In response to a Fourth Amendment lawsuit filed by attorneys for The Rutherford Institute, government officials insist they had “probable cause” to arrest a 37-year-old disabled man, allegedly because of his slurred speech and unsteady gait. Gordon Goines, a resident of Waynesboro, Va., who suffers from a neurological condition similar to multiple sclerosis, was then strip searched by police, handcuffed to a table, diagnosed as having “mental health issues,” and subsequently locked up for five days in a mental health facility against his will and with no access to family and friends.

In a blow to First Amendment rights, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has upheld as “reasonable” a 60-year old federal statute criminalizing expressive First Amendment activity on the Supreme Court plaza. The appeals court’s ruling reverses a lower court decision in Hodge v. Talkin, et al., that found the ban to be “repugnant” to the Constitution and “unreasonable, substantially overbroad, and irreconcilable with the First Amendment.”

In asking the Supreme Court to reinstate Brandon Raub v. Michael Campbell, Rutherford Institute attorneys are challenging a ruling by a lower court judge who characterized the Institute’s concerns over government suppression of dissident speech as “far-fetched.” Moreover, Institute attorneys are urging the Court to establish standards to guide and constrain mental health professionals when they seek to commit individuals and to prevent commitment on the basis of a person’s exercise of his right to free speech.

In weighing in on a case that, if not reversed, could undermine the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of a right to counsel in criminal cases, The Rutherford Institute is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to prohibit the government from using aggressive asset forfeiture tactics to strip American citizens of the funds needed to hire a defense attorney of their choosing.

In a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on behalf of Don Karns and Nathan Magnusen, Rutherford Institute attorneys are challenging a Hampton, Va., law restricting voice amplifiers that was used to cite, convict and arrest the street preachers for sharing their message amidst crowds gathered for the City’s Hampton Bay Days.

Attorneys for The Rutherford Institute have advised the Greene County Board of Supervisors that rules recently adopted governing the open forum public comment period during Board meetings could be used to censor unpopular but constitutionally protected speech, thereby resulting in First Amendment violations.

The Rutherford Institute is challenging a warrantless raid carried out on a rural home by the Gillespie County (Tex.) Sheriff’s Department, which allegedly resulted in the homeowner being seized by police officers, placed in handcuffs, thrown to the ground and subsequently arrested for refusing to consent to the search of his home.

The Rutherford Institute has filed a lawsuit against the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) over its unregulated use of whole body scanners, which have been likened to virtual strip searches, in the nation’s airports. The TSA implemented Whole Body Imagers (WBI) (also referred to as Advanced Imaging Technology) in 2009 as a primary security screening tool in airports. However, the agency did not notify the public of its decision to deploy the scanners, nor did it ask for public comments on use of the use of WBI technology as required by federal law.

Attorneys for The Rutherford Institute have filed an appeal in a case involving a disabled man who was arrested, strip searched, handcuffed to a table, diagnosed as having “mental health issues,” and subsequently locked up for five days in a mental health facility against his will and with no access to family and friends, allegedly because of his slurred speech and unsteady gait.

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.