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The Affordable Care Act allows the federal government to provide subsidies to poor and middle-class people purchasing insurance on the federal exchange, the Supreme Court ruled in King v. Burwell today. Opponents to Obamacare had claimed that federal subsidies were, based on the language of the Act, limited to plans purchased on exchanges individual states set up themselves, not those obtained through Healthcare.gov. The exact language of the Act must yield to its overall intent, the Court decided in its 6-3 decision....

Conviction for drug crimes is affirmed where there was sufficient evidence from which a reasonable jury could find that defendant intentionally joined the charged drug conspiracy. Sentence is vacated and remanded where the court did not make an adequate finding of the quantity of drugs reasonably foreseeable to defendant, a crucial element in determining the proper base offense level. Read US v. Dean, No. 08-3287 Appellate InformationAppeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, New Albany Division....

FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod writes regularly in this section on legal developments surrounding technology and the internet. Wherever we go these days, whether at work, at home, in restaurants, outside, or practically anywhere else, people reflexively go to their smartphones constantly. Why? Because those little handheld devices can accomplish so much. We can send communications across various platforms, conduct business tasks, check on the news, shop, participate in social media, listen to music, watch videos, and the list goes on and on....

It is notoriously difficult to win a libel suit when you are a public figure. That common knowledge, along with an improper reliance on testimony from an evidentiary hearing, may have led a district court judge to incorrectly dismiss a libel lawsuit former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin brought against The New York Times. While the substance of the lawsuit includes important First Amendment considerations and the incendiary rhetoric often found today in many media outlets, the 2nd Circuit’s decision was based on procedural grounds....

Earlier this week, the Judges of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals convened in honor of a recently departed judge, reports Metropolitan News Enterprise. Judge Cynthia Holcomb Hall passed away in February, at the age of 82. And coming from an era where women lawyers were rare and women judges even more so, Judge Hall was a trailblazer for women in the legal industry, like her fellow Stanford Law alumnus, Retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor....

To your teenage child, school can seem boring and pointless. The idea of calling it quits and making their own way in the world can seem alluring. Although statistics show that dropping out is usually a bad idea, the motivation to leave school can be overwhelming. If students want to do it, however, state laws are an impediment until they reach a certain age — 16, 17 or 18, depending on the state....

In a panel decision out of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, one defendant is catching a tough break after the court found that the warrant that secured his cell phone location data was not supported by probable cause. Despite the lack of probable cause, a divided panel found that the officer’s good faith reliance on the warrant being supported by probable cause defeated the fact that it was not....

Got all that? Five years later, U.S. Marshalls tracked him down, extradited him, and he faced sentencing. This time, however, the government wasn’t feeling nearly as generous and recommended a higher sentence than the plea bargain provided for. The probation officer’s presentence report added upward adjustments for additional drugs, obstruction of justice, and possession of a dangerous weapon. It also deleted credits for acceptance of responsibility. That’s steep, but as the Seventh Circuit noted, it’s still 29 months below the guidelines....

Challenge to Cross-Gender Strip Search In Byrd v. Maricopa Sheriff’s Dept., No. 07-16640, a civil rights action by a pretrial detainee claiming that he was subjected to a cross-gender strip search of his genital area, the court affirmed in part judgment for defendant where the complaint’s allegations failed to state an equal protection claim because they asserted only allegedly harmful treatment and mentioned nothing about disparate treatment, much less about the specific jail policy or gender classification in general....

The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals is accepting comments in response to five proposed changes to the Tenth Circuit rules until Sunday, October 23, 2011. Comments on the proposed changes may be emailed to 10th_Circuit_Clerk@ca10.uscourts.gov. Interested parties are also invited to call the office of the Clerk with any questions they may have. That number is 303-844-3157. The proposed changes are summarized below. 10th Cir. R. 22.1 and 22.2(certificates of appealability and procedures in death penalty cases)....

