Recently in Civil Rights Law Category

Here’s an interesting case from the Third Circuit Court of Appeals involving private tuition rights for a student with disabilities.

The appellate court upheld a district court ruling on the matter, which essentially overturned a ruling by a PennsCylvania Due Process Hearing Officer.

On April 26, a three-judge panel of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals agreed to vacate a jury judgment awarding $6.5 million to workers at the Department of Environmental Protection.

The award had already been vacated by the district court before the case to went to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.

CBS is not out of the woods yet on Janet Jackson’s notorious Super Bowl incident from 2004.

The U.S. Supreme Court might be reviewing the infamous “wardrobe malfunction” case. The Federal Communications Commission filed a writ of certiorari, requesting the Supreme Court to review the appeals court decision.

A group of porn-industry folks brought a recent lawsuit before the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia.

The lawsuit raised constitutional issues relating to criminal laws that imposed recordkeeping, labeling and inspection requirements on “producers of sexually explicit depictions.”

On Tuesday, a panel of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments in what’s been dubbed the “I Heart Boobies” case. This lawsuit has it all — the First Amendment, the ACLU and “boobies.”

The case involves two female middle school students at Easton Area Middle School. The students were suspended for wearing breast-cancer awareness bracelets that had the words “I Heart Boobies— Keep a Breast Foundation.”

The U.S. Supreme Court upheld a 2010 Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruling on the propriety of strip searches for minor offenses in an April 2 decision.

The case, Florence v. Board of Chosen Freeholders of the County of Burlington, dealt with the strip search of a man on a minor traffic offense, finding that such searches were okay under the law.

Last December, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals found in favor of the Lower Merion School District, in Pennsylvania, in a case that alleged that a plan to reassign certain students to a different school was racially motivated.

Now, nine African American students from Ardmore are petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to review the Third Circuit’s decision, reports The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Last week, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals held in favor of Haverford Township in a police brutality case.

This week, the township is seeking to recoup costs from the plaintiff for expenses incurred by the township while fighting the claim and the appeal.

Wilmington is suspending and revising its Instant Ticketing Program after the Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the program violated due process rights.

Last year, the Third Circuit ruled in favor of plaintiffs Christine Dowd, Damon Morris, and Roy Morris, finding that a 2008 New Castle ordinance establishing a civil, “Instant Ticketing Program” for sanitation code violations was “patently an unconstitutional procedure,” according to The News Journal.

With the skyrocketing popularity of social media use, cyber bullying has become an increasingly serious problem for young people. However, it won’t be up to school officials to regulate their off-campus conduct.

The United States Supreme Court denied cert to three free speech cases involving some of the first challenges to the free speech rights of students on the Internet. The cases involved student comments made about administrators or peers on social media websites.