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We love being right, though to be fair, anyone with even the most rudimentary understanding of how controlling precedent works could have seen this opinion coming. The Tenth Circuit has ruled against gay marriage. The Supreme Court didn’t intervene. What’s a federal district court in Kansas to do then? Make Kansas the 33rd state to have legalized gay marriage, obviously, even though a parallel state court challenge is set for oral arguments tomorrow....

Since the dawn of the legal services industries, lawyers have had to deal with that flippant attitude of clients and managers instructing us to “just make it happen.” And sometimes, that “it” is possible and realistic; sometimes it’s a pipedream. In the end, that attitude can be both damaging for the profession and the professional. As Patrick Krill explains, that phrase, and others like it, “are signaling that you don’t matter all that much....

Railroad Retirement Board’s determination that contractor operator of commuter railroads is a covered employer affirmed Herzog Transit Serv. Inc. v. United States R.R. Ret. Bd., 09-3945, Petition for review of an order of the Railroad Retirement Board (Board), determining that a contract operator of commuter railroads is a covered employer under the Railroad Retirement Act (RRA) and the Railroad Unemployment Insurance Act, but only with respect to certain dispatching operations, is denied as the Board correctly determined that petitioner was, insofar as it performed the dispatching function for interstate trains using the tracks of the owner of the rail line in question, a covered employer....

In a drug defect product liability litigation, appellant-law firm’s interlocutory appeal from the district court’s order finding that all of appellant-law firm’s cases that were pending in the district court were subject to certain attorney compensation strictures and that appellant was prohibited from making any disbursements from a fund that it maintained until a fund administrator had certified that the protocols had been adhered to, is dismissed where the injunction did not give or aid in giving substantive relief sought in the lawsuit, and thus there was no jurisdiction under 28 U....

In US v. Golinveaux, No. 09-1959, the court of appeals affirmed defendant’s conviction for being a felon in possession of seven rounds of .22 caliber ammunition while having been previously convicted of three or more violent felony offenses, on the grounds that 1) the district court did not clearly err in finding that defendant showed no signs of being under the influence and rejecting defendant’s argument that she was likely under the influence at the time she gave consent to search; and 2) defendant was not so overcome by police authority or by an officer’s persuasive powers as to make her consent involuntary....

In plaintiff’s employment discrimination and retaliation action against her former employer, summary judgment in favor of defendant is affirmed where, because plaintiff failed to present evidence that defendant acted with retaliatory intent when it fired her, a jury could not infer that defendant fired her because she took FMLA leave. Read Long v. Teachers’ Ret. Sys. of State of Illinois, No. 10/23/09 Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of Illinois...

The Supreme Court split four to four today in a case challenging one President Obama’s signature immigration reform efforts. The case, United States v. Texas, was one of the Court’s highest profile disputes of the term, touching on a host of significant issues, from the ability of states to challenge federal immigration programs, to the extent of executive branch power, and to, not insignificantly, the status of millions of immigrants....

In capital habeas proceedings, circuit court’s order reversing a district court’s grant of a habeas petition is reversed where it was objectively unreasonable for a state court to conclude that there was no reasonable probability the sentence would have been different if the sentencing judge and jury had heard the significant mitigation evidence that petitioner’s counsel neither uncovered nor presented, including evidence of petitioner’s mental health or mental impairment, his family background, or his military service....

The Seventh Circuit decided an immigration case and a criminal case involving a defendant convicted of distributing crack cocaine. In Gonzalez-Balderas v. Holder, No. 09-1890, the court faced a challenge to the BIA’s denial of a Mexican National’s request to reapply for admission retroactive to the date of her second reentry. The petitioner initially entered the U.S. illegally by using someone else’s documentation and removed, which made her ineligible to seek readmission for five years....

Three years ago, the Supreme Court ruled in Berghuis v. Thompkins that a criminal suspect must affirmatively invoke his right to refuse questions. The Washington Post characterized the holding as “speak up … to remain silent.” This month, the Court will revisit the right to remain silent to decide whether the Fifth Amendment protects a suspect who clams up during pre-arrest questioning. A ballistics test later matched Salinas’ shotgun with the casings left at the murder scene, and Salinas was charged with murder....

