Attorneys for The Rutherford Institute have filed a First Amendment lawsuit against police officers who allegedly intimidated and threatened to arrest a man who was lawfully and peacefully exercising his First Amendment rights prior to a Giants v. Dodgers game by holding up a “John 3:16” religious sign in the public plaza in front of the San Francisco Giants ballpark.

In a ruling that comes on the heels of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent declaration that the government can discriminate against expression that takes place within a government forum (e.g., government-issued Confederate license plates), a federal court has ordered the cancellation of the NFL Redskins’ federal trademark registrations on the grounds that its name is offensive to Native Americans. Reasoning that the government is exempt from First Amendment scrutiny, U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee affirmed that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) doesn’t have to hand out registrations to entities whose names it finds offensive, equating a trademark registration with a form of government-sanctioned speech.

Battlefield America: The War on the American People (SelectBooks, 2015), constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead’s chilling follow-up to his award-winning 2013 book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, is being released as an audiobook by Brilliance Audio. In Battlefield America, Whitehead paints a terrifying portrait of a nation at war with itself and which is on the verge of undermining the basic freedoms guaranteed to the citizenry in the Constitution. With a foreword written by former presidential candidate Ron Paul, Battlefield America is drawing praise on all fronts.

In a 5-4 decision in Glossip v. Gross, a divided U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the use of a controversial drug as part of the government’s lethal injection protocols for death row executions. Citing the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment, death row inmates had challenged the State of Oklahoma’s plan to use midazolam, an anti-anxiety drug that experts indicate would not create the deep coma needed to prevent inmates from awakening and avoid excruciating pain in death penalty executions. In justifying its ruling, the Court declared that the inmates did not show that an alternative method of execution entails a lesser risk of pain.

Pointing to statistics showing that the number of vaccinated schoolchildren has not reached levels which would pose a significant danger of disease outbreaks, The Rutherford Institute is warning the California State Assembly against adopting legislation that would deny families with religious and/or “personal” beliefs an exemption from certain childhood vaccinations required for attendance in public or private schools.

The U.S. Supreme Court has handed down three consecutive rulings affirming the right of Americans to be free from government overreach. The Rutherford Institute advanced arguments in all three cases, which respectively deal with the use of tasers and excessive force by prison officials (Kingsley v. Hendrickson); the practice of police gaining unfettered access to motel and hotel guest registries (City of Los Angeles v. Patel); and the government’s confiscation of agricultural crops without any guarantee or promise of payment (Horne v. U.S. Department of Agriculture).

The Rutherford Institute is challenging a federal statute that allows the government to reject trademark applications for names that might be offensive to certain persons or groups. In coming to the defense of “The Slants,” an Asian-American dance rock band whose trademark application was denied by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) on the grounds that the trademark might disparage or offend persons of Asian heritage (even though the applicant himself is of Asian heritage), Rutherford Institute attorneys argue that the statute openly discriminates against speech on the basis of content and viewpoint, violating the most fundamental constitutional guarantees to freedom of expression.

Delivering a sharp blow to the First Amendment, a 5-4 U.S. Supreme Court has declared specialty license plates to be “government speech” and not private speech and, thus, subject to censorship by government officials. The Rutherford Institute warns that the ruling could set a dangerous precedent, paving the way for the government to censor private speech whenever it occurs in a public or government forum. At issue in Walker v. Texas Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans, Inc., was whether Texas officials violated the First Amendment when they denied a Civil War heritage group’s request for a specialty plate bearing the Confederate battle flag, allegedly because the Department of Motor Vehicles was concerned some people would be offended by the Confederate flag.

