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Court Denies Trump’s Special Master Sneak Peek Into Classified Docs

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The Justice Department on Tuesday asked that the United States Supreme Court deny former President Donald Trump’s request to block the DOJ from continuing its review of classified documents seized during the FBI’s unprecedented raid of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

Trump’s attorneys last week elevated the former president’s legal battle to the Supreme Court, requesting that Justice Clarence Thomas, who has jurisdiction over the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, vacate the stay by a lower court that allowed the DOJ to review classified records taken in August from Mar-a-Lago instead of court-appointed Special Master Raymond Dearie.

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon issued an injunction against the DOJ’s use of the 100 documents purportedly marked as classified to be used for investigative purposes.

The 11th Circuit overturned Cannon’s order and prevented Dearie from reviewing those materials. The panel had limited Dearie’s review to only the non-classified documents seized from Mar-a-Lago.

Trump’s legal team asked the Supreme Court to intervene, but the Justice Department in a filing on Tuesday argued that the court of appeals “correctly held that it had appellate jurisdiction to review and stay the portion of the September 5 order that requires the government to turn over the documents bearing classification markings for special-master review.” (Read more from “Court Denies Trump’s Special Master Sneak Peek Into Classified Docs” HERE)

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Scathing Appeals Court Calls Out Raging Hypocrisy of Race-Baiting Obama Administration Bureaucrats

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Photo Credit: EEOC public domain

Photo Credit: EEOC public domain

It’s always satisfying to see race-baiting bureaucrats get their comeuppance in court, but an opinion by the 6th Circuit issued earlier this month begins especially delightfully:

In this case the EEOC sued the defendants for using the same type of background check that the EEOC itself uses. The EEOC’s personnel handbook recites that “[o]verdue just debts increase temptation to commit illegal or unethical acts as a means of gaining funds to meet financial obligations.” Because of that concern, the EEOC runs credit checks on applicants for 84 of the agency’s 97 positions. The defendants (collectively, “Kaplan”) have the same concern; and thus Kaplan runs credit checks on applicants for positions that provide access to students’ financial-loan information, among other positions. For that practice, the EEOC sued Kaplan.

The April 9 ruling in Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v. Kaplan Higher Education Corp. has received little fanfare. It should probably receive more, though, if only because the EEOC lost so good and hard.

In the case, the unanimous three-judge panel ruled to exclude the findings of government contractor General Information Services and the testimony of a dubious statistical analyst, thus affirming a lower court’s “meticulously reasoned” summary judgment decision and likely ending the EEOC’s complaint against Kaplan.

Read more from this story HERE.

U.S. Appeals Court Throws Arctic Drilling Into Further Doubt

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Photo Credit: Paxson Woelber

Photo Credit: Paxson Woelber

A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that the U.S. Interior Department wrongly awarded offshore oil leases in the Chukchi Sea near Alaska in 2008 without considering the full range of environmental risks posed by drilling in the Arctic.

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sent the on-going dispute – pitting environmental groups and Native Alaska tribes against the federal government and energy companies – back to U.S. District in Anchorage, Alaska.

It was not immediately clear what the decision would mean for the oil company Royal Dutch Shell Plc and its plans, revealed in December, to resume exploratory drilling this coming summer in the Chukchi.

Shell is the major lease holder from the sale six years ago. Company spokeswoman Megan Baldino said in an email statement: “We are reviewing the opinion.”

A spokeswoman for the Interior Department declined to comment, saying the agency does not discuss pending legal matters.

Read more from this story HERE.

Appeals Court Orders Utah on Christmas Eve: Move Forward With Same-Sex Marriages

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Photo Credit: AP Photo/The Deseret News, Tom Smart

Photo Credit: AP Photo/The Deseret News, Tom Smart

A federal appeals court has refused yet again to stop gay marriage in Utah, making it more likely that same-sex weddings in the home of the Mormon church are here to stay for the immediate future.

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ rejection of Utah’s request for an emergency order to put gay marriage on hold marked yet another legal setback for the state. Utah lawyers have repeatedly struck out in their bid to block gay marriage, getting rejected on four occasions in recent days.

Utah’s last chance to temporarily stop the marriages would be a long-shot request before U.S. Supreme Court. That’s what the Utah attorney general’s office is prepared to do, spokesman Ryan Bruckman said. Gov. Gary Herbert’s office declined to comment on the decision.

“We’re disappointed in the ruling, but we just have to take it to the next level,” Bruckman said.

Carl Tobias, a constitutional law professor at Virginia’s University of Richmond who has tracked legal battles for gay marriage, said he expects the U.S. Supreme Court to make a decision by Friday. He thinks Utah faces long odds to get their stay granted, considering two courts have already rejected it and marriages have been going on for days now.

Read more from this story HERE.

Appeals Court Strikes Down Obamacare Contraception Mandate

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Photo Credit: APA federal appeals court struck down Obamacare’s controversial birth control mandate, declaring that requiring contraception coverage in employee health plans is unduly burdensome for business owners who oppose birth control on religious grounds.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled 2-1 Friday in favor of Francis and Philip Gilardi, the Roman Catholic owners of Ohio-based Freshway Foods and Freshway Logistics, who argued that the provision in the new healthcare law would violate their religious freedom, The Hill reports.

“The burden on religious exercise does not occur at the point of contraceptive purchase; instead, it occurs when a company’s owners fill the basket of goods and services that constitute a healthcare plan,” wrote Judge Janice Rogers Brown in the court’s decision.

Had the plaintiffs refused to comply with the law, they would have faced a $14 million fine.

Read more from this story HERE.

Huge Win for Life: Appeals Court Upholds South Dakota’s Strict Informed Consent Law

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A federal appeals court has upheld a provision of a South Dakota law requiring the states lone abortion business, operated by Planned Parenthood, that it has to inform women of the validity of the link between abortion and suicide. With women facing a host of mental health issues following an abortion, Planned Parenthood can no longer keep women in the dark about them.

An en banc panel of the court declared that South Dakota’s statute that requires abortion doctors to disclose to pregnant mothers that an abortion places the mother at increased risk for suicide ideation and suicide constitutional because the disclosure is truthful, non-misleading, and relevant to the pregnant mother’s decision of whether or not to consent to an abortion.

Harold J. Cassidy, a pro-life attorney who represented Leslee Unruh, president of the Alpha Center of Sioux Falls, and Stacy Wollman, president of Care Net of Rapid City — two pregnancy centers that provide abortion alternatives — sent LifeNews details about the decision.

He called the decision “a fabulous victory for the women of the State of South Dakota.”

“The Court ruled that the women will now be given additional important information before they consent to an abortion: that the abortion places a woman at increased risk of suicide ideation and suicide,” he said. “This victory represents the fourth separate decision of the Eighth Circuit reversing the District Court in this one case, two decisions issued by en banc Courts four years apart – a rare occurrence that underscores the importance of the issues presented by the case.”

Read more from this story HERE, detailing the requirements of the upheld South Dakota law including informing mothers:

(1) that “an abortion terminates the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being;”
(2) that the mother’s “relationship with that second human being enjoys protection under the Constitution of the United States and the Laws of South Dakota;”
(3) that relationship and all rights attached to it will be terminated; and
(4) the abortion places the mother “at increased risk for suicide ideation and suicide.”

Photo credit: BrianSwant