Docket Reports

Fall 2022

A Big Victory for Free Speech: The U.S. Air Force agreed to rescind a policy that allowed it to ban individuals who posted critical comments on an official Facebook page.

Winter 2022

Two new victories: CIR granted partial summary judgment on behalf of NY civil servant Salvatore Davi and achieved favorable settlement on behalf of Maria Garcia’s coffee business Cocina Cultura!  Plus, two new cases.

Spring 2020

CIR started 2020 with big plans, and we intend to see them through. We brought two major new cases that challenge the power of government agencies to pick and choose whose rights they will defend.

Fall 2019

CIR’s big victory this summer in Davis v. Guam probably puts an end to Guam’s effort to hold a race-exclusive referendum on the question of whether Guam should remain part of the United States.

Fall 2018

Landmark legal victories don’t come easily. They take years of detailed planning, hard work, and patience. That was certainly the case with our effort to overturn compulsory union dues.

Fall 2017

We’re so close. A victory in Janus v. CTA next June could end compulsory dues across the nation. In no small part, this will be due to CIR supporters who helped get CIR’s Friedrichs v. CTA to the Supreme Court last year.

Spring 2012

In late March, the Supreme Court heard an unprecedented three days of oral argument in the most important case of this decade. The Court now will decide whether Congress has the authority to require every individual in the United States to purchase health insurance.

Fall 2011

There has been some good news of late in the national fight against Obamacare: the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals just struck down the central pillar of that law, the so-called “individual mandate.”

Fall 2010

As current events in Washington unmistakably show, the Democratic Party has become a machine for rewarding its friends and harming its foes. Tirelessly, it works to make more and more elements of our society beholden to it, from recipients of unemployment benefits to major corporations eager to deal in “carbon credits.”

Fall 2009

Six months into the Obama Presidency, CIR has occasion for some good cheer. It’s not simply that plans to greatly expand the government are in trouble with a suddenly skeptical public. More heartening is the way the cause of limited government has been advanced through the courts, Obama Administration or no Obama Administration.

Spring 2009

“Fundamental and astounding.” That’s how Abraham Lincoln described the changes wrought by the Civil War.

Summer 2006

On January 19, the Supreme Court of the State of New York ordered Le Moyne College to reinstate Scott McConnell forthwith.

Winter 2005

CIR duly filed its motion for summary judgment in Brennan v. Ashcroft on November 15. Sometime in the next month, a truckload of opposition briefs will be wheeled down our hall. (To be more precise, they will be delivered electronically and come sliding into our offices over our T-1 line.)

Spring 2004

Steve Hinkle never dreamed that administrators at California Polytechnic State University (located in San Luis Obispo) would punish him for peaceably trying to post a flyer that announced a campus event on a public bulletin board at his school. But that is what happened.

Winter 2003

Staff members were plenty excited this December 2 when they got the news: the Supreme Court has agreed to hear both of CIR’s cases against the admissions policies of the University of Michigan—Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger.

Spring 2003

On April 1, the CIR staff, clients, and co-counsel set off in a caravan of taxicabs headed towards the entrance of the Supreme Court at the corner of Maryland and South Capital streets. This was the day on which the Court had scheduled successive oral arguments in our cases challenging racial preferences at the University of Michigan.

Fall 2002

An air of tense, but pleasant, anticipation hangs over CIR offices these days. After years of work and the dedicated efforts of many people, aaCIR’s twin cases against racial preferences at the University of Michigan (Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger) are poised to go all the way to the Supreme Court.

Winter 2000

CIR’s twin cases against racial preferences at the University of Michigan finally will go to trial. Pre-trial hearings in the case against the Undergraduate College of Literature, Sciences, and the Arts will take place November 16, 2000. And the law school trial is scheduled to begin on January 15, 2001.

Summer 1995

ENOUGH! We’re not normally given to indignation. But in the case of James B. Maas v. Cornell University, filed on August 1, 1995 in Tompkins County Court, we’ll make an exception. Jim Maas is a professor of psychology at Cornell University, where he has taught for 31 years. He is–or was–a beloved and esteemed member of what Cornell, hilariously, still calls its “community.” To this day, he is intensely loyal to his institution, wretched though its conduct has been of late.