Maryland Daily Record Maryland's trusted source for business and legal news

La Plata High School did not violate a Christian student’s constitutional First Amendment rights to freedom of religion and speech by providing lessons in Islam as part of a required world history class, a federal appeals court ruled Monday. In ...

Tagged with: establishment clause first amendment free exercise of religion free speech islam

A three-judge panel disregarded legitimate political considerations when it struck down a congressional district in western Maryland because it was drawn with such a partisan bias by the state’s Democratic leadership as to violate the Republicans’ constitutional right to political ...

Tagged with: first amendment Lamone v. Benisek partisan gerrymandering redistricting Supreme Court

A Christian fellowship with ties to Africa can pursue its claim that Baltimore County violated its right to religious freedom by prohibiting it from operating a church on land the fellowship purchased in Pikesville, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday. ...

Tagged with: first amendment religious freedom RLUIPA

ANNAPOLIS – Appearing before a joint General Assembly session, Maryland’s top judge said Wednesday that the Maryland judiciary, legislature and executive branch share in the responsibility to act “with diligence and integrity and abiding respect for the rule of law.” ...

Tagged with: Mary Ellen Barbera maryland judiciary rule of law

ANNAPOLIS — Attorneys for Baltimore on Tuesday asked an appellate panel to allow the enforcement of a city ban on food trucks operating too close to businesses selling the same food, arguing that a trial judge should not have found the ...

Tagged with: baltimore city Court of Special Appeals food truck

  WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has installed a historic number of federal appeals court judges for this point of a presidency. But the immediate effect on the composition of the courts across the country is modest — and the ...

Tagged with: appeals court Supreme Court Trump

ANNAPOLIS – Attorneys for an embattled youngster and the state clashed before Maryland’s top court Friday over whether the girl, then 16, was “involved” in distributing child pornography in violation of state law when she texted a video of herself ...

Tagged with: child pornography sexting texting

A retired Baltimore Police Department detective is asking a federal appeals court to vacate a $15 million verdict awarded to a wrongfully incarcerated man who claimed the detective ignored and withheld exculpatory evidence. Sabein Burgess spent nearly two decades in prison ...

Tagged with: 4th Circuit Baltimore Police Department sabein burgess Wrongful conviction

The ACLU of Maryland is urging the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that a 40-foot cross erected as a war memorial on public land in Bladensburg violates the constitutional separation of church and state. In a brief filed with the ...

RICHMOND — A federal appeals court heard arguments Wednesday on the constitutionality of nondisclosure agreements in Baltimore Police Department settlements, which advocates claim unduly restrict speech and limit public access to information about police brutality. Attorneys for the city told ...