National Roundup

Ohio
Court keeps lawsuit alive over Facebook parody
CINCINNATI (AP) — A federal appeals court has kept alive a man’s lawsuit against a suburban Cleveland city and police over a fake Facebook page that led to his arrest.

A three-judge 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel agreed Monday with U.S. District Judge Dan Polster’s ruling that the lawsuit can proceed.

Anthony Novak sued the city of Parma and police officers seeking compensation and legal fees after his acquittal of a felony count of disrupting public services. He had created a Facebook page in 2016 that resembled the Parma police department’s page.

Judge Amul Thapar wrote that the case is about whether Novak’s page was “a protected parody in the great American tradition of ridiculing the government.”

The court dismissed some claims, and didn’t rule on municipal liability.

Maryland
Man gets 18 years in child ­pornography case
BALTIMORE (AP) — A federal judge has sentenced a man to 18 years in prison for transportation and possession of child pornography.

U.S. District Judge Deborah Chasanow also sentenced John Patrick Dillon on Monday for illegal possession of firearms by a previously convicted felon.

Dillon, formerly of Harwood, Maryland, has been detained since his arrest in May of 2018.

He was convicted in Anne Arundel County for sexual abuse of a minor in 1998 and sentenced to seven years in prison.

Authorities say he uploaded images of child pornography. The uploads led to a cybertip being sent to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which passed the tip on to authorities.

Police searched Dillon’s home in 2018 and found firearms and ammunition he was prohibited from possessing after his first conviction.

Alabama
Last slave ship: State files ­federal ­ownership claim
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Alabama has filed a federal court claim to ownership of the wreckage of the last ship known to bring enslaved people from Africa to the U.S., a move the archaeologist who helped find the ship says will bolster protection of the site.

The so-called admiralty claim presented by Alabama in federal court asks a judge to declare the state the true owner of the Clotilda, which was discovered earlier this year in state waters. The claim, which was filed Friday, also seeks to ensure that the Alabama Historical Commission has the exclusive right to the site.

The historical commission said in a statement that the action is an attempt to prevent salvagers from disturbing the ship or taking artifacts from it.

James Delgado, a maritime archaeologist who helped lead the team that found and verified the wreck as that of the Clotilda, said Monday that the state is taking appropriate action and called the court step “another tool in the historic preservation toolbox.”

“This wreck is nationally important, for the events that took place on it and for its association with the very long and terrible trade in human lives,” Delgado said.

Decades after the United States banned the importation of slaves, an Alabama plantation owner made a wager that he could bring a shipload of people from Africa to the United States. In 1860, the Clotilda smuggled more than 100 enslaved people to the U.S. The ship was then taken into delta waters and burned to avoid detection.

The captives were freed after the Civil War. Unable to return to Africa, they settled a community that’s still called Africatown.

Earlier this year, a research team announced the discovery of the remnants of the Clotilda along the banks of the Mobile River. The Alabama Historical Commission had worked with the National Geographic Society and Search, Inc. to find and identify the wreckage.

New York
Judge: ­Woodstock music festival can license its name to pot
NEW YORK (AP) — A judge says the owners of the Woodstock music festival name can license it to create a marijuana brand marking the 50th anniversary of the famed gathering.

U.S. District Judge Paul Gardephe on Monday rejected a claim that the deal would infringe on the name of another company, Woodstock Roots.

Gardephe concluded the nature of the planned Woodstock-branded recreational marijuana and a competitor’s cannabis-related smoking paraphernalia are different.

Woodstock Ventures, which produced the 1969 Woodstock festival, and Woodstock Roots sued each other last year. Woodstock Roots does business as Woodstock American Products.

Woodstock Ventures argued recreational marijuana falls within its “natural zone of expansion” under federal trademark law. It is working on a deal with a major marijuana dispensary.

New Jersey
Judge upholds  state limit on gun ammunition
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — A federal judge on Monday upheld New Jersey’s law that lowers the number of bullets a gun can hold, dismissing a lawsuit filed by a gun rights group.

New Jersey passed a law last year that made it unlawful to possess firearm magazines holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition, with some exceptions. The state has said that’s enough for self-defense and that anything more could prove dangerous to bystanders. A 15-round limit had been in place since 1990.

The Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs argued that the law only hurts law-abiding gun owners and homeowners because criminals will ignore it, and plans to appeal.

Previously, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia declined to grant an injunction to stop the law from taking effect.

U.S. District Court Judge Peter Sheridan based his ruling Monday on the 3rd Circuit’s conclusion that New Jersey’s law “does not violate the Second Amendment, the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause, and the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.”

Sheridan also denied the gun rights group’s request to delay action on New Jersey’s law while the U.S. Supreme Court decides a New York case the involves a restriction on the right to carry a firearm in public, writing that it poses a different legal question.

Daniel Schmutter, an attorney representing the gun group, said the case isn’t over.

“New Jersey’s law is both unconstitutional and counterproductive from a public safety perspective,” he said in an email. “We will be appealing this ruling.”