The Tennessee House of Representatives approved a bill on Thursday that criminalizes adults who knowingly take minors away from Tennessee to help them receive gender-affirming medical procedures without the consent of their parents. The companion bill was introduced to the Tennessee House of Representatives on January 29, 2024 as HB 2310 by Representative Bryan Richey and to the Tennessee Senate on January 31. Senator Janice Bowling introduced SB 2782 in the Senate. The bill originally allowed parents to sue any adult who “knowingly remove a minor from [Tennessee] without the consent of a pare ..read more

The Bundestag, Germany’s federal Parliament, passed on Friday the second amendment of the Federal Climate Protection Act. The amendment passed a day after the Federal Constitutional Court rejected a lawmaker’s objection to the amended bill. The amendments aim to reduce the pressure against individual sectors by removing some greenhouse gas emissions targets. In the Bundestag on Friday, Germany’s coalition government agreed to pass the amendments. The Free Democratic Party (FDP) and the Green Party voted to approve the bill, while the opposing party Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU ..read more

The India Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) launched a case on Thursday in response to allegations of land grabs and sexual assaults involving five influential individuals located in Sandeshkhali, West Bengal, according to an official’s statement to the Press Trust of India (PTI). This follows a court-monitored investigation of the situation, which was previously ordered by the Calcutta High Court on April 10. The case centers around a contentious land dispute, with reports indicating that women from the victim’s family endured sexual assault allegedly perpetrated by prominent figures in t ..read more

A New York federal judge rejected former US President Donald Trump’s request for a new trial or judgment in his favor on Thursday in the defamation case won by E. Jean Carroll. Trump challenged the $83.3 million jury verdict against him—which includes $18.3 million in compensatory and $65 million in punitive damages—but Judge Lewis Kaplan found his motion “without merit.” This is not Trump’s first challenge to the verdict. He previously alleged that Kaplan should have recused himself because of a conflict of interest. In Thursday’s order, Kaplan summarily dismissed some of Trump’s arguments bu ..read more

UK authorities charged Dylan Earl with conducting hostile activity to benefit a foreign state—in this case, Russia—following Crown Prosecution Service authorization on Friday. Four other men have also been charged in relation to the arson plot. This marks the first time authorities have filed charges under the new National Security Act 2023. Earl allegedly criminal conduct benefitted the Russian state to the detriment of Ukraine. It included plotting and paying for an arson attack on two Ukrainian-linked London sites that took place earlier this year, on March 20. The alleged target of the att ..read more

King Charles III has given his assent to the UK government’s legislation which will allow asylum seekers to be sent to Rwanda. The Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill 2024 received Royal Assent on Thursday and will now become law in the UK. Royal assent is the final stage in the British legislative process, and effectively rubber stamps the decision taken by Parliament earlier this week to approve the bill. The King himself is removed from the political process and the step is really a bureaucratic finality. The bill would enable the deportation of illegal migrants under the UK ..read more

Advocate General (AG) Athanasios Rantos of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) on Thursday issued an opinion, largely siding with an Austrian lawyer and privacy activist who sued Meta for misusing his personal data to send him targeted advertisements. Meta is the parent company of popular social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram.  Privacy lawyer Max Schrems sued Facebook and Meta in Austria in 2020 for misusing his personal data. He asked the court for a declaration and an injunction because he regularly received advertisements directed at homosexuals, even though ..read more

India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA) arrested Thursday a key suspect, Inderpal Singh Gaba, in the attack on the Indian High Commission in London in March 2023. The alleged attack occurred on March 19, 2023, during protests outside the Indian High Commission by alleged separatists known as “Khalistanis.” India’s state-owned news channel DD News shared the update on their official X (formerly Twitter) account. It stated: National Investigation Agency (NIA) today [Thursday] arrested one accused in the 2023 case relating to the violent attack on the High Commission of India, #London ..read more

Marissa Zupancic is JURIST’s Washington DC Correspondent, a JURIST Senior Editor and a 3L at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. She’s stationed in Washington during her Semester in DC. Today I attended oral arguments at the US Supreme Court for Trump v. US, a case concerning whether a president has absolute immunity after they leave office for actions they took while president. This marks my final Supreme Court attendance as JURIST’s inaugural Washington DC Correspondent. Walking up to the court at 8 AM, there were only a handful of protesters, and I recognized some from when I a ..read more

The Madrid Prosecutor’s Office in Spain asked the court on Thursday to drop the case against Begoña Gomez, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s wife, for the alleged crime of peddling influence and corruption, sources told Spanish news source EFE. The prosecutors appealed a local court’s decision to open preliminary investigations into the links between Begoña Gomez and private companies. Prosecutors also demanded the dismissal of the case, citing a lack of evidence. The case started after a private activist group named Manos Limpias filed a complaint on Wednesday against Pedro Sanchez’s wife. The c ..read more