A federal appeals court on Thursday dismissed a lawsuit challenging first-in-the-nation law designed to place strict limits on drag shows, reversing a lower court ruling that deemed the statute unconstitutional and blocked its enforcement in part of the state.
The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Memphis-based LGBTQ+ theater company that filed the complaint last year lacked the legal right to sue over the law.
Friends of George’s had alleged that the law would negatively affect them because they produce “drag-centric performances, comedy sketches, and plays” with no age restrictions.
However, the federal appeals court found that Friends of George’s was not at risk of violating the 2023 law because its performances were not “harmful to minors.”
Tennessee’s Republican-dominated Legislature advanced the anti-drag law last year with the support of Republican Gov. Bill Lee. Several GOP members pointed to drag performances in their hometowns as reasons why it was necessary to restrict such performances from taking place in public or where children could view them.
Yet the actual word “drag” doesn’t appear in the statute. Instead, lawmakers changed the state’s definition of adult cabaret to mean “adult-oriented performances that are harmful to minors.” Furthermore, “male or female impersonators” were classified as a form of adult cabaret, akin to strippers or topless dancers.
The law banned adult cabaret performances on public property or anywhere minors might be present. Performers who break the law risk being charged with a misdemeanor or a felony for a repeat offense.
In Thursday’s ruling, the justices stressed that term “harmful to minors” has a specific definition under Tennessee law — which has three components that must be met in order to prosecute. The ruling also pointed out that the Tennessee Supreme Court limited the definition of “harmful to a minor” to materials lacking “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for a reasonable 17-year-old minor.”
The second phase of the civil trial against the National Rifle Association and its top executives began Monday in Manhattan, with New York Attorney General Letitia James seeking an independent monitor to oversee the powerful gun rights group.
The Democrat also is seeking to ban Wayne LaPierre, the organization’s former CEO, from serving in leadership positions for or collecting funds on behalf of charitable organizations conducting business in New York.
Judge Joel Cohen also will decide whether ex-general counsel John Frazer should be barred from charitable organizations in the state.
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During the first phase of trial earlier this year, a jury in February found LaPierre misspent millions of dollars of NRA money in order to fund an extravagant lifestyle that included exotic getaways and trips on private planes and superyachts.
Jurors also found the NRA failed to properly manage its assets, omitted or misrepresented information in its tax filings and violated whistleblower protections under New York law.
The second phase of proceedings in Manhattan state court is a bench trial, meaning there is no jury and the judge will hand down the verdict. It is expected to last about two weeks, with Charles Cotton, a former NRA president, first to take the witness stand.
Sixteen jurors were seated Tuesday for Alec Baldwin’s involuntary manslaughter trial in New Mexico, where opening statements are set to start Wednesday.
Five men and 11 women were chosen by Santa Fe County special prosecutors and the actor’s team of defense attorneys. Twelve will be designated as the jury and four as alternates by the court only after they hear the case.
They’ll be tasked with deciding whether Baldwin committed the felony when, during a rehearsal in October 2021, a revolver went off while he was pointing it at cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, killing her and wounding director Joel Souza. They were on the set of the Western film “Rust,” at Bonanza Creek Ranch some 18 miles (29 kilometers) from where the trial is being held.
Media members were not allowed in the courtroom when attorneys used their challenges to strike jurors. Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer swore in the jury, told them to avoid news about the case and to report Wednesday morning.
Baldwin, 66, could get up to 18 months in prison if the jurors unanimously find him guilty.
The selection got off to a slow start Tuesday with a delay of over two hours due to technical problems, but the panel was selected in a single day as expected.
When Marlowe Sommer asked the pool of 70 possible jurors if they were familiar with the case, all but two raised their hands to indicate they were.
Two others indicated they would not be able to be fair and impartial and were excused.
Baldwin, the star of “30 Rock” and “The Hunt for Red October” and a major Hollywood figure for 35 years, sat in the courtroom with a team of four of his lawyers, dressed in a gray suit, dark tie, white shirt with glasses and neatly combed hair.
His wife, Hilaria Baldwin, and his brother, “The Usual Suspects” actor Stephen Baldwin, were seated in the back of the courtroom.
Under questioning from prosecutor Kari Morrissey, a potential juror said she hates firearms, but many others acknowledged owning them and few people expressed strong opinions about guns.
Baldwin’s lawyer Alex Spiro in his questioning highlighted the gravity of the situation — “obviously someone lost their life” — and asked jurors to come forward with any reservations about their own ability to be fair and impartial.
Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor, federal prosecutor and legal adviser to Donald Trump, was disbarred in New York on Tuesday after a court found he repeatedly made false statements about Trump’s 2020 election loss.
The Manhattan appeals court ruled Giuliani, who had his New York law license suspended in 2021 for making false statements around the election, is no longer allowed to practice law in the state, effective immediately.
“The seriousness of respondent’s misconduct cannot be overstated,” the decision reads. Giuliani “flagrantly misused” his position and “baselessly attacked and undermined the integrity of this country’s electoral process.”
“In so doing, respondent not only deliberately violated some of the most fundamental tenets of the legal profession, but he also actively contributed to the national strife that has followed the 2020 Presidential election, for which he is entirely unrepentant,” the court wrote.
Giuliani said Tuesday that he wasn’t surprised to lose his law license in his hometown, claiming in a post on the social media platform X that the case was “based on an activist complaint, replete with false arguments.”
The former mob prosecutor was admitted to the New York bar in 1969, but before pleading Trump’s case in November 2020, Giuliani had not appeared in court as an attorney since 1992, according to court records.
A Giuliani spokesperson, Ted Goodman, said the man once dubbed “America’s mayor” will appeal the “objectively flawed” decision by the midlevel state court. He also called on others in the legal community to speak out against the “politically and ideologically corrupted decision.”
Giuliani argued in hearings held last October that he believed the claims he was making on behalf of the Trump campaign were true, but the court, in its decision, said it wasn’t convinced.
“Contrary to respondent’s allegations, there is nothing on the record before us that would permit the conclusion that respondent lacked knowledge of the falsehood of the numerous statements that he made, and that he had a good faith basis to believe them to be true,” the decision reads.
Among other things, the court said it found that Giuliani “falsely and dishonestly” claimed during the 2020 Presidential election that thousands of votes were cast in the names of dead people in Philadelphia, including a ballot in the name of the late boxing great Joe Frazier. He also falsely claimed people were taken from nearby Camden, New Jersey, to vote illegally in the Pennsylvania city, the court said.
“These false statements were made to improperly bolster respondent’s narrative that due to widespread voter fraud, victory in the 2020 United States presidential election was stolen from his client,” the decision read.
The disbarment comes amid mounting woes for the 80-year-old Giuliani. In May, WABC radio suspended him and canceled his daily talk show because he refused to stop making false claims about the 2020 election.
The Supreme Court on Monday ruled for the first time that former presidents have broad immunity from prosecution, extending the delay in the Washington criminal case against Donald Trump on charges he plotted to overturn his 2020 presidential election loss and all but ending prospects the former president could be tried before the November election.
In a historic 6-3 ruling, the court’s conservative majority, including the three justices appointed by Trump, narrowed the case against him and returned it to the trial court to determine what is left of special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment.
Trump celebrated a “BIG WIN” on X. President Joe Biden said the justices set “a dangerous precedent (that) undermines the rule of this nation.” The ruling reflected a muscular view of presidential power, and left dissenting judges to criticize it as undermining a core democratic principle that no person is above the law.
The court’s decision highlighted how the justices have been thrust into an impactful role in the November presidential election. Earlier, they had rejected efforts to bar him from the ballot because of his actions following the 2020 election. The court last week also limited an obstruction charge faced by Trump and used against hundreds of his supporters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The split among the justices also in many ways mirrored the political divide in the country.
“Under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of presidential power entitles a former president to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court. “And he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts. There is no immunity for unofficial acts.”
The chief justice insisted that the president “is not above the law.” But in a fiery dissent for the court’s three liberals, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, “In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.”
Reading from her opinion in the courtroom, Sotomayor said, “Because our Constitution does not shield a former president from answering for criminal and treasonous acts, I dissent.” Sotomayor said the decision “makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of government, that no man is above the law.”
The protection afforded presidents by the court, she said, “is just as bad as it sounds, and it is baseless.” Trump posted in all capital letters on his social media network shortly after the decision was released: “BIG WIN FOR OUR CONSTITUTION AND DEMOCRACY. PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN!”
Biden, in evening remarks from the White House, cited accepted restraints on presidential power all the way back to George Washington and bemoaned that “for all practical purposes, today’s decision almost certainly means that there are virtually no limits on what a president can do.”
Smith’s office declined to comment on the ruling. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer denounced the ruling as “a disgraceful decision,” made with the help of the three justices that Trump appointed.
“It undermines SCOTUS’s credibility and suggests political influence trumps all in our courts today,” the New York Democrat said on X.
The justices knocked out one aspect of the indictment. The opinion found Trump is “absolutely immune” from prosecution for alleged conduct involving discussions with the Justice Department.
