Welcome to Gavel Drop, our roundup of legal news, headlines, and head-shaking moments in the courts.

Attorneys for the admitted Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood shooter Robert Lewis Dear Jr. have asked the court to order their client to stop talking to the media. Dear, who was arrested after a November rampage left three dead, is awaiting another court-ordered competency hearing to determine if and when he will stand trial for the 179 counts he faces. That hearing is currently scheduled for August 11.

The California criminal justice system is in shambles, and nobody seems to know what to do about it, not even the California Supreme Court.

Scott Lemieux has this really smart piece on how we may be closer than we think to eliminating the death penalty once and for all.

The State of Texas has launched more than 40 lawsuits against the Obama administration. Here’s how they all stack up in terms of cost and success.

Nope. The birth control benefit lawsuits are never going to end.

Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times writes that Republican Missouri state Rep. Paul Wieland’s lawsuit challenging the birth control benefit is more about family control than strictly religious beliefs.

Wisconsin is the latest state to see provisions of its voter ID law fall.

Meanwhile, attorneys for the State of Virginia say they will appeal a ruling blocking an order restoring voting rights to thousands of people convicted of felonies.

Attorneys for the State of Kentucky really want to close down a Louisville Planned Parenthood, despite no evidence of wrongdoing at the reproductive health-care center.

In Ohio, the state appellate court ruled that regulations mandating abortion clinics to enter into transfer agreements with hospitals within 30 miles are unconstitutional.

Cornell Law School Professor Sherry F. Colb explains why “Mike Pence’s abortion law” in Indiana—which, among other restrictions, prohibits pregnancy terminations based upon the fetus’ Down syndrome status—is a violation of women’s bodily integrity.