Where procedural and substantive reasonableness requirements are necessary to ensure the broad remedial purposes of the First Step Act, but the district court here did not explain why it believed a large upward variance was warranted when it resentenced the ...

Tagged with: 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Criminal Judge Stephanie Dawn Thacker

Where a federal employee claimed his suit challenging the Drug Enforcement Agency, or DEA’s, failure to select him for any of the GS-15 positions for which he applied was a “mixed case” under the law, but guidance from prior cases ...

Tagged with: 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Employment Judge Stephanie Dawn Thacker

Where the plaintiffs obtained a preliminary injunction against enforcement of a Virginia statute that triggered the automatic suspension of driver’s licenses for nonpayment of court costs and fines, and the General Assembly then repealed the statute, the plaintiffs weren’t entitled ...

Tagged with: 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Civil Practice Judge Stephanie Dawn Thacker

Although the district court should not have allowed (1) the employees of two robbed jewelry stores to testify about how the emotional aftermath of the robberies affected their lives or (2) a law enforcement agent to give lay testimony about ...

Tagged with: 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Criminal Judge Stephanie Dawn Thacker

Where a church was aware of zoning restrictions when it purchased property, it could not have had a reasonable expectation of religious land use, dooming its claim under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, or RLUIPA. Because the ...

Tagged with: 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Constitutional Judge Stephanie Dawn Thacker

Where a borrower’s letter to his loan servicer included the name, account number and other information that would “enable[] the servicer to identify” the account, and it explained why the borrower believed the account was in error, it constituted a ...

Tagged with: 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Consumer Protection Judge Stephanie Dawn Thacker

Where abortion providers challenged South Carolina legislation that bans abortions after an ultrasound detects a “fetal heartbeat,” they had third-party standing to do so because they would suffer an injury-in-fact from enforcement and could reasonably be expected to frame the ...

Tagged with: 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Civil Practice Judge Stephanie Dawn Thacker

Where the South Carolina governor had no responsibility for enforcing a provision in the state budget that prohibits school districts from using appropriated funds to impose mask mandates, and the South Carolina attorney general had neither implemented nor threatened to ...

Tagged with: 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Civil Practice Judge Stephanie Dawn Thacker

Where the United States Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management, or BLM, failed to account for data suggesting increased sedimentation along the route of a proposed gas pipeline, and approved the use of the conventional bore method to ...

Tagged with: 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Administrative Judge Stephanie Dawn Thacker

Where a juror in the trial of a man ultimately sentenced to death for killing a police officer falsely answered three voir dire questions, including whether a relative was employed by law enforcement, because the district court found his false ...

Tagged with: 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Criminal Judge Stephanie Dawn Thacker