The Supreme Court on Friday upheld a federal gun control law that is intended to protect victims of domestic violence.
In their first Second Amendment case since they expanded gun rights in 2022, the justices ruled 8-1 in favor of a 1994 ban on firearms for people under restraining orders to stay away from their spouses or partners. The justices reversed a ruling from the federal appeals court in New Orleans that had struck down the law.
Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the court, said the law uses “common sense” and applies only “after a judge determines that an individual poses a credible threat” of physical violence.
Justice Clarence Thomas, the author of the major 2022 Bruen ruling in a New York case, dissented.
President Joe Biden, who has been critical of previous high-court rulings on guns, abortion and other hot-button issues, praised the outcome.
“No one who has been abused should have to worry about their abuser getting a gun,” Biden said in a statement. “As a result of today’s ruling, survivors of domestic violence and their families will still be able to count on critical protections, just as they have for the past three decades.”
Last week, the court overturned a Trump-era ban on bump stocks, the rapid-fire gun accessories used in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. The court ruled that the Justice Department exceeded its authority in imposing that ban.
Friday’s case stemmed directly from the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision in June 2022. A Texas man, Zackey Rahimi, was accused of hitting his girlfriend during an argument in a parking lot and later threatening to shoot her.
At arguments in November, some justices voiced concern that a ruling for Rahimi could also jeopardize the background check system that the Biden administration said has stopped more than 75,000 gun sales in the past 25 years based on domestic violence protective orders.
The case also had been closely watched for its potential to affect cases in which other gun ownership laws have been called into question, including in the high-profile prosecution of Hunter Biden. Biden’s son was convicted of lying on a form to buy a firearm while he was addicted to drugs. His lawyers have signaled they will appeal.
A decision to strike down the domestic violence gun law might have signaled the court’s skepticism of the other laws as well. But Friday’s decision did not suggest that the court would necessarily uphold those law either.
The justices could weigh in soon in one or more of those other cases.
Many of the gun law cases grow out of the Bruen decision. That high court ruling not only expanded Americans’ gun rights under the Constitution but also changed the way courts are supposed to evaluate restrictions on firearms.
A media organization is due in court Monday after publishing details from leaked documents about the shooter who killed six people at a Nashville elementary school in March 2023, while the outlet sues for those records and others to be released to the public.
The hearing, ordered by Nashville Chancellor I’Ashea Myles, has led to outcry not only from Star News Digital Media and Editor-in-Chief Michael Leahy, but also from open government advocates and Tennessee lawmakers.
Leahy’s attorney argued the court proceeding would violate his due process rights and infringe on First Amendment protections after his outlet, The Tennessee Star, reported on records leaked to them about the shooter at The Covenant School.
Initially, the judge ordered Leahy and attorneys to explain in court why the recent work involving leaked documents has not violated court protection of records that could subject them to contempt proceedings and sanctions. The judge later denied a request by Leahy to cancel the hearing but said no witnesses would testify.
The public records lawsuit by the conservative Star News and other plaintiffs remains tied up in court after more than a year. A group of Covenant School parents have joined the lawsuit, arguing none of the documents should ever be released because they could inspire copycats and retraumatize their children.
Though the investigative file remains officially closed to the public’s view, two prominent rounds of evidence about the shooter’s writings have leaked to media outlets.
Police have said they could not determine who was responsible for the first leak. While they look into the second, a lieutenant has drawn a connection to a former colleague without directly accusing him of the leak.
In a court declaration Friday, Nashville Police Lt. Alfredo Arevalo said his office led an investigation of the first leak. A former lieutenant, Garet Davidson, was given a copy of the criminal investigative file that was stored in a safe in his office and only Davidson had the key and safe combination, Arevalo said.
Davidson has left the force. Separately, he filed a well-publicized complaint alleging the police department actively lobbied to gut the city’s community oversight board, as well as a number of other misconduct claims.
In his declaration, Arevalo noted Davidson has spoken about details from the Covenant investigative file on Leahy’s radio show and another program.
Arevalo wrote that he is “appalled” by the leak and “saddened by the impact that this leak must have on the victims and families of the Covenant school shooting.”
The shooter who killed three 9-year-old children and three adults at Covenant, a private Christian school, left behind at least 20 journals, a suicide note and an unpublished memoir, according to court filings.
The city of Nashville has argued it doesn’t have to release the documents during an active police investigation. The plaintiffs have countered there is no meaningful criminal investigation underway since the shooter, Audrey Hale, was killed by police.
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