Good morning. President Donald Trump is falsely claiming victory over Joe Biden despite millions of still uncounted votes, Californians delivered Uber and Lyft a victory in their fight to treat drivers as contractors, Republicans appear poised to retain control of a majority of state AG offices, and Wachtell Lipton on Election Day elected two women of color to its partnership. Get ready, it's going to be a wild one!
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Presidential election unclear, as Trump vows to take it to SCOTUS REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque Americans woke up today unclear who will sit in the White House next year, with the race between President Donald Trump and Democratic rival Joe Biden coming down to a handful of states.
But that hasn't stopped the Republican incumbent from falsely claiming victory already and declaring that his lawyers will be taking his case to the U.S. Supreme Court. "We want the law to be used in a proper manner," he said. "So we'll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court. We want all voting to stop."
It's unclear what case Trump could make to stop states from counting already-cast votes. Biden is pinning his hopes on Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. He has a narrow lead in Wisconsin while Trump is ahead in Michigan and Pennsylvania, with more mail-in ballots that are likely to lean Democratic still to be tallied, Trevor Hunnicutt and Jeff Mason report.
Ahead of Election Day on Monday, Trump had blasted a U.S. Supreme Court decision to not block a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling that extended deadlines for receiving mail-in ballots in the state. Pennsylvania officials are segregating those ballots, teeing up a potential court battle in the event of a close election. Read more.
Californians vote to allow gig-economy drivers to be treated as contractors REUTERS/Mike Blake Voters in California delivered Uber Technologies and Lyft a major victory by approving a ballot measure that exempts drivers for ride-hailing and delivery app services from a new state law that would have treated them as employees rather than as independent contractors.
The measure, known as Proposition 22, marked the culmination of years of legal and legislative wrangling over the future of gig economy companies whose business models rely on treating workers as contractors not entitled to minimum wage protections and healthcare benefits.
With 99% of precincts partially reporting, 58.4% of voters have approved adopting the measure. Companies including Uber, Lyft, Doordash, Instacart and Postmates poured more than $205 million into the most expensive ballot campaign in California history, Tina Bellon and Lisa Baertlein report.
The proposition is the app makers' response to a state law enacted last year that requires companies that control how workers do their jobs to classify those workers as employees.
Republicans set to retain majority control of AG offices REUTERS/Jonathan Drake Republicans are set to retain control of a majority of state attorney general offices, with Democratic incumbents in Pennsylvania and North Carolina in tight races that remain too close to call this morning. Even Democrats win there, results in eight other races would leave the split between Republican to Democratic state AGs at 26-24.
North Carolina: Josh Stein (pictured above), a Democrat who as AG has taken a leading role in negotiating a multi-billion dollar opioid litigation settlement, is narrowly leading Republican Jim O'Neill, the Forsyth County's district attorney, 50.1% to 49.9%, with some mail-in and provisional ballots still to count.
Industry buzz
Election protection efforts draw significant lawyer turnout As voters went to the polls, lawyers at many major law firms volunteered to help defend people's rights to cast a ballot in the election, David Thomas reports. The Daily Docket caught up with a few to see how they spent the day:
Akin Gump partner Barbara Niederkofler in D.C.: "With this year being the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, I felt even more strongly about appreciating our democracy and our right to vote. I am volunteering at the Election Protection hotline, organized by the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the nation’s largest nonpartisan voter protection coalition."
Hogan Lovells senior associate Samuel Zimmerman in New York: "I will be supporting voters as a poll clerk at a high school in Chinatown named after Emma Lazarus, whose poem The New Colossus welcomed millions of immigrants into this country -- feels fitting given what's at stake in this election."
Morgan Lewis partner Kristen Ferris in Boston, who ran one of the firm's Election Protection centers: "Coordinating and getting our volunteers organized has been a huge undertaking itself. The Lawyers' Committee and the election protection partnership is doing all of the back-office work. It's phenomenal. It's a huge undertaking, and we all laugh, we're building this plane while we're flying it.”
Video: Lawyers work to protect voting rights
Lawyers around the country have been working to protect the rights of voters as they flocked to the polls in apparent record numbers. Reuters reporter David Thomas spoke with Bill Silverman, head of pro bono at Proskauer, who is leading voter protection efforts at the firm and Alora Thomas, a senior staff attorney for the Voting Rights Project at the ACLU about this year’s presidential election. Watch the full video here.
Coming up today
"I have my voice back."
Shikila Calder, one of potentially thousands of people with past felony convictions voting in a general election for the first time this year in Florida after their rights were restored in a 2018 referendum. The U.S. Supreme Court in July rebuffed a challenge to a subsequent law the Republican-led Florida legislature passed last year that allowed only those who had paid all legal fines to vote. Calder said she paid all of her obligations. (Reuters)
In the courts
Industry moves
Columnist spotlight: A new defense for news sites embedding copyrighted photos -- fair use There’s been a lot of recent copyright litigation in the federal courts of New York over “embedded images,” in which a news website reproduces a social media post that contains a copyrighted photograph. Alison Frankel has written before about Manhattan judges opining on difficult, fact-specific questions about whether Instagram’s user agreements grant sublicenses to reproduce the work of photographers who post their work publicly on the social media site. But now she’s taking a look at a new case in which photographers have to worry about another defense: fair use. Read her full column here.
Lawyer speak: DOJ reveals more about how it views cryptocurrency threats Last month the U.S. Attorney General's Cyber-Digital Task Force published a cryptocurrency enforcement framework revealing more about how the DOJ views the threats cryptocurrency may pose, the regulatory tools at the government's disposal and the challenges the government faces in enforcement. Fenwick & West attorneys Michael Dicke, Catherine Kevane, Jacob Wittman and Andrea Louie discuss the major takeaways.
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