Attorneys for The Rutherford Institute are urging the Houston County Sheriff’s Office to reconsider its decision to remove “Blessed Are the Peacemakers” decals from police department vehicles. Sheriff Valenza removed the decals after being threatened with lawsuits and accused of violating the Establishment Clause’s so-called “separation of church and state.”

Attorneys for The Rutherford Institute are rebutting an attempt by a Virginia police officer to dismiss a lawsuit filed on behalf of a man who was arrested as he was engaged in a First Amendment protest against President Obama while lawfully carrying a rifle. Rutherford Institute attorneys are also challenging an assertion by police that Brandon Howard was not actually under arrest, even though he was detained by police at gun point, handcuffed against his will and transported against his will to a local police station.

The Rutherford Institute, as part of a coalition of 45 national and international organizations that includes the ACLU, Government Accountability Project, Human Rights Watch and the Sunlight Foundation, is calling on President Obama to restore whistleblower protections for intelligence community (IC) contractors such as Edward Snowden.

In recognition of Constitution Day, Sept. 17, the anniversary of the signing of the U.S. Constitution, The Rutherford Institute is calling on all Americans to read the document that one historian described as “the owners’ manual to the greatest form of government the world has ever known.” Institute president John W. Whitehead is also challenging all of the presidential candidates to take a test in order to qualify for office proving that they have a working knowledge of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Arguing that the First Amendment forbids the government from dictating what citizens should say, whom they should support or with whom they should associate, The Rutherford Institute has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn existing law that allows unions to require public-sector employees to subsidize political activities undertaken by the union.

Pointing to extensive evidence that the government is systematically copying and substantially reviewing all international text-based communications, The Rutherford Institute, the ACLU, Wikipedia, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and other educational, legal, human rights and media organizations have asked a federal court to reject the government’s motion to dismiss a major First and Fourth Amendment lawsuit against the National Security Agency (NSA), the U.S. Department of Justice and their directors over the government’s mass surveillance programs.

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.