Recently in Civil Rights Category

The adoptive parents of a child born with male and female organs say South Carolina mutilated their son by choosing a gender and having his male genitalia surgically removed.

The surgery took place when the child was 16 months old and a ward of the state, according to the attached lawsuit filed by the parents against three doctors and several members of the South Carolina Department of Social Services.

Lawyers for the parents said the complaints filed in federal and state courts are the first lawsuits of their kind filed in the United States.

The child, now 8 years old, feels more like a boy and “wants to be a normal boy,” Pamela Crawford, the boy’s adoptive mother, said in a video released by the Southern Poverty Law Center. “There was no medical reason that this decision had to be made at this time.”

The U.S. government secretly seized telephone records of The Associated Press for a two-month period in 2012 in a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into news-gathering operations, the AP says.

AP Chief Executive Gary Pruitt, in a letter addressed to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, said the Justice Department seized records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP and its journalists in April and May of 2012.

"There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of The Associated Press and its reporters," Pruitt said in the attached letter of protest.

The records obtained by the Justice Department listed outgoing calls for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, for general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., and for the main number for the AP in the House of Representatives press gallery, according to attorneys for the AP.

People who test positive for smoking pot can legally be fired from their job, the Colorado Court of Appeals has ruled. So while recreational and medical marijuana is legal in Colorado, there is no employment protection for marijuana users.

A divided court upheld the firing of a man for off-the-job medical-marijuana use. The court reasoned that, because marijuana is illegal under federal law, employees have no protection to use it.

Brandon Coats is a quadriplegic medical-marijuana patient who was fired from his job as a telephone operator at Dish Network after testing positive for marijuana.

The case, decided 2-1, is the first to look at whether off-duty marijuana use that is legal under state law is protected by Colorado's Lawful Off-Duty Activities Statute, according to The Denver Post. The statute says employers can't fire employees for doing legal things off-the-clock.

The morning-after pill for emergency contraception, popularly known as “Plan B,” must be made available over the counter to girls 16 and under, a New York federal judge has ruled.

The ruling could end a long battle over how easy or difficult it should be for teenage girls to obtain emergency contraception. The ruling would also make it easier for all women to obtain the morning-after pill because it wouldn’t have to be kept behind drugstore counters anymore.

The judge’s order effectively overturns a controversial 2011 decision by Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius that barred over-the-counter sales of the pill to girls under 17.

After years of study and internal debate, the FDA had decided that Plan B One Step should be allowed for sale without a prescription — and without age restrictions. Sebelius’ controversial ruling overturned the FDA’s decision.

Senior Judge Edward R. Korman, of the Eastern District of New York, ruled that Sebelius’s ruling on Plan B was “arbitrary, capricious, and unreasonable.” Judge Korman went on to call Sebelius’ decision “politically motivated, scientifically unjustified, and contrary to agency precedent ….”

A Jesus portrait in a small Ohio town has come down over concerns over the cost of defending a federal lawsuit against its display.

The religious painting thrust rural Jackson, Ohio into a national debate over religion in public schools.

The Jackson City Schools superintendent ordered the "Head of Christ" painting taken down Wednesday. Superintendent Phil Howard said the decision was made after the district's insurance company declined to cover litigation expenses.

"At the end of the day, we just couldn't roll the dice with taxpayer money," Superintendent Phil Howard told The Associated Press. "When you get into these kinds of legal battles, you're not talking about money you can raise with bake sales and car washes. It's not fair to take those resources from our kids' education."

The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio and the Madison, Wis.-based Freedom from Religion Foundation sued on behalf of a student and two parents. The complaint, attached here, called the portrait an unconstitutional promotion of religion in a public school.

New York City’s ban on large soda drinks was halted by a judge Monday after industry groups sued to stop the “unfair burden on small business.” The ban was invalidated one day before the new law was to go into effect.

The city is “enjoined and permanently restrained from implementing or enforcing the new regulations,” New York Supreme Court Justice Milton Tingling ruled.

“The loopholes in this rule effectively defeat the state purpose of the rule,” Justice Tingling wrote, stating the regulations are “fraught with arbitrary and capricious consequences.”

Mayor Michael Bloomberg had spearheaded the ban on any sugary drink cup over 16 ounces from restaurants, movie theaters and other establishments as an attack on obesity. But beverage manufacturers, like the American Beverage Association, called the law an illegal overreach that would infringe upon consumers’ personal liberty.

Justice Tingling sided with the trade groups and issued a permanent injunction prohibiting the city from implementing the plan.

Arkansas has adopted what is by far the nation’s most restrictive ban on abortion — at 12 weeks of pregnancy, when a fetal heartbeat can typically be detected by abdominal ultrasound.

The law, the most pointed challenge yet to Roe v. Wade, was passed by the newly Republican-controlled legislature over the veto of Gov. Mike Beebe. Beebe called the law “blatantly unconstitutional.”

The law contradicts the limit established by Supreme Court decisions, which give women a right to an abortion until the fetus is viable outside the womb, usually around 24 weeks into pregnancy.

A provision of Arizona’s SB 1070 immigration law that forbids day laborers to look for work violates the First Amendment, the 9th Circuit has ruled.

The provision aimed at day laborers and employers who hire them is unconstitutional and unenforceable, a three-judge federal appeals court panel ruled.

The panel rejected the state’s argument that it can make it a crime for someone looking for work to enter a car stopped on the street. That law also criminalizes drivers who stop to pick up laborers.

Attorneys for the state said Arizona has a legitimate interest in ensuring that traffic is not blocked.

But Appellate Judge Raymond Fisher ruled it would have been one thing if the state simply made it illegal to block traffic.

Instead, SB 1070 only targeted day laborers. And that, Fisher said, makes it an unconstitutional infringement on the First Amendment rights of the individuals.

National businesses and prominent cities filed two amicus curiae briefs with the U.S. Supreme Court in support of same-sex marriage.

The groups urged the court to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in U.S. v. Windsor and Proposition 8 in Hollingsworth v. Perry.

The businesses include financial institutions, medical centers, airlines, energy and high technology businesses, law and professional firms, retailers, restaurants, non-profit organizations, and several others. Both briefs state an interest for the businesses in their desires to recruit, retain, and secure a talented workforce, and state that the laws in question impinge upon those interests.

The issue of same sex marriage is also dividing the Republican Party as a group of more than 80 prominent members of the GOP reportedly have signed a separate amicus brief advocating for the legalization of gay marriage.

A member of the 80 Republicans has said it would be submitted to the United States Supreme Court this week. The deadline to submit briefs is Thursday.

Medical marijuana users in Michigan aren’t allowed to buy pot from businesses or other patients, Michigan’s highest court recently ruled. The ruling may shutter most of the state’s medical marijuana dispensaries.

In a 4-1 decision, the Michigan Supreme Court held that transfers of marijuana between two authorized medical marijuana patients are not legal. The high court upheld a 2011 state Court of Appeals ruling that said patient-to-patient sales of marijuana are illegal under the state’s medical marijuana law.

Marijuana dispensaries can be considered a “public nuisance,” according to the Supreme Court’s opinion. Enforcement since the appeals’ court decision has depended on the attitudes of local police and sheriff’s agencies.