Under a settlement agreement negotiated by attorneys for The Rutherford Institute, an Illinois community college will allow two social activists previously banned from the college to hand out what might be perceived as “politically incorrect” informational flyers on campus. The settlement was reached after a federal court ruled that Waubonsee Community College (WCC) likely violated the First Amendment by excluding Wayne Lela and John McCartney from campus on the basis of the content of their leaflets for the organization Heterosexuals Organized for a Moral Environment. WCC deemed the speech not “consistent with the philosophy, goals and mission of the college.” WCC has agreed to allow Lela and McCartney to hand out leaflets near entrances to the college’s student center on various occasions over the next 10 years.

Calling the expiration of Section 215 of the Patriot Act, cited as the legal authority for the National Security Agency’s (NSA) domestic surveillance program, an historic opportunity to not only end the government’s unconstitutional practice but rein in the NSA, The Rutherford Institute is cautioning the United States Senate against adopting the proposed USA FREEDOM Act as a legislative solution because it could do more damage than good.

Ruling in a case that will significantly impact expression on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks, a near-unanimous U.S. Supreme Court declared in Anthony D. Elonis v. United States of America that threats made over the Internet are protected unless they are malevolent or reckless. In weighing in on the case, The Rutherford Institute had argued that the First Amendment protects even inflammatory statements that may give offense or cause concern to others unless the statements were a credible threat to engage in violence against another and made by the defendant with the intent to cause fear in the alleged victim.

Constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead will be appearing at BookExpo America, the leading publishing showcase for North America, on Thursday, May 28, 2015, to showcase his new book, Battlefield America: The War on the American People (SelectBooks, 2015).

Constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead will appear in “The Root: Excessive Force,” a special documentary hosted by Glenn Beck about what happens to civil liberties when the government favors police state tactics such as lockdowns, SWAT team raids, and mass surveillance.  “The Root: Excessive Force” will air at 5 pm EST on May 21, 2015, TheBlazeTV. The airing of the documentary coincides with the Obama administration’s release of a 120-page “Task Force on 21st Century Policing” report and the announcement that the president will limit some of the military weapons being passed along to local police departments.

Months after the White House defended a federal program that distributed $18 billion worth of military equipment to local police, President Obama has now announced that he will ban the federal government from providing local police departments with tracked armored vehicles, weaponized aircraft and vehicles, bayonets, grenade launchers, camouflage uniforms and large-caliber firearms. Obama also indicated that less heavy-duty equipment (armored vehicles, tactical vehicles, riot gear and specialized firearms and ammunition) will reportedly be subject to more regulations such as local government approval, and police being required to undergo more training and collect data on the equipment’s use.

A federal court has granted qualified immunity to police officers who wrongfully arrested, strip searched, handcuffed to a table, diagnosed as having “mental health issues,” and subsequently locked up a disabled man for five days in a mental health facility against his will and with no access to family and friends, apparently because of his slurred speech and unsteady gait.

Describing the National Security Agency’s (NSA) domestic spying program that collects data about virtually all telephone calls made in the United States as “staggering” in its scope and unauthorized by the Patriot Act, a federal appeals court has struck down the agency’s surveillance program, ruling that the program violates a federal law authorizing more limited investigations in support of national security.

The City of Harrisonburg, Virginia, has rescinded a threat made by zoning officials to levy criminal charges at a local church over its display of pro-life messages on private property. The city’s reversal came after attorneys for The Rutherford Institute intervened on behalf of Valley Church of Christ, which had been ordered to take down signs on its property that quote Mother Teresa and the Bible on the sanctity of human life.

A federal appeals court has refused to reinstate the lawsuit of decorated Marine Brandon Raub who was seized by a swarm of Secret Service, FBI and local police officials and involuntarily committed for a week because of controversial song lyrics and political views he posted on his Facebook page.

Rejecting the idea that some violations of the Constitution are insignificant, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled today that police may not extend the time needed to conduct an ordinary traffic stop in order to subject the vehicle and its occupants to an examination by a drug-detecting dog unless they have specific reasons to suspect the car is carrying contraband.

Battlefield America: The War on the American People (SelectBooks, 2015), constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead’s chilling follow-up to his award-winning 2013 book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, hits bookstores today.