Law

Sept 17 (Reuters) - Every football player knows that plays don’t always go the way they’re diagrammed on the coach’s whiteboard. To win, sometimes you need a back-up plan.

Just ask Shannon Sharpe, the Hall of Fame tight end who spent most of his storied NFL career with the Denver Broncos. On Monday, Sharpe defeated an appeal by another NFL Hall of Famer —Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Favre — because he built contingency plays into his legal strategy.

Favre sued Sharpe for defamation in 2023, after Sharpe spoke on his popular Fox Sports television show about Favre’s involvement in a scandal over the alleged misuse of Mississippi welfare funds.

The background details here are important. A Mississippi state auditor discovered in 2021 that more than $77 million earmarked for the state’s neediest families had been misappropriated for other uses between 2016 and 2019. Six people have since pleaded guilty to state and federal charges related to the welfare funding scandal.

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/19879143

Federal Judge Aileen M. Cannon, the controversial jurist who tossed out the classified documents criminal case against Donald Trump in July, failed to disclose her attendance at a May 2023 banquet funded by a conservative law school.

Cannon went to an event in Arlington, Va. honoring the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, according to documents obtained from the Law and Economics Center at George Mason University. At a lecture and private dinner, she sat among members of Scalia’s family, fellow Federalist Society members and more than 30 conservative federal judges. Organizers billed the event as “an excellent opportunity to connect with judicial colleagues.”

A 2006 rule, intended to shine a light on judges’ attendance at paid seminars that could pose conflicts or influence decisions, requires them to file disclosure forms for such trips within 30 days and make them public on the court’s website.

It’s not the first time she has failed to fully comply with the rule.

In 2021 and 2022, Cannon took weeklong trips to the luxurious Sage Lodge in Pray, Montana, for legal colloquiums sponsored by George Mason, which named its law school for Scalia thanks to $30 million in gifts that conservative judicial kingmaker Leonard Leo helped organize.

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cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/41908556

Opening statements before District Judge Leonie Brinkema of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia start later today. The BBC notes that the Justice Department plans to argue that Google's parent company, Alphabet, illegally operates a monopoly in the online advertising market. However, Alphabet denies the allegations, claiming that its success is due to the "effectiveness" of its services.

The Justice Department claims Google established its monopoly through the anti-competitive acquisitions of smaller ad-tech rivals and even bullying website publishers into using its ad products. Google is also said to have unethically controlled key businesses in each part of the advertising supply chain, thereby driving up ad rates for advertisers while reducing the payouts to website owners.

Pointing out Google's systematic abuse of the online ad business, the DoJ will ask the court to break up the company's ad-tech monopoly. The agency believes a breakup would create new opportunities for Google's smaller competitors and incentivize new players to enter the market. It will also be better for both advertisers and publishers.

If it's illegal to have a concealed knife in a vehicle in California, then how do people drive around in an RV with a drawer full of knives?

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court held, opens new tab that a 1957 law barring people from possessing spring-release pocketknives commonly known as "switchblades" violated the right to keep and bear arms enshrined in the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment.

The court reached that conclusion while dismissing a charge filed against David Canjura for unlawfully possessing a switchblade, which Boston police found when responding to a report of an altercation between Canjura and his girlfriend.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/19040697

Democrats were able to get President Joe Biden to step aside after a pressure campaign. But it’s much more difficult to force out a federal judge.

At the age of 97, Judge Pauline Newman is the oldest full-time federal judge on the bench, but despite concerns about her ability to do the job, her colleagues are struggling to get rid of her.

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When Democrats decided after President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance that he was no longer fit to serve at the top of the ticket, a multifaceted pressure campaign was able to convince him to step aside.

But federal judges, as well as Supreme Court justices, have lifetime appointments and there is no easy process for easing them aside.

With people generally living longer, a lifetime appointment can now last many decades. The average age of a federal judge is 69, according to a recent study, and there is no clean way to force someone to step down.

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20240822141004/https://www.justsecurity.org/98741/fisa-defensive-searches/

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/19043926

Last spring, New York City police officers stopped a 19-year-old on the subway during her commute. She was eligible for a free transfer from the bus to the subway, but the transfer failed to register at the turnstile, so she and a friend entered through the platform emergency exit door.

Police stopped them, took their names, and let her friend go. Officers told the 19-year-old she had a prior arrest — from 2018, when she was in her early teens — and began to question her.