It’s possible that Karen Golinski’s Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) challenge won’t be resolved in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. In the past week, both the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group (BLAG) and the Department of Justice have asked the Supreme Court to decide whether DOMA Section 3 is constitutional. The section limits federal programs and benefits for marriage to legal unions of a man and a woman. Now, the federal government is battling itself to resolve whether the provision violates the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment Due Process Clause, reports SCOTUSblog....

According to one federal judge’s reading of the law, if a website embeds another’s copyright violation, that’s a copyright violation. And while some folks who write on the internet might be up in arms about the recent decision holding such, as embedding is a common practice, there’s more to it than most media outlets are letting on, and it’s not the end of the internet. For starters, the court decided a rather narrow issue....

In March, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Humiston-Keeling still controlled reasonable accommodation claims, but it indicated that it might reconsider the impact of the Supreme Court’s 2002 US Airways, Inc. v. Barnett decision on Humiston-Keeling. That day of reconsideration has come. Friday, the appellate court announced that Humiston-Keeling did not survive Barnett, and that “the ADA does indeed mandate that an employer appoint employees with disabilities to vacant positions for which they are qualified, provided that such accommodations would be ordinarily reasonable and would not present an undue hardship to that employer....

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg turns 80 on Friday, and we’re ready to celebrate her graceful transition from septuagenarian to octogenarian. Here are 8 reasons to celebrate Justice Ginsburg: She’s tough. Justice Ginsburg has beaten cancer twice. When she fell and broke two ribs in 2012? She still went to work. And The New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin describes her as “kind of the monster of the Supreme Court gym.” She dreams of being a diva....

Retailers, restaurants, airlines, and other businesses are begging Americans to try and return to some sense of “normal.” That is not happening. And with the expiration of most federal financial support, many businesses big and small are entering another period of massive uncertainty. As a business owner, your strategy may be no more complex than “just trying to hang on.” Unfortunately, it appears that another line of defense — business interruption insurance — may not come to the rescue during the pandemic....

On Monday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit challenging the way judges are vetted in the state of Iowa. The lawsuit, which was brought by four Iowa residents, challenged the composition of the Judicial Nominating Commission at the time when the commission was vetting applicants for judgeships. The four plaintiffs, Steve Carlson, Mary Graznow, Richard Kettels, and William Ramsey, invoked the Fourteenth Amendment, citing that their right to equal protection had been violated....

The Motion Picture Association of America has joined forced with Flava Works, a gay porn production company, in a copyright infringement lawsuit over a website that allowed users to upload embedded links to porn videos. The case is now on appeal to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Flava Works claims that myVidster.com, a social video bookmarking site, infringed on its copyrighted material by embedding Flava Works’ videos on myVidster and reaping the ad revenue rewards....

In a licensing agreement dispute involving restriction of Styrofoam-type sales to certain Asian countries, district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of plaintiff-licensee is affirmed where the “fully paid-up” license clearly expired along with defendant’s intellectual property rights in the process, and as such, because defendant does not have continuing intellectual property rights in the process, the License Agreement has no continuing force. Read Nova Chem., Inc. v. Sekisui Plastics Co....

Following the woes Ohio experienced in the 2004 election, the state legislature established “no fault” absentee voting and early, in-person (EIP) voting. In 2013, Ohio passed a statute decreasing the number of EIP days to 28, down from 35. The decrease in EIP days was an attempt to close a loophole: EIP voting and the voting registration deadline overlapped during a period subsequently called “Golden Week,” meaning voters could register and vote at the same time....

Two weeks ago, the Ninth Circuit shocked the legal world by holding, contrary to many circuits with more conservative credentials, that the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to keep and bear arms, which in practical terms, must guarantee the right to bear them in public – i.e., concealed or open carry. Our gut reaction was en banc appeal. And because the panel’s 2-1 majority aligned along conservative-liberal lines, there was some question about what an entire en banc court might hold....