Law

Judge certifies class-action lawsuit that’s one of many challenging order denying citizenship to those born to undocumented parents in the US

Donald Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship suffered a courtroom defeat on Thursday as a federal judge in New Hampshire blocked the controversial executive order nationwide and certified a sweeping class-action lawsuit that could protect tens of thousands of children.

Ruling from the bench on Thursday, Judge Joseph LaPlante announced his decision after an hour-long hearing and said a written order would follow. The judge, an appointee of George W Bush, said a written order would follow later in the day, with a seven-day stay to allow for appeal.

The decision is a test case following a recent supreme court ruling that restricted nationwide injunctions, in effect making class-action lawsuits the primary remaining method for district court judges to halt policy implementation across large areas of the country. It delivers a legal blow to the administration’s hardline immigration agenda and ramps up a constitutional dispute that has continued through the first six months of Trump’s second term.

A judge on Monday temporarily barred the Trump administration from revoking Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood, partially freezing a provision of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act just days after Trump signed it into law.

The temporary restraining order by U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani lasts 14 days and directs the Department of Health and Human Services to "take all steps necessary to ensure that Medicaid funding continues to be disbursed" to Planned Parenthood. The ruling, which came after a lawsuit from Planned Parenthood, doesn't apply to any other health care providers.

The lawsuit takes aim at a portion of Mr. Trump's signature domestic policy bill that would cut off any federal Medicaid funding to groups "primarily engaged in family planning services, reproductive health, and related medical care" that provide abortions.

Two U.S. appeals court judges appointed by Donald Trump told lawmakers on Tuesday that they viewed calls to impeach judges over their rulings as inappropriate and that the judiciary needed more resources to bolster security for members of the bench.

U.S. Circuit Judges Amy St. Eve and Michael Scudder appeared before a subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives' Judiciary Committee on behalf of the U.S. Judicial Conference for a hearing examining the courts' finances and cybersecurity.

But lawmakers on both sides of the aisle used the rare appearance before Congress by two sitting members of the judiciary to prod them about the fallout from a wave of court rulings blocking Trump's immigration and cost-cutting agenda.

As the conservative wing of the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday sided with the Trump administration and stayed a district court's preliminary injunction pending appeal, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor sharply criticized the majority for "clos[ing] its eyes" and "rewarding lawlessness" by permitting the government to resume so-called "third-country" deportations.

The court needed five justices to grant the stay, and the nine-member court accomplished that without the help of the dissenting Sotomayor and Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

As recently as early June, immigration lawyers opposing the Trump administration's stay application urged the high court not to lose sight of the government's "own choices — to violate the district court's orders" by moving to "deport two groups of class members to Libya and South Sudan" even after U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy issued the injunction in April.

In an environmental case, the liberal justice questioned whether the high court treats business interests differently from "less powerful litigants."

Liberal Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson criticized her colleagues Friday in a scathing dissent in a case involving vehicle emissions regulations.

In her dissenting opinion, she argued that the court's ruling gives the impression it favors “moneyed interests” in the way it decides which cases to hear and how it rules in them. The court had ruled 7-2 in favor of fuel producers seeking to challenge the Environmental Protection Agency's approval of California clean vehicle emissions regulations.

She also said she was concerned that the ruling could have "a reputational cost for this court, which is already viewed by many as being overly sympathetic to corporate interests."

A federal judge ruled Monday it was illegal for the Trump administration to cancel several hundred research grants, adding that the cuts raise serious questions about racial discrimination.

U.S. District Judge William Young in Massachusetts said the administration’s process was “arbitrary and capricious” and that it did not follow long-held government rules and standards when it abruptly canceled grants deemed to focus on gender identity or diversity, equity and inclusion.

In a hearing Monday on two cases calling for the grants to be restored, the judge pushed government lawyers to offer a formal definition of DEI, questioning how grants could be canceled for that reason when some were designed to study health disparities as Congress had directed.

After 40 years on the bench, “I’ve never seen government racial discrimination like this,” Young added. He ended Monday’s hearing saying, “Have we no shame.”

A federal jury in Colorado on Monday found that one of the nation’s most prominent election conspiracy theorists, MyPillow founder Mike Lindell, defamed a former employee for a leading voting equipment company after the 2020 presidential election.

The employee, Eric Coomer, was awarded $2.3 million in damages. He had sued after Lindell called him a traitor and accusations about him stealing the election were streamed on Lindell’s online media platform.

Coomer was the security and product strategy director at Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems, whose voting machines became the target of elaborate conspiracy theories among allies of President Donald Trump, who continues to falsely claim that his loss to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020 was due to widespread fraud.

A federal judge on Friday blocked Donald Trump’s attempt to overhaul elections in the U.S., siding with a group of Democratic state attorneys general who challenged the effort as unconstitutional.

Judge Denise J. Casper of the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts said in Friday’s order that the states had a likelihood of success as to their legal challenges. “The Constitution does not grant the President any specific powers over elections,” Casper wrote.

Casper also noted that, when it comes to citizenship, “there is no dispute (nor could there be) that U.S. citizenship is required to vote in federal elections and the federal voter registration forms require attestation of citizenship.”

A Tennessee judge is scheduled to hear arguments Friday about whether Kilmar Abrego Garcia can be released from jail pending the outcome of a trial on human smuggling charges.

