Tag: lawsuits

Anti-Christian agenda now costing Hawaiian taxpayers $100,000

An agenda to deprive after-school Bible clubs of the same access to schools that other clubs were granted routinely now is costing the taxpayers in the state of Hawaii.

A report from Liberty Counsel, which fought the state on behalf of Child Evangelism Fellowship and its Good News Clubs, revealed that the state appropriations bill, just signed by Gov. Josh Green, provides $100,000 to CEF following a court ruling.

It was last December that a federal judge granted Liberty Counsel a permanent injunction on behalf of CEF against the state that provided equal access to school facilities.

That access had been “unlawfully denied” by the state Department of Education and six different elementary schools, the report said.

The injunction granted CEF Hawaii “prevailing party” status in the dispute, a move that now protects the Good News Clubs from the previous viewpoint discrimination, but also calls for the state to cover litigation costs.

The result now is that the state will give CEF’s clubs access to schools equal to other similarly situated organizations across the state.

Liberty Counsel reported, “During the lawsuit, Hawaii’s Department of Education conceded that one school denied CEF Hawaii use of its facilities based on religion, while another school’s denial was due to a ‘misapplication’ of school policies. CEF Hawaii contended that after it appealed the ‘blatant religious discrimination’ of these denials to the Hawaii State Department of Education, it never received any response, nor did school officials take any corrective actions.”

Other organizations that had been granted access included the Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Cub Scouts, Girls on the Run, A+ After School Programs, and YMCA.

The state had allowed CEF’s Good News Clubs in more than a dozen schools on Oahu and other islands before COVID-19.

“Then, after restricting after-school programs due to COVID-19, schools fully restored after-school programs in 2022. However, the Hawaii State Department of Education, through four of its superintendents and other officials, had denied every request submitted by CEF to restart its programs and either expressly or effectively denied every appeal, while allowing access for other similar groups to meet after school on campus,” Liberty Counsel explained.

There are more than 3,000 Good News Clubs in elementary schools across the nation.

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NPR Is Under The Delusion It Has A Constitutional Right To Your Money

NPR filed a delusional lawsuit on Tuesday against the Trump administration, arguing that it has a constitutional right to your hard-earned money.

The suit, brought by NPR and three Colorado-based public radio stations, alleges that Trump’s executive order cutting federal funding to the left-wing NPR and PBS violates their right to free speech, as well as provisions of the Public Broadcasting Act.

“The [Executive] Order’s objectives could not be clearer: the Order aims to punish NPR for the content of news and other programming the President dislikes and chill the free exercise of First Amendment rights by NPR and individual public radios across the country,” the suit states.

But as Texas Rep. Brandon Gill countered in a post on X: “NPR has a right to free speech. It doesn’t have a right to our tax dollars.”

Trump issued an executive order earlier this month directing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to “cease federal funding” to NPR and PBS.

“Americans have the right to expect that if their tax dollars fund public broadcasting at all, they fund only fair, accurate, unbiased, and nonpartisan news coverage,” the order stated, with the White House adding that PBS and NPR “receive millions from taxpayers to spread radical, woke propaganda disguised as ‘news.’”

“No media outlet has a constitutional right to taxpayer subsidies, and the Government is entitled to determine which categories of activities to subsidize,” the order continues.

But NPR argues that it does have a right to your hard-earned dollars.

The suit argues the order is unconstitutional and violates the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. That law established the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) to “‘facilitate the full development of public telecommunications in which programs of high quality’ and ‘creativity’ will be ‘obtained by diverse sources’” among other things. As stated in NPR’s lawsuit, the act explains “how the Corporation must allocate its general appropriation from Congress.” Twenty-five percent of the appropriation goes toward public radio, while 75 percent goes to public television.

According to the suit, “Congress has appropriated $535 million in general funding for the Corporation for Fiscal Years 2025, 2026, and 2027,” while NPR, in fiscal year 2024, spent roughly $11.1 million in total in grants from the CBP.

Trump “is exercising his lawful authority to limit funding to NPR and PBS,” White House spokesman Harrison Fields said in a statement. “The President was elected with a mandate to ensure efficient use of taxpayer dollars, and he will continue to use his lawful authority to achieve that objective.”

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Judge Rules in Favor of New Hampshire Bakery in Fight Over Donut Mural

A New Hampshire bakery has won a crucial victory in its fight to preserve a mural of donuts and other baked goods above its storefront. While town officials have attempted to force the bakery to remove the mural, citing zoning regulations, a federal court ruled on Monday that the city cannot enforce its sign rules against the bakery.

In 2022, Sean Young, the owner of Leavitt’s Country Bakery, a popular bakery in Conway, New Hampshire, collaborated with a local high school art class to paint a mural for the bakery’s storefront. The students’ mural depicted baked goods forming the shape of a mountain range, with a multicolored sunrise in the background. Initially, the mural didn’t cause any controversy—and it was even covered positively by local media. However, about a week after being installed, Conway’s Code Enforcement Officer Jeremy Gibbs told Young that the mural violated town zoning rules.

