Posts Tagged ‘Reed O’Connor’

ATF Pistol Brace Regulations Blocked

Tuesday, October 10th, 2023

In another small victory in the war against ATF overreach, a federal judge has blocked ATF regulations on pistol braces.

After the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals found that a challenge to the Biden administration’s rule regulating pistol braces as short-barreled rifles (SBR) would likely prevail, a district judge entered orders enforcing the appeals court’s findings — blocking any enforcement against the plaintiffs, their customers, or their families.

The case, styled Mock v Garland, was brought against the Department of Justice by the Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) to challenge the reclassification of popular pistol braces as SBRs, which are heavily regulated weapons under the National Firearms Act (NFA). That law requires extensive background checks, a $200 tax that in some cases takes over a year to pay, and carries additional restrictions on the firearm.

Violating any of the nuanced rules in the NFA can subject the owners to heavy fines and penalties.

While the district court had initially denied the plaintiffs’ request for an injunction, the instructions from the 5th Circuit instructed the district judge to grant the request in a manner consistent with their findings.

On October 2, Judge Reed O’Connor issued the order blocking enforcement of the law against the individual plaintiffs, FPC and their members, pistol brace manufacturer Maxim Defense, and their customers and families.

The lawsuit will now proceed to trial, along with challenges brought by several other gun rights groups in separate cases seeking to have the rule struck down entirely.

As I’ve stated before, the pistol brace rule would retroactively make millions of law-abiding Americans criminals for not registering them (which, for the left, is no doubt the point). Government agencies should not be able to unilaterally and retroactively declare ownership of legally obtained goods suddenly forbidden on penalty of law.

This ruling is also another example of why the black-pilled “Republicans are useless” mutterings are wrong. Without Reagan, Bush41, Bush43 and Trump judicial appointments, it’s overwhelmingly likely that none of the landmark Second Amendment cases (Heller, Bruen) go our way, and ruling Democrats would be busy working on complete disarmament of American citizens.

It’s important to celebrate every victory for freedom, no matter how small.

Federal Judge Rules ObamaCare Unconstitutional

Saturday, December 15th, 2018

The budget busting, premium-hiking monster that is ObamaCare may finally be slain:

A judge ruled Friday evening that Obamacare is unconstitutional, putting the future of the federal healthcare law in jeopardy.

The decision, issued by U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor in the Northern District of Texas — a George W. Bush appointee, is likely to face an appeal to the Fifth Circuit. Obamacare will remain in place pending appeal .

The suit in the case, Texas v. Azar, was brought by 20 Republican state officials, who have asked that all of Obamacare be thrown out as a consequence of the new tax law, which zeroed out a penalty on the uninsured, known as the “individual mandate.” The officials argued that the penalty was central to making the rest of the law work, and that without it, the rest should crumble.

O’Connor appeared to sympathize with this argument in his opinion. He explained that he believed Congress would not have enacted Obamacare in the first place, with its various rules and taxes, without the mandate, and that the regulatory framework was intended to work together.

“Congress stated many times unequivocally — through enacted text signed by the president — that the individual mandate is ‘essential’ to the ACA,” he wrote of the Affordable Care Act, the formal name for Obamacare. “And this essentiality, the ACA’s text makes clear, means the mandate must work ‘together with the other provisions’ for the Act to function as intended.”

O’Connor was talking about the Obama administration’s argument that the mandate could not be severed from the rest of the law in a 2012 Supreme Court case. In his opinion, he elaborated on the different ways that Obamacare had been challenged in court and in Congress.

“It is like watching a slow game of Jenga, each party poking at a different provision to see if the ACA falls,” O’Connor wrote.

The “death of a thousand cuts” approach undertaken by congressional Republicans and the Trump Administration may finally be bearing fruit. Remember that the central conceit that allowed the Supreme Court to find ObamaCare constitutional in National Federation of Independent Business vs. Sebelius was treating the individual mandate as a tax, and the individual mandate was repealed in 2017.

Consider how radically the political environment has changed. Many of the baleful effects Republican foresaw for ObamaCare (spiraling premiums and declining choices) have come to pass. Also, in chasing their Russian collusion fantasy, the Democratic Media Complex has had precious little bandwidth to expend on extolling the supposed wonders of ObamaCare. Chief Justice John Roberts may well feel that he has a chance to undo a mistake in being the deciding vote in the originalSebelius decision now that the political pressure and scrutiny has lessened.

Texas vs. Azar may deliver ObamaCare the mercy killing it so richly deserves.

A Roundup of Texas Lawsuits of Note

Wednesday, October 26th, 2016

A number of lawsuits related to local or federal overreach in Texas are working their way through the court system. Here’s a quick roundup of developments in a few notable cases.

  • U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor reiterated that the injunction that stops Obama’s tranny bathroom mandate still applies nationwide. Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed a lawsuit against the tranny bathroom mandate which has been joined by 13 other states.
  • Paxton has also joined a Texas Public Policy Foundation lawsuit against the City of Austin over their new short-term rental ordinance. “The Ordinance raises significant constitutional questions, because it functionally ousts homeowners and investors from real property without just compensation.”
  • Paxton also joined another TPPF lawsuit against the City of Brownsville over their $1 fee on plastic checkout bags, calling it an illegal sales tax, as bags are not taxable under state law.
  • Speaking of Paxton, in case you missed it, the SEC case against Paxton was thrown out by a federal judge:

    Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton won a sweeping victory in court Friday when Federal District Judge Amos L. Mazzant III dismissed a fraud case the Securities and Exchange Commission had brought against him.

    Mazzant, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Barack Obama, found that even if all the facts the SEC alleged were true, they didn’t amount to any violation of securities law by Paxton.

    The SEC had dogpiled on Paxton after Collin County special prosecutors got a local grand jury to indict Paxton under state securities law in August 2015.

  • Now the question is whether Collin County will drop its own case against Paxton, and end payment of high dollar special prosecutor fees, now that the SEC has dropped the case.
  • Also note that Texas is still a co-plaintiff in State of West Virginia, et al. v. EPA, over the Obama Administration’s “Clean Power Plan,” which the Supreme Court ordered stayed February of last year.