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Since the Supreme Court’s Windsor decision finding DOMA unconstitutional, earlier this year, there’s been a flurry of activity across the nation with renewed efforts in states to allow same-sex marriage. Today, we review the status of gay-marriage in the states that comprise the Third Circuit: Delaware, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Delaware is leading the pack in the Third Circuit as the first state, of the three, to allow same-sex marriage. Earlier this year, in May, Delaware became the eleventh state to allow same-sex marriage, after Gov....

The SCOTUS term may have ended, but that doesn’t mean you have to stop reading about the most powerful court in the country. Every year, new books are published that highlight various aspects of the Court’s history, the Justices’ lives, and the cases that get decided. And while you might not be able to bill for reading biographies, memoirs, and historical texts, if the High Court is a subject of interest to you, some of the following books might make for some good SCOTUS off-season reading....

Unfortunately for a Missouri man, who admitted to shooting a man to death in 2017, special conditions on his release were upheld by the 8th Circuit earlier this month. Ricky B. Gurley, who claimed he shot the man in self-defense and was convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm, challenged the district court’s decision to keep him off of social media. As part of Gurley’s supervised release, the district court ordered that “the defendant shall not maintain, utilize, access, or create a user account on any social networking site....

Can an ERISA retirement plan, after having paid out a consistent pension to early retirees, later reduce those pensions based on the age at which the pensioners retired? Not without violating ERISA’s anti-cutback rule, the Third Circuit ruled last Wednesday. The case, Cottillion v. United Refining Company, involved pensioned retirees who began collecting before they were 65. After several years of pension payouts, United amended the plan to reduce, based on an actuary assessment, payments for early retirees....

Zegrean v. U.S. Attorney General, No. 08-3714, involved a challenge to the BIA’s affirmance of the Department of Homeland Security’s denial of petitioner’s application for naturalization on the ground that a removal proceeding was pending against petitioner. In addressing petitioner’s argument that the tension between 8 C.F.R. section 1239.2(f) and 8 U.S.C. section 1429 must be reconciled, the court explained that the BIA’s conclusion that it cannot consider eligibility is consistent with 8 U....

In the 1960s, some brilliant individual decided that, with all of the Central Valley desert being, well, deserted, it would be a desirable idea to drench the place in water and start growing crops. Congress paid for irrigation contingent on either California paying for drainage, or the water being dumped in the Contra Costa delta. After that flop, a temporary drainage solution was put into place until they discovered that, well, toxic water is toxic and halted drainage to the Kesterson Reservoir in 1986....

A surprising new trend out of the Pacific Northwest involves bikini clad baristas serving coffee in drive-thru coffee stands. The bikini baristas have taken social media by storm, and have received a surprisingly welcoming reception from almost everyone, except the cities that have been trying to regulate these businesses out of existence. And if you’re not convinced that this is an important constitutional matter, just consider the level of analysis the attorney for the city of Everett provides when explaining what an “anal cleft” is to the Ninth Circuit panel of judges: “There is only one vertical opening made as if by splitting that could be associated with the anus on the human body....

On October 22, the Supreme Court rejected stays of three lawsuits against oil companies who are trying to remove the cases to federal court. It is the latest in several lawsuits targeting energy companies over climate change concerns. The three lawsuits are brought by Baltimore, Rhode Island, and Colorado, respectively, and all were filed in state courts. Defendants in the lawsuits, which include dozens of energy companies, argued that proceedings in state courts should be halted while federal circuit courts weigh appeals on whether these cases should be removed to federal court....

US v. Brown, No. 09-1028, concerned a challenge to the district court’s imposition of a 120-month mandatory minimum sentence, despite defendant’s two previous convictions for aggravated assault qualified him as a career offender for purposes of section 4B1.1, in a conviction for distributing more than five grams of crack cocaine. In vacating and remanding for re-sentencing, the court held that the district court failed to articulate the necessary justification for such a sizable departure from the guidelines....

Battles continue to rage in schools throughout the country on whether students should be required to wear face masks. As of mid-September, eight states – mostly in the South – have banned mask mandates by schools. Elsewhere, angry anti-mask parents have been converging on school board meetings to proclaim “parental rights" to act on behalf of their children and ignore mask mandates. In Duval County, Florida, for example, parents of two dozen school children sued the school board there on Sept....

