//sli.reutersmedia.net/imp?s=126591700&li=&e=gjjtuyu768@gmail.com&p=31969772&stpe=pixel” width=”2″ height=”6″ border=”0″ /> |
//sli.reutersmedia.net/imp?s=126591701&li=&e=gjjtuyu768@gmail.com&p=31969772&stpe=pixel” width=”2″ height=”6″ border=”0″ /> |
//sli.reutersmedia.net/imp?s=126591702&li=&e=gjjtuyu768@gmail.com&p=31969772&stpe=pixel” width=”2″ height=”6″ border=”0″ /> |
//sli.reutersmedia.net/imp?s=126591703&li=&e=gjjtuyu768@gmail.com&p=31969772&stpe=pixel” width=”2″ height=”6″ border=”0″ /> |
//sli.reutersmedia.net/imp?s=126591704&li=&e=gjjtuyu768@gmail.com&p=31969772&stpe=pixel” width=”2″ height=”6″ border=”0″ /> |
|
|
|
//sli.reutersmedia.net/imp?s=874768&li=&e=gjjtuyu768@gmail.com&p=31969772&stpe=static” border=”0″ style=”max-height:12px;” /> |
|
|
|
|
|
Good morning. The U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority flexed its muscles at the term’s end, and major decisions on affirmative action and LGBT rights could have ripple effects. Plus, U.S. judges have halted numerous Republican-led efforts to ban medical procedures for transgender youth, and the first trial over Zantac cancer claims now has a date. On tap this week, a D.C. judge will hold a hearing in the dustup over a 96-year-old Federal Circuit judge’s bid to stop a probe focused on her conduct. A happy and safe July 4 holiday to all. We’ll be back on Wednesday.
Were you forwarded this email? Subscribe here.
|
The U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative justices cemented their dominance of the court at the term’s end, rejecting affirmative action in college admissions, curbing LGBT rights and blocking President Joe Biden’s student debt relief plan, John Kruzel and Andrew Chung report. One legal scholar said the decisions “moved the law in a dramatically conservative direction.”
The court’s liberal justices, including Biden appointee Ketanji Brown Jackson, often were in dissent in some of the most notable cases. The justices’ 6-3 decision against race-conscious policies in college admissions is likely to fuel challenges to corporate workforce diversity efforts, experts told Daniel Wiessner.
The high court’s conservative-majority ruling letting certain businesses refuse to provide services for same-sex marriages could impact an array of customers beyond LGBT people, according to the court’s liberal justices, Chung writes. Experts, however, were divided over how far such a ripple could spread. The ruling marked the court’s latest affirmation of an expansive view of religious interests at the expense of protections for LGBT people, Kruzel reports.
Read more: Catch up on all of the term’s biggest rulings in this roundup.
|
|
|
- U.S. District Judge Vanessa Bryant in Connecticut rejected rapper Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson’s $32 million lawsuit against his former firm Reed Smith. Jackson had argued Reed Smith pursued an “uninformed” legal strategy in the run-up to a trial that led to a $7 million judgment against him. (Reuters)
- Law firm Consovoy McCarthy achieved a long-sought victory last week when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down race-based college admissions policies. The law firm notched another partial victory, when the justices blocked President Joe Biden’s plan to forgive $430 billion in student loan debt. The firm’s co-founder called the wins “bittersweet” afer the death of William Consovoy, the other co-founder and a prominent conservative lawyer who once led the lawsuit challenging affirmative action at Harvard University. (Reuters)
|
That’s how many unsolicited, unwanted telemarketer text messages it takes to bring a case under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, the 9th Circuit said. The appellate court revived a TCPA lawsuit filed by a mother who sued over unwanted texts from an online entertainment company that she received after her son used her phone. “Receiving even one unsolicited, automated text message from a telemarketer is the precise harm identified by Congress, and sufficient to state an injury in fact,” wrote Judge Richard Bennett, a federal District Court judge who was sitting in at the circuit court.
|
We all know that Google founder Larry Page and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai are busy people with important responsibilities overseeing a trillion-dollar company. They are also defendants and potentially crucial witnesses in a billion-dollar shareholder class action accusing the company and top executives of concealing user privacy vulnerabilities. The whole securities fraud case, in fact, hinges on whether shareholder lawyers from Robbins Geller can show that Page and Pichai intended to deceive investors. But Alphabet defense lawyers are trying to restrict what shareholders can ask the high-ranking executives, citing the so-called apex doctrine’s protection from abusive discovery. The doctrine, writes Alison Frankel, has apparently never been successfully invoked in a securities class action. Will the Alphabet litigation break new ground?
