Recently in Civil Rights Law Category

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that certain tax exempt groups who finance electioneering ads must disclose the names of their donors, reports the Associated Press.

The court held that a law requiring disclosure of the names of contributors was not shown to be harmful to the contributors. This comes after a federal district court ruling in March against the Federal Election Commission. The FEC had not been enforcing the disclosure law.

Google and the National Security Agency can keep their clandestine relationship under wraps, says the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The ruling came out last Friday and addressed the Freedom of Information Act request filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC). In the ruling, the court stated that the NSA does not have to confirm or deny its relationship with Google.

Is the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals responsible for blocking the efforts of Guantanamo Bay detainees to win their cases?

Despite the Supreme Court's holding in Boumediene v. Bush, allowing Guantanamo Bay detainees to challenge their detention, the detainees aren't having much luck.

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments Thursday in the Hamdan v. U.S. appeal.

Hamdan is one of the big players as far as Guantuanamo Bay cases go.

Salim Hamdan, Osama Bin Laden’s former driver, was tried before a military commission in 2006. He was convicted on five counts of material support, and was acquitted on three counts of material support.

A D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals case involving a dairy farmer is drawing attention, particularly in light of a concurring judge’s scathing opinion.

In a sharply worded concurrence, Judge Janice Rogers Brown of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals made the reluctance of her concurrence clear, as she explained that her vote on the three-judge panel was the result of decades of bad Supreme Court precedent.

On April 10, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals will be hearing oral arguments on the constitutionality of graphic images on cigarette packages.

On February 29, a U.S. District Court ruled that the images were unconstitutional. The labels in question include images of a sewn up cadaver and diseased lungs. The district court judge held that the images, which take up 20 percent of the cigarette carton, infringe upon the First Amendment free-speech rights of the tobacco companies.

Last month, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments in the Doe v. Rumsfeld case.

Citing Bivens v. Six Unknown Fed. Narcotics Agents as an authority, the case involved alleged detention and interrogation abuses against a U.S. military contractor, “John Doe,” in Iraq. Doe, an Arabic translator for a Marine intelligence unit, is a U.S. citizen.

Does the Environmental Protection Agency have the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions? The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit will decide later this year, as it sits poised to hear oral arguments this week from four major lawsuits challenging the authority of the EPA.

These lawsuits are brought by four industry groups. In 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the EPA had the authority to regulate greenhouse gases by virtue of the Clean Air Act. Of course, this was with the caveat that it could only do so if the gases posed a risk to human health.

The Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) graphic warning labels for cigarettes are not only bad for the tobacco business, they’re unconstitutional.

When the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals considers an injunction against the new labels in April, it can also consider the latest ruling finding that the labels violate the First Amendment. The D.C. District Court ruled this week that the warnings violated the tobacco industry’s free speech rights without a compelling government interest.

The advent of new technology typically provides novel considerations of applying age-old laws.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the GPS tracking of a suspect without a warrant violated the Fourth Amendment’s ban on “unreasonable searches and seizures,” upholding the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeal’s opinion from 2010.

The case, U.S. v. Jones, stemmed from police action in which officers tracked the movements of suspected cocaine dealer Antoine Jones for over a month without a warrant.