When someone delivers food to your door, you give them a little extra cash for the effort. And you think that tip is going to the driver, on top of whatever the restaurant or delivery service is paying them. Customers using DoorDash can tip their drivers through the app, and the extra money is making it to the driver, just not in the way you think. The company is facing a class action lawsuit that claims tips were diverted to pay drivers’ salaries, rather than being a bonus on top of their base pay....

In a suit brought against a police officer and a restaurant owner on behalf of minors, claiming civil rights violation, false imprisonment, and injuries suffered arising from a dispute over a bill owed to the restaurant, the district court’s conclusion that the parties reached an enforceable oral agreement to settle their dispute is affirmed where: 1) given the record, the district court had no choice but to confirm the magistrate judge’s finding that the plaintiffs - directly or through their lawyer - accepted the agreement; 2) the material terms were definite and certain - defendants would pay $6000 to the plaintiffs in exchange for their dismissal of the lawsuit; and 3) district court did not abuse its discretion in finding that it had complied with Local Rule 17....

Denial of Expert Witness Fees and Double Costs Under Arizona Law Affirmed In Goldberg v. Pac. Indemn. Co., No. 09-16243, defendants’ appeal from the district court’s denial of their request for expert witness fees and double costs pursuant to Arizona Rule of Civil Procedure 68, the court affirmed where Arizona Rule 68 did not apply because it conflicted with Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 68, under which defendants were not entitled to recover costs because judgment was entered in their favor....

One of the most difficult things about creating a safe self-driving vehicle is programming the vehicle to be as observant as a human driver. Self-driving cars not only need GPS capabilities to get from point A to point B, they also must have the ability to sense and avoid surrounding objects, such as as other vehicles, pedestrians, and objects in the road in order to avoid an accident. Generally, humans can still do this much easier than computers....

In a case begun in 1986, now involving the estate of a well-known tax attorney, seeking review of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue’s determination that the attorney had not paid all his taxes, judgment of the Tax Court is reversed and remanded as the Tax Court did not show the proper level of deference to the Special Trial Judge’s (STJ) factual findings where: 1) STJ’s factual findings are not clearly erroneous with respect to petitioner’s tax liability and tax fraud; 2) there is no reversible error in the STJ’s conclusion that petitioner was not the owner of the trusts in question, and as such, he is not liable for the tax deficiencies that the Commissioner assessed; 3) with respect to the partnership, the Tax Court lacked jurisdiction over the 1983, 1984, and 1986 tax years; and 4) STJ’s conclusion that only the 1% interest that petitioner held in the partnership for the 1981 and 1982 tax years was taxable is not clearly erroneous....

If you are a lawyer or a law student, you may not be surprised by the dismal mental health statistics in the legal profession: 20% of attorneys have problematic drinking habits, compared to only 14% for the general population.Lawyers are 3.6 times more likely to suffer from depression than the general population.While 18.1% of the general population reported mild to severe anxiety in the past year, 37% of attorneys reported the same....

When Sandra Day O’Connor suggested an expiration date for the use of affirmative action in university admissions in 2003, her hope was that affirmative action would no longer be necessary in the future. “We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today,” the now-retired Justice O’Connor wrote in Grutter v. Bollinger. But as two new university affirmative action cases make their way toward Supreme Court appeals, is another protected group emerging?...

Lacking satisfaction in the courts, David Ostrom is seeking it by Medieval means: Trial by combat. Or so he claims. Admitting defeat at the hands of his ex-wife and her lawyer in an Iowa court, Ostrom has asked a judge to sanction a different kind of battle: sword fighting. “To this day, trial by combat has never been explicitly banned or restricted as a right in these United States,” Ostrom argued to the court....

Mommy blogger Lacey Spears was sentenced for the poisoning death of her son. Lacey Spears was a prolific blogger. She wrote hundreds of entries about her young son who seemed to always be sick. The boy died of salt poisoning when he was only 5 years old, reports The Associated Press. This is where the story takes a disturbing turn. Prosecutors arrested Spears and charged her with murdering her son. She was accused of making her son sick so that she could blog about it....

John Graham shot Anna Mae Aquash in the back of the head, execution-style in the Badlands of South Dakota. She died that day in December 1975, but it took authorities 35 years to get Graham to trial because he had fled to Canada. In 2010, he was convicted of felony murder and sentenced to life in prison. In Graham v. Young, the convicted murderer claimed he was wrongly extradited. The U....