A dozen Philadelphia police officers who were fired or suspended for racist and violent social media posts can pursue a lawsuit against the city claiming their First Amendment rights were violated, a federal appeals court ruled.

The officers’ social media accounts were included in a database, published in 2019, that catalogued thousands of bigoted or violent posts by active-duty and former police officers in several states.

In Philadelphia, nearly 200 officers were disciplined, including 15 who were forced off the job. Twelve officers subsequently filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city, asserting the police department had retaliated against them for exercising their First Amendment rights.

A federal judge dismissed the suit last year, agreeing with the city’s argument that the officers’ posts had undermined public trust in the department and violated the city’s social media policy.

The plaintiffs “played racist bingo, mocking as many ethnic or religious groups as possible,” U.S. District Judge Petrese Tucker wrote last year.

In a ruling Thursday, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said it agreed the content was “offensive, racist and violent,” adding it does not “condone the officers’ use of social media to mock, disparage, and threaten the very communities they were sworn to protect.”

“Posts like the officers’ have the capacity to confirm the community’s worst fears about bias in policing,” the three-judge panel wrote.

But the court said Tucker’s decision to throw out the case was premature, given what it said was a lack of clarity over the provenance of some of the posts, which posts were the subject of discipline by the police department, and the “unadorned speculation” about the posts’ impact.

The court sent the case back to the lower court, saying the officers could continue to pursue their claims while noting they “undoubtedly face a steep uphill climb in ultimately proving their case.”

The indictment of former President Donald Trump will likely have little impact on the high stakes Wisconsin Supreme Court race to be decided next week, as Democrats try to flip majority control of the court with the fate of abortion access in the state on the line, those closely watching the contest said Friday.

Trump has not been directly involved in the race, did not endorse anyone, and the Republican-backed candidate has tried to distance his connections with the former president and the GOP. Additionally, Trump’s support among Republicans appears to be waning in the battleground state that he barely won in 2016 and then lost by a similar margin in 2020.

“While this (indictment) may get the juice flowing with some of his supporters, some may have a head shake and shoulder shrug,” said longtime Republican strategist and former state GOP party leader Brandon Scholz. “This indictment thing isn’t really tied into this race. It is a Trump issue.”

Charles Franklin, a pollster for the Marquette University Law School, said the indictment could spur a bump in turnout both among Trump’s most ardent supporters and his most fervent Democratic opponents. But he didn’t think it would fundamentally alter the dynamics of the Supreme Court race between Republican-backed Dan Kelly and Democratic-backed Janet Protasiewicz to be decided Tuesday.

With security threats to Supreme Court justices still fresh memories, Chief Justice John Roberts on Saturday praised programs that protect judges, saying that “we must support judges by ensuring their safety.”

Roberts and other conservative Supreme Court justices were the subject of protests, some at their homes, after the May leak of the court’s decision that ultimately stripped away constitutional protections for abortion. Justice Samuel Alito has said that the leak made conservative justices “targets for assassination.” And in June, a man carrying a gun, knife and zip ties was arrested near Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s house after threatening to kill the justice, whose vote was key to overturning the court’s Roe v. Wade decision.

Roberts, writing in an annual year-end report about the federal judiciary, did not specifically mention the abortion decision, but the case and the reaction to it seemed clearly on his mind.

“Judicial opinions speak for themselves, and there is no obligation in our free country to agree with them. Indeed, we judges frequently dissent — sometimes strongly — from our colleagues’ opinions, and we explain why in public writings about the cases before us,” Roberts wrote.

Polls following the abortion decision show public trust in the court is at historic lows. And two of Roberts’ liberal colleagues who dissented in the abortion case, Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, have said the court needs to be concerned about overturning precedent and appearing political.

After the leak and threat to Kavanaugh, lawmakers passed legislation increasing security protection for the justices and their families. Separately, in December, lawmakers passed legislation protecting the personal information of federal judges including their addresses.

The law is named for the son of U.S. District Judge Esther Salas, 20-year-old Daniel Anderl, who was killed at the family’s New Jersey home by a man who previously had a case before her.

Roberts thanked members of Congress “who are attending to judicial security needs.” And he said programs that protect judges are “essential to run a system of courts.”

In writing about judicial security, Roberts told the story of Judge Ronald N. Davies, who in September 1957 ordered the integration of Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas. Davies’ decision followed the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education ruling that segregated schools were unconstitutional and rejected Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus’ attempt to stop school integration.

