Tag Archives: ACLU

The Supreme Court is considering the right of citizens to sue over a law that lets government agents conduct dragnet telephone and email surveillance. The current case won’t determine the constitutionality of the sweeping powers of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, but a ruling against the government could set the stage for a constitutional challenge next year. FISA was passed in 1978 to give government agents the ability to eavesdrop on communications between foreign parties without a warrant. …

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit on Oct. 23 said Indiana could not enforce a 2011 state law that barred abortion providers – including Planned Parenthood – from receiving any state or federal funds. It would have stripped all Medicaid funding from any health care provider that provides abortion services, among many others. The appellate court barred enforcement of the law, based on Planned Parenthood’s objection that the state defunding law violates a federal Medicaid law that …

Did you know your cell phone can be tracked by the government, even when you’re not using it? Using a device called a Stingray, which acts like a “fake” cell phone tower allowing them to search large areas for a specific cell phone signal, the government is able to gather data on any other phones in the area. That clearly violates the Fourth Amendment, according to a constitutional challenge mounted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the ACLU as …

  To read a companion article on Huffington Post, see The Legal Battle Over Cell Phone Location Privacy Did you know the government can be tracking you as you listen to this podcast? In today’s Lawyers.com Radio broadcast, host Matt Plessner interviews Editor in Chief Larry Bodine about an alarming trend going through the courts right now, where the police are making requests to cell phone companies to tell them the location of their customers. “They’re not asking to listen …

For the second time this year, a federal appeals court has deemed that the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional. Today the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York ruled that the 1996 law barring federal recognition of same-sex marriages is in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution that guarantees equal protection under the law. In June the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit in Boston handed down a similar ruling in a separate …