The cops should not have known about that past arrest. A New York state law protects juvenile records in cases without any finding of guilt from access by anyone, including law enforcement, without a court order.

The young woman is one of three plaintiffs who filed a class-action suit in July against the city and NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban for what they said was a practice of illegally accessing, using, and leaking sealed youth records. The suit, which was unsealed Thursday, alleges that officials routinely share those sealed records with prosecutors and the media — specifically with pro-cop tabloids that regularly publish juvenile arrest information sourced from police.

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"The ban on fake reviews includes AI-generated reviews and real people that have no experience with the product being reviewed.... Buying reviews, whether positive or negative, is also banned in any form. So-called “insider” reviews are prohibited by employees of a given company.... The new rule will become effective 60 days after it’s published in the Federal Register.... "

After a doctor suffered a fatal allergic reaction at a Disney World restaurant, Disney is trying to get her widower's wrongful death lawsuit tossed by pointing to the fine print of a Disney+ trial he signed up for years earlier.

Jeffrey Piccolo is representing the estate of his late wife, Kanokporn Tangsuan, a doctor at New York's NYU Langone hospital who died of an allergic reaction while visiting the Florida resort in October.

The couple, along with Piccolo's mother, went to dinner on the night of Oct. 5 at Raglan Road Irish Pub, a restaurant located within a shopping and dining complex called Disney Springs.

Tangsuan was "highly allergic" to dairy and nuts, and they chose that particular restaurant in part because of its promises about accommodating patrons with food allergies, according to the lawsuit filed in a Florida circuit court.

The complaint details the family's repeated conversations with their waiter about Tangsuan's allergies. The family allegedly raised the issue upfront, inquired about the safety of specific menu items, had the server confirm with the chef that they could be made allergen-free and asked for confirmation "several more times" after that.

"When the waiter returned with [Tangsuan's] food, some of the items did not have allergen free flags in them and [Tangsuan] and [Piccolo] once again questioned the waiter who, once again, guaranteed the food being delivered to [Tangsuan] was allergen free," the lawsuit reads.

The three of them ate and then went their separate ways: Piccolo brought the leftovers to their room, while his wife and mother headed for the stores. After about 45 minutes, Tangsuan "began having severe difficulty breathing and collapsed to the floor." Bimbo bread is displayed on a shelf at a market in Anaheim, Calif., in 2003. On Tuesday, U.S. federal food safety regulators warned Bimbo Bakeries USA - which includes brands such as Sara Lee, Oroweat, Thomas', Entenmann's and Ball Park buns and rolls - to stop using labels that say its products contain potentially dangerous allergens when they don't.

She self-administered an epi-pen, and an observer called 911. The Piccolos, who had tried calling her multiple times, were eventually told she had been rushed to the hospital. They went to meet her and, after a period of waiting, were told that she had died.

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"First, it determined that under the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Carpenter v. United States, individuals have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the location data implicated by geofence warrants.... Second, the court found that even though investigators seek warrants for geofence location data, these searches are inherently unconstitutional.... "

The hardline approach Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito takes usually gets him what he wants.

This year it backfired.

Behind the scenes, the conservative justice sought to put a thumb on the scale for states trying to restrict how social media companies filter content. His tactics could have led to a major change in how platforms operate.

CNN has learned, however, that Alito went too far for two justices – Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson – who abandoned the precarious 5-4 majority and left Alito on the losing side.

As a result, the final 6-3 ruling led by Justice Elena Kagan backed the First Amendment rights of social media companies

It is rare that a justice tapped to write the majority opinion loses it in ensuing weeks, but sources tell CNN that it happened twice this year to Alito. He also lost the majority as he was writing the decision in the case of a Texas councilwoman who said she was arrested in retaliation for criticizing the city manager. ...

I know there's been challenges about elected officials blocking people on social media, but I've got a local elected official who keeps claiming that he's been working on a particular safety issue for like 6 years now. attempting to follow up yet again, I got a response saying that if I continued contacting him, he was going to block my phone number.

we were discussing city business. nothing personal. florida, if it matters

I've got an empty lot that I need to properly mark as private property before an upcoming project, and I want to make sure my signage is legally enforceable.

from what I can read, it just says that the signs have to be 18x24, with the words no trespassing at least 2" tall, and the name of the owner or lessee clearly printed on it. but there should be more to it than that, right? I can't find a regulation for how many signs there has to be for a given size property. like I'm sure I can't just mark 10 acres with a single sign, right? when I lived up north, the law was something about you had to have a sign posted every so many feet around the entire perimeter but I can't find the Florida regulation on that.

