Tag: restraining orders

New York City plans to temporarily house migrants in hotels in other counties. Two counties are suing to stop it | CNN

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Following New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ announcement last week that the city will bus some migrants to hotels in nearby counties temporarily, officials in Orange County and Rockland counties filed lawsuits attempting to stop the plan – even as some migrants have already arrived.

The counties have also issued executive orders barring the arrival of migrants and asylum seekers.

Filed in state court in Orange County, one of the lawsuits obtained by CNN alleges that the city’s plan exceeds its authority, violates a county executive order and bypasses shelter licensing requirements. It asks the court to issue a preliminary injunction blocking the city’s plan while the proceeding is pending.

Orange County officials “oppose the City Respondents’ illegal and misguided attempts to manage their burdens and assumed responsibilities within their borders by offloading them onto the County, which is already overburdened with responsibilities to its own citizens, with no planning whatsoever,” according to the lawsuit.

Adams had said the new program intends to provide up to four months of temporary shelter for adult men seeking asylum who are already in the city’s care while they try to secure work permits.

Days after Adams announced plans for Orange and Rockland counties, Orange County Executive Steven Neuhaus issued an executive order stating the migrants would not be permitted to stay in hotels there.

Rockland County filed its own lawsuit on Tuesday night. The suit, filed in Rockland County Supreme Court, alleges Mayor Adams’ plan to bus migrants to a hotel in the exceeds the city’s legal authority.

On Friday, a judge granted a temporary restraining order against the Adam’s plan, blocking the city from transporting migrants to a hotel in Rockland County. The city has said it plans to appeal the restraining order. A court hearing is scheduled for May 30 to determine if the order will be extended.

The New York Civil Liberties Union filed a federal lawsuit on Thursday against Orange and Rockland counties for blocking the arrival of asylum seekers from New York City, according to court documents.

In issuing orders “expressly seek[ing] to ‘bar migrants’ and ‘asylum seekers’ from coming to the counties from New York City and that further seek to bar local hotels from making their rooms available to migrants for any period of time,” the counties violated due process and equal protection clauses under the US Constitution, the lawsuit says.

When reached by CNN for comment Thursday, Neuhaus said, “We have not been served with any lawsuit.” CNN on Saturday reached out to Rockland and Orange county officials for further comment on the NYCLU’s lawsuit.

Rockland County officials said in a statement that while they don’t typically comment on pending litigation, they “feel strongly that what [they] are doing is right and legal as witnessed by the court’s Temporary Restraining Order granted Thursday.”

The Orange County complaint details multiple examples of the city’s alleged “subterfuge.”

Orange County authorities believed the city planned to move 60 people to one hotel in the county, according to the lawsuit, but then later learned the city planned to send more than 600 individuals to two hotels. The county claims this would more than double its homeless population, which was about 437 last month, according to the lawsuit.

After the county issued its executive order, officials were “expressly assured” by the city that buses would not be sent for the time being, according to the lawsuit.

“Nonetheless, and despite these assurances, busses showed up at the hotel on May 11, 2023, with no notice, and unloaded homeless men pursuant to the City’s illegal Proposed Transfer plan,” the lawsuit says.

On Wednesday, a spokesperson for Mayor Adams’ office said that the city was “discussing legal and safety concerns with our state partners,” adding that while the city temporarily paused busing migrants to locations outside of New York City, their “plans have not changed.” A spokesperson for Mayor Adams’ office said Thursday that Neuhaus’ statement about alleged assurances that no asylum seekers from the city would arrive in Orange County is inaccurate.

“New York City has cared for more than 65,000 migrants – sheltering, feeding, and caring for them, and we have done so largely without incident,” spokesperson Fabien Levy said in a statement on Friday.

“We need the federal government to step up, but until they do, we need other elected officials around the state and country to do their part. Right now, we’re asking Orange County to manage less than ¼ of 1% of the asylum seekers who have come to New York City, with New York paying for shelter, food, and services. We are reviewing our legal options.”