In a motion asking U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes to order Abrego Garcia detained, Acting U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee Rob McGuire described him as both a danger to the community and a flight risk. Abrego Garcia’s attorneys disagree. They point out that he was already wrongly detained in a notorious Salvadoran prison thanks to government error, and argue that due process and “basic fairness” require him to be set free.

Abrego Garcia is a citizen of El Salvador who had been living in the United States for more than a decade before he was wrongfully deported in March. The expulsion violated a 2019 U.S. immigration judge’s order that shielded him from deportation to his native country because he likely faced gang persecution there.

Donald Trump says he had no role in bringing mistakenly deported Maryland father Kilmar Abrego Garcia back to the United States, telling NBC News the decision was made solely by the Justice Department and not him personally.

“That wasn’t my decision,” Trump told NBC’s Kristen Welker in an interview Saturday. “It should be a very easy case,” he reportedly added. “I think it should be.”

Trump also said he did not speak with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele about Abrego Garcia’s return before it went down on Friday, per Welker. The 29-year-old El Salvador native was transported back to the U.S. to be federally charged with two counts of illegally transporting undocumented migrants into the country. It was the DOJ that reportedly signed off on the move after “new facts” came to light following Abrego Garcia’s deportation.

Texas lawmakers trying to muzzle campus protests have just passed one of the most ridiculous anti-speech laws in the country. If signed by Gov. Greg Abbott, Senate Bill 2972 would ban speech at night — from study groups to newspaper reporting — at public universities in the state.

Ironically, the bill builds on a previous law passed in 2019 meant to enshrine free speech on Texas campuses. But now, lawmakers want to crack down on college students’ pro-Palestinian protests so badly that they literally passed a prohibition on talking.

The university filed a legal challenge after Trump said he would block visas for international students who planned to attend.

A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked Donald Trump's efforts to block visas for foreign students planning to attend Harvard, after the Ivy League college filed a legal challenge.

U.S. District Court Judge Allison D. Burroughs granted a temporary restraining order that enjoins anyone from "implementing, instituting, maintaining, enforcing, or giving force or effect to the Presidential Proclamation" that Trump issued Wednesday.

Harvard had earlier Thursday amended its complaint against the Trump administration to challenge Trump's proclamation that the president issued the day before.

Donald Trump’s administration on Monday renewed its request for the Supreme Court to clear the way for plans to downsize the federal workforce, while a lawsuit filed by labor unions and cities proceeds.

The high court filing came after an appeals court refused to freeze a California-based judge’s order halting the cuts, which have been led by the Department of Government Efficiency.

By a 2-1 vote, a panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals found that the downsizing could have broader effects, including on the nation’s food-safety system and health care for veterans.

In her ruling last month, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston found that Trump’s administration needs congressional approval to make sizable reductions to the federal workforce.

The court's 6-3 conservative majority has expanded gun rights but has also shown a reluctance in recent months to take up new cases on the scope of the right to bear arms.

The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear two major gun cases challenging a Maryland law that bans assault-style weapons, including the AR-15 semiautomatic rifle that has been used in high-profile mass shootings, and a Rhode Island restriction on large-capacity magazines.

As a result, the two laws remain in effect. Litigation over similar bans across the country is ongoing, and the issue is likely to return to the justices.

The court has a 6-3 conservative majority that has expanded gun rights but has also shown a reluctance in recent months to take up a new case on the scope of the right to bear arms under the Constitution's Second Amendment.

Richard Bednar apologized after Utah appeals court discovered false citations, including one nonexistent case

The Utah court of appeals has sanctioned a lawyer after he was discovered to have used ChatGPT for a filing he made in which he referenced a nonexistent court case.

Earlier this week, the Utah court of appeals made the decision to sanction Richard Bednar over claims that he filed a brief which included false citations.

According to court documents reviewed by ABC4, Bednar and Douglas Durbano, another Utah-based lawyer who was serving as the petitioner’s counsel, filed a “timely petition for interlocutory appeal”.

Upon reviewing the brief which was written by a law clerk, the respondent’s counsel found several false citations of cases.

Veteran lawyers have reached a curious conclusion about Trump's deals with big law firms this year: they do not appear to be legally valid.

Trump since coming to office has punished certain firms for their past clients or causes, stripping them of security clearances and government contracts, while trumpeting deals with others, including titans like Kirkland & Ellis and Latham & Watkins.

The White House said the nine firms it's settled with agreed to provide about $1 billion in pro bono services in order to curtail investigations into their hiring practices and maintain access to federal buildings. But the details of those agreements remain murky, even after Democratic lawmakers demanded answers.

"The problem with the law firm deals is … they're not deals at all," said Harold Hongju Koh, a professor and former dean at Yale Law School. "You know, a contract that you make with a gun to your head is not a contract."

Donald Trump's administration can temporarily revoke the legal status of over 500,000 migrants living in the US, the US Supreme Court ruled on Friday.

The ruling put on hold a previous federal judge's order stopping the administration from ending the "parole" immigration programme, established by Joe Biden. The programme protected immigrants fleeing economic and political turmoil in their home countries.

The new order puts roughly 530,000 migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela at risk of being deported.

Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor, two of the court's three liberal justices, dissented.

The National Association of the Deaf (NAD) has filed a federal lawsuit against the White House over a lack of American Sign Language interpreters at media briefings.

The NAD says the White House abruptly stopped providing ASL interpreters during press briefings and other public events when President Trump returned to office for a second term.

The lawsuit, filed on Wednesday, asks the court to require ASL interpreters be present at these events and that video of them be available for viewers.