Held: Under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of Presidential power entitles a former President to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority. And he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts. There is no immunity for unofficial acts.

The President enjoys no im- munity for his unofficial acts, and not everything the President does is official. The President is not above the law.

Writing for the majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch contended that the Eighth Amendment, which bans cruel and unusual punishment, “serves many important functions, but it does not authorize federal judges” to “dictate this Nation’s homelessness policy.” Instead, he suggested, such a task should fall to the American people.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented, in an opinion joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. She argued that the majority’s ruling “focuses almost exclusively on the needs of local government and leaves the most vulnerable in our society with an impossible choice: Either stay awake or be arrested.”

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-175_19m2.pdf

In a major ruling, the Supreme Court on Friday cut back sharply on the power of federal agencies to interpret the laws they administer and ruled that courts should rely on their own interpretion of ambiguous laws.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/22-451_7m58.pdf

Considering I made the post Yesterday about the Thursday & Friday rulings, I felt obliged to share that they added another additional day of opinions (July 1st).

Securities and Exchange Commission v. Jarkesy

Issue(s): (1) Whether statutory provisions that empower the Securities and Exchange Commission to initiate and adjudicate administrative enforcement proceedings seeking civil penalties violate the Seventh Amendment; (2) whether statutory provisions that authorize the SEC to choose to enforce the securities laws through an agency adjudication instead of filing a district court action violate the nondelegation doctrine; and (3) whether Congress violated Article II by granting for-cause removal protection to administrative law judges in agencies whose heads enjoy for-cause removal protection.

Harrington v. Purdue Pharma L.P.

Issue(s): Whether the Bankruptcy Code authorizes a court to approve, as part of a plan of reorganization under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code, a release that extinguishes claims held by nondebtors against nondebtor third parties, without the claimants’ consent.

Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce

Issue(s): Whether the court should overrule Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, or at least clarify that statutory silence concerning controversial powers expressly but narrowly granted elsewhere in the statute does not constitute an ambiguity requiring deference to the agency.

Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo

Issue(s): Whether the court should overrule Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, or at least clarify that statutory silence concerning controversial powers expressly but narrowly granted elsewhere in the statute does not constitute an ambiguity requiring deference to the agency. [Sic]

Corner Post, Inc. v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System

Issue(s): Whether a plaintiff’s Administrative Procedure Act claim “first accrues” under 28 U.S.C. § 2401(a) when an agency issues a rule — regardless of whether that rule injures the plaintiff on that date — or when the rule first causes a plaintiff to “suffer[] legal wrong” or be “adversely affected or aggrieved.”

Ohio v. Environmental Protection Agency

Issue(s): (1) Whether the court should stay the Environmental Protection Agency’s federal emission reductions rule, the Good Neighbor Plan; and (2) whether the emissions controls imposed by the rule are reasonable regardless of the number of states subject to the rule.

*Moody v. NetChoice, LLC"

Issue(s): (1) Whether the laws’ content-moderation restrictions comply with the First Amendment; and (2) whether the laws’ individualized-explanation requirements comply with the First Amendment.

NetChoice, LLC v. Paxton

Issue(s): Whether the First Amendment prohibits viewpoint-, content-, or speaker-based laws restricting select websites from engaging in editorial choices about whether, and how, to publish and disseminate speech — or otherwise burdening those editorial choices through onerous operational and disclosure requirements.

Fischer v. US

Issue(s): Whether the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit erred in construing 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c), which prohibits obstruction of congressional inquiries and investigations, to include acts unrelated to investigations and evidence.

City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson

Issue(s): Whether the enforcement of generally applicable laws regulating camping on public property constitutes “cruel and unusual punishment” prohibited by the Eighth Amendment.

Moyle v. US

Issue(s): Whether the Supreme Court should stay the order by the U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho enjoining the enforcement of Idaho’s Defense of Life Act, which prohibits abortions unless necessary to save the life of the mother, on the ground that the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act preempts it.

Trump v. US

Issue(s): Whether and if so to what extent does a former president enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office.