public, a lawsuit alleges. 

The email was disguised in Greek alphabet font and sent by Andrew Leavitt, a consultant to Michigan’s energy department, to Whitmer’s senior energy adviser Kara Cook in September of 2021, according to a class action lawsuit filed.

“Hot off the presses. As I warned there are some major red flags. It seems like we are back at square one having not learned from Flint,” reads Leavitt’s decoded email, which was first reported by the Washington Free Beacon on Wednesday after a June court filing in the case. 

Leavitt served as a consultant for the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy.

The use of the Greek language and alphabet “appears to be calculated to conceal the statements,” the court filing states, noting that Leavitt “prefaced his grave concerns about the water crises with a reference back to his prior warnings and the State and City Defendants’ failure to learn from the Flint tragedy.“

Since the email was written in Greek, it would not have been included in public records requests for government communications containing words such as “Flint” or “red flags.”

Michigan’s public records department cannot electronically search for material written using the Greek alphabet, the Washington Free Beacon reported. 

Keep reading

National Archives acknowledges 5,400 Biden pseudonym emails, faces lawsuit for their release

The National Archives and Records Administration acknowledged possessing potentially up to 5,400 emails connected to then-Vice President Joe Biden’s pseudonym accounts that he used to forward government information and discuss business with his son, Hunter Biden, and others, and on Monday the Southeastern Legal Foundation filed a lawsuit to compel the agency to turn over the emails.

The non-profit constitutional legal group that filed the lawsuit said the archives confirmed that Biden used the pseudonyms of Robin Ware, Robert L. Peters, and JRB Ware during his time in the Obama administration. 

The archives’ admissions confirm years of reporting from Just the News about Biden’s use of a personal email as vice president and the pseudonym accounts he used.

The legal foundation first filed a Freedom of Information Act request to the archives for Biden’s emails in 2021 on behalf of Just the News editor-in-chief John Solomon.

The legal foundation renewed its initial request last year with a second FOIA request, but the archives “has failed to produce a single one of these emails,” the group said.

Monday’s lawsuit turns up the pressure on the archives to release the documents.

“All too often, public officials abuse their power by using it for their personal or political benefit. When they do, many seek to hide it,” Southeastern Legal Foundation general counsel Kimberly Hermann said. “The only way to preserve governmental integrity is for NARA to release Biden’s nearly 5,400 emails to SLF and thus the public. The American public deserves to know what is in them.”

Keep reading

DOJ files lawsuit accusing SpaceX of hiring discrimination against refugees, asylum recipients

The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Thursday filed a lawsuit against SpaceX accusing the company of discriminating against asylum recipients and refugees in its hiring decisions.

The DOJ alleges that SpaceX “routinely discouraged asylees and refugees from applying and refused to hire or consider them, because of their citizenship status, in violation of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).” According to the suit, SpaceX wrongly claimed that federal regulations related to export controls restricted the company to only hiring U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents, also known as green card holders.

“Our investigation found that SpaceX failed to fairly consider or hire asylees and refugees because of their citizenship status and imposed what amounted to a ban on their hire regardless of their qualification, in violation of federal law,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division. “Our investigation found that SpaceX recruiters and high-level officials took actions that actively discouraged asylees and refugees from seeking work opportunities at the company.”

Keep reading

Medical Marijuana Company Slams DEA In Lawsuit Alleging Extreme Delays To Cannabis Research Licensing

A company focused on developing marijuana-derived pharmaceuticals is suing the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) over what it calls “exponential delays” in the agency’s process for granting licenses to grow cannabis for medical research.

Rhode Island-based MMJ BioPharma Cultivation Inc. filed a petition for a writ of mandamus in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on Friday, alleging that DEA’s yearslong licensing application process has hamstrung the company’s business and stymied innovation that could benefit patients. It’s asking the federal court to compel the agency to act.

“Despite beginning this process in November of 2017,” the company says in the lawsuit, “MMJ has been unable to conduct the research that it was created to do.”

MMJ is working to produce a gel capsule containing cannabis extracts, which it says is intended to treat multiple sclerosis and Huntington’s disease. While it previously received DEA authorization to import marijuana into the U.S. from Canada, MMJ later applied for permission to cultivate cannabis in-house for research and development purposes.

“This registration is essential to MMJ’s ability to conduct FDA-sanctioned clinical trials,” the company says, “because without the ability to cultivate their own marijuana, they are unable to produce the proper compound.”

MMJ asserts that DEA’s pre-registration investigation for the license application began in June 2021 and lasted through the following October. “At the end of the visit, the diversion investigator informed MMJ that they would return to the DEA office, ‘write up’ the report, and submit the report to their group supervisor who would then submit those findings to DEA Headquarters for a final determination,” the suit says.

But according to the petition, no final determination ever came. “Despite numerous attempts to follow-up and check the status of the registration approval determinations for manufacturing, DEA personnel have expressed to MMJ that they have not yet made final determinations and they have no idea when that determination will be made,” it says.

Keep reading