Government & Civil Rights

If your credit report still shows a debt as “past due” months after a bankruptcy court discharged it — you weren’t imagining that something was wrong. Dennis Goyette filed three separate class action lawsuits against Equifax, Experian and TransUnion, No. 8:26-cv-01838, No. 8:26-cv-01840, and No. 8:26-cv-01841, in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District…

The University of Northern Iowa has agreed to pay $350,000 to settle a civil rights lawsuit with a tenured professor who sued UNI and 11 administrators for civil rights, Title IX, and free speech violations. The case, DeSoto v. University of Northern Iowa et al., was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern…

A lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas accuses Return to the Land, a whites-only community in Lawrence County, of violating the Fair Housing Act by refusing to sell property to a woman based on her race and religion. The plaintiff, Michelle Walker, is a woman of Jewish ancestry…

Tennessee will pay $835,000 to settle a federal lawsuit filed by a retired police officer who was jailed over Facebook posts about conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination. Larry Bushart spent 37 days in jail after Perry County authorities charged him with making a threat tied to memes he shared following Kirk’s death. Prosecutors later dropped…

A coalition of 24 states and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit in federal court Tuesday challenging a Trump administration rule that limits access to federal student loans for borrowers earning a graduate degree in several popular, healthcare-related fields. The total coalition, including Maryland as a co-leader, brings the count to 25 states plus…

A Lake Charles family is taking the Calcasieu Parish Sheriff’s Office to federal court after a deputy allegedly drove onto their private driveway without justification and shot and killed their five-year-old Rottweiler. The lawsuit says what came next — a staged reenactment, cameras switched off, and the dog’s ashes mailed home in a box —…

The New York Times took the Pentagon back to federal court on May 18, 2026 — its second lawsuit in five months — arguing that a new rule requiring journalists to have a government escort at all times inside the building is unconstitutional and designed to shut down independent reporting on the U.S. military. How…

A Monroe County, Indiana man typed a two-digit number on some politicians’ Facebook pages. Days later, a state investigator showed up at his front door and told him he could be indicted. Now the ACLU is suing — and the case is drawing direct comparisons to the federal prosecution of former FBI Director James Comey….

Kars4Kids is facing a permanent ban on its iconic jingle in California after a full civil trial found the charity violated the state’s False Advertising Law and Unfair Competition Law. The ruling was issued on May 8, 2026, by Judge Gassia Apkarian of the Orange County Superior Court, finding that Kars4Kids violated California’s False Advertising…