Overturns

Ruling is blow to Office for Students after it issued fine for handling of protests over professor’s trans rights viewsSussex University has overturned a £585,000 fine by England’s higher education watchdog after the high court rejected claims the university had breached free speech regulations involving its former professor Kathleen Stock.The ruling is a damaging blow to the credibility and management of the Office for Students, after the court rejected the regulator’s lengthy investigation into Sussex’s handling of the protests aimed at Stock over her views on transgender rights and her subsequent resignation in 2021. Continue reading...

Not ‘reasonable’ to impose that Siena Hopper, 25, with no criminal history, should be excluded from City of Sydney except for work or to attend courtFollow our Australia news live blog for latest updatesGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastA judge has overturned the bail conditions imposed by police on a Sydney anti-Herzog protester with no criminal history, saying the conditions were not “reasonable”.Lawyer Wael Skaf made an application before the Downing Centre local court to vary Siena Hopper’s bail conditions, which barred her from attending any “unlawful protests” and included a condition that she not enter the City of Sydney except for work or to attend court. Continue reading...

Clarence Curtis Jordan was convicted in 1978 but hadn’t had a lawyer for over 30 yearsThe Texas court of criminal appeals has overturned the death sentence of Clarence Curtis Jordan, a 70-year-old man with intellectual disabilities, who spent nearly 50 years on death row – much of that time without a lawyer.Jordan was convicted in 1978 for the murder of Joe L Williams, a 40-year-old grocer in Houston, and was sentenced to death. In the years that followed, courts determined that Jordan, who has intellectual disabilities, was “incompetent”, making him ineligible for execution under constitutional standards. Continue reading...