(AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews, File)
ATLANTA (CN) An attorney for a Georgia sheriff asked an 11th Circuit panel Wednesday to overturn an order ending a jail’s policy of holding mentally ill women in solitary confinement up to 24 hours a day in disturbing conditions.
Ashley Palmer of the Fulton County Attorney’s Office told a three-judge panel of the Atlanta-appeals court that the lower court overstepped its authority by requiring Fulton County Sheriff Theodore Jackson and South Fulton Municipal Regional Jail officials to offer mentally disabled prisoners held in solitary confinement at least four hours of out-of-cell time per day.
Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, a megachurch in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, that is home to Coral Ridge Ministries. (By Jimmy Baikovicius)
(CN) A Florida ministry urged an 11th Circuit panel Tuesday to hold the Southern Poverty Law Center and Amazon responsible for what it called a discriminatory labeling of the church as a hate group, a designation that has prevented it from fundraising through Amazon’s charitable website.
“We continue to be defamed and we continue to be discriminated against,” attorney David C. Gibbs III told the panel during virtual arguments Tuesday morning. “When you present it as a fact, ‘this is a hate group,’ then they have to be held responsible for that incorrect statement.”