In what has got to be this years’ most finicky, hair-splitting case, the Tenth Circuit dismissed a lawsuit by a group of snowboarders who claimed equal protection violations by the U.S. Forest Service whose special-use permit excluded snowboarders but allowed skiers. In the opinion of U.S. Judge Dee Benson, “the equal protection clause is not a general fairness law that allows anyone who feels discriminated against to bring an action in federal court....

In plaintiff’s suit against a customs officer for arresting him for illegal reentry into the U.S. and against the Assistant United States Attorney who prosecuted the case, grant of the government’s motion for substitution and dismissal under the Federal Employees Liability Reform and Tort Compensation Act (Westfall Act) is affirmed where: 1) the district court correctly substituted the U.S. as defendant, as plaintiff’s claim for relief for violation of his rights under the Vienna Convention does not fall within an exception to the Westfall Act’s substitution provision; and 2) the district court properly dismissed plaintiff’s claim as the source of his claims is not state tort law, but international treaty and as such, does not fall within the United States’ waiver of its sovereign immunity in section 1346(b)....

Civil rights action against police officers and a city Sykes v. Anderson, 08-2088, concerned a challenge to a jury verdict in favor of the plaintiffs on their claims against two police officers and award of over $2.5 million in compensatory and punitive damages, in plaintiffs’ 42 U.S.C. section 1983 actions against several police officers, asserting claims of false imprisonment, malicious prosecution, and denial of due process, and against the City of Detroit claiming that the city failed to respond to citizen complaints and that it failed to train and supervise its employees, following their overturned convictions for state crimes of “Larceny by Conversion” and “False Report of a Felony....

A Native American tribe in North Dakota indicated that it may be planning to bring its lawsuit to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, reports the Bismarck Times. The Spirit Lake and Standing Rock Sioux tribes sued in the federal district court against the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) for its policy banning the use of Native American imagery. The lawsuit didn’t get very far on the merits, given the reaction of the district judge....

Defendant’s sentence for being a deported alien found in the U.S. is affirmed where the use of physical force against the person of another was an element of California Penal Code section 273.5, and thus defendant’s prior violation of that statute was a categorical crime of violence under U.S.S.G. section 2L1.2. Read US v. Laurico-Yeno, No. 09-50093 Appellate Information Argued and Submitted November 3, 2009 Filed January 4, 2010 Judges...

In a dispute involving enforcement of the Clean Water Act, district court’s judgment against defendant is affirmed where: 1) the court did not err in finding defendant did not have standing to intervene in an action to enforce the Clean Water Act against the Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District as defendant did not adequately allege that it would suffer a concrete and particularized injury, nor did it establish that its injury was fairly traceable to the challenged action and would likely to be redressed by a favorable decision; and 2) defendant did not have the right to intervene under either Fed....

The Ninth Circuit booted U.S. District Judge Manuel Real from a now recurring antitrust case involving Kaplan and West Publishing (makers of BarBri), while reversing his ruling. The circuit’s decision might have appeared inevitable to some, given that Real’s rulings on previous antitrust cases involving BarBri have been reversed three times in a separate case. There are many interesting facets to the case. One question lawyers will be left asking is what judge Real’s rational was in slashing attorneys’ fee numbers by 70 percent?...

The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last week that a South Park parody of a viral video, (which, in turn, became its own viral video), was clearly a parody of the original and protected under the fair use doctrine, reports TechDirt. In 2008, South Park incorporated a parody of a video called, “What What (In the Butt)” (WWITB) in one of its episodes. The parody featured Butters, one of the South Park characters, singing WWITB....

Al “Scarface” Capone. Frank “The Enforcer” Nitti. Louis “Little New York” Campagna. These were the names of Chicago’s famous crime bosses, but things have changed since then. Now names like Laquan McDonald and Jason Van Dyke make headlines there. Van Dyke, a Chicago police officer, was convicted of murdering McDonald. That led to a plan for police reforms, which a federal judge has now approved. Police Reforms According to reports, public trust in Chicago police eroded over decades....

Transcript Panel 1: A round, turquoise character holds out a bottle of Adderall to a friend while accepting some dollar bills in their other hand. A speech bubble comes out of the turquoise character, saying: “Is it illegal to sell my Adderall to my friends?” Panel 2: Four round characters stand admiring medication bottles and surrounding “law” with arms and legs. On the left of the law character, an orange round character says “I’ll Venmo you!...