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From Chief Judge Lance Walker (D. Me.) today in Nass v. Maine Bd. of Licensure in Medicine: As alleged [in the Complaint], this case arises out of the COVID-19 pandemic and the desire of the medical establishment, in this instance the Maine Board of Licensure in Medicine, to compel medical practitioners to toe the line in all matters related to COVID medical treatments as well as messaging concerning vaccination efficacy and treatment alternatives. Plaintiff Meryl Nass, M.D., has been a Maine-li

Some excerpts from Judge Kathleen Waterman-Marshall's longish decision filed Monday in Abdou v. Columbia Univ. (an appeal appears imminent): Plaintiff Mohamed Abdou … is a North African-Egyptian Muslim scholar in the field of Cultural Studies, who was employed as a visiting professor at Columbia for the Spring 2024 academic term; his employment term end date was May 31, 2024. On April 17, 2024, Dr. Shafik, the former Columbia President, testified before the U.S. House Committee on Educati

"Washington D.C. went from High Crime to NO CRIME — Thank you President Trump!" reads a Truth Social post from President Donald Trump in July. The president has attributed the district's drop in crime to his deployment of the National Guard, but a recent report says otherwise.  In the year since the National Guard arrived in the nation's capital, it was mentioned in just 1.3 percent of criminal prosecutions, Reuters reported. Most Guard activity took place "near the city's core," with "little ev

The Department of Justice (DOJ) put California on notice last week that the state's decades-long failure to protect incarcerated women in two state prisons from rampant sexual abuse likely violates the Constitution. An August 13 report by the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division concluded that there was an "unbroken pattern of often violent, sexual misconduct by staff against prisoners from 2000 through 2024, continuing to the present" at the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchil

Last week, the Tennessee Supreme Court denied the parents' application to review the Tennessee Court of Appeals' ruling, so that now goes into effect. Here's my post on the Court of Appeals ruling, from February: [* * *] Following the 2023 Covenant School shooting in Nashville, in which the shooter was killed by responding police officers, the shooter's parents inherited the shooter's copyright interest in various writings (including the shooter's manifesto). They then assigned it "to a trust to

There's an old saying: Those who can, do; those who can't, teach. A similar idea underscores the debate over wealth taxes in California and elsewhere: Those who can, build companies. Those who can't, devise ways for the government to take shares in what others have built. This new version might sound unfair until you listen to Rep. Ro Khanna's (D–Calif.) pitch for an allegedly onetime, 5 percent wealth tax on California billionaires, tied to November's vote on Proposition 40. Space constraints p

From Minnesota Voters Alliance v. Ellison, decided today by Eighth Circuit Judge David Stras, joined by Judges Raymond Gruender and Jonathan Kobes: A group of Minnesotans want to express their belief that certain felons cannot vote. Can the state criminalize their speech? In denying a preliminary injunction, the district court thought so. We disagree…. Minnesota has a law that allows felons to vote unless they are currently behind bars. See Minn. Stat. § 201.014 ["An individual who is ine

Let's all admit libertarians were right: The national debt just hit $40 trillion for the first time ever, "an ominous milestone for an economy that sits on a shaky fiscal foundation after decades of borrowing to pay for the rising costs of the military, social safety net programs and President [Donald] Trump's tax cuts," reports The New York Times. I'd alter their assessment somewhat: Tax cuts are, in principle, a great thing (allowing people to keep more of their hard-earned money is not someth

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits the government from passing any law "respecting the establishment of religion." Yet Texas has passed a law requiring every public school classroom in the state to prominently display the text of the Ten Commandments, as it appears in the King James version of the Bible. Does that state law violate the Establishment Clause? Earlier this week, lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), representing a number of Texas families "of

8/20/1866: President Andrew Johnson proclaims an "end to insurrection in the United States." President Andrew JohnsonThe post Today in Supreme Court History: August 20, 1866 appeared first on Reason.com.

Baltimore police officer Dequwan Houchins has been indicted on charges of misconduct and making false entries in public records for allegedly filing fake reports about traffic stops he didn't actually make. During an undercover investigation, detectives found that when Houchins claimed he was making traffic stops, he was actually just sitting in his car or ordering a smoothie, apparently to avoid being assigned service calls that would require him to respond to people who need police assistance.

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Some excerpts from the long opinion in R.J. Reynolds Tobacco v. FDA, written by Judge Don Willett and joined in relevant part by Judges Leslie Southwick and James Ho: When Congress legislates in broad strokes, constitutional trouble sometimes follows. This case presents the opposite problem: Congress legislated with precision, and an agency treated that precision as optional. In the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act (TCA), Congress provided a detailed framework with nine prescrib

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) flew specific people to Iran at the Islamic Republic's request, newly released documents show. "The Iran Embassy just issued passports or travel documents for the three listed below. They requested that they be added to the flight leaving out on the 29th," an ICE official wrote in a September 2025 email. ICE seems to have complied with the request, as other ICE officials scrambled to collect these Iranians from different detention centers in the U.S. The

Pharmaceutical companies Moderna and Merck announced today the highly promising results of their anti-cancer mRNA vaccine Phase 3 clinical trial targeting later-stage melanoma skin cancers. Researchers sequenced the DNA from each patient's tumors to create personalized vaccines that, when injected, rev up the immune system to destroy the cancer cells while leaving healthy tissues alone. The versatile mRNA platform enables researchers to manufacture bespoke vaccines for each patient in just six w

One would think that delivery drivers would be natural supporters of delivery services. Not if you're the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.  Through lobbying efforts and lawsuits, the union has made itself the primary enemy of any business or industry that might ship goods or drop off packages without employing unionized drivers (or any drivers, for that matter).  The Teamsters have come out in force to support New York City's Delivery Protection Act (DPA), which would require companies li

An excellent piece today by Jesse Singal in The Dispatch; the whole thing is worth reading, but here are some excerpts (by the way, I much enjoy Singal's and Katie Herzog's work on Blocked and Reported; it's one of the few podcasts to which I have a paid subscription): In the U.K., Labour MP Dawn Butler published a letter to the head of the Independent Press Standards Organisation, an independent regulatory body, arguing that "Jason would still be alive today if not for the relentless and pern

The Fourth Amendment says authorities can't search you or your things without probable cause and a warrant. But U.S. immigration authorities have long claimed that this constitutional mandate doesn't apply to them, at least not when it comes to searching people—including American citizens—who are entering or exiting the United States. Under current Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) policies, agents are allowed to seize and search your stuff—includi

Yesterday, a unanimous panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit concluded that states cannot limit "no excuse" absentee voting to the elderly. Judge Gregory wrote for the panel in Grant v. Belangia, joined by Judges Harris and Richardson. His opinion begins: The Constitution grants states broad authority to regulate "[t]he Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections," U.S. Const. art. 1, § 4, including whether to permit absentee voting. But when a state offers a method for cas

Statistician Aaron Brown and gun policy scholar Robert Spitzer debate the resolution, "Until there is convincing evidence that government-imposed gun control brings a net reduction in harm, all legal restrictions on adult possession of guns should be abolished." Taking the affirmative is Brown, a statistician, Bloomberg opinion columnist, and author of Wrong Number: How To Extract Truth From a Blizzard of Quantitative Disinformation. Subscribe to Brown's Reason newsletter here. Taking the negati