Too often, national security and personal liberties are portrayed as inversely related. This is simplistic, and also clearly wrong. After all, in the absence of security, it would be impossible to enjoy our freedoms at all. Nevertheless, some of the hardest national security choices are inevitably those that involve tradeoffs with civil liberties. The need to gather information on our enemies rubs up against expectations of privacy. The eroding line between war and law enforcement endangers principles of due process. And the need to keep secrets increasingly leads to tension with a robust free press.
Latest in Civil Liberties and Constitutional Rights
On March 9, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit issued two concurring opinions in an earlier per curiam ruling that had vacated a district court injunction against the military’s restrictions on service of transgender persons. As Judge Robert Wilkins’s concurrence observed, neither the D.C.
Note: The Defense Department has issued a directive implementing the department's policy, effective April 12, 2019.
In the latest salvo in a long debate over the use of video teleconferencing (VTC) technology in immigration courts, several legal aid organizations filed a class-action lawsuit on Feb. 12 in New York challenging the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) practice of denying in-person hearings to immigrants.
In the past few days, two young women who left their home countries to join the Islamic State in Syria announced their desire to return home with their children. Hoda Muthana, from the United States, and Shamima Begum, from the United Kingdom, both married Islamic State fighters and had children in Syria. But neither the U.S. nor the U.K. will allow their return.
On Feb. 22, a federal judge in the Southern District of Texas ruled that it is unconstitutional for the government to require only men to register for the draft.
This morning, the Supreme Court granted stays of two district court preliminary injunctions in Trump v. Karnoski and Trump v. Stockman, which had blocked implementation of the Trump administration’s ban on military service by transgender people. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan would have denied the stay.
On Monday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled in Davidson v. Randall that a Virginia county official who blocked a constituent's access to the official’s Facebook page had violated the First Amendment. The court held that the official’s Facebook account amounted to a “public forum” and that blocking constituent access based on political viewpoints is unconstitutional. The full ruling is below.
On Nov. 23, the Trump administration filed petitions with the Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari before judgment in three lawsuits challenging its ban on military service by transgender people, seeking extraordinary expedited review and preempting rulings by the courts of appeals.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia declined on Nov. 30 to grant the government's motion for a stay of the court's preliminary injunction halting implementation of the ban on military service by transgender individuals. The court's order is available here and below.
On Nov. 23, the Trump administration filed petitions for a writ of certiorari before judgment in three lawsuits challenging its ban on military service by transgender people, preempting rulings by the courts of appeals. The filings are available here, here, here and below.