A class action lawsuit filed in a Georgia federal district court on Tuesday accuses CoreCivil , one of the country’s largest private prison contractors, of “maintain a deprivation scheme intended to force detained immigrants to work for nearly free” in order to maximize its profits, in violation of federal labor law and common law equity [...]
US Senators Bob Corker (R-TN) and Tim Kaine (D-VA) proposed a new bill Monday that would replace the 2001 and 2002 authorizations for use of military force (AUMF). The proposed legislation includes several new provisions including: the use of all necessary and appropriate forces against al Qaeda, the Taliban and Islamic State, along with any [...]
The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit decided Tuesday that because the Justice Department will not defend former Maricopa County Sheriff’s criminal contempt conviction, it would appoint a special prosecutor to defend the question. Arpaio was convicted of criminal contempt in July. The court found Arpaio did not comply with a court order [...]
The Pennsylvania House of Representatives on Monday voted 139-56 to approve HB 2050 , which prohibits abortions if the fetus is diagnosed with or believed to have Down syndrome. In April the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania (ACLU) referred to the bill as an unconstitutional restriction on reproductive rights, thereby making it unenforceable. Executive [...]
The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments in two cases Tuesday: South Dakota v. Wayfair and Lamar, Archer & Cofrin, LLP v. Appling . In Wayfair, the justices considered whether to overrule Quill Corp. v. North Dakota , a previous Supreme Court decision in which the court held that the commerce clause prohibits states from [...]
In a 6-3 decision on Tuesday, the US Supreme Court held that a federal court in a habeas corpus matter reviewing an unexplained state court decision on the merits should “look through” that decision to the last related state court decision that provides a relevant rationale and “presume that the unexplained decision adopted the same [...]
Iraqi women and children are being denied access to humanitarian aid and are not allowed to return to their homes because of their alleged association with the Islamic State (IS), according to a report published Tuesday by Amnesty International. The displaced Iraqi women live in eight camps in two provinces north of Baghdad. Amnesty researchers [...]
The US Supreme Court on Tuesday held that Microsoft is required to disclose a customer’s electronic information stored overseas when it was suspected in furthering illegal drug trafficking. The per curium opinion vacated and remanded the judgment of the US court of appeals, which held the disclosure to be unauthorized due to the information’s storage [...]
A Stuttgart Public Prosecutor brought charges Monday in a district court in Mannheim against a 94-year-old former Schutzstaffel (SS) guard of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp for aiding and abetting the murders committed in the camp. The man, whose identity has not been released, was an SS Schütze, or Private, in the camp that was both [...]
The US Supreme Court held 5-4 Tuesday that the term “aggravated felony” in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) , as it relates to §16(b) of the federal criminal code , is “unconstitutionally void for vagueness” under the Fifth Amendment‘s Due Process Clause. Section 1227(a)(2)(A)(3) of the INA provides: “Any alien (including an alien crewman) [...]