According to the town, the mural violated local laws that regulate signs. Because the mural depicted baked goods—which the bakery obviously sells—it was deemed a “sign,” not a mural, and signs are subject to rules limiting their size. While the town’s rules define a sign incredibly broadly, in practice, the town only enforces its sign regulations on speech it perceives as commercial in nature. If Leavitt’s Country Bakery had erected a mural of just a sunrise, for example, the town would have no problem with it, even though the rules on the books would apply to both. “Imposing different burdens on speech depending on who is speaking and what is being said is content based and speaker based restriction on free speech,” reads a 2023 complaint from the Institute for Justice, a public interest law group, which represented the bakery in its lawsuit against Conway.

On Monday, a judge agreed. While the judge noted that the town’s sign rules, as written, don’t necessarily violate the Constitution, the selective nature of the town’s enforcement does. “The court rules only that Conway’s application of its sign code, and specifically its enforcement of the sign code to the Leavitt’s sign in the particular manner it employed in this case, does not withstand any level of constitutional scrutiny,” reads a ruling from District Judge Joseph N. Laplante enjoining the town from forcing Young to remove the mural. “Although the display may have violated the sign code because of its size, Gibbs’ determination was based on a rationale with no textual basis in the sign code, which does not distinguish between displays based on content.”

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EU Commission Sues Five Member States Over Censorship Law Non-Compliance

Five EU member countries are being taken to court by the EU Commission for failure to “effectively” comply with the bloc’s online censorship law, the Digital Services Act (DSA).

DSA, and the Digital Markets Act (DMA), are EU’s key regulations often criticized for centralizing the bloc’s power in the digital sphere at the expense of free speech, and tech companies’ business interests – but also, it appears, the sovereignty of member countries.

Among the “May infringements package” covering various areas regulated by the EU is the section dedicated to the digital economy. It is here that the Commission announced legal action against Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Poland, Portugal, and Spain.

These countries have been referred to the Court of Justice of the European Union; Bulgaria, meanwhile, has been put on notice and may eventually also find itself in court, unless it empowers a national digital services coordinator (DSC, a role established under DSA) and “lay down the rules on penalties applicable to infringements (of DSA).”

The EU Commission said that designating and empowering DSCs is an essential step in enforcing the DSA rules and “in ensuring the uniform application” of the regulation across the bloc.

Of the five EU members that are already in court, Poland has not designated or empowered a DSC at all, while the other four have done that – but failed to “entrust them with the necessary powers to carry out their tasks under the DSA.”

All five countries have yet to come up with rules regarding penalties for DSA infringement.

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Victory for mom who claims child was sexually abused by AI chatbot that drove him to suicide

A Florida mother who claims her 14-year-old son was sexually abused and driven to suicide by an AI chatbot has secured a major victory in her ongoing legal case. 

Sewell Setzer III fatally shot himself in February 2024 after a chatbot sent him sexual messages telling him to ‘please come home.’ 

According to a lawsuit filed by his heartbroken mother Megan Garcia, Setzer spent the last weeks of his life texting an AI character named after Daenerys Targaryen, a character on ‘Game of Thrones,’ on the role-playing app Character.AI.

Garcia, who herself works as a lawyer, has blamed Character.AI for her son’s death and accused the founders, Noam Shazeer and Daniel de Freitas, of knowing that their product could be dangerous for underage customers. 

On Wednesday, U.S. Senior District Judge Anne Conway rejected arguments made by the AI company, who claimed its chatbots were protected under the First Amendment. 

The developers behind Charcter.AI, Character Technologies and Google are named as defendants in the legal filing. They are pushing to have the case dismissed. 

The teen’s chats ranged from romantic to sexually charged and also resembled two friends chatting about life.

The chatbot, which was created on role-playing app Character.AI, was designed to always text back and always answer in character.

It’s not known whether Sewell knew ‘Dany,’ as he called the chatbot, wasn’t a real person – despite the app having a disclaimer at the bottom of all the chats that reads, ‘Remember: Everything Characters say is made up!’

But he did tell Dany how he ‘hated’ himself and how he felt empty and exhausted.

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Texas House OKs Bill To Sue Vaccine Makers for False Ads

In a major victory for accountability and informed consent, the Texas House of Representatives passed HB 3441 yesterday, a bill that would allow Texans to sue vaccine manufacturers whose advertising leads to injury or harm.

The unprecedented move comes as CDC data show there have been an alarming 2,665,796 adverse events linked to vaccines since 1990, the vast majority related to COVID-19 jabs.

But if fewer than 1% of adverse events are reported – as a 2010 HHS-funded Harvard analysis confirms – the real number could exceed 266 million, or roughly 7.6 million per year, or 20,800 per day.

First filed in February, the new bill passed yesterday by a vote of 88–31, moving the legislation one step closer to becoming law.

The pioneering legislation boasts a whopping 79 brave sponsors, 74 Republicans and 5 Democrats.

The bill is spearheaded by Representatives Shelley Luther (R-62), Jeff Leach (R-67), Marc LaHood (R-121), Oscar Longoria (D-35), and Mike Schofield (R-132).

If you want this kind of bill passed in your state or at the federal level, you can find your local, state, and U.S. representatives here and let them know.