|
“An employee does not shed her right to be free from workplace discrimination simply because she believes in God, prays at work, and is employed by a religious entity.“
|
|
|
- Trade groups representing the payday loan industry in alleging the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s funding mechanism violated a constitutional provision giving lawmakers the power of the purse are due to file their merits brief in the U.S. Supreme Court. The justices in February agreed to decide whether the agency’s funding structure established by Congress violates the U.S. Constitution. A federal judge in 2021 ruled for the agency. But the 5th Circuit in October ruled that the funding structure violated the Constitution’s “appropriations clause.” Veteran appellate lawyer Noel Francisco of Jones Day represents the trade groups, including the Community Financial Services Association of America. The justices will hear the case during the court’s next term, which begins in October.
|
Court calendars are subject to last-minute docket changes.
|
- On Wednesday, lawyers for two former Georgia election workers suing Rudy Giuliani and others are expected to submit a filing in D.C. federal court detailing the costs and fees they are seeking after a judge last month sanctioned the former New York mayor for failing to search for and turn over records in the litigation. U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell ordered Giuliani to pay attorney fees and costs associated with the plaintiffs’ effort to force Giuliani to search for documents. The plaintiffs’ legal team includes lawyers from Willkie Farr.
- On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper in D.C. will hold a status hearing in the lawsuit filed by 96-year-old Federal Circuit Judge Pauline Newman in her challenge to an order suspending her from hearing cases amid an investigation into her competence and conduct. Newman, represented by Greg Dolin of the New Civil Liberties Alliance, said in a court filing that her suspension without a misconduct finding is unconstitutional and repeated her argument that she is fit to serve, citing a recent neurological exam that she said “revealed no significant cognitive deficits.”
- On Friday, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kennelly in Chicago will hold a status conference with the lawyers in a privacy action against BNSF Railway. Last week, the court erased a $228 million jury verdict against the freight rail giant after finding damages under the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act were discretionary and up to a jury’s consideration. The jury trial last year in Chicago marked the first-ever under the state law, one of the most stringent in the country in the protection of sensitive personal information.
|
Court calendars are subject to last-minute docket changes.
|
- U.S. District Judge Thomas Durkin in Chicago said Pilgrim’s Pride, Sanderson Farms, Tyson Foods and several other companies must face private antitrust litigation accusing them of conspiring to inflate broiler chicken prices by reducing supply. In a 90-page decision, Durkin said reasonable jurors could find it more likely than not that the defendants conspired to fix prices. The companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment. (Reuters)
- DuPont de Nemours asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review whether a lower court inappropriately hamstrung its defense during trial over claims that its chemicals caused cancer. DuPont’s attorney Paul Clement told the justices that it was improperly barred from disputing “key liability issues” at the trial, which led to a $40 million verdict, on the grounds that three similar cases had already determined the company negligently exposed people to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. (Reuters)
- Fox Corp has settled for $12 million a lawsuit by former Fox News producer Abby Grossberg, who had made claims of gender discrimination and accused the network’s lawyers of pressuring her to make misleading statements in the Dominion Voting Systems case, her lawyer Tanvir Rahman said. Fox did not respond to a request for comment. (Reuters)
- The Indiana Supreme Court upheld a law banning nearly all abortions in the state, lifting a lower court order that had blocked the law in response to a lawsuit by Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers. The court, in a 4-1 decision, found that the Indiana constitution does not include a broad right to abortion, allowing Indiana to join 14 other Republican-led states in enforcing abortion bans. (Reuters)
- The D.C. Circuit rejected a challenge to the first federal regulations on greenhouse gas emissions from airplanes, which environmental groups and several Democrat-led states have insisted are too lenient. Circuit Judge Neomi Rao, writing for the court, said the decision to not adopt stricter rules rested on the “reasonable judgment that the best way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions globally would be to align with international standards.” (Reuters)
|
|
|
Sponsors are not involved in the creation of newsletter or other Reuters news content.
Get Reuters News App
Want to stop receiving this newsletter? Unsubscribe here.
To manage which newsletters you’re subscribed to, click here.
|
|
|
|