Several Pennsylvania groups represented by the American Civil Liberties Union have filed suit in federal court seeking to have votes from mail-in or absentee ballots counted even if they lack proper dates on their return envelopes.

The suit filed Friday night in western Pennsylvania by state chapters of the NAACP, League of Women Voters, and Common Cause and other groups follows a state Supreme Court ruling last week that barred officials from counting ballots that lack accurate, handwritten dates on their return envelopes as required by state law.

The groups said refusing to count such ballots “because of a trivial paperwork error” could disenfranchise thousands of voters and would violate provisions of the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964, which states that immaterial errors or omissions should not be used to prevent voting.

“Refusing to count votes based on immaterial paperwork errors has a suppressive effect ... by erecting yet another roadblock preventing them from voting and having their votes counted,” the lawsuit said.

The groups —- which also included Philadelphians Organized to Witness, Empower and Rebuild, the Black Political Empowerment Project and Make the Road Pennsylvania — also said they would have to divert resources from voter mobilization and education to track down voters who omitted the date on the return envelopes of their ballots.

They are asking the court to bar election officials from rejecting otherwise valid ballots with missing or incorrect dates on the return envelope and to bar state and county governments from certifying any election in which such ballots are not counted.

The state Supreme Court had unanimously barred officials from counting such votes, directing county boards of elections to “segregate and preserve” those ballots, but the justices split 3-3 on whether making the envelope dates mandatory under state law would violate provisions of federal civil rights law.

Attorneys for the state of Idaho say a federal judge misinterpreted the law when he blocked part of a strict new abortion ban, and they say another law blocking all abortions after about six weeks’ gestation should also remain in effect.

In court documents filed Wednesday, Deputy Attorney General Brian Church asked U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill to reconsider his decision blocking the state from enforcing a strict abortion ban in medical emergencies, saying the judge misinterpreted both state and federal law and then issued an overly broad ruling.

“This case is not about denying necessary medical care to save the lives of women,” Church wrote in his motion. “This case is about preserving for the State its sovereign power to regulate abortions within its boundaries.”

Idaho’s strict abortion ban makes performing an abortion in any “clinically diagnosable pregnancy” a felony punishable by up to five years in prison, but says that physicians can defend themselves in court by showing that the procedure was necessary to avert the pregnant person’s death.

The law prompted the U.S. Department of Justice to sue Idaho last month, contending that the ban violates the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA). The law requires Medicare-funded hospitals to providing stabilizing care to patients experiencing medical emergencies, and the Justice Department says that include abortions in cases where the health of the pregnant patient is in jeopardy or when continuing the pregnancy could seriously harm the pregnant patient’s organs or body parts.

The Minnesota Supreme Court will arguments on whether to permanently allow cameras in the courtroom, following trials by ex-police officers Derek Chauvin and Kim Potter that were watched by millions of people around the world.

An advisory committee made up of Minnesota judges, attorneys and court personnel is recommending the court continue its routine of keeping out cameras. Minnesota media outlets and advocacy groups say it’s time the state embrace the technology like neighboring Iowa, Wisconsin and North Dakota.

Minnesota’s top court is scheduled to hear arguments on the issue Tuesday.

Presiding Hennepin County District Court judges were initially opposed to cameras in the courtroom for the notorious trials of Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd, and Potter for the killing of Daunte Wright. Both judges, Peter Cahill and Regina Chu, changed their minds in part because of immense public interest and COVID-19 limitations.

Media and government organizations, along with Cahill, sent letters to the Supreme Court in support of expanded camera access. Victims’ rights groups, public defenders, defense attorneys and prosecutors are opposed, the Star Tribune reported.

“The fact of the matter is that these are incredibly emotional times, difficult times for all the parties that are involved,” said Minnesota State Public Defender Bill Ward. “Justice should not be a spectator sport and should not be something that’s sensationalized in the news media.”

Mankato Free Press Managing Editor Joe Spear wrote to the court that the presence of a camera doesn’t change the truth.

Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that an underage girl can get an abortion without parental consent if she had been raped.

The court ruled that it was not necessary to have filed a crime report about the rape; the victim only has to swear she was raped.

The court held last year that it was unconstitutional to punish abortion. As Mexico’s highest court, its ruling bars all jurisdictions from charging a woman with a crime for terminating a pregnancy.

Statutes outlawing abortion are still on the books in most of Mexico’s 32 states, however, and nongovernmental organizations that have long pushed for decriminalization are pressing state legislatures to reform them. Abortion was already readily available in Mexico City and some states.