The city of San Jose is impatient to play ball. On Tuesday the city filed an antitrust suit against Major League Baseball alleging the league has engaged in a “blatant conspiracy” to prevent the Oakland Athletics from moving to San…
Arizona’s voter initiative banning bail for undocumented aliens charged with a serious felony survived a constitutional challenge Tuesday in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The panel voted 2-1 that Proposition 100 did not violate the Constitution’s due process…
California cities cannot skirt the state’s tough Coastal Commission guardianship of public access to beaches by limiting hours through gated communities at the shore, a state appeals court said Monday. The Fourth District Court of Appeal’s 2-1 decision requires the…
Defendants facing competency hearings have a constitutional right to testify that cannot be waived by defense counsel, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday. The difficult judicial issue of handling disruptive defendants and competency hearings didn’t get any…
A timber sale in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest in California will be allowed to proceed, despite objections from environmentalists that it will threaten Northern Spotted Owl habitat. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Thursday upheld a lower court decision…
California’s cash-strapped court system will get $63 million restored from May’s initial budget revision by Gov. Jerry Brown. The compromise proposal issued Tuesday between Brown and the Legislature’s Democratic leaders keeps the judiciary’s budget at $1.2 billion, down by over…
The process to take someone’s guns away isn’t that easy for a city, even a 72-year-old woman with psychiatric problems, who threatened suicide and had a closet full of handguns. The Fourth District Court of Appeal Tuesday rejected a constitutional…
[UPDATED] Someone forgot to tell the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that the government is considering declassifying some documents related to claims the NSA collected phone records on Americans. On Monday, the circuit tossed a lawsuit against the NSA and President…
A federal judge who has been a Whitewater prosecutor and judge on the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court will now oversee administration of the federal courts. U.S. District Judge John Bates takes over July 1 as head of the Administrative…
You might think the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision approving the police practice of collecting DNA from arrestees would moot the 9th Circuit’s review of a similar case. Certainly state Attorney General Kamala Harris thought so and filed papers with the…
Lovers of San Francisco’s historic landmark restaurant, Julius Castle, won’t be eating cracked crab or sipping port anytime soon. The restaurant, which has perched on the side of Telegraph Hill since 1923, has been shuttered since 2008. On Monday, a…
Appellate judge’s in the Google Wi-Spy privacy class action weren’t giving up much indication of how they’re leaning in Monday’s argument, where the central question is whether the 1986 Wiretap Act would allow interception of unencrypted Wi-Fi signals. One thing…
Affordable housing programs in California just got a big boost from a state Court of Appeal ruling Friday upholding the constitutionality of San Jose’s set-aside rules. The Sixth District Court of Appeal said that San Jose’s police powers allow it…