Federal Courts

The ACLU of Illinois has filed a class-action lawsuit against the Chicago Housing Authority seeking to block mandatory, suspicionless drug testing of mixed-income housing residents.

The NYPD's stop-and-frisk program unconstitutionally targets racial minorities, a federal judge ruled Monday. Mayor Bloomberg isn't happy, but civil libertarians and black and brown New Yorkers are.

When the war on pain docs meets prosecutorial misconduct, watch out. A Florida case potentially headed to the Supreme Court seeks to make prosecutors pay for their misdeeds.

The third petition to reschedule marijuana is not dead yet. Although a federal appeals court upheld the DEA rejection of it, the petitioners are now asking the US Supreme Court to review that decision.

A federal medical marijuana banking bill was introduced, an Oregon bill that would allow and regulate dispensaries heads to the governor's desk, Berkeley and Oakland fight the feds.

In a decision that should cut back on prison time for some drug offenders, the Supreme Court has held that facts used to impose mandatory minimum sentences must be proven before a jury -- not a judge with a lower standard of proof.

A US district court judge has lambasted federal meth sentencing guidelines as harsh, unfair, based on politics instead of science, and "fundamentally flawed." He's not the only one.

A panel of the 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati has held that the Fair Sentencing Act's reduction in sentencing disparities between crack and powder cocaine offenses should be extended to all federal crack prisoners, regardless of when their offense took place.