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Vicious FBI Agents Accused of Terrorizing Innocent J6 Families and Harassing Children Sue to Keep Their Identities Hidden

In 2023 The Gateway Pundit published the shocking story of Chris and In Annette Kuehne.

Chris Kuehne is a 22-year veteran who received numerous medals and awards, including the Purple Heart, a Navy Commendation Medal with Valor, and a Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal with Valor for actions in combat.

On January 6, 2021, Chris went inside the Capitol but did not cause any harm or damage – in fact he cleaned trash off the floor, helped to stop theft of government property, asked people to leave the building, and went up to Capitol Police Officers to ask how he could help. Chris was also set-up by an FBI operative that day. Chris committed no violence and did nothing wrong.

One month later, in the early morning of February 11, 2021 Chris, his four-year-old child, and his wife Annette, who was pregnant at the time were awakened to sirens, cell phone rings, and bursts of colorful lights reflecting through our windows.

Annette later went public about the raid, “The FBI instructed Chris to come outside immediately. Our 4-year-old was awakened from the chaos, and I picked him up and ran downstairs to open the front door. Our house, street and neighboring streets were completely surrounded by armed FBI and law enforcement. It was a scene that we see so many times in the movies, but now it was here at my house! There were three large armored tactical vehicles parked on my front, side and back yard, and police vehicles that extended throughout the entire community. I open the door, and for a second, I didn’t realize that there were about twenty FBI SWAT Team members with semi-automatic rifles pointed at my son and I. We were covered by the bright red lasers pointed at our faces, chests, and various points on our bodies.”

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‘No trace of alcohol’: Police thought Amazon worker’s stroke was a DWI, then threw him in jail for 7 hours and caused him to go blind, lawsuit says

A Missouri man who was wrongly arrested for DWI while he was exhibiting symptoms of a stroke is suing the sheriff’s office for not getting him the medical treatment he needed.

In a complaint filed in federal court in April, Paul Espinosa, 54, claimed that while he was arriving at the parking lot of the Amazon Warehouse in Republic, Missouri, where he worked, he was pulled over by Greene County Sheriff’s Deputy Kyle Winchell. Winchell claimed that Espinosa’s car was “weaving,” and the deputy suspected he was driving while intoxicated. Espinosa agreed to a field sobriety test, including a Breathalyzer test, which yielded a reading of 0.000% — indicating there was “no trace of alcohol in his system,” the lawsuit states.

However, Espinosa showed signs of “swaying” during other parts of the test, and Winchell arrested Espinosa on suspicion of DWI. Espinosa was put in the back of Winchell’s vehicle and transported to the jail. Espinosa began “sweating profusely” during the transport, despite the car’s air conditioning running throughout the trip. Upon their arrival at the jail, Espinosa’s “motor skills were declining,” the lawsuit states.

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Google Reaches $1.375 Billion Settlement with Texas Over Privacy Violations Involving Location Tracking and Biometric Data

Google has reached a $1.375 billion settlement with Texas over allegations the tech giant intruded on user privacy by collecting data without proper consent. The resolution, announced by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, concludes two lawsuits centered on the company’s handling of sensitive information across several of its products.

The lawsuits focused on practices involving Google’s location tracking, biometric data collection, and its private browsing tool, Incognito mode. According to Paxton, the company engaged in prolonged surveillance of individuals’ movements, online activity, and even biometric identifiers like voiceprints and facial features, activities he claimed were conducted without user knowledge or agreement.

“In Texas, Big Tech is not above the law,” said Paxton. “For years, Google secretly tracked people’s movements, private searches, and even their voiceprints and facial geometry through their products and services. I fought back and won.”

Although the total settlement figure has been made public, specific terms remain undisclosed, and the state has not explained how the funds will be distributed.

Google has denied any wrongdoing and emphasized that the agreement resolves claims based on policies that have already been updated. “This settles a raft of old claims, many of which have already been resolved elsewhere, concerning product policies we have long since changed,” said Google spokesperson José Castañeda. He added, “We are pleased to put them behind us, and we will continue to build robust privacy controls into our services.”

The original lawsuits, filed in 2022, accused Google of circumventing user privacy settings, continuing to track locations despite users believing the feature was off. They also charged that the company’s so-called private browsing mode did not actually provide meaningful privacy and that Google had collected biometric data from Texans without obtaining legally required consent.

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Smartmatic Suffers Setback in FOX News Case After NY Judge Orders Company to Prove Evidence of Damages

FOX News moved to dismiss the $2.7 billion “meritless” nuisance case by Smartmatic in a press release in February 2021.

FOX News argued at the time, “If the First Amendment means anything, it means that Fox cannot be held liable for fairly reporting and commenting on competing allegations in a hotly contested and actively litigated election.”

Smartmatic suffered a setback in a New York court after a NY judge orders the company to prove it suffered actual damages following the FOX News reporting.

Smartmatic, the controversial election machine company, filed charges against FOX News in February 2021 following a segment on the conservative channel.

Four years later – this week a New York judge ordered Smartmatic to produce real evidence it suffered actual harm from the FOX News segment.

This comes weeks after FOX News again called on the suit to be tossed out.

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