Good morning. A Colorado law barring discrimination against LGBT people is the subject of arguments at the U.S. Supreme Court today, as a web designer opposed to gay marriage argues it infringes her right to free speech. Plus, the Chess cheating lawsuit heats up, and why the predicted pandemic-related backlog in the federal courts never materialized. Hope your Monday is off to a great start.
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The U.S. Supreme Court today will take up a dispute involving an evangelical Christian web designer who refuses to provide her services for same-sex marriages. The case pits LGBT rights against an argument that the constitutional right to free speech exempts artists from anti-discrimination laws, Andrew Chung and Nate Raymond report.
Denver-area business owner Lorie Smith (above), represented by Kristen Waggoner of Alliance Defending Freedom, is seeking an exemption from a Colorado law that bars discrimination based on sexual orientation and other factors. Smith argues that Colorado's Anti-Discrimination Act violates the right of artists to free speech under the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment by forcing them to express messages through their work that they oppose.
Lower courts ruled in favor of Colorado. The state, civil rights groups and numerous legal scholars warn of a ripple effect of discrimination against LGBT people and others if Smith wins. Colorado Solicitor General Eric Olson, a former Bartlit Beck partner and law clerk to the late Justice John Paul Stevens, will argue for the state. Deputy U.S. Solicitor General Brian Fletcher, a former Stanford Law professor who clerked for the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, will argue for the federal government as a friend of the court.
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Access 2 x CLE webinars, the Thomson Reuters Legal Department Operations (LDO) Index report 2022, and 3 x Legal Leaders podcast episodes. |
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West Virginia’s Judicial Investigations Commission censured Chief 2nd Judicial Circuit Judge David Hummel after he put his gun on the bench and picked it up during proceedings in a civil case. The commission cited the gun incident and past unrelated ethics complaints in censuring Hummel for multiple violations of West Virginia's code of judicial conduct but said it wouldn’t pursue other charges against him because he had agreed to resign. (Reuters)
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Davis Polk, Paul Weiss and Debevoise rolled out year-end bonus plans for associates that range from $15,000 pro-rated to $115,000 based on seniority, matching last year's bonus scale in a departure from the yearly increases in the past. (Reuters)
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The exodus of law schools from the U.S. News & World Report rankings slowed this week, as clearer divisions emerged in how the schools would proceed. In total so far, 14 schools have now said they will not give U.S. News their internal data for use in the rankings — outnumbering the four that have said so far that they will. (Reuters)
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Perkins Coie privacy and security partners will lead Google’s defense in a lawsuit by the RNC that alleged email systems were sending the group’s missives to users’ spam folders. Google has denied the claims, saying that spam filters reflect the action of users. (Reuters)
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The legal services sector saw relatively flat job growth in November, adding a mere 800 jobs, its smallest gain of the year, according to U.S. Labor Department data. Legal sector jobs totaled 1,183,200 in November, according to preliminary data released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (Reuters)
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It’s not often that 80-page judicial orders can fairly be described as page-turners. But Alison Frankel says in her latest column that if you start reading a Delaware federal judge’s explanation of how he came to suspect that dozens of patent suits had been filed by shell entities in a possible fraud on the court, you won’t be able to stop. The order is from Judge Colm Connolly, who is facing a mandamus petition from a patent owner who claims the judge stepped way out of bounds when he ordered the production of records on its apparent ties to a patent monetizer called IP Edge. Connolly’s order describes all of the investigative steps leading up to a remarkable hearing in which the patent owner revealed he paid nothing to acquire the IP and has had no role in the litigation to enforce it. Read more about what Frankel says is an extraordinary order.
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"Amid a squabble about a magazine, let’s not lose sight of the big picture." |
—Georgia law dean Peter “Bo” Rutledge, who said the U.S. News & World Report’s law school rankings are just one of the factors future students consider when they decide whether — and where — to get a J.D. As Penn, UC Davis and University of Washington joined the growing group of law schools declining to participate this year, Rutledge said cost, debt, jobs and bar passage are major considerations for potential students picking a school.
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Reuters video journalist Alex Cohen gives you an early view of the week ahead in legal news. Watch the video. |
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Rudy Giuliani’s attorney misconduct hearing kicks off today before a hearing committee of the D.C. Board on Professional Responsibility. The D.C. bar’s disciplinary arm, led by Phil Fox, in June claimed Giuliani made baseless claims in federal court filings about the results of the 2020 presidential election in Pennsylvania. Giuliani has denied violating attorney ethics rules in his advocacy challenging Democrat Joe Biden’s presidential win. Giuliani, who faces a separate disciplinary proceeding in New York, is among a group of lawyers in Trump’s orbit facing bar licensing issues over their election-related work.
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Pfizer and BioNTech face a deadline today to file a response to Moderna's August lawsuit in Boston federal court alleging their rival COVID-19 vaccine copied Moderna's technology. Moderna, represented by Bill Lee of WilmerHale, alleges Pfizer/BioNTech, without permission, copied mRNA technology that Moderna had patented between 2010 and 2016, well before COVID-19 emerged in 2019 and exploded into global consciousness in early 2020. Pfizer, represented by McCarter & English, and BioNTech, represented by Saul Ewing, have said their technology was original.
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Michael Avenatti, the lawyer who represented porn actress Stormy Daniels in legal battles against Donald Trump, is expected to be sentenced by a California federal judge to more prison time after pleading guilty in June to four counts of wire fraud and one count of obstructing the IRS. Any sentence may be in addition to or partially overlap with the five years in prison that Avenatti already faces for embezzling from Daniels and trying to extort Nike.
Court calendars are subject to last-minute docket changes.
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On Tuesday, the 4th Circuit is scheduled to hear arguments over whether Maryland’s assault weapons ban is barred by the Second Amendment. The law was challenged by a group of Maryland locals, gun rights groups and a Maryland gun shop represented by Cooper & Kirk, but the district court tossed the case based on 4th Circuit precedent upholding the ban.
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Also on Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case questioning whether the DOJ can dismiss lawsuits by whistleblowers after declining to participate. The issue came to the fore during the Trump administration, when the DOJ adopted a policy aimed at encouraging its attorneys to more frequently exercise their authority to seek the dismissal of "meritless" or "parasitic" lawsuits the government does not back. The case before the Supreme Court was brought against UnitedHealth Group subsidiary Executive Health Resources by a former employee, Jesse Polansky, who accused the company of overbilling Medicare by potentially billions of dollars. The government declined to intervene in the case, but successfully filed a motion to dismiss it.
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In Washington state court on Wednesday, King County Superior Court Judge Ken Schubert will hear witness testimony in the state attorney general’s office bid to block Albertsons from making a $4 billion special dividend payment in advance of its $25 billion planned merger with rival grocer Kroger. The court has paused the payment at least until Dec. 9, when Schubert will hear arguments over the merits of the dividend. The state AG’s office has argued the dividend would weaken the company’s ability to compete. Lawyers for Albertsons dispute that contention. The dividend faces a separate pending legal challenge in D.C. federal court.
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Also on Wednesday, the D.C. Circuit will hear arguments in Donald Trump's appeal of a lower court ruling that allowed lawsuits accusing him of inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, riots at the U.S. Capitol to proceed. In February, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta rejected Trump’s argument that he is immune from three lawsuits by Democratic members of Congress and two police officers, finding Trump’s fiery speech before the Capitol attack was not within the scope of his official presidential duties.
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On Friday, U.S. District Judge Christopher Burke in Delaware will hear oral arguments on cancer-screening company Guardant Health and its founders' motion to dismiss a trade-secrets lawsuit brought by genetic-analysis company Illumina. The lawsuit accused former Illumina employees Helmy Eltoukhy and AmirAli Talasaz of taking thousands of confidential documents from Illumina and misusing Illumina's secrets to obtain at least 35 patents. Guardant has called the lawsuit a "brazen attempt by Illumina to put its chief rival out of business and stifle competition in the market for life-saving cancer technologies" and said the "sham" claims were time-barred because the alleged misconduct happened 10 years ago.
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Also on Friday, U.S. District Judge John Bates will weigh efforts by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to dismiss a civil wrongful death lawsuit filed against him by the fiancee of slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Khashoggi's fiancee Hatice Cengiz, whose lawyers include a team from Jenner, sued Prince Mohammed and other Saudi officials in D.C. federal court over the murder of Khashoggi, killed and dismembered in October 2018 at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. The Biden administration has said Prince Mohammed is immune from liability in the lawsuit as a foreign head of state. Cengiz’s lawyers are challenging the suggestion of immunity.
Court calendars are subject to last-minute docket changes.
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ExxonMobil, Shell and other oil companies facing lawsuits accusing them of fueling climate change asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review whether those claims should be heard in federal courts, the companies' preferred venue, instead of the state systems where they were originally filed. "The global challenge of climate change does not lend itself to a disjointed patchwork of lawsuits in state courts," said Theodore Boutrous of Gibson Dunn, who filed the petitions for the oil companies, in a statement. (Reuters)
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The 7th Circuit seemed likely to rule that a rental car service's arbitration agreements with its customers did not shield a third-party company that verifies the identities of the service's users from facing class action biometric privacy claims in court. The question is critical because many screening companies face multimillion-dollar class action lawsuits under a unique Illinois law that regulates biometric information, and moving cases into individual arbitration can be quicker and cheaper then fighting them in court. (Reuters)
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U.S. District Judge Victor Bolden declined to dismiss a charge accusing a group of aerospace executives and managers of conspiring to restrict employee mobility, an early victory for the DOJ in its effort to apply criminal antitrust statutes to labor and employment practices. Defense lawyers had argued communication about hiring was “legitimate business collaboration.”
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Albertsons won dismissal of a proposed class action lawsuit accusing it of misleading consumers by selling "rapid release" acetaminophen tablets that allegedly dissolved more slowly than its standard version of the over-the-counter pain reliever. U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns in Boston ruled that the lawsuit, filed by Massachusetts resident Nicole Sapienza on behalf of a nationwide class of consumers, was blocked by the federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, which governs drug labeling. (Reuters)
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Indian Harbor Insurance can’t rely on an insurance policy exclusion for injuries caused by “stunts” to avoid a payout after a person was injured during a bar’s forklift parade, the 9th Circuit said. The court reversed an earlier ruling in the insurance company’s favor, siding with bar owner Timothy Krehbiel, who faced a lawsuit after he ran over someone’s foot while driving a forklift. Krehbiel was operating the forklift in downtown Los Angeles in honor of his wife’s 50th birthday. (Reuters)
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Erin England joined Reed Smith’s financial industry group as a Dallas-based partner. England was previously at Katten. (Reed Smith)
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Perkins Coie brought on a four-partner intellectual property group from Morrison & Foerster: Stefani Shanberg, Nathan Sabri and Robin Brewer will be based in the firm’s San Francisco office, and Veronica Ascarrunz will be in D.C. (Perkins Coie)
>> More moves to share? Please drop us a note at LegalCareerTracker@thomsonreuters.com. |
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