Orange County also filed a separate complaint Friday against the two hotels within the county planning to house migrants from New York City. The complaint seeks to block the hotels from accepting asylum seekers and “converting” into homeless shelters, alleging it violates the county’s executive order.

The town of Newburgh, which is located in Orange County, also filed a complaint against one of the hotels. The lawsuit claims that housing the migrants is not permitted under the building’s certificate of occupancy and would violate the town’s municipal and building construction codes.

“The Mayor’s program did not consider or address the local zoning, building, or fire codes governing the proposed or ‘selected’ housing sites,” the complaint says.

After Orange County issued its executive order, Newburgh inspectors visited the hotel and noticed “the alterations of beds, insertion of additional bedding, and the alteration of room accommodations,” the lawsuit says. The next day, the hotel received two busloads of people from the city, according to the complaint.

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May 13, 2023
DOJ seeks fast-track Supreme Court review of ruling against gun ban for people under domestic violence restraining orders | CNN Politics

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The Justice Department on Friday asked the Supreme Court to fast-track its consideration of a recent appeals court ruling that deemed unconstitutional a federal law barring gun possession by those under domestic violence restraining orders.

“The presence of a gun in a house with a domestic abuser increases the risk of homicide sixfold,” US Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote in her petition Friday, urging the high court to decide before its summer recess whether to take up the case.

The 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals said in February that the 1996 law was unconstitutional, and while the ruling applies only to Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, advocates worry it will have wide implications, including that it will discourage victims from coming forward.

The circuit court cited the major Second Amendment ruling handed down by the Supreme Court’s conservative majority last year that laid out a new test for lower courts to use to analyze a gun regulation’s constitutionality.

Prelogar told the Supreme Court on Friday that the 5th Circuit’s reasoning was wrong and the high court should take up the case so “that it can correct the Fifth Circuit’s misinterpretation of Bruen,” referring to last summer’s Supreme Court opinion.

The high court’s majority opinion in June said that part of the test was whether a gun restriction had a parallel to the regulations in place at the time of the Constitution’s framing.

The 5th Circuit said, with its opinion regarding the domestic violence gun restriction earlier this year, that the prohibition on alleged abusers lacked that kind of historical parallel and therefore was unconstitutional.

If the 5th Circuit’s “approach were applied across the board,” Prelogar wrote, “few modern statutes would survive judicial review; most modern gun regulations, after all, differ from their historical forbears in at least some ways.”

At the time of the circuit court ruling, Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement that Congress had determined the gun ban statute “nearly 30 years ago” and signaled the department’s plan to appeal the ruling.

“Whether analyzed through the lens of Supreme Court precedent, or of the text, history, and tradition of the Second Amendment, that statute is constitutional. Accordingly, the Department will seek further review of the Fifth Circuit’s contrary decision,” he said.

Guns are used to commit nearly two-thirds of intimate partner homicides, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said. A 2021 study found that the majority of mass shootings are also linked to domestic violence.

Though some of the states covered by the appeals court have similar state law restrictions, the new ruling undermines a crucial tool that survivors have to protect themselves from their abusers. If the 5th Circuit’s logic were adopted nationwide by the US Supreme Court, the consequences would be devastating, advocates say.

“People are going to know that their abuser still has their gun. They’re going to continue to live in absolute, abject fear,” said Heather Bellino, the CEO of the Texas Advocacy Project, which works with victims of domestic violence. “They are going to be afraid to get a protective order, because now that gun’s not going away.”

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March 18, 2023
Law barring people with domestic violence restraining orders from having guns is unconstitutional, court rules | CNN Politics

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A federal law that prohibits people subject to domestic violence restraining orders from possessing firearms is unconstitutional, a conservative-leaning appeals court ruled Thursday.

The ruling is the latest significant decision dismantling a gun restriction in the wake of the Supreme Court’s expansion of Second Amendment rights last year in the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen decision.

The 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals said that the federal law targeting those believed to pose a domestic violence threat could not stand under the Bruen test, which requires that gun laws have a historical analogy to the firearm regulations in place at the time of the Constitution’s framing.

