In an opinion issued Thursday, Judge Richard Leon, senior US District Court for the District of Columbia, granted Senator Mark Kelly a preliminary injunction blocking Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth from retaliating against Kelly for a video he and others made citing laws requiring refusal to obey illegal orders.

The opinion’s opening paragraphs make the judge’s viewpoint clear:

United States Senator Mark Kelly, a retired naval officer, has been censured by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth for voicing certain opinions on military actions and policy. In addition, he has been subjected to proceedings to possibly reduce his retirement rank and pay and threatened with criminal prosecution if he continues to speak out on these issues. Secretary Hegseth relies on the well-established doctrine that military servicemembers enjoy less vigorous First Amendment protections given the fundamental obligation for obedience and discipline in the armed forces. Unfortunately for Secretary Hegseth, no court has ever extended those principles to retired servicemembers, much less a retired servicemember serving in Congress and exercising oversight responsibility over the military. This Court will not be the first to do so!

Worse still, Secretary Hegseth contends that this Court is not yet competent to decide the issues in this case. He and his fellow Defendants argue that military personnel decisions are exempt from judicial review and, in any event, that Senator Kelly should first be required to go through the military appeals process so the military can have the first crack at adjudicating his First Amendment rights. I disagree. This Court has all it needs to conclude that Defendants have trampled on Senator Kelly’s First Amendment freedoms and threatened the constitutional liberties of millions of military retirees. After all, as Bob Dylan famously said, “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.” To say the least, our retired veterans deserve more respect from their Government, and our Constitution demands they receive it!

Leon’s full opinion appears below.

Another scathing 83-page opinion by a federal district court judge, this time Judge Ana Reyes in the DC Circuit. It comes in a case challenging the Trump administration’s plan to terminate the Temporary Protected Status previously granted to 352,959 lawful Haitian immigrants.

Reyes found that the government has neither the facts nor the law on its side.

NPR reported:

Reyes said in an 83-page opinion that plaintiffs were likely to prevail on the merits of the case, and that she found it “substantially likely” that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem preordained her termination decision because of “hostility to nonwhite immigrants.”

Here is the conclusion of Judge Reyes’ opinion.

There is an old adage among lawyers. If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have the law on your side, pound the law. If you have neither, pound the table. Secretary Noem, the record to-date shows, does not have the facts on her side or at least has ignored them. Does not have the law on her side or at least has ignored it. Having neither and bringing the adage into the 21st century, she pounds X (f/k/a Twitter).

Kristi Noem has a First Amendment right to call immigrants killers, leeches, entitlement junkies, and any other inapt name she wants. Secretary Noem, however, is constrained by both our Constitution and the APA to apply faithfully the facts to the law in implementing the TPS program. The record to-date shows she has yet to do that.

By accompanying Order, the Court GRANTS Plaintiffs’ Renewed Motion for a Stay Under 5 U.S.C. § 705.

This is a long and thorough takedown of the administration’s position.

I would encourage you to read the first four pages of the opinion in which Judge Reyes summarizes her decision to extend legal protections for Haitians in the TPS program until the current lawsuit is completed.

Then you can pick and choose what additional sections of the opinion might interest you.