The United States inherited sodomy laws,which outlawed a variety of sexual acts,from colonial laws in the 17th century. While they often targeted sexual acts between persons of the same sex,many statutes employed definitions broad enough to outlaw certain sexual acts between persons of different sexes,in some cases even including acts between married persons.
The United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts is the federal district court whose territorial jurisdiction is the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,United States. The first court session was held in Boston in 1789. The second term was held in Salem in 1790 and court session locations alternated between the two cities until 1813. That year,Boston became the court's permanent home. A western division was opened in Springfield in 1979 and a central division was opened in Worcester in 1987. The court's main building is the John Joseph Moakley Federal Courthouse on Fan Pier in South Boston.
Vanderbilt University Law School is a graduate school of Vanderbilt University. Established in 1874,it is one of the oldest law schools in the southern United States. Vanderbilt Law School is one of the most selective law schools in the United States and has a 14.25% acceptance rate. Vanderbilt Law enrolls approximately 640 students,with each entering Juris Doctor class consisting of approximately 175 students.
The United States District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi is a federal court in the Fifth Circuit with facilities in Gulfport,Hattiesburg,Natchez,and Jackson.
The United States District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi is a federal court in the Fifth Circuit with facilities in Aberdeen,Greenville,and Oxford.
Kerri Rigsby and Cori Rigsby (Moran) are the American sisters who worked for eight years at E.A. Renfroe Company and were managers overseeing catastrophe claims adjusters. Kerri and Cori Rigsby are also the whistleblowers who proved to a Mississippi jury that State Farm committed fraud against the U.S. government. The sisters claim State Farm ignored or minimized wind damage to avoid payments relating to Hurricane Katrina and instead attributed damage to flooding so that the National Flood Insurance Program would cover the claims. The jury verdict was upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit,was then affirmed 8-0 by the United States Supreme Court. The Rigsbys were managers who worked in Gulfport,Mississippi for a subcontractor hired by State Farm to adjust wind and flood claims after Hurricane Katrina. They were the first to uncover a fraudulent scheme by State Farm to improperly categorize wind damage as flood damage. This mischaracterization was very important because State Farm had to pay for wind damage out of its own pocket under State Farm homeowner policies,while flood damage was paid by the federal government under FEMA's flood policies. Over the course of several months,the sisters amassed thousands of pages of documents related to State Farm's activities. The Rigsbys' landmark win was historic because they were the first to prove that an insurance company defrauded the government in FEMA's National Flood Insurance Program despite testimony by FEMA’s Executive Director that,after investigating the allegations,he personally didn’t believe that there was any fraud by State Farm,and he confirmed that FEMA had not asked State Farm to repay any money to the National Flood Insurance Program. However,according to court documents,the sisters took the documents without authorization. Their actions in regard to these documents is the subject of ongoing legal action. Eventually,their story went public when ABC's 20/20 show aired it in August 2006. In 2008,Judge Senter of the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of Mississippi found that the sisters and their attorneys had acted unethically when the Scruggs Katrina Group paid the sisters $150,000 per year each to testify,and barred them from testifying or using any of the documents that were taken. Scruggs was later forced to withdraw as their attorney because he improperly paid them for downloading and giving him the State Farm claims files and other documents to use in his lawsuits against State Farm. Scruggs also was later disbarred after pleading guilty to conspiracy to bribe a state circuit court judge in 2008 and separately,to improperly influence another state court circuit judge. He was sentenced to serve five years and seven years,to run concurrently,on the two guilty pleas.
The Mississippi Court of Appeals is the intermediate-level appellate court for the state of Mississippi. A creation of the Mississippi Legislature,the court began operations in 1995 for the purpose of relieving a backlog of cases before the Supreme Court of Mississippi.
Louis Guirola Jr. is a senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi and a judge on the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and the United States Alien Terrorist Removal Court.
Amul Roger Thapar is an American attorney and jurist serving as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He previously served as a U.S. district judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky from 2008 to 2017 and as the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky from 2006 to 2008. Thapar was President Donald Trump's first Court of Appeals appointment and Trump's second judicial appointment after Justice Neil Gorsuch. Thapar was discussed as a candidate for the Supreme Court of the United States.
Henry Travillion Wingate is a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi.
The Alexander Blewett III School of Law is a law school at the University of Montana in Missoula. It was established in 1911 and remains Montana's only law school.
Raymond Joseph Lohier Jr. is a Canadian-born American lawyer who serves as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Formerly,he was an assistant United States attorney for the Southern District of New York and a senior trial attorney in the United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division. He was the chief of the securities and commodities fraud task force in the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney's office. He was recommended by New York Senator Charles Schumer for nomination to the seat on the Second Circuit that was vacated by Judge Sonia Sotomayor when she was elevated to the Supreme Court of the United States. Lohier is the first Haitian-American to serve as an Article III federal judge and to be confirmed by the United States Senate as a judge.
Mississippi House Bill 1523, also called the Religious Liberty Accommodations Act or Protecting Freedom of Conscience from Government Discrimination Act,is 2016 state legislation passed in direct response to federal rulings in support of same-sex marriage. MS H.B. 1523 provides protections for persons,religious organizations,and private associations who choose to provide or withhold services discriminatorily in accordance to the three "deeply held religious beliefs or moral convictions" which are specifically outlined in the bill. These protected beliefs are 1) that marriage is and should be an exclusively heterosexual union,2) sex should not occur outside of marriage,and 3) that biologically-assigned sex is objective and immutably linked to gender.
Lewis Jeffrey Liman is a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Maxine Aldridge White is an American attorney and judge. She is the chief judge of the Wisconsin Court of Appeals,and has served on the Court of Appeals in the Milwaukee-based District I court since 2020. She is the first African-American woman to serve on the Wisconsin Court of Appeals.