“Through that lens, we conclude that (the law’s) ban on possession of firearms is an ‘outlier’ that our ancestors would never have accepted,” the 5th Circuit said.

The Justice Department signaled Thursday night that it plans to appeal the ruling. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement that Congress had determined the statute “nearly 30 years ago.”

“Whether analyzed through the lens of Supreme Court precedent, or of the text, history, and tradition of the Second Amendment, that statute is constitutional. Accordingly, the Department will seek further review of the Fifth Circuit’s contrary decision,” he said.

The Justice Department did not specify its next step in seeking review of the ruling, which could include asking the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals for an en banc rehearing by all the judges on the court, or asking the US Supreme Court to take up an appeal.

The court’s opinion was written by Judge Cory Todd Wilson, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump. He was joined by Reagan-appointee Judge Edith Jones and Judge James Ho, another Trump appointee who also wrote a concurrence.

The 5th Circuit panel was not persuaded by the historical parallels put forward by the US Justice Department, which was defending the conviction of a person who possessed a firearm while under a domestic violence restraining order that had been imposed after he was accused of assaulting his ex-girlfriend. The Justice Department argued that the domestic violence law was analogous to 17th-and 18th century regulations that disarmed “dangerous” persons.

“The purpose of these ‘dangerousness’ laws was the preservation of political and social order, not the protection of an identified person from the specific threat posed by another,” the 5th Circuit opinion read. “Therefore, laws disarming ‘dangerous’ classes of people are not ‘relevantly similar’” to “serve as historical analogues.”

A spokesperson for the Justice Department did not immediately respond to a CNN inquiry. If the 5th Circuit’s ruling is appealed, it could set up another showdown over gun rights at the Supreme Court.

Steve Vladeck, a CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at the University of Texas School of Law, said clarity from the court is necessary.

“One of two things is true: Either this kind of blind, rigid, context-free, and common-sense-defying assessment of history is exactly what the Supreme Court intended in its landmark ruling last June in Bruen, or it isn’t,” Vladeck said.

“Either way, it’s incumbent upon the justices in the Bruen majority to clarify which one they meant – and to either endorse or reject the rather terrifying idea that individuals under an active domestic violence-related restraining order are nevertheless constitutionally entitled to possess firearms,” he added.

The defendant challenging his conviction, Zackey Rahimi, had lost in an earlier round before the 5th Circuit, before the Supreme Court issued its Bruen ruling last year. The previous 5th Circuit opinion was withdrawn after the Bruen decision was handed down, and the appeals court did another round of briefing directed at the new test.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

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February 2, 2023
Half Moon Bay shooting suspect legally owned his gun and targeted specific people, authorities said. Here’s what we know about him | CNN

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The man suspected of killing four people at a California mushroom farm and three others at a nearby site had legal possession of a semi-automatic weapon that was registered to him, San Mateo County Sheriff Christina Corpus said.

The suspect, who authorities identified as 66-year-old Chunli Zhao, was not known to local law enforcement before the massacre and had shown no red flags as far as the sheriff’s office was aware, Corpus told CNN Tuesday morning.

“There was nothing that would have kind of elevated or raised us to have any concern with him at this time, prior to this incident,” the sheriff said.

This was a case, the sheriff continued, where someone “snaps,” and “innocent people were killed.”

Officers found four people dead and one person wounded at the mushroom farm and, moments later, found three more people dead at a separate site about two miles away, officials said.

The sheriff has described the attack as a “workplace violence incident,” saying Zhao targeted specific people and, though he had the opportunity to hurt others, “he went after and pursued” certain individuals.

The sheriff’s office described the suspect as a “co-worker or former co-worker” of the victims at each shooting site.

Zhao is expected to appear in court for an arraignment Wednesday afternoon, San Mateo County Chief Deputy District Attorney Sean Gallagher said.

There are many questions still unanswered about the attack, including what could have motivated the shooting, who the victims were and why they were targeted.

But here’s what we know about the suspected gunman.

County officials said authorities did not know “preceding factors” that would have suggested Zhao would carry out the attack.

But it wasn’t the first time he was accused of violence against someone he worked with, court records obtained by CNN show.

Zhao was subject to a temporary restraining order after a former coworker and roommate accused him of attacking and threatening him in 2013.

Yingjiu Wang, who worked with Zhao at a restaurant and lived with him in a San Jose apartment, wrote in a court declaration that Zhao’s violent behavior started after Zhao quit that job in March 2013.

Early in the morning two days later, Zhao came into Wang’s room and asked for his salary. When Wang told him to pick it up at the restaurant, Zhao said he would kill Wang, and then “took a pillow and started to cover my face and suffocate me,” Wang wrote.

“While I couldn’t (breathe), I used all my might within the few seconds to push him away with my blanket,” Wang wrote. He said he called for help and another roommate came to the door, but Zhao had allegedly locked it. The two men ended up wrestling on Wang’s bed before Zhao calmed down, according to Wang.

Two days later, he wrote, Zhao threatened him again, saying “he can use a knife to cut my head if he can’t come back to work.” Wang wrote he had no control over Zhao’s work status at the restaurant.

A judge issued a temporary restraining order against Zhao, which prevented him from getting too close to Wang and banned him from owning or buying a gun, according to the court paperwork. The restraining order expired in July 2013. An attorney for Zhao in the 2013 complaint did not respond to requests for comment and Wang could not be reached for comment.

The incident was first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle.

Zhao lived at the first property, where four victims were killed, for about seven years, according to California Terra Garden spokesperson David Oates.

The site, formerly known as Mountain Mushroom Farm, was acquired by the company California Terra Garden in March 2022, Oates said.

There are several mobile homes and trailers for employees on the property, which is where the suspect lived, Oates added.

Zhao was one of about 35 employees working at the farm, the spokesperson said, adding that in the background checks all employees have to go through, there was “nothing to indicate anything like this was even a possibility.”

An employee who did not want to be named told CNN he had known the suspect for about six years and had considered him to be friendly and a “nice guy.” The two were coworkers at the farm and had both been working Monday, the employee said.

The employee told CNN he took cover when the shooting began and when the gunfire stopped, he saw the suspect drive away from the scene on a forklift.

Zhao, who authorities believe acted alone, was arrested roughly two hours after authorities received the first reports of a shooting.

Deputies were dispatched a little after 2:20 p.m. local time. At roughly 4:40 p.m., the suspect was taken into custody after authorities found him in his vehicle at the parking lot of the Sheriff’s Office Half Moon Bay Police Substation, the sheriff’s office said in a news release.

A weapon was also found in his car, the release added.

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January 25, 2023
FTC to seek federal court order temporarily blocking Microsoft-Activision deal | CNN Business

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The Federal Trade Commission on Monday sued to prevent Microsoft and Activision-Blizzard from closing their $69 billion merger.

The filing asks the US District Court for the Northern District of California for a temporary restraining order that could keep the companies from consummating the acquisition while the FTC’s in-house court is deliberating on the deal.

The FTC sued Microsoft in the agency’s administrative court in December, challenging the deal as anticompetitive.

“Both a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction are necessary because Microsoft and Activision have represented that they may consummate the Proposed Acquisition at any time without any further notice to the Commission,” the FTC’s court filing said.

“We welcome the opportunity to present our case in federal court,” Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president, said in a statement. “We believe accelerating the legal process in the U.S. will ultimately bring more choice and competition to the market.”

UK competition regulators have also challenged the deal, which promises to make Microsoft the world’s third-largest video game publisher after Tencent and Sony. The acquisition would give Microsoft control over popular franchises including “Call of Duty” and “World of Warcraft.”

Officials from the FTC and the UK have claimed that the deal could harm the gaming industry by allowing Microsoft to withhold Activision titles from rival platforms, such as Sony’s Playstation. Microsoft has struck 10-year licensing agreements with some game platforms that will ensure those titles remain available.

Antitrust officials from the European Union blessed the deal last month, saying that Microsoft’s concessions were enough to address its competition concerns.

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April 12, 2021