Florida Governor Ron DeSantis issued a statement Friday following the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark ruling that created a right to abortion nationwide. The ruling now returns issues about abortion to the individual states.
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Federal District Court Judge Paul L. Maloney granted 16 Western Michigan University (WMU) athletes’ request to continue participating in intercollegiate athletic competition without being injected with the COVID-19 vaccine.
Initially, four soccer stars sued in August over WMU’s vaccine mandate for athletes, which required athletic participants take the COVID-19 vaccine by Aug. 31 or forfeit their spot on the team. WMU has denied all the athletes a religious liberty accommodation.
No similar vaccine requirement exists for any other students at WMU and other universities. The lawsuit says Michigan State University and the University of Michigan are granting religious accommodations to their athletes.
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The Texas Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the Texas Constitution authorizes the state’s House of Representatives to arrest members who flee in order to break the quorum required to vote.
The opinion states that “just as” Texas’ Constitution enables “‘quorum-breaking’ by a minority faction of the legislature, it likewise authorizes ‘quorum-forcing’ by the remaining members,” including by “arrest.”
“The legal question before this Court concerns only whether the Texas Constitution gives the House of Representatives the authority to physically compel the attendance of absent members. We conclude that it does, and we therefore direct the district court to withdraw the TRO,” wrote Justice Jimmy Blacklock on behalf of the state’s Supreme Court.
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A Federal Judge has ruled that portions of an abortion-limiting bill, signed into law late last year, cannot be enforced as the law is written. As previously reported: On December 13, 2018, then-Governor John Kasich signed Senate Bill 145 (SB 145), commonly referred to as a Dismemberment Abortion Ban into law. It is, as reported at the time, “an act that restricts one of the most common methods in which second-trimester abortions are performed. The Dismemberment Abortion Ban, as the bill is known, restricts doctors from performing procedures in which dismemberment of the fetus occurs. The law also made it a “fourth-degree felony” for a doctor to perform the procedure. Should a doctor do so, they could face up to 18 months in prison and the loss of their license to practice medicine. The procedure can only be performed if the mother’s life is at serious risk or if the doctor causes “fetal demise” before the procedure. In late March, Senior U.S. District Judge Michael Barrett in Cincinnati placed a temporary hold on the bill. This was placed as the result of a lawsuit filed by Planned Parenthood against the bill on the grounds that the law was unconstitutional. “They…
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Friday, Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas Judge Robert Rhuehlman granted an injunction against an ordnance by the city of Cincinnati that would have made “trigger activators,” which are more commonly know as bump stocks, illegal in city limits. A bump stock is any device that uses “bump fire,” to increase the rate-of-fire of a semiautomatic weapon, and some revolvers. The device uses the natural recoil of the gun to permit the weapon to fire at a much higher rate. The ATF, led by appointees of the Obama Administration ruled in 2010 that these devices were legal and could be sold without regulation. Despite widespread availability and at relatively modest prices, they were not commonly adopted. This changed dramatically in 2017. On October 1st, 2017, a gunman opened fire in Las Vegas, Nevada, killing 58 people, wounding more than 400 with gunfire, and injuring 851. Upon investigation, it was found that he was utilizing bump stocks on several of his weapons. This propelled the otherwise innocuous firearm modification into the national spotlight. Overnight, demand for bump stocks spiked. Many progressive groups began calling for immediate bans. To many second amendment advocates, this appeared to be an overreaction by the federal government that infringed upon the second amendment.…
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