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Good morning. The U.S. Supreme Court released its highly anticipated ruling on affirmative action, but experts say the legal fight over race and college admissions is far from over. Plus, three people are facing charges over claims they made $22 million in insider trading ahead of a SPAC’s announcement of a merger with Trump Media, OpenAI faces a new potential class action, and the U.S. Supreme Court’s term comes to a close. Happy Friday.
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The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision barring race-conscious admissions policies will force universities to find new ways to attract a diverse student body — but experts said such efforts will likely open a new front in what has been a decades-long legal battle over race and college admissions, report Joseph Ax, Daniel Wiessner and Tom Hals.
Chief Justice John Roberts said in the majority opinion that admissions officers at colleges could consider “an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise,” as long as they do so on an individual basis. But the inherent nuance in taking race into account without allowing it to form the sole basis for an advantage creates a gray area that could lead to new lawsuits, experts said.
Brian Fitzpatrick, a law professor at Vanderbilt University who opposes affirmative action, said he expected some schools to “try to drive a truck through that little paragraph,” leading to “years and years” of litigation.
Edward Blum, the founder of the group that brought the Supreme Court case, made it clear in a statement that he would be watching schools’ reaction closely.
“The law will not tolerate direct proxies for racial classifications,” Blum said. “We remain vigilant and intend to initiate litigation should universities defiantly flout this clear ruling.”
Read more Reuters coverage of the landmark decision:
>>> U.S. Supreme Court’s affirmative action ruling a ‘headwind’ for lawyer diversity, experts say
>>> Post-affirmative action, these law schools may provide path for others
>>> US Justices Jackson, Thomas illustrate heated US debate on affirmative action
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- Hackers behind a massive breach at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services claimed credit for stealing data from two major law firms, Kirkland & Ellis and K&L Gates. The hackers’ claims could not immediately be verified. Mercenary hackers increasingly are targeting law firms in a bid to steal data that could tip the balance in legal cases, French and British authorities say. Kirkland and K&L did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment. (Reuters)
- Federal prosecutors in Manhattan said a “serial fraudster” who impersonated the chairman of an unnamed global law firm pleaded guilty to charges after bilking more than $1 million out of a private equity firm and an investment firm. Prosecutors said Florida resident Jonathan Ghertler also impersonated the general counsel of a private equity firm and the founder of an investment firm. (Reuters)
- Sanofi’s lawyers at Weil Gotshal asked a Kansas federal judge not to approve more than $775,000 in litigation costs for Mylan. Attorneys for Mylan at Wilson Sonsini contend the drugmaker, now known as Viatris, is entitled to recover a large court tab after defeating Sanofi’s antitrust claims over the market for the EpiPen device. (Reuters)
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REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay/Illustration
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That’s how much a former employee of Pfizer and a friend allegedly made in illicit profit in an insider-trading scheme, according to federal prosecutors. Amit Dagar, a senior statistical program lead for Pfizer’s Paxlovid, was arrested on insider trading charges for allegedly trading the drugmaker’s stock before it announced positive results from clinical trials of antiviral drug. An attorney for Dagar said his client denies the allegations. An attorney for Dagar’s friend said his client denied trading on inside information. Pfizer said it was cooperating with the investigation.
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When food distribution giant Sysco sued litigation financier Burford in March for allegedly seizing control of the company’s price-fixing cases, litigation funding critics were quick to seize on the case as a prime example of the perils of outside investment in litigation. But it now appears, writes Alison Frankel, that Burford has gotten the last laugh in the dispute. The funder and Sysco agreed on Wednesday to drop their competing lawsuits over an arbitration panel ruling that blocked Sysco from settling claims without Burford’s approval. Burford and Sysco also revealed that the company has assigned all of its remaining price-fixing claims to a Burford entity, which will now act as a plaintiff instead of Sysco. In other words, Frankel writes, the funder now has complete control, not just the limited veto power Sysco originally sued over. It’s hard, Frankel said, to read that outcome as anything but a win for Burford.
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“Judges are not historians. We were not trained as historians.“
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What to catch up on this weekend
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- The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to issue one or more decisions today, as the term draws to a close. final days come into focus. The court is expected soon to rule on the legality of President Joe Biden’s plan to cancel $430 billion in student debt for about 40 million borrowers. At the court’s hearing in the case, conservative justices signaled their skepticism over the legality of the Biden administration’s effort. In another pending case, the court’s conservative majority appeared ready to rule that a Christian web designer has a right to refuse to provide services for same-sex marriages.
- U.S. District Judge Joanna Seybert in the Eastern District of New York will hold a status hearing in the criminal prosecution of U.S. Rep. George Santos. Santos has pleaded not guilty to 13 criminal charges including fraud, money laundering and theft of public funds. Santos’s father and aunt were recently identified as the guarantors of the indicted U.S. representative’s $500,000 bail, after Santos fought unsuccessfully to keep them anonymous.
- U.S. court officials will hold a ceremony naming the federal courthouse in Tallahassee, Florida, after the late Judge Joseph W. Hatchett. A civil rights lawyer, Hatchett, was the first Black man to serve on the Florida Supreme Court and became a federal appeals court judge in 1979. Hatchett joined the law firm Akerman in 1999 and died in 2021 at age 88. The ceremony will be at the Joseph Woodrow Hatchett U.S. Courthouse and Federal Building.
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Court calendars are subject to last-minute docket changes.
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- Two authors filed a proposed class action against OpenAI in San Francisco federal court, accusing the Microsoft-backed company of misusing their works to “train” its popular generative artificial-intelligence system ChatGPT. The Massachusetts-based writers claimed the material in datasets used to teach ChatGPT to create text was copied from thousands of books without permission, infringing the authors’ copyrights. A representative for OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment. (Reuters)
- Coinbase said it will ask a Manhattan federal judge to dismiss the SEC lawsuit claiming it broke the law by failing to register its business. The cryptocurrency platform’s defense lawyers at Wachtell said in a letter to U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla that the securities agency has no authority to pursue civil claims because assets trading on its platform are not “investment contracts,” and thus not securities. (Reuters)
- U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Martin Glenn in Manhattan said that he would allow SVB Financial Group to sell its investment banking division, once the company has ensured that it is not releasing any liabilities related to the collapse of its Silicon Valley Bank unit. Glenn said at a hearing that he would likely approve a plan to sell SVB Securities to a group led by the subsidiary’s former CEO Jeff Leerink, as long as broad releases of liability for Leerink were removed from the deal. (Reuters)
- U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan rejected former President Donald Trump’s motion to dismiss E. Jean Carroll’s original suit. Trump had argued that he was entitled to absolute presidential immunity, many of his statements were opinion, and Carroll “consented” to his statements by waiting decades to go public, leaving him “no choice” but to defend himself